Deciding how to handle the “college conflict”, as aptly phrased by Alayna Sonnesyn, is a daunting and somewhat mysterious prospect, particularly for athletes and families who are unfamiliar with the process. How does a junior athlete know that they are cut out for a collegiate program? NCAA or USCSA? What about a gap year? In this series, FasterSkier spoke with collegiate and junior coaches and athletes who have chosen different pathways to create a resource...
Link to Cross-Country Nationals Classic Sprint Gallery. For many, there’s no place like home. Tucked into the Northeast Kingdom, the Craftsbury Outdoor Center takes pride first and foremost for making outdoor sport accessible to the region’s children. The icing on the cake is when one of those local kids goes big, skis on the World Cup, and comes home for a classic sprint national championship. Although the in-between details are missing, that’s the short-version story...
Link to photo gallery. The attention of the domestic racing scene has focused on Northen Vermont’. Thursday was the first day of racing at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center which featured a 10-kilometer classic interval start for the women. The home club, Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP), had athletes take first and third in the women’s race. Patterson won in a time of 30:44.7 minutes. At twenty-eight-years-old, Caitlin Patterson won her seventh national title on Thursday. This...
Perhaps you have heard of them. Or at least seen them. At 6 feet and 6 feet 2 inches tall, respectively, the Mooney sisters, Heather and Brooke, are hard to miss. But their height is not the only reason the two women stand out. The sisterly pair also share a talent for the sports they pursue. At one point, for both of them, that sport was skiing. And at one point, for both of them,...
Success to failure. Failure to success. Two trends of two extremes on the performance metrics on the international cross-country skiing spectrum. There are many in-betweens: scoring World Cup points with a top 30, top 10’s, any spot on the podium. There are the Olympic and Paralympic quads featuring a four-year buildup to North America’s singular focus on bronze, silver and gold hardware. When considering how to develop talent, placing athletes on snow with the absolute...
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): 50 k classic mass start In the final race of the U.S. racing season, Erik Bjornsen of Alaska Pacific University (APU) and U.S. Ski Team (USST) won his second individual race of the week at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, with a victory in the men’s 50-kilometer classic mass start on Wednesday for the U.S. Distance Nationals title. He previously Live timing
2018 U.S. Distance Nationals (Craftsbury, Vermont): 30 k classic mass start Jessie Diggins swept SuperTour Finals once again, after doing so 2016 SuperTour Finals the year before in Craftsbury, Vt. Back in Craftsbury on Tuesday, and coming off three-straight victories in the classic sprint, 10-kilometer freestyle mass start and mixed relay with her Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team teammates, Diggins, 26, pulled out her fourth-straight win in her last race of the season: the...
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): 10/15 k freestyle mass starts Jessie Diggins won her second-straight race in as many days at 2018 SuperTour Finals and Erik Bjornsen pulled out a victory in the men’s 15-kilometer freestyle mass start on Saturday in Craftsbury. Diggins, of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team and U.S. Ski Team (USST), won the women’s 10 k freestyle mass start in 25:56.0 minutes, just 1.2 seconds ahead of her USST...
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): Classic sprints The end of the racing season is just around the corner. The U.S. SuperTour Finals (a.k.a. Spring Series) kicked off Friday with 1.3-kilometer classic sprints at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, and four other days of racing are set to follow on Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The U.S. Ski Team (USST) made the trek from Europe less than a week after racing at World Cup Finals in...
The following was submitted by Kevin Brooker, who attended the 2018 Ski Orienteering World Cup and Ski Orienteering World Masters Championships last week in Craftsbury, Vermont. Brooker, who wrote Alex Jospe interview on Vermont Public Radio *** About the Author: Kevin began nordic skiing to keep in shape for bicycle racing at the dawn of the skating revolution. He lives in Vermont with his wife and two kids, who are fortunate enough to have great skiing right...
CRAFTSBURY, Vermont — This week, the Craftsbury Outdoor Center is hosting the final three races of the 2018 Ski Orienteering World Cup as well as Ski Orienteering World Masters Championships. In addition to flocking from all over the United States, athletes have traveled from Bulgaria, Canada, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, Romania, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland for this event. For those FasterSkier readers worried about cross-country skiing being unknown here in the U.S., it...
Two and a half weeks after U.S. nationals in Anchorage, Alaska, the SuperTour picked back up again on the East Coast in Craftsbury, Vermont, with two race days over a three-day span. The Craftsbury SuperTour opened Friday, Jan. 26 with classic sprints, then took a break on Saturday for the Craftsbury Marathon. SuperTour racers were back on course at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center on Sunday, Jan. 28 for the 5- and 10-kilometer freestyle individual starts....
Nordic Combined World Cup (Seefeld, Austria): Individual normal hill/5 k On the first of the three-day Seefeld Triple Nordic Combined World Cup, Japan’s Akito Watabe took the win and Taylor Fletcher was the top American in 28th in the individual normal hill/5-kilometer Gundersen on Friday. Watabe put himself in second in the jump portion and started the 5 k ski race 21 seconds behind Norway’s Jarl Magnus Riiber in first. Watabe caught Riiber and beat...
Two and a half years ago, Kelsey Dickinson automatically landed a spot on the U.S. World Cup squad for December. “Our goal for her this year is to make that Olympic team, for sure, but she’s really four years ahead of schedule with it,” Dickinson’s ski coach at Saint Scholastica, Maria Stuber, said. “Nothing about what’s going on right now is what I expected to happen,” Dickinson, a double-major in philosophy and natural science, said....
A critical issue looms in Craftsbury, Vt. — home to what nordic skiers know as the Craftsbury Outdoor Center (COC). The COC runs sculling camps on the adjacent Great Hosmer Pond. Currently, motorboats and scullers share access on the pond. The tippy-sleek sculls are best on glassy water — meaning no wind and restricted speeds for any motor boats. Some homeowners along the pond are frustrated with what they claim is the COC’s monopolization of...
After spending last summer training in the U.S. with the Craftsbury Outdoor Center’s U23/collegiate summer training group, this year Johanna Talihärm decided to go home to Estonia. The FIS Cross-County World Cup swings by Otepää periodically (as does the Continental Cup circuit and biathlon’s IBU Cup series), but Talihärm is originally from Tallinn, Estonia’s capital and a World Heritage Site. That’s the atmosphere she moved back to for the summer — which she said had both pros...
Note: Photos from this story are courtesy of John Lazenby. Many more photos from the Eastern Cup weekend are available U16 boys – men Temperatures warmed on Sunday and the snow turned to rain, but luckily the manmade base of the Craftsbury Outdoor Center’s 2.5 k loop held up well through nearly 400 racers doing two to four loops each. In the U16 girls’ 5 k skate, Lehmann held onto her lead, as did Koch...
Natural snow is where it’s at, unless there’s none to be found. In high-elevation places like West Yellowstone, Mont., (roughly 6,600 feet above sea level) and Crested Butte (nearly 9,000 feet), November skiing is http://www.skirunbikemt.com/yellowstone-ski-festival.html When: Tuesday, Nov. 22 – Saturday, Nov. 26, 2016 How many years running: Over 30 years. “It started with Drew Barney, Torbjorn Karlsen and Dick Hunt More details | clinics and held a FIS race on Nov. 2. Temperatures are reliably cold, and any snow that falls...
Alaska Pacific University led from start to finish, with Erik Bjornsen, Rosie Brennan, Scott Patterson, and Chelsea Holmes, to win its third-consecutive mixed relay title at SuperTour Finals on Thursday in Craftsbury, Vt. A hybrid team called Vailbury Green placed second, and Jessie Diggins brought SMST2 from sixth to third at the finish.
The last week of SuperTour racing taking place this year in Craftsbury, Vt. has already hit the halfway mark, with the women's 1.5-kilometer classic sprint taking place on Tuesday at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center. Check out some of the photos that capture the best moments of the event.