Bright lights in PyeongChang. The men’s second semifinal of the Olympic freestyle team sprint was a career highlight moment for Erik Bjornsen. Fourteen teams would crowd the start lanes with Martin Johnsrud Sundby in bib 1. The Norwegian was paired with Johannes Høsflot Klæbo: The duo blessed with Sundby’s stamina and his younger counterpart’s break-from-the-pack speed. With Simi Hamilton racing the second, fourth, and sixth legs for the U.S., and Bjornsen leading off, the semi...
This series comes to FasterSkier from the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Club. A Day in the Life: APUNSC is checking in with Elite Team members over the course of the next few months to get a glimpse into what life looks like for elite athletes as training starts up again during a global pandemic. Today we check in with Tyler Kornfield (29), a 2018 Olympian and 3x National Champion who was born and raised...
On December 15th, 28-year-old Rosie Frankowski scored her first World Cup points after finishing 23rd in the 10-kilometer skate in Davos. She then flew back to Minneapolis to spend Christmas with her family before heading to Houghton, Michigan for US Nationals where despite coming down with a stomach bug, she finished 7th in the 10 k skate, 5th in the 20 k classic, and 6th in the classic sprint. FasterSkier connected with Frankowski as she...
United States Overall in Nations Cup Last Year: 5th Women’s Ranking 2018/2019: 4th Men’s Ranking 2018/2019: 11th Americans to Watch: Seven men and nine women will be lining up in stars and stripes for the World Cup’s opening: Finland’s Ruka Triple. Three race series features a classic sprint followed by a two-day distance pursuit. At the top of the ranks, Jessie Diggins (USST/SMS T2) finished the 2019 season 6th in distance and 7th in sprint....
Back in 2015, prior to her first go at a World Championships, Rosie Brennan was asked this: What’s your biggest motivation while racing?. “I am most motivated by wanting to show that my hard work was worth it, that I did everything I could to go as fast as I could,” Brennan replied at the time. She was twenty six years old then, and now at 30 years old, the Park City native grinds away,...
Before we begin, if you have not heard of the course record holder. In 2016 he bested the time of world renowned mountain athlete Killian Jornet. Norris chose to sit out this year’s event due to the smoke-induced poor air quality. Norris also won the Cirque Series Alyeska race in 2017 and 2019 and took third in between. In 2018, Yeaton won the Cirque Series race and both members of the duo won Mount Marathon —...
Editor’s note: John Wood is a septuagenarian racer who lives in Eagle River, Alaska, outside of Anchorage. Four years ago he wrote a first-person Masters Mind piece for FasterSkier detailing his return from a full knee replacement to winning his age group at the American Birkebeiner classic race 18 months later. This article provides an update on what happened next, including competing at the 2019 Masters World Cup in Beitostølen, Norway, following a second knee...
May 1. Start of a new training cycle for some. In this Wednesday Workout, we checked in with Jessica Yeaton. Yeaton resides in Anchorage, Alaska where she trains with APU and has represented Australia on the World Cup, World Championships, and the Olympics. She earned two U.S. National Championship podiums in Craftsbury, Vermont last season. She placed second in the 10-kilometer classic and third in the 20 k mass start freestyle. A sixth place...
Sunday was the day. The day of all days when SuperTour Finals in Presque Isles, Maine witnessed the fastest 4 x 5-kilometer mixed relay team in the land. Over the last four years of the mixed relay competition at the U.S. Ski and Snowboard SuperTour Finals, also known as Spring Series, Alaska Pacific University APU won the first two iterations of the event, SMS T2 the two most recent. The foursome comprising APU 1: Rosie Brennan,...
Link to mass start skate race photo gallery. Always a threat in the grinding and longer distance races, APU’s David Norris positioned himself as the primary disruptor in the men’s 30-kilometer freestyle mass start at the U.S. Cross-Country Ski National Championships in Craftsbury, VT. With the men racing after the women’s 20 k, the 5 k ski loop used for the mass starts had been skied in, with a faster, narrower best-line often making for...
As the title suggest, we are giving away the keys: Eric Packer, long of the Alaska Pacific University Elite Team, will be posting to our instagram account this week. If you know Packer, his own IG account can be found here, @eric_packer, you understand he has a fondness for the camera lens. He’s a rocket fast skier. But he balances his athletic pursuits by working as an engineer and getting behind the lens. His still photography...
The last time Rosie Brennan was focused on competitive running, she was sporting a red, white and black singlet as a senior at Park City High School in Utah. In the 11 years since, the former U.S. Ski Team member’s running has shifted from a seasonal sport to supplemental training for her true passion: cross-country skiing. Yet earlier this month, on June 9, Brennan surged to the front of the Alaska Run for Women in...
last year’s World Cup squad are retirees Andy Newell (the latter of which isn’t exactly retiring), and Rosie Brennan. Simi Hamilton leads the men’s team as its lone A-team member, while Sadie Bjornsen, Sophie Caldwell, Jessie Diggins, and Ida Sargent are all back on the A-team. The B-team includes three returners — Erik Bjornsen, Paddy Caldwell and Scott Patterson — as well as 25-year-old rookie Kevin Bolger, out of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation...
As discussed last week in 30-kilometer classic mass start at 2018 Spring Series this past March in Craftsbury, Vermont. She crossed the finish line in third, leading out a four-racer chase pack to claim the final podium spot in the final race of her career. She followed U.S. Ski Team (USST) teammate Jessie Diggins and USST and APU teammate Sadie Bjornsen, who took first and second in a tight finish. Randall was the oldest skier...
Skiku. Kornfield is not alone in this endeavor: many skiers and coaches have volunteered their time to “to foster the health and recreational benefits of skiing, biathlon and running through sustainable programs across Alaska”. We spoke to Kornfield on May 3 to learn more about his commitment to Skiku and get the rundown on his year. (To subscribe to the Nordic Nation podcast channel, download the iTunes app. If you have iTunes, subscribe to Nordic Nation here.)
Kikkan Randall competed in her first World Cup race in 2001, and her last in 2018. In between, she won 14 World Cup races, three Sprint Cup Crystal Globes, three World Championships medals, and one Olympic gold medal accompanied by one very enthusiastic broadcast call from Chad Salmela. She appeared in television ads, received the Skis to the City from the mayor of Anchorage, and had an ice-cream flavor named after her. And long before...
With the 2017/2018 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is excited to unveil its annual award winners for this past winter. Votes stem from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they are intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This set of honors goes to the U.S. Breakthrough Skiers of the Year. Previous categories: Collegiate Skiers of the Year | Para-Nordic Skiers of the Year | Canadian...
With ski season winding down, you may be one of the lucky ones hitting the road for some quality family/friend/significant-other time. Here’s a one-hour workout you can squeeze in on-the-go, which we received from Alaska Pacific University (APU) skier Reese Hanneman back in 2013. Hanneman, now 28, and his brother Logan, 24, raced at their first Olympics this past winter in PyeongChang, South Korea.
2018 U.S. Distance Nationals (Craftsbury, Vermont): 30 k classic mass start Jessie Diggins swept SuperTour Finals once again, after doing so 2016 SuperTour Finals the year before in Craftsbury, Vt. Back in Craftsbury on Tuesday, and coming off three-straight victories in the classic sprint, 10-kilometer freestyle mass start and mixed relay with her Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team teammates, Diggins, 26, pulled out her fourth-straight win in her last race of the season: the...
In an effort to showcase the North Americans who competed at last week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2018 Nordic Junior/U23 World Championships in Goms, Switzerland, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. Here we have 21-year-old Thomas O’Harra, of Alaska Pacific University, who represented the U.S. at his first U23 Worlds (after competing at three Junior Worlds). Last week in Goms, O’Harra placed 43rd in...