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Sunday Rundown: Gatineau, Hakuba & Planica

NorAm Eastern Canadian Championships (Gatineau, Quebec): 10/15 k classic pursuits Rosie Frankowski defended her lead and tallied her won Saturday’s large hill/10 k competition, took the final spot on the podium after a photo finish with the Czech Republic’s Tomas Portyk. They finished 11.1 and 11.2 seconds behind Schmid in third and fourth, respectively. American Adam Loomis achieved his best individual result in three years, placing 24th (+3:03.4), after jumping to 30th and starting 3:20...

Harvey Second to Cologna in Seefeld 15 k; Bjornsen 9th, Hamilton 12th

SEEFELD, Austria — A gray sky shadowed over the Tirol ski trails on Sunday. A similarly cool tension built on the course as slightly more than 100 racers warmed up for the mass start of the men’s 15-kilometer freestyle mass start. With five minutes to spare, spectators hurried to stake their spot, some carrying steaming-cheese-fondue-filled baguettes from the Le Gruyère cheese tent: Switzerland’s stamp on the Austrian snow. For those on site, the Le Gruyère...

Saturday Rundown: Seefeld and Ridnaun

FIS Nordic Combined World Cup (Seefeld, Austria): Normal hill/10 k Two of the same men from Jumping | Women’s report Women’s final  Men’s qualifier | Friday’s sprint and thus started first), and shot clean to take the lead after the third stage — where Varvynets missed one. Chevalier went on to clean the final stage for perfect 20-for-20 shooting and crossed the line first in 29:25.4. Varvynets finished second, 11.0 seconds back after missing a...

Poltoranin Owns Planica 15 k Classic; Klæbo Second

Sunday’s World Cup 15-kilometer classic in Planica, Slovenia was a coupling of efficiency, power transfer and patience. Three laps of the course on which skiers climbed roughly 650 feet per 5 k cycle required the low-revving thump-thump-thump of a diesel engine and just the right timing for speed bursts to close time gaps. Kazakhstan’s Alexey Poltoranin covered the 15 k distance in 36:45.7 and won the race by 13.2 seconds over overall World Cup leader,...

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...

Klæbo Dominates in Planica; Hamilton 19th, Newell 20th

Sunny skies. Craggy Slovenian Alps. Fresh snow and firm classic tracks. The perfect backdrop for the coiffed hair and pink sunglasses. On Saturday in Planica, Slovenia, Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo again proved his form is on another level. Sometimes calm with tens of meters to spare, sometimes allowing others to draft momentarily on his ski tails, Klæbo won the World Cup men’s 1.6-kilometer classic sprint in 3:27.35 minutes. In a final that featured three Norwegians,...

Pellegrino Anchors Italy to Another Dresden Win; Late Crash Takes Out U.S. Men

(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Canada’s Bob Thompson.) Federico Pellegrino’s winning move in the men’s 6 x 1.2-kilometer freestyle team sprint on Sunday wasn’t exactly the same as yesterday when the Italian attacked on the final climb of the Saturday’s individual sprint, Locke placed 15th for a career best. The two ultimately finished seventh in the first team-sprint semifinal, just one place behind Great Britain’s James Clugnet and Andrew Young....

The Grandkids Will Love This: Pellegrino Beats Klæbo in Dresden; Hamilton 10th, Locke 15th

How do you beat Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo at his competition-crushing game? Take him by surprise with minimal time to recover. Italy’s Federico Pellegrino did just that on the last uphill rise of the 1.2-kilometer sprint course on Saturday in Dresden, Germany. Dresden, a historic city in eastern Germany, debuted its brand-new course along the Elbe River on manmade snow amid damp conditions and temperatures above freezing throughout the day. Pellegrino had done what he...

Saturday Rundown: Dresden, Ruhpolding, Kaiser Maximilian Lauf

FIS Cross Country World Cup (Dresden, Germany): Freestyle sprints Men’s report For her second-straight World Cup sprint, Sophie Caldwell of the U.S. Ski Team reached the podium in the women’s 1.2-kilometer freestyle sprint on Saturday in Dresden, Germany. Caldwell placed third in the final behind Sweden’s Hanna Falk, who won it in 2:11.02 minutes, and Maja Dahlqvist, also of Sweden, who placed second (+0.23). Caldwell and Dahlqvist both lunged in a photo finish for second,...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — No two races are exactly alike, the saying goes, and there’s a lot of truth to this cliché. But if you step back just a little bit, two race days can start to look awfully similar to one another. For example, for the second time this week, a Hanneman brother won the sprint qualifier, Reese Hanneman won the final, and Alaska Pacific University (APU) put three athletes in the final and two on...

Kornfield Crowned National 30 k Champ After 8-Man Sprint to Finish

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — It could have been mistaken for the finish of a sprint final — except for the fact that almost 10 skiers were in the hunt until the end, most of which were distance specialists. As it were, the last 100 meters of the men’s 30-kilometer classic mass start at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships on Sunday involved eight men double poling in four lanes. Two of those men were past national classic-sprint...

Sunday Rundown: U.S. Nationals; Tour de Ski Finale; Oberhof Relays

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...

West Yellowstone in Review: Big Wins from Hart, Michaud, Bångman, and Brian Gregg

Another SuperTour season opened in West Yellowstone, Montana, one weekend later than usual this year but with a lot of the old standbys, including a twisty, technical freestyle sprint course and puzzling conditions for the classic distance race. In a crash-marred women’s final on Saturday, Dec. 2, Anne Hart of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team avoided a tangle between Caitlin Gregg (Team Gregg) and Caitlin Patterson, of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP),...

Sunday Rundown: Lillehammer; Östersund; West Yellowstone (Updated)

US SuperTour (West Yellowstone, Montana): 10/15 k classic mass starts The second day of SuperTour racing took place as originally planned at the Rendezvous Ski Trails in West Yellowstone, with 22-year-old Hedda Bångman, of the University of Colorado Boulder (CU), and 33-year-old Brian Gregg (Team Gregg) winning the women’s 10-kilometer and men’s 15 k classic mass starts, respectively, on Sunday. Bångman, a Swedish freshman on the second in Saturday’s skate sprint) in third (+4.6). Kyle Bratrud (CXC...

Saturday Rundown: Lillehammer; Östersund; West Yellowstone (Updated)

US SuperTour (West Yellowstone, Montana): Freestyle sprints Anne Hart and Nick Michaud were the big winners on opening day of the US SuperTour season at the Rendezvous Ski Trails on Saturday, taking individual victories in the women’s and men’s freestyle sprint finals, respectively. Hart led into the finishing straight to take the win in 2:52.49 minutes, 0.88 seconds ahead of Erika Flowers, her teammate on the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team, who placed second, and...

On the eastern side of the Northern Michigan University (NMU) campus, where Fair Avenue and Presque Isle Ave intersect, a righthand turn presents visitors with a view of the Berry Events Center and the school’s 26-year-old Superior Dome — a semi-Star-Trek-like outcropping in an otherwise conventionally secular setting. Between the two recreational buildings sits another building, the college’s Physical Education and Instructional Facility (PEIF). Designed predominantly as a practice venue for basketball players, the complex...

Lustgarten, Diggins Double Up on Wins at Winter Games NZ

What if getting to snow-covered groomed trails came in three steps — those literally being from the front door to the trailhead. While recent winters may make this seem like a melting dream for many, a number of Americans made it their reality these past two weeks while staying at the Snow Farm in Wanaka, New Zealand. U.S. Ski Team (USST) members, as well as American skiers representing the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP), Sun...

Start of a New Season (as Seen on Social Media)

Happy May! With the start of a new training year, FasterSkier scanned social media for a sense of how nordic skiers kicked off Day 1 (and the days before) of the 2017/2018 season. Kikkan Randall of the U.S. Ski Team (USST) and Alaska Pacific University (APU) “sneaking in some secret Mom training” while pushing her son Breck on April 30: View this post on Instagram Excited to kick off a new training season tomorrow! (Sneaking in some secret Mom training...

FasterSkier’s U.S. Continental Skiers of the Year: Ben Lustgarten and Jennie Bender

With the 2016/2017 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 American skiers competing primarily, but not exclusively, at the Continental Cup level.  Previous categories: Collegiate Skiers of the Year...

Monday Rundown: SuperTour Finals Skiathlon

U.S. SuperTour Finals (Fairbanks, Alaska): Women’s and men’s skiathlons The first day of racing was skiathlon day at the 2017 U.S. SuperTour Finals, also referred to as Spring Series, in Fairbanks, Alaska. It marked the World Championship medal in a classic event, it is still one of those things for me I am always going to feel like I am trying to fix it, always trying to work on it, which is good.” Diggins has...