FIS Cross Country World Cup 1.6-kilometer freestyle sprint Cogne, Italy Amidst sunshine and sporting rolled up sleeves on Saturday in Cogne Italy, American Jessie Diggins took the women’s 1.6-kilometer freestyle sprint win in nail-biter fashion. After making it into the semifinals and the final as one of the day’s lucky losers, Diggins outlunged Germany’s Sandra Ringwald by 0.11 seconds, claiming the victory in a time of 3:32.73. The 27 year old Afton, Minnesota native now has...
IBU World Cup Soldier Hollow (Midway), Utah women’s 7.5 k Sprint The name itself carries with it a reputation for high heart rates. Nestled on the East slope of Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, Soldier Hollow (SoHo), the sight of this week’s IBU World Cup races, features tracks well above 5,000 feet in altitude. Junior and senior skiers understand that a hard effort at SoHo come with a mandatory lactic acid tax. Not since 2002 at the...
FIS World Cup Dresden, Germany 6 x 1.6 k Freestyle Team Sprint The first World Cup team sprint of the season was run amidst drizzle and the Dresden, Germany city-scape as the women raced a total of six 1.6-kilometer laps. Round and round on the looping course, the pace was a mix of tactically subdued speeds with sustained bursts of energy to break the pack. After all the speed changes and exchanges with one athlete...
OSLO, Norway—Eight World Cup weekends, a swing by Open European Championships, two weeks at the Olympics, and it all came down to this: Susan Dunklee’s last international race of the season was also her first podium of the season, and she’s heading back to the United States with a third-place finish in the 10 k pursuit. “I’m super happy,” Dunklee said. “I often start feeling stronger and stronger as the season goes on, and this...
IBU World Cup (Kontiolahti, Finland): Women’s 7.5 k sprint Darya Domracheva of Belarus raced to her third World Cup victory of the season on Friday, and American Clare Egan tallied a career best in 13th, just behind Canada’s Rosanna Crawford in 12th in the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup women’s 7.5 k sprint in Kontiolahti. Domracheva started 16th and shot a perfect 5-for-5 in prone, then missed one in her standing bout, but skied...
FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, mixed relay team placed fifth two days ago). Öberg passed Bescond to claim silver for Sweden, 10.7 seconds back, while Bescond anchored France to bronze (+17.6), ahead of Norway in fourth (+29.7), Slovakia in fifth (+38.4), Switzerland in sixth (+43.5), Poland in seventh (+43.6), Germany in eighth (+53.9), Italy in ninth (+1:04.1), and Canada in 10th (+1:33.4). The U.S. finished 13th (+2:01.9) of 18th teams. With...
IBU World Cup (Antholz, Italy): Women’s 7.5 k sprint So far this season, Norway’s Tiril Eckhoff had yet to crack the top 20 outside a relay in the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup. That all changed Thursday when she won the women’s 7.5-kilometer sprint in Antholz, Italy. She did so by hitting all 10 targets and besting the time of Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier by 12 seconds at the finish. “I was very nervous for...
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,...
IBU World Cup (Oberhof): Women’s and men’s pursuits told the IBU after. “My shape is very good now but I was worried if I could concentrate on the shooting … After the first shooting, I was relaxed and realized it was OK. I just gave the other girls two chances … I must apologize for my emotion [on the shooting range], but I was so happy and enjoyed the last loop.” Wierer finished 1:04.4 minutes...
For athletes who finished 2017 on a high note, the first race of 2018 can be a couple of two things. One is a continuation of the good competitions right like they left off. Another is a downgrade leaving them wondering if they’ve lost their mojo. For some women in Thursday’s 7.5 k World Cup sprint in Oberhof, Germany, it was the former. Anastasiya Kuzmina of Slovakia started in the yellow bib denoting the leader...
Strong gusts of wind on the range required strong nerves and a lot of luck in the women’s and men’s relay races that concluded the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria, on Sunday afternoon. While the relays concluded with teams on the podium one might expect there, tempestuous weather conditions that at times made it almost impossible to hit the targets also gave outsiders a good chance, and both the U.S. men...
NorAm/SuperTour (Sovereign Lake near Vernon, British Columbia): 10/15 k freestyle VERNON, B.C. — The combined NorAm and SuperTour event at the Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre continued with individual-start distance races and continued with the theme of U.S. domination of the leaderboard. Ian Torchia, of Northern Michigan University (NMU) and the U.S. Ski Team D-team, started the day with a big victory in the men’s 15 k freestyle, finishing in 36:29.7 minutes and on the heels...
Between breaking historic biathlon records and waiting for the imminent birth of his second child, France’s IBU World Cup dominator Martin Fourcade forgot one crucial detail of Biathlon 101 before Sunday’s final race of the season in the men’s 15-kilometer mass start: loading his ammunition clips. Fourcade only realized he had started with four empty clips when he crouched down on the shooting mat for the first prone shooting, then signaled for help. His coach...
To nobody’s surprise, Germany came out on top in the women’s World Cup relay in PyeongChang, South Korea, where biathletes are checking out next year’s Olympic venue. Nadine Horchler, Maren Hammerschmidt, Denise Herrman, and Franziska Hildebrand cruised to 22.8-second win over Norway in the 4 x 6 k event, completing a clean five-for-five sweep of all the relays this season despite resting top star Laura Dahlmeier and relay regular Vanessa Hinz. Sure, France made a...
FIS Nordic World Championships (Lahti, Finland): Men’s 50 k freestyle mass start After a week of missing out on the medals at 2017 Nordic World Championships, Canada’s Alex Harvey, a four-time World Championships medalist from 2011, 2013 and 2015, achieved his first individual gold medal in the final race of this year’s World Championships in Lahti, Finland. Harvey, 28, won the men’s 50-kilometer freestyle mass start in a drag race to the finish. Entering the...
In Saturday’s 10-kilometer pursuit in PyeongChang, South Korea, Laura Dahlmeier achieved a level of perfection that made biathlon almost seem unexciting. The German biathlon star started in bib number one after winning Thursday’s 10 k sprint on the 2018 Olympic course, then shot a perfect 20-for-20 and skied away from the field to a 1:12.6 victory. As she hit the last target with more than a minute of time in hand over her competitors, Dahlmeier raised...
HOCHFILZEN, Austria — Coming into the women’s 4 x 6-kilometer relay at World Championships, there was certainly one overwhelming favorite: Germany. Not only had the German women won every relay in the World Cup season so far, but the German mixed relay team won gold to kick off the Championships. Plus, anchor leg Laura Dahlmeier had two individual gold medals to her name and one silver so far. “As a team we tried to put...
As they had done in the first two relays this season, Germany and France occupied the top two positions on the podium in the women’s 4 x 6-kilometer relay on Sunday at the IBU World Cup in Antholz, Italy. And to the joy of over 20,000 raucous fans in the sunny arena, home team Italy claimed the third place. So far, so not very unusual. But at the halfway point of the race, Susan Dunklee had moved...
Kaisa Mäkäräinen skied in a league of her own on Saturday. The five biathletes currently leading the International Biathlon Union (IBU) women’s overall standings also occupied the top five of Saturday’s 7.5-kilometer sprint in Ruhpolding, Germany. But when Mäkäräinen shoots clean in a race, even those fast skiers cannot keep up with “the Finnish flash,” as an announcer for German TV broadcaster ARD dubbed her, as she finished in 20:51.8 minutes for her first World Cup win of the season and...
After twice shooting clean on Sunday, American Susan Dunklee found herself in third place going out on the next loop of the women’s 12.5-kilometer mass start at the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup in Oberhof, Germany, pushing hard to keep up with Czech Republic’s Gabriela Koukalová and Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier. “I was not skiing a sustainable pace,” Dunklee explained in an email to FasterSkier. “Sometimes it makes more sense to keep yourself in the race...