With the beginning of the FIS World Cup season less than two weeks away, we wanted to remind readers that FasterSkier will continue to post same-day race coverage of all World Cup, Senior National, Junior National, and SuperTour events this season. Like last season, we’ve found that Ski and Snowboard Live is the easiest and most reliable streaming service available for World Cup events, so we’re encouraging our readers to subscribe to this live streaming...
Click here to read part 1 and part 2 of this series, which takes a look at international news surrounding the Russian athlete ban through the spring. For how these bans have impacted a broader cross-section of the sporting world and analysis of the complex questions surrounding whether Russian athletes should be able to compete, check out this recent Sports Illustrated article by Michael Rosenberg. Historically, athlete bans meant to pressure a government have not...
Click here to read part 1 of this series, which takes a look at international news surrounding the Russian athlete ban through the spring. For how these bans have impacted a broader cross-section of the sporting world and analysis of the complex questions surrounding whether Russian athletes should be able to compete, check out this recent Sports Illustrated article by Michael Rosenberg. Concerns over both fair play and propaganda have been tied to the...
I think we can all agree that the last two years have been a wild ride. For those at the helm of the cross-country program at U.S. Ski & Snowboard, added layers of COVID safety precautions and expensive testing have increased the otherwise mounting demands of preparing for an Olympic Games. There have been numerous domestic and international competitions canceled, including a full season of SuperTour racing in 2020/2021, numerous World Cups canceled, and three...
With Russian athletes banned from all FIS competitions, and no end in sight for the war in Ukraine, there is a growing belief that Russian skiers are unlikely to rejoin the World Cup next season. Some commentators have gone further, proclaiming that we have seen the last of Bolshunov, Neprayeva, and the rest of the Russian team on the international stage. The pessimism is rooted in the history of similar bans—which tend to be long...
You’ve been waiting on pins and needles for the first episode of this season’s Devon Kershaw Show; we know. But it’s been a busy spring. This edition was recorded a couple of weeks ago, so apologies we’re not up to speed on all the latest developments, but we break down some retirements and other off-season news and we’ll be back soon with some discussion of equal distance racing and other news. You can email us...
This press release originally appeared on fis-ski.com on Wednesday, March 18, 2022. May marks the month of the FIS Committee meetings, debriefing the season and setting up task and changes for the upcoming ones. All proposals that were elaborated by Sub-Committees and working groups members came on the table of the Cross-Country Committee (CCC) on Wednesday, 18th May. The Committee discussed them and forwarded the confirmed proposals on to the highest authority in FIS, the...
Last week, the International Ski Federation (FIS) held spring meetings to discuss the 2021-2022 cross-country race season. The Cross-Country Committee made several proposals that remain to be approved by the FIS Council. A familiar-looking draft of the 2021-2022 World Cup calendar was proposed. Ruka, Finland will kick off racing with a three-race weekend at the end of November. This series, however, will not be organized as a mini-tour. Period I advances with three races in...
A year and more has elapsed since a doping scandal rocked the 2019 cross-country World Championships in Austria. Over that time, we have learned a bit more about what transpired at the micro-level. In the broader picture, those covering doping in sport often scour The World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) annual release of a voluminous document titled “Anti-Doping Testing Figures”. The data dump runs hundreds of pages. Looking for figures on the number of tests per...
Press Release Cross Country Ski FIS World Cup on track for March 2020 Season Finale The Season Finale to be held at the Canmore Nordic Centre Provincial Park will welcome the world’s best skiers from around the world to compete for 3 days in March 2020. CANMORE, ALBERTA July, 22 2019 – The Alberta World Cup Society (AWCS) just completed a successful pre-World Cup site visit by FIS (Fédération Internationale de Ski), accompanied by FIS Marketing AG...
On Sunday, the International Ski Federation (FIS) approved its2019 World Championships), all in Period 2. Next comes the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, from Feb. 9-25. The season wraps up with Period 4 in Finland, Norway and Sweden, with World Cup Finals in Falun, Sweden. Full calendar below or for original PDF,
Most of the time, the FIS Cross-Country World Cup visits towns and ski trails the racers already know well. Some venues, like Norway’s Holmenkollen and Switzerland’s Davos, are visited every year. Others, like France’s La Clusaz, are on the schedule every few years but are still always popular. “I’ve been on the World Cup for ten or eleven years, and we go to the same venues all the time,” the U.S. Ski Team’s Liz Stephen said....
To double pole or not to double pole: sometimes it's not even a question for strong-enough skiers. We spoke to a few well-informed individuals on FIS's 83-percent rule and gathered their opinions.
FIS Cross-Country recently approved its 2016/2017 World Cup calendar, which includes a lot of the same historical venues plus a few new ones (i.e. Ulricehamn, PyeongChang and World Cup Finals in Tuymen, Russia). It also announced some new rules, including the latest on no-double-pole zones and team quotas.
On Wednesday, June 1, U.S. Ski Team veteran Kikkan Randall plans to resume training, six weeks after giving birth to her first child. While she's admittedly antsy, she also knows it's wise to ease back into things with a goal of peaking for 2017 World Championships. “I’m really curious to see how it feels,” she said of racing. “My body is refreshed from a little break, my mind is refreshed and that could open totally new doors.”
It's been 15 years since the U.S. hosted a cross-country World Cup. In that time, Canada has hosted such international races on home snow multiple times, most recently with the eight-stage Ski Tour Canada. The cost of hosting World Cups is high and the benefits are sometimes hard to measure. FasterSkier explores how Canada has pulled it off and why the U.S. avoids the risk.
The day after Kikkan Randall announced she was pregnant with her first child, FasterSkier caught up with the four-time U.S. Olympian and 2013 world champion on the phone. Listen to the full-length interview here.
We caught up with new CCC Women's Committee Chair Madeleine Williams, a former national-team member and 2010 Olympian who's passionate about keeping Canadian females in elite sports and has made public recommendations on gender equality.
One editor's take on how to improve the sport of cross-country skiing as we know it, both from a barriers-of-entry standpoint to spectator satisfaction.
Ever wonder who’s behind the FIS Cross-Country Twitter feed? This season, that would be Jeff Ellis. About two weeks ago, Ellis started his new job as FIS Cross-Country Marketing Support, a job which involves interviewing his wife, Kikkan Randall.