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Ben Loomis

(Press Release) USA Nordic Sport Nominates Nordic Combined Team Roster For Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022

PARK CITY, UTAH (January 19, 2022) — USA Nordic Sport announced today its nominations for the U.S. Olympic Nordic Combined Team that will represent Team USA at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. Nominations are to be confirmed by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee when it formally announces the U.S. Olympic Team. Athletes to Watch The team will be headlined by three-time Olympian Taylor Fletcher, who looks for his first Olympic podium. Fletcher’s top finishes at the Olympics include...

FasterSkier’s Juniors of the Year: Ben Loomis and Hailey Swirbul (Updated)

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 outstanding North American junior athletes across all nordic disciplines.  *** Ben Loomis, U.S. Nordic Combined Team In late January,...

Thursday Olympic Rundown: Belarus Gold in Thrilling Women’s Biathlon Relay; US 10th Team in NoCo

FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, Full report Ranked just 10th coming into today’s women’s relay, the team from Belarus stole the show with Darya Domracheva skating across the line to claim the fourth Olympic gold of her career after strong efforts from Nadezhda Skardino and Iryna Kryuko, both of whom have stood on the World Cup podium before, and newcomer Dzinara Alimbekava, a 22-year-old newcomer with just 11 World Cup starts to her name. It was the first relay...

FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, postponed to Thursday due to high winds, the nordic-combined jumping portion went off earlier in the day as planned. The men’s individual normal hill/10-kilometer Gundersen competition saw Austria’s Franz-Josef Rehrl scored the highest number of points off the jump with a jump of 112 meters and 130.6 points. Norway’s Jarl Magnus Riiber jumped to second, flying 111 meters and scoring 126.9 points, and Japan’s Akito Watabe posted the third-best...

FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, Full report After the jumping round of the nordic-combined individual normal hill/10-kilometer Gundersen-start competition on Wednesday, Austria’s Franz-Josef Rehrl topped the standings thanks to a jump of 112 meters, just a meter farther than second place Jarl Magnus Riiber of Norway. The top American was Bryan Fletcher, who sat in 18th place after a jump of 97.5 meters good for 99 points. He started the 10 k cross-country skiing portion of the competition 2:06...

Saturday Rundown: Relay Silver for U.S. Men; Loomis 4th; Plus Hakuba & Gatineau

(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Americans Ben Loomis, Luke Jager and Gus Schumacher.) Junior World Championships (Goms, Switzerland): Men’s and women’s relays Two individual medals and a relay podium. That’s how the U.S. team fared this week at Junior World Championships in terms of a medal count, but the significance of its breakthroughs go way beyond the hardware. Hailey Swirbul became the most successful American nordic skier at Junior World...

Thursday Rundown: Swirbul 3rd in Junior Worlds Skiathlon; U.S. NoCo Relay 7th (Updated)

(This article has been updated to include comments from Americans Hailey Swirbul and Gus Schumacher.) Junior World Championships (Goms, Switzerland): 10/20 k skiathlons second in the 5 k classic for her first individual medal and the best-ever finish for the U.S. at Junior Worlds. “This means so much,” she told race organizers after taking third in Thursday’s skiathlon. “I’m so happy to represent the United States here and show how we can improve in the...

Tuesday Rundown: Swirbul 2nd at Junior Worlds; Loomis 3rd (Updated)

(This article has been updated to reflect that American Hailey Swirbul was in second for most of Tuesday’s 5 k race, not over one minute back as previously reported based on a live timing error. It has also been updated to include comments from Americans Hailey Swirbul, Ben Loomis, Stephen Schumann, and Gus Schumacher, Canada’s Antoine Cyr, University of Alaska Anchorage nordic head coach Andrew Kastning, and U.S. Ski Team Development Coach Bryan Fish.) Junior World Championships (Goms,...

Under 23 Questions: Ben Loomis

In an effort to showcase the North Americans competing at next week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2018 Nordic Combined Junior World Championships in Kandersteg, Switzerland, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. Here we have 19-year-old Ben Loomis, of USA Nordic, who’s representing the U.S. at his fourth Junior Worlds. Loomis is also headed to his

Sunday Rundown: Planica, Chaux-Neuve, Rena, Red Deer

FIS Cross Country World Cup (Planica, Slovenia): 10/15 k classic Men’s report Just when it looked like one of those Charlotte-Kalla days, Finland’s Krista Pärmäkoski swooped in and topped the Swede’s time by 3.6 seconds in the women’s 10-kilometer classic individual start on Sunday for her first-career outright World Cup win. Outright meaning non-stage; Pärmäkoski has two World Cup wins to her name for setting the fastest time of day in 2016 pursuit races. But...

Flying Farther: Developing Ski Jumping and NoCo, USA Nordic Style

Three years ago, U.S. Ski and Snowboard (officially dropped nordic combined from its funding rolls. It was a potentially big blow and flat-liner moment for a program coming off one the most successful runs in U.S. nordic sports history. As recently as 2013, the foursome of Todd Lodwick, Billy Demong, Bryan Fletcher, and Taylor Fletcher earned bronze in the team event at World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy. Now, under the umbrella of USA Nordic, and two World Championships...

FasterSkier’s 2017 Performances of the Year

This is it — the final award in our 2016/2017 awards series. Votes stemmed from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they’re intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This honor goes to outstanding North American performances of the year across various nordic sports. Previous categories: Collegiate | U.S. Continental | Biathletes | U.S. Breakthroughs | International | won the 20-kilometer individual at 2017 IBU World Championships, it was by about a slim margin as he...

Sunday Rundown: Lahti and Osrblie (Updated x2)

FIS Nordic World Championships (Lahti, Finland): Classic team sprints Defending champions Norway repeated gold in the women’s team sprint, with Heidi Weng and Maiken Caspersen Falla crossing the finish line first in Lahti, Finland. On the second-to-last loop, it looked like Russia could have something to say about that. Yulia Belorukova put in a furious sprint up the course’s biggest climb, and then beat Weng to the exchange. But her teammate Natalia Matveeva could not match the pace when Falla...

FIS Nordic Combined Junior World Championships (Park City and Midway, Utah): Normal hill/5 k [UPDATED] In the individual normal hill/5-kilometer Gundersen on Saturday, the last nordic-combined competition of 2017 Nordic Junior World Championships, American Ben Loomis captured his first top 10 in his third Junior Worlds in ninth place. Eighteen-year-old Loomis jumped to 10th then picked off one place in the 5 k to finish ninth, 1:22.3 minutes behind the winner, Germany’s Vinzenz Geiger. Geiger...

FIS Nordic U23 World Championships (Midway, Utah): 10/15 k freestyle Paddy Caldwell, of the Stratton Mountain School and U.S. Ski Team D-team, raced to the first top 10 of his career at a U23 World Championship on Thursday, placing ninth in the men’s 15-kilometer freestyle individual start at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. Caldwell started 44th (of 53) and crossed the finish in sixth before being bumped down three places to ninth. Upon being passed by the eventual...

Schumann Races to 10th at Home NoCo Junior Worlds

Sixteen-year-old Stephen Schumann knew the drill when it came to Nordic Junior World Championships. He had been to his first Junior Worlds last year in Rasnov and Cheile Gradistei, Romania, and competed in three events: two individual and the team 4 x 5-kilometer relay. This year, he’s on his home turf in Park City, Utah. And while most U.S. nordic-combined up-and-comers migrate there to train with the U.S. Ski Team at Utah Olympic Park, Schumann...

FIS Nordic U23 World Championships (Midway, Utah): Classic sprint [UPDATED] All four American women and three Canadians qualified for the women’s classic sprint heats on the first day of U23 World Championships on Tuesday, and in the men’s qualifier, three Americans finished in the top 30 to advance to the quarterfinals at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. Kelsey Phinney led the Americans in sixth in the women’s 1.3-kilometer qualifier, clocking in 2.77 seconds off the fastest women’s...

Under 23 Questions with Ben Loomis

In an effort to showcase the North Americans competing at this week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2017 USANA Nordic Junior World Championships and U23 Cross Country World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. Here we have 18-year-old Ben Loomis, of the U.S. Nordic Combined Team, who’s representing the U.S. at his third Junior Worlds. *** “My full name is Benjamin...