Andrew Musgrave is a mainstay of the World Cup cross-country skiing circuit and a two-time podium finisher, racing for a surprisingly strong British team. Devon and Nat chatted with him this week about a major budget cut for the British team that’s forced team members to fundraise; Muzzy also talks about his training, his life in Norway, his diet and his plans to start feuds on the World Cup. You can email us at devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com.
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. By Rachel Bachman Perkins and Ian Tovell During a brief reprieve from racing, the top tier of international racing made its way from the high desert of Zhangjiakou, China...
Crash and Burn in Falun: News from around the scene has some World Cup skiers on the mend after Saturday’s mass start races in Falun, Sweden. A few notes from the men’s and women’s 10 k and 15 k mass start classic race: there were numerous crashes, some serious. According to an Instagram post from British skier Andrew Young, he crashed on the fourth lap of the men’s race. “I slid into and through...
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. Laid out like a white magic carpet along the Elbe River in Dresden, Germany, the thin ribbon of snow became the speedy tracks for the men’s 1.3-kilometer freestyle sprint...
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. Italy’s Federico Pellegrino (30) loves the skate sprint. Before his win in the Davos, Switzerland, freestyle sprint on Saturday, Pellegrino had won 13 World Cup sprints. All of those...
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. A spicy rivalry in sports just heightens the tension. Although Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo has achieved wunderkind status, last season his prowess was usurped by a stronger Alexander Bolshunov...
Thousands of spectators, slate skies, and a manmade loop of snow laid down in the otherwise green-brown Falun, Sweden ski stadium greeted the World Cup on Saturday. After a weekend hiatus last week, racers contested a 1.4-kilometer classic sprint in one of Sweden’s skiing epicenters. The main World Cup sprint star, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, was absent. The twenty-three-year-old Klæbo broke two fingers last week. According to Norwegian broadcaster NRK, he will be reevaluated on Feb....
It was dizzying in Dresden for the skate team sprints. The man-made loop of lightning-fast snow had skiers going literally round and round for a total of 11 exchanges between teammates. Each skier skated a single 0.7-kilometer lap, for a total of 7.8 k. Each skier raced six laps. Turn your head dizzy. The Women’s Final The finals consisted of ten teams. Sweden I animated the race with its display of pull ahead speed late...
At the close of the season, after some striding and skating on some heavy courses, FasterSkier sent out a query to get some athletes’ opinions on which course (distance and sprint) was the most difficult? We also asked which specific World Cup climb was the deepest-dig grind. Here are the responses. We’ve included some course profiles for reference at the end of the piece. In your opinion what World Cup distance course is the most...
A strip of imported snow along the Elbe river, iconic architectural reminders of old-world Europe’s city-scape in Dresden, Germany, Lycra, speedy skiers, and teams of two: all the ingredients for the men’s 1.6-kilometer freestyle team sprint. With tight pack skiing a function of the the relatively flat Dresden ski loop, the ten teams in the final attempted to play stay-out-of-trouble-skiing for the six total laps. But with a crowded tag area and tight corners where...
FIS World Cup Dresden, Germany 1.6 k Freestyle Sprint The city of Dresden resting alongside the River Elbe hosted a 1.6-kilometer freestyle sprint for the second year running. Hannah Falk of Sweden, last year’s sprint winner in Dresden, won the qualifier in a time of 3:41.85 minutes. The U.S. Ski Team’s (USST) Sophie Caldwell was the second fastest qualifier (+0.49), with Falk’s teammate, Stina Nilsson, qualifying in third (+0.80). Canada’s Dahria Beatty placed 20th (+8.72) in...
The FIS opener races in Beitostølen, Norway, came to a close on Sunday as competitors capped off the three day race weekend with a men’s and women’s freestyle distance event. Forty-nine athletes raced the women’s 10-kilometer skate race, with Norway’s Therese Johaug taking the victory in a time of 24:21.5. The FIS win is Johaug’s second in a row (she won Friday’s Beito classic race before skipping Saturday’s sprints) since her return to the circuit...
Welcome to The Rundown, your quick primer of need-to-know information about the day’s racing. We’ll be updating this digest as the day goes on with additional results, photos and quotes. The Rundown is NOT a race report; stay tuned for complete race reports later today with interviews from the day’s top racers. *** FIS cross-country Beitostølen, Norway: 10 k/15 k freestyle The FIS Beitostølen cross-country races came to a close on Sunday November, 18 with...
In a place like Norway, where the pool of cross-country athletes appears eternally deep, when you see competitors raise the bar, there’s nothing else to do but jump. On Saturday in Beitostølen, Norway the known knowns were self-evident: Maiken Caspersen Falla and Johannes Høsflot Klæbo took the freestyle sprint wins during the second day of FIS race competitions. As both athletes were overall World Cup sprint champions last season, there are no shockers there....
Welcome to The Rundown, your quick primer of need-to-know information about the day’s racing. We’ll be updating this digest as the day goes on with additional results, photos and quotes. The Rundown is NOT a race report; stay tuned for complete race reports later today with interviews from the day’s top racers. *** FIS cross-country Beitostølen, Norway: 1.3 k freestyle sprints In Beitostølen on Saturday, the second day of FIS races there sent the women on 1.3-kilometer skate...
The 2018 Blink Ski Festival continued in full force on Friday and Saturday, with cross-country and biathlon prologues, 10- and 15-kilometer cross-country races and biathlon mass starts all taking place on Friday, followed by sprints on Saturday. Results: Men’s cross-country prologue After the elite men’s prologue, athletes geared up for a men’s and women’s biathlon prologues. Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Bø took the men’s biathlon prologue win in a time of 10:30.2 after two misses (1+1)....
BEITOSTØLEN, Norway — A year ago, 20-year-old Johannes Høsflot Klæbo leapt onto the scene with a Friday’s 15 k classic, 18 seconds behind reigning Overall World Cup champion Martin Johnsrud Sundby. On Saturday, Klæbo won the 1.5 k classic sprint in Beitostølen without so much as a blemish, winning the qualifier to start the day then topping each of his heats en route to the final. Up against five other Norwegians in the final, Klæbo...
Editor’s Note: The following is part of a series proposed by Maks Zechel, a 20-year-old Canadian cross-country skier embarking on his first season training abroad. In August, he recently made the big move to Norway, where he’ll be training and racing with Team Asker for the entire winter. Through these updates, Maks hopes to share his personal “observations, stories and lessons learned” to help close the gap between North American and Scandinavian nordic skiing. Previous posts: #2, #4,...
This past weekend was once again the time of the year for the Toppidrettsveka ski festival, a three-day rollerski mini tour held annually since 2005 in the region of Trondheim, Norway. In addition to the individual stages, points for the top-30 finishers were awarded to compile an overall ranking similar to the Tour de Ski. The elite field of athletes was mostly comprised of Norwegian and other Scandinavian skiers active on the International Ski Federation...
IBU World Championships (Hochfilzen, Austria): Men’s relay [UPDATED] Russia’s four-man relay team hit nearly every target on Saturday, using a total of just three spares to clean 40 targets, and stayed out of the penalty loop to capture gold in the men’s 4 x 7.5-kilometer relay at the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. It was the last team event and the second-to-last day of the championships, with the men’s and women’s...