Frozen Thunder lived up to its name on Friday, with temperatures hovering below the legal race limit prior to the start of the second competition series of the week: the women’s 7.5- and men’s 10-kilometer freestyle individual starts. An hour delay was enough time to see temperatures rise to -10 degrees Celsius (14 Fahrenheit), and many skiers bundled in Buffs in prep for the five to six laps of racing. Overcast skies were a celestial...
Clouds heavy with building snow and a winter-storm warning already in effect cast a second anticipatory shadow over a jittery group of racers gathered on Wednesday for the first Frozen Thunder race of the season at the Canmore Nordic Centre in Canmore, Alberta. At stake for some of the top Canadians participating in the day’s classic sprint was the opportunity to secure the final spot on the men’s World Cup team for the first period...
Frozen Thunder is back, but it’s not the same Frozen Thunder you knew before. Every year, snow is stored all summer at the Canmore Nordic Centre in Canmore, Alberta, and rolled out in October to provide local ski and biathlon teams with on-snow training opportunities. This year, the loop has changed. “It feels good to be back on the snow after such a long time away,” Biathlon Canada’s Nathan Smith wrote in an email. “The...
Shortly after the U.S. Ski Team (USST) medalist at the World Junior Championships, made the objective criteria that way.” Below are the eight A-team athletes and Ogden, who was renominated to the development “D” team, that met the USST’s objective criteria for team selection. A Team Men Simi Hamilton (Stratton Mountain School Elite Team) Andy Newell (SMS Elite) Women Sadie Bjornsen (Alaska Pacific University) Sophie Caldwell (SMS Elite) Jessie Diggins (SMS Elite) Kikkan Randall (APU) Ida Sargent (Craftsbury Green...
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 breakthrough U.S. skiers. Previous categories: Collegiate Skiers of the Year | U.S. Continental Skiers of the Year |...
Spring Series in Fairbanks, Alaska, wrapped up on Sunday at the Birch Hill Recreation Area with the U.S. Distance Nationals
U.S. Distance Nationals (Fairbanks, Alaska): 30/50 k freestyle mass starts On Sunday in Fairbanks, Alaska U.S. Distance Nationals came to a conclusion for the women as they contested a 30-kilometer skate mass start. Spoiler alert: Diggins swept the week. Marked from the start was Jessie Diggins of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team and the U.S. Ski Team (USST). Diggins is coming off a World Cup campaign where she placed sixth overall and won a sprint...
On Friday at Spring Series in Fairbanks, Alaska, clubs went head to head in the 4 x 5-kilometer
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...
After the 2017 World Cup Finals mini tour drew Men | Women | Men |
When it comes to distance classic events, at least this season, Norway’s Marit Bjørgen is calling the shots. She completed her undefeated streak in 10-kilometer classic competitions (in both individual or mass starts), winning her fourth in a row on Saturday at World Cup Finals in Québec City. Starting in bib No. 7, Saturday’s eventual mass-start winner was skiing just outside of the top 10 for the first kilometer, following two U.S. skiers, Sadie Bjornsen in eighth...
For the second-straight year, the World Cup’s season-ending races will be held in Canada, with Québec City hosting 2017 World Cup Finals, this Friday through Sunday. Canada initially announced a according to a press release. On Thursday, FasterSkier confirmed that the list included the Women | U.S. selection criteria, and
IBU Biathlon World Cup (Kontiolahti, Finland): Single Mixed Relay In the last single mixed relay of the season, Susan Dunklee held the lead after two loops of skiing. She was looking for a top tag-off to American Lowell Bailey, but she crashed on a downhill. Nevertheless, she was able to focus on the shooting range and climb back into podium position. The leaders were gone, however: Simon Eder and Lisa Therese Hauser of Austria ran away with the...
LAHTI, Finland — 1, 2, 3, 4: Norway’s Marit Bjørgen, Norway’s Heidi Weng, Norway’s Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen, Norway’s Ragnhild Haga. That’s how the women’s 30-kilometer freestyle mass start at the 2017 Nordic World Championships ended on Saturday. Bjørgen has two previous 30-kilometer championship titles, but Saturday’s was her first in freestyle. She won the race in 1:08:36.8 hours, just 1.9 seconds ahead of a hard-charging, photo-finishing Weng for second and Jacobsen for third. Haga finished...
FIS Nordic World Championships (Lahti, Finland): Women’s 30 k freestyle mass start Marit Bjørgen made it a four-peat on Saturday with her fourth gold and third individual win over the last week at 2017 Nordic World Championships in Lahti, Finland. (She previously won the 15-kilometer skiathlon, 10 k classic, and 4 x 5 k relay.) The 36-year-old Norwegian closed out the championships with a 1.9-second victory in the women’s 30-kilometer freestyle mass start, finishing in 1:08:36.8...
LAHTI, Finland — Tuesday at Lahti’s venue for the 2017 Nordic World Ski Championships, the sun sets early. Although technically sunset was 5:22 p.m., the sun on this clear-sky day was still wintertime reluctant. It seemed too short a time for the sun’s transect to thaw Lahti. Temps were in the mid-to-low 20 degrees Fahrenheit. But a brisk wind called for down coats and insulated pants for those not actively skiing — in the shade, it...
IBU World Championships (Hochfilzen, Austria): Women’s & men’s mass starts Silver medal for Susan Dunklee. That’s the big news coming out of Hochfilzen, Austria, on the final day of the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Championships after the American finished second, just 4.6 seconds out of first, in the women’s 12.5-kilometer mass start. Dunklee started in bib 17 in the mass start and cleaned all 20 targets to put herself in the hunt for gold....
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — So how cold was it at Kincaid Park Sunday morning for the last of four Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association (RMISA) races held in the Anchorage area this week? “It’s f—ing cold,” said women’s winner Merete Myrseth of the University of Utah. “It was cold,” said men’s winner Moritz Madlener of the University of Denver. “Now we fly back to Denver and get warm.” [Unavailable for comment] were the two skiers who...
www.nnf.ski, Instagram.com/gonnf, for updates from the athletes and the event.
You already learned who's going to Lahti next month. FasterSkier talks with USST head coach Chris Grover about the reasoning behind who was and was not selected for next month's world championships team.