You should be in Bend. Bend, Oregon. Right now. For all of my “shallow readers” in the audience, those unable to focus on any piece of written work longer than 140 characters (you know who you are), you can stop here. You’ve both learned everything you need to know and also everything your SnapChat-addled brain can handle, so you’re done. For those of you with attention spans longer than those of fruit flies, dig in,...
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...
Monday afternoon, Noah Hoffman big-volume 2016/2017 training load and subsequent lackluster results, as well as his near off-the-grid month adventuring in Utah’s desert country. As of late Monday night, the 2017/2018 U.S. Ski Team (USST) nominations had not been released publicly. USST Head Coach Chris Grover declined to comment on the team’s newest iteration or Hoffman not being renamed to the team until a formal announcement is made through the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association (USSA). Team...
QUEBEC CITY — Friday started off about as good as the Canadian men’s team could have hoped for, with five skiers finishing in the top 30 to qualify for the heats in the 1.5-kilometer freestyle sprint on the first day of World Cup Finals. According to Cross Country Canada, that’s the first time five Canadian men have qualified in a World Cup race. Racing one lap around the Plains of Abraham in the heart of Quebec...
At the start of the season, Sweden’s Stina Nilsson had three individual World Cup wins to her name. Now, after taking Friday’s freestyle sprint title — and only two races left on this year’s World Cup calendar — Nilsson has quadrupled that number. The 23-year-old Swede raced to her ninth victory of the season on Friday in Québec City, crossing first in the women’s 1.5-kilometer freestyle sprint in a time of 3:01.87. The closest competitor...
LAHTI, Finland—The Norwegian lineup for the women’s 4 x 5-kilometer team at the 2017 Nordic World Championships on Thursday was daunting: Maiken Caspersen Falla, Heidi Weng, Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen, Marit Bjørgen. On paper and on snow, a rundown of names and accomplishments. Here during these Lahti championships the Norse foursome have hauled; Falla and Weng with a classic team sprint gold, Bjørgen a 15 k skiathlon gold, and Jacobsen’s hardware was a bronze in the 10 k classic. On Thursday...
LAHTI, Finland — Up until the final 100 meters of Thursday’s race, it looked as if the 2017 Nordic World Championships sprint title belonged to Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov. In fact, Ustiugov had won the qualifier in a time of 3:11.72 minutes, a commanding 2.7 seconds over Norway’s Finn Hågen Krogh. The Russian reigning Tour de Ski champion placed second in his quarterfinal by a mere 0.19 seconds. He was second again in his semifinal in a three-way...
Multiple race warmup and cool downs, managing hydration and caloric intake, moving at her max sprinting speed — more than once. It’s not often that American Liz Stephen feels the lingering effects of a World Cup sprint day. Her most recent memory was three years ago, when she qualified 22nd in Szklarska Poreba, Poland. But this weekend’s three-day competition series in PyeongChang, South Korea, challenged the distance specialist once again. With a smaller World Cup...
Answer the door when opportunity knocks: Russia’s Petr Sedov wins the men's 30 k skiathlon in PyeongChang, South Korea while U.S. skiers Noah Hoffman and Scott Patterson score top-tens.
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...
(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Liz Guiney, Caitlin Patterson and Jessica Yeaton.) Sometimes just being there is half the battle, as the saying goes. No Maiken Caspersen Falla. No Stina Nilsson. On Friday at the site of next year’s Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, three athletes who had never made it to a World Cup podium before prevailed in the women’s 1.4-kilometer classic sprint. And right there was...
2018 is sooner than you think. The World Cup makes its pre-Olympic presence in PyeongChang, South Korea this week and the U.S. and Canadian teams are there.
Last weekend’s first-ever World Cup in Ulricehamn, Sweden, was one Canada will remember for a long time, after Alex Harvey won Saturday’s 15-kilometer freestyle individual start for his second-straight World Cup victory (after Men’s report | Men’s report |
Another women’s 4 x 5 k World Cup relay, another Norwegian win. Yawn? Not so fast. While the team of Ingvild Flugstad Østberg, Heidi Weng, Astrid Jacobsen, and Marit Bjørgen may have picked up the victory, the women’s race in Ulricehamn, Sweden, was anything but dull. For one thing, it was the closest race in 23 months, going all the way back to the 2014 Olympics where Sweden took gold. The top four teams all...
There are a lot of things Marit Bjørgen is not. She is not the only woman on Norway’s national team who knows how to win. She is not in the early stages of her cross-country career — her first World Cup debut came in December 1999. In comparison to many of her Norwegian teammates, she is not young. The average age of Norway’s women competing in Saturday’s 10-kilometer freestyle individual start in Ulricehamn, Sweden, (Bjørgen not included)...
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.
And you thought the weekend after the Tour de Ski would be boring. For fans of North American World Cup cross-country skiers, it was anything but, with Simi Hamilton coming excruciatingly close to a win in the men’s freestyle sprint on Saturday, Jan. 14, and placing second for his first podium of the season, followed by Canada’s first team-sprint victory since 2011 for Len Valjas’s first World Cup win. There was a lot of excitement surrounding two...
The feeling was beyond déjà vu. Simi Hamilton remembered the exact moment so clearly: almost exactly Tour de Ski’s first stage in Val Müstair, Switzerland. After leaving the Tour after Stage 2, Hamilton competed in two OPA Cup races last weekend in Planica, Slovenia. There, he won the skate sprint and finished fifth in the 10 k skate. “That definitely increased my confidence and I felt much better about where I was fitness-wise and speed-wise...
Who’s racing what when U.S. Nationals begin at SoHo on Saturday morning? And what are they racing for (besides bragging rights)? FasterSkier explains why, when it comes to domestic racers hoping to make it to World Champs in Lahti, second place this month is worth more than first place last month.
Diggins placed fourth in that race. The FIS Competition Analysis is a tool coaches and skiers can use to see exactly where they skied effectively, and where they may have lost time. In Davos, pretty much Diggins skied fast. FIS Competition Analysis from the Tour de Ski’s stage 4 women’s 10 k freestyle pursuit in Oberstdorf, Germany; Diggins placed fifth and her U.S. teammates had an impressive day as well. Other references: