This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com. The origin story of the Tour de Ski suggests that it was invented to mirror cycling’s Tour de France: multiple stages, mountaintop finishes, leader’s jerseys, thrilling competitions, glorious champions. Today’s Stage 7 of...
Competing at a professional level in any sport requires great skill, talent, and focus. Thinking of going pro? Unless you’re in the top 1%, don’t bother trying out. Then, once you reach the professional level of competition, the athletic quality is so high that there is simply no margin allowing time to participate in more than your primary sport. Despite all those seeming truisms, occasionally an athlete emerges with the talent and determination to...
The Alpe Cermis When the Grand Tour of skiing—the Tour de Ski—was dreamed up by Vegard Ulvang and Jurg Capol in 2006, one of the first definitive decisions was that it would need a Queen Stage: a stage that sought to distill the essence of ski racing—the brutal beauty of the slog—to its purest state. The Tour de France had its Alp d’Huez, and the Tour de Ski would have the Alpe di Cermis. Through...
We’ve got extra-special Alaska-based guest Kikkan Randall joining us for this episode to recap the 2021/22 Tour de Ski. We break down a rough finish for a head cold-afflicted Jessie Diggins, some sensational skiing by Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, and some lingering questions about Olympic preparation. We’re planning a mailbag episode in the next few days; send your questions to devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com. We’ll be back soon!
Hall and the A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage please contact info@fasterskier.com. We began this year’s coverage of the Men’s Tour de Ski with a prelude from 5 time Tour de France champion Bernard Hinault. So let us begin this coda with him as well. On the cycling classic Paris-Roubaix, “the hell of the north”...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage please contact info@fasterskier.com. Again the capstone of the Tour de Ski, athletes faced the infamous and grueling hill climb up the Alpe Cermis in Val di Fiemme, Italy to close out six...
The question is not where to start. That is with Jessie Diggins and her shining moment over eight stages at the Tour de Ski. Diggins secured the overall win in the Tour de Ski on Sunday, the first non-European skier, male or female to win the Tour. Ivan Babikov, former Candian National Ski Team member and master of the Alpe himself, joins Devon to discuss Diggins, the Russians, the Alpe, and the vagaries of the...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and their A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage please contact info@fasterskier.com. The inevitable conclusion at the sharp end of the 2021 Tour de Ski came to fruition. The ticks of the clock to second skier overall, France’s Maurice Manificat (34),...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and their A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage please contact info@fasterskier.com. Though Devon Kershaw might fairly say “It’s not really cross country skiing,” as a viewer, the grueling climb up the Alpe Cermis is the crown jewel of the Tour de...
Holy smokes. It concludes. First off, for those who have listened to this seven-episode post-TdS run, we appreciate it. And there was the racing. Johaug. Weng. Diggins and Brennan in form today on the Alpe, and Sadie Maubet Bjornsen in seventh overall. For the men …. Johannes Høsflot Klæbo faded on the Alpe while Alexander Bolshunov came into his own. We could digress. But we’ll leave that for the podcast. Ciao. Wait. A small digression. We...
The hype. The Spectacle. Stage 7 of the 2019-2020 Tour de Ski (TdS) brings the show: the Alpe Cermis final climb. The race this year began as a mass start — a new format for the final stage, as this has historically has been a pursuit race, where the first skier to the finish line is the TdS champ. With the opening sections of the course taking in the sprint course loop in Val di Fiemme,...
The fateful Alpe Cermis. The 10-kilometer capstone of the Tour de Ski, athletes complete the 1.5 k sprint loop before following the river valley down to the base of the alpine hill, climbing steeply for nearly 400 vertical meters to the finish. Bodies aching with the cumulative fatigue of the tour, racers are totally spent at the finish of the event. Crossing the line, they collapse with their faces pressed into the snow gasping for...
Risk is part of putting on the race bib. In an individual sport like cross-country skiing, athletes expose themselves to be judged by place, time back, splits, sector times, overall rankings, fastest (or slowest) times on the day. In the latest version of the Tour de Ski (TdS) overall winners were crowned on Sunday; Norwegians Ingvild Flugstad Østberg won the women’s Tour, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won the men’s. Both were first-time winners. Within...
With the ascent comes the end. On Sunday the 2018/2019 Tour de Ski (TdS) Stage 7 9-kilometer skate pursuit brought the Tour de Ski to a close atop Val di Fiemme’s Alpe Cermis. The basic Alpe Cermis stats are stout: the slope approaches a 30 percent grade in sections, and averages 12 percent, and climbs 420 meters in 3.5 k. It’s a lung-buster. After the 60.67 k seven-stage Tour that began on Dec. 29...
U.S. Cross Country Championships (Anchorage, Alaska): 20/30 k classic mass starts Women’s report Sweden’s Hedda Bångman denied Caitlin Patterson of her first outright victory of the week at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships, but Patterson as the first American racked up her third-straight national title in the women’s 20-kilometer classic mass start at Kincaid Park on Sunday in Anchorage, Alaska. Bångman, a 22-year-old freshman at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU), pulled off a 15.9-second...
The 2018 Tour de Ski is a wrap. On Sunday in Val di Fiemme, Italy, the final Stage 7 hill climb was a mirage of sorts as Switzerland’s Dario Cologna soloed in for his fourth overall Tour de Ski (TdS) victory. The stage, a 9-kilometer freestyle pursuit “final climb” ascends an alpine ski-area slope for the final three k’s as it climbs 425 meters from race start to finish. Not once did the 31-year-old Cologna...
The question wasn’t whether – it was when. Defending Tour de Ski champion Heidi Weng started the day with a two-second deficit to Norwegian teammate Ingvild Flugstad Østberg. But as one of the best climbers in the World Cup field, it was fairly certain that at the top of the Alpe Cermis, Weng would be crowned the Tour winner again. The move came after about six and a half kilometers of the nine-kilometer skate pursuit...
That’s a wrap, folks! With the 11th Tour de Ski coming to an end on Sunday with the infamous Alpe Cermis final climb in Val di Fiemme, we wanted to share some of the athlete and coach comments that didn’t make it into the race reports. Below are quotes from the last three stages of the Tour, all in Italy. *** Stage 5 (Toblach, Italy): 5/10 k freestyle Men’s report On pre-race feelings: “I think nerves were...
U.S. Cross Country Championships (Soldier Hollow): Classic sprints Jennie Bender of Bridger Ski Foundation and Kevin Bolger of the University of Utah won national titles in the classic sprints at 2017 U.S. Cross Country Championships at Soldier Hollow earlier Sunday afternoon. They each took narrow – but, for sprinting, relatively uncontested – victories, as each was in the lead coming into the stadium and led through the final 180-degree turn into the finishing straight. In the women’s race, Bender took the...
Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Noah Hoffman. There were moments in Sunday’s 9-kilometer freestyle climb up Alpe Cermis, the seventh and final stage of the 2017 Tour de Ski, that Norway’s Martin Johnsrud Sundby appeared to be putting some serious time into Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov up front. In the first two kilometers, Sundby as the runner-up entering the day had gained three seconds on Ustiugov, who had won all but...