We caught up with Canadian Junior National Team member Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier, of Montreal and now Quebec City, who reached his goal last season of a top 20 at Junior World Championships in placing 14th in the 10-kilometre classic in Val di Fiemme, Italy.
At the 2014 NCAA Championships, Kyle Bratrud was the first American in the 15 k classic. The result was the highlight of his college career to date. However, the skier is much more than his results suggest and the Minnesota native's relationship with the sport shows that several strong influences from his coaches have helped him get where he is today.
Note: This is the first profile of an ongoing series on junior and collegiate racers in the U.S. and beyond. The nordic sports are certainly not the largest, but there are still thousands of great stories that most of us are not familiar with. We will be picking athletes out of this pack to feature – nominations for outstanding or interesting nordic skiers can be sent to business journal’s website. “I was shocked at first,”...