There are no brakes for the World Cup until Sunday afternoon in Seefeld, Austria. The Opening Ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics is Feb. 9. For the champing-at-the-bit thoroughbreds in Seefeld, Saturday featured the last sprint before the Games: a 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint. If you were thinking the World Cup’s sprint leaders were taking a “taper” weekend in the run-up to PyeongChang, you’d be wrong. Jumping into the mix were overall Sprint World Cup leader...
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...
(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....
IBU Biathlon World Cup (Ruhpolding, Germany): 12.5/15 k mass starts Kaisa Makarainen of Finland took her first win of the season and will start next weekend with the overall World Cup leader’s bib after she outsprinted Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier by 0.8 seconds to claim the win in the 12.5 k mass start. In a tight race for third, Veronica Vitkova of the Czech Republic edged out Rosanna Crawford of Canada for the final spot on the podium; the pair...
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...
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,...
For Sergey Ustiugov, the Tour de Ski (TdS) is picking up where he left it last year. Last January, the 25-year-old Russiansix stages remaining. “I really wanted to win today to start the Tour strong,” Ustiugov said, according to an International Ski Federation (FIS) press release. Ustiugov’s opening day began with his qualifier, which he won after covering the course in a time of 2:58.46 minutes. Italy’s Federico Pellegrino posted the second-fastest qualifying time, 1.08...
FIS Cross-Country Tour de Ski (Lenzerheide, Switzerland): Stage 1 freestyle sprint Men’s report Sophie Caldwell is back on the podium. It’s been two years since the 27-year-old U.S. Ski Team sprinter won an individual World Cup race and
DAVOS, Switzerland – Would Johannes Høsflot Klæbo cruise to win No. 6, a perfect World Cup record, in the skate sprint today, or could someone stop him? As qualifying finished, the quarterfinals passed, and the semifinals began on Saturday, it became clear that only one man had a chance: Federico Pellegrino, the Italian who won World Championships gold over Klæbo last season. Sergey Ustiugov, the Russian who would have challenged Klæbo last year, didn’t make...
NorAm/SuperTour (Sovereign Lake near Vernon, British Columbia): Classic sprints On the opening day of the NorAm Continental Cup series in Canada (which doubled as a U.S. SuperTour), American Kaitlynn Miller of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) started Saturday with a nearly three-second win in the classic-sprint qualifier at the Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre, then went on to win her quarterfinal and semifinal before topping the final as well. Miller was the fastest women’s qualifier...
There was no mistaking Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo in Friday’s 1.4-kilometer classic sprint, even with no natural light illuminating the course in Kuusamo, Finland, by the time the men’s final left the start line. The 21 year old’s distinct runner-like, high-tempo stride could be seen leading the five other men’s finalists on every climb, distinguishing him from the light fog and densely packed trees lining the course’s firmly packed tracks. Making his World Cup debut...
FIS Cross Country World Cup (Kuusamo, Finland): Classic sprints Men’s race report In the first race of the 2017/2018 cross-country World Cup season, U.S. Ski Team (USST) member Sadie Bjornsen, who turned 28 on Tuesday, raced to the best result of her career, placing second to Sweden’s Stina Nilsson in Friday’s classic sprint in Kuusamo, Finland. Last season, Bjornsen notched her first World Cup podium in third place in the 5-kilometer freestyle in Toblach, Italy,...
Welcome to World Cup Windup, where we check in with the top-10 teams from last year’s FIS Cross Country World Cup tour before the season starts with the Ruka Triple in Kuusamo, Finland, on Nov. 24. ITALY Overall in Nations Cup Last Year: Ninth Women’s Ranking 2016/2017: Ninth Men’s Ranking 2016/2017: Eighth Who’s Back: Federico Pellegrino, World Champion in the sprint and runner-up in the Sprint Cup; Dietmar Nöckler, who joined him for team sprint...
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...
LAHTI, Finland — The breath taken out of a nation. Throughout the lifetime of a sporting fan, high-stakes races or games offer the chance for seared-into-the-neurons moments, things you remember for an eternity with the distinct recollection of where you were and what you were doing when the news came down. But those are exceptionally rare moments. And depending on what side of the equation you’re on, they can be mile high or a mile...
FIS Nordic World Championships (Lahti, Finland): Classic team sprints Defending champions Norway repeated gold in the women’s team sprint, with Heidi Weng and Maiken Caspersen Falla crossing the finish line first in Lahti, Finland. On the second-to-last loop, it looked like Russia could have something to say about that. Yulia Belorukova put in a furious sprint up the course’s biggest climb, and then beat Weng to the exchange. But her teammate Natalia Matveeva could not match the pace when Falla...
LAHTI, Finland — A collective gasp fell through the stands. Flags bearing Norway’s iconic red, blue and white symbol, previously waving, went limp. With half a kilometer left in the men’s 30 k skiathlon at the 2017 Nordic World Championships in Lahti, Norway’s race favorite Martin Johnsrud Sundby had fallen. A half a second earlier on Saturday, the Norwegian’s shot at the win was still within sight. He and Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov had broken away from the...
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...
FIS Nordic World Championships (Lahti, Finland): Freestyle sprints Men’s report [UPDATED] Two medals for the U.S. on Day 1. That’s exactly what happened Thursday in the first medals race of 2017 Nordic World Championships in Lahti, Finland, where American Jessie Diggins raced to second and her U.S. teammate Kikkan Randall third in the women’s 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint final, right behind Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla, who took gold. While Falla crossed the finish line first in...
LAHTI, Finland — Yesterday’s lick of blue sky winter sun was fleeting, as Lahti woke to overcast skies and buzz that new snow was imminent. Race time temps hovered around 24 degrees Fahrenheit, but with 78-percent humidity and a brisk wind — some would say ripping — blowing out of the west, it felt wind-brief cold. Wednesday’s kickoff events were an opportunity for volunteers, camera crews and even hundreds of local Finnish school children who...