A week after relentless amounts of rainfall and resulting floods devastated southern Alberta, residents of Canmore are drying out, keeping their heads up and training on par.
A week after relentless amounts of rainfall and resulting floods devastated southern Alberta, residents of Canmore are drying out, keeping their heads up and training on par.
The first World Cup in Kuusamo, Finland, isn’t until the end of November, but when you start to break down the North American training schedules by camp and month, the off-season suddenly looks much shorter. The Canadian and U.S. national teams will be training in New Zealand, Canmore, Alaska, Truckee, Bend, Lake Placid and Park City at various points between now and when the season begins.
Heidi Widmer, 22, isn't one for hanging around. Recently promoted to the Canadian Senior Team, Widmer ended the season with a backcountry trip then flew to El Salvador and New Orleans before training in Switzerland, where she'll spend a month with World Cup and national team skiers.
It all started as a running joke. Amanda Ammar wasn’t actually a ninja, people just thought she was. In her third season of racing independently, Ammar invited a few friends to join her fun-loving and flexible training method: Alana Thomas, Zoe Roy and Chandra Crawford.
A few days after calling it a season and flying home to Canmore, Alberta, Chandra Crawford and her coach Eric de Nys talk about her decision and what's next for Canada's Olympic gold medalist as she tries to recover for Sochi.
Ever wonder what it's like inside the Bill Warren Training Centre, Canada's premiere indoor facility for national and development skiers? FasterSkier took a tour and some photos while in Canmore, Alberta.
With the holidays heralding a rest period for many, Canmore is old news, but we haven’t forgotten about several of the athletes we interviewed there. Here are some of the highlights, and be sure to check out our video montage with several Canadian nation's group skiers.
Justyna Kowalczyk knows a thing or two about racing in Canmore, and she used her calm approach to win Sunday's 15 k skiathlon, her second title at the Alberta World Cup, by nearly 35 seconds.
After winning gold in a World Cup skate sprint in Canmore in 2008, Chandra Crawford has some great memories of racing in her hometown. The Canadian National Team member added to the list Saturday, placing sixth in the 1.3 k sprint for a World Cup season best.
Alex Harvey (CAN) and Kris Freeman (USA) recorded their best results of the season Thursday at the Alberta World Cup opener, a 15 k classic mass start, to build some confidence and lead their respective teams in Canmore.
Germany's Tim Tscharnke made a good day into a great one, capturing his first World Cup win (and individual podium) on his birthday in the 15 k classic mass start at the Alberta World Cup in Canmore, Alberta.
A staple on the Australian national team for the last 10 years, Esther Bottomley wants to crack the top 30 in a World Cup this season, and she'll go for it in her first World Cup of the year in Québec this weekend.
Entering his third straight season with the Canadian Para-Nordic World Cup Team, Erik Carleton has already made some big decisions this year. Among them, he had to choose whether to race the Alberta Cross Country World Cup in Canmore or go for gold at the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) World Cup opener in Vuokatti, Finland. It must be tough to be Carleton, a competitive-nordic racer who doubles as a Para-Nordic guide for Brian McKeever, arguably the...
Without a doubt, the Canadian World Cup team faced some challenges last season even though its results didn’t really show it. Sure, every team has its ups and downs and occasional tizzy, but Canada generally kept it under wraps. Devon Kershaw continued to podium one weekend after the next and ended up second overall in the World Cup. Simultaneously, most of his teammates also notched personal bests: Alex Harvey finished sixth overall, Lenny Valjas tallied three...
(Note: This article has been updated to reflect the number of competitors registered as of Friday, Nov. 16, and approximate number of red-group skiers.) With the Alberta World Cup in Canmore less than a month (more precisely, four weeks) away, Organizing Committee Chair Ken Hewitt said it’s been a whirlwind at work. The phone rings by the minute, emails are piling up in his inbox, but it’s all good. As of Friday, Hewitt wrote in...
Despite tying his career-best World Cup result last year, winning three IBU Cup races and hitting the podium in another, and securing a spot on Biathlon Canada’s “A” team, until recently Nathan Smith wasn’t feeling too confident about the upcoming season of racing. “I got a cold at the end of August and I guess I underestimated how much of a toll it took on me,” he told FasterSkier in an interview on Thursday. “So...
This past spring, nine Canadians learned they prequalified for their nation’s World Cups in December. Most had an inkling they were in the mix; last season’s NorAm winners Kevin Sandau and Alysson Marshall automatically guaranteed themselves starts in every Québec and Alberta World Cup race, as did the second-place finishers Brent McMurtry and Emily Nishikawa. But then there were some wild cards, like Canadian national-team biathlete Rosanna Crawford. In March, Crawford jumped into a couple...
There’s only so much warming up one can do on a 1.8-kilometer course with more than 70 other people using it. That’s why Chandra Crawford spent part of her 45-minute prep before the WinSport Frozen Thunder Classic at the Canmore Nordic Centre dancing with Jessie Diggins. While the first unofficial race of the season and certainly the largest sprint in North America so far tested both Canadian and U.S. national team skiers, it also brought...
Andy Newell didn’t have time to make a game plan. It all came kind of naturally. The 27-year-old U.S. Ski Team veteran (who also skis for the Stratton Mountain School T2 Team) was pretty busy worrying about whether he’d have enough time to warm up for the inaugural WinSport Frozen Thunder Classic on Friday, and how late that school bus he was following was going to make him. Turns out he had just enough time...
Thirty-six men in the Spray Drag running race didn’t end up chasing Devon Kershaw up Spray Lakes Road in Canmore, Alberta, on Saturday, but they had one heck of a battle from the start. According to American Sylvan Ellefson (Ski & Snowboard Club Vail/Team HomeGrown), the pace was fast for a bunch of nordic skiers early on. “Any road runner could have pulled away, but it was a quick pace,” he wrote in an email....