January 12, 2011 (Park City, UT) – World Championship silver medalist Kikkan Randall (Anchorage) will lead a strong 2011 U.S. Cross Country World Championship Team to compete at Holmenkollen in Oslo beginning Feb. 24. Randall is one of 14 athletes named Wednesday to compete in the biennial Championships. The International Ski Federation’s 2011 Nordic World Ski Championships are especially important this year, taking place in the heart of nordic skiing and in its most prestigious...
SuperTour action continues this weekend, as the domestic circuit moves from Rumford, ME, to Lake Placid for races on Friday and Saturday. Organizers are expecting between 325 and 350 athletes competing in a 10 k/6 k classic and a 15 k/10 k freestyle, headlined by competitors from the U.S. Ski Team and the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Club. With two hours until entries closed at noon on Wednesday, Noah Hoffman (USST), Lars Flora (APU),...
In her unlikely path from APU coach to elite ski racer, Holly Brooks’s career has taken her to some amazing places, namely the 2010 Olympics. But for all her success over the past two years, there was one spot she still hadn’t set foot until this weekend: the top step of the podium at the U.S. National Championships. In Sunday’s classic sprint in Rumford, Brooks checked another achievement off her list with an emphatic display...
APU’s Holly Brooks has been waiting all year to test herself against the eastern women—at least one of whom, Ida Sargent, raced on the World Cup this fall. If Sunday’s classic sprint qualifier results at nationals are the first measure, Brooks is on her way to acing that test. At Rumford’s Black Mountain, she skied to a three-second victory in the preliminary round over her teammate Sadie Bjornsen. Dartmouth’s Sophie Caldwell was third, with Morgan...
With 15 titles over the past decade, Kikkan Randall has turned the U.S. National Championships into something of a one-woman show. In the 2010 edition, which was held in her hometown of Anchorage, she swept all four events—collecting nearly $5,000 en route to wins in two distance races and a pair of sprints. This year, the country’s fastest women will assemble at Black Mountain in Rumford, ME. But when the first event of the championships...
Craftsbury, VT – While much of New England waits for skiable snow, over 300 of the fastest cross-country ski racers took to the 1.3K sprint course at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center today to contest the first TD Bank Eastern Cup of the season. A member of Craftsbury’s own team, the Green Racing Project’s Tim Reynolds and junior skier Skyler Davis from Stratton Mountain School were the men’s favorites heading into the day’s sprint. On the...
This weekend’s World Cup city sprints in Dusseldorf aren’t supposed to start in the airport. But the American and Canadian ski teams will be cutting it pretty close. Thanks to a strike by Finnair’s flight attendants, the two squads’ sprinters are spending Thursday night in Finland and departing for Germany on Friday—giving the teams a buffer of roughly 24 hours before the start of the races on Saturday. American Andy Newell’s schedule will be even...
After failing to win the Overall World Cup title last season, Norway’s Marit Bjoergen continues to make a statement on the World Cup in this season. On a cold Sunday with little glide and many tactics, Bjoergen picked up yet another win, crossing the line first in the 10 k skate pursuit in the ‘Ruka Triple’ in Kuusamo, Finland. While many other skiers moved up and down the rankings Sunday, Bjoergen was consistent, leading wire...
While skiers at the first SuperTour event in West Yellowstone, Montana, were feeling the effects of cold weather this weekend, their fellow skiers on the World Cup in Kuusamo, Finland, faced similar temperatures. The official FIS press release listed the temperature in the northern Finnish town as a balmy -17 degrees Celsius, just under the legal racing limit. Despite struggling during Friday’s classic sprint, finishing 42nd and failing to qualify, on Saturday Randall bounced back,...
Over the course of the weekend there will be no less than ten races in Kuusamo: This marks the season opener for ski jumping and nordic combined, while cross-country enters WC round two, embarking on a 3-day mini tour starting with sprints on Friday, distance on Saturday and Sunday.
Norwegian fans looking for a good view of the finish line for the women’s relay at the 2011 World Championships might want to start staking out their seats now. Given this weekend’s performance by the Norwegian women, there’s not much doubt about who will be waving her country’s flag as the winner of the relay in Oslo. After putting six of their skiers in the top 11 in Saturday’s 10 k freestyle, the Norwegians skied...
Much to the chagrin of certain US ski fans, the US Ski Team has not put much focus on relay events over the past eight years. Not since the 2002 Olympics have the Americans posted a top result, and more often than not, have been well to the back of the field. That is not going to change overnight, but with a both a men’s and women’s quartet hitting the trails on Sunday, and a...
As the season gets fully under way, FasterSkier will be featuring previews of teams and athletes at different levels. We published our piece on US World Cup athletes, check out our 24 Teams in 24 Days series. With eight athletes headed to Gallivare, Sweden for the World Cup opener, the U.S. Ski Team (USST) will have the numbers to field both a men’s and women’s relay team for the first time in many years. The increased...
Despite two sensational weeks of racing in Europe, Ida Sargent still has to head back to Dartmouth College in December to take final exams. But thanks to her stellar results, she has added a couple of stops along the way: two weekends of World Cup racing in Scandinavia. Along with Noah Hoffman, the U.S. Ski Team (USST) gave Sargent the nod to travel to Gallivare, Sweden, where the squad will contest the season’s first World...
It isn’t even Thanksgiving, and the international racing season is officially just over a week old, yet there has already been plenty of high-octane racing action to satisfy even the most demanding ski fan. With elite skiers tuning up for the season opener, and up-and-comers out to make a name for themselves, FIS races in Finland, Sweden, and Norway featured a level of competition usually limited to the World Cup. It is always a challenge...
America took its second win of the weekend in Muonio, with Kris Freeman skiing to a 12-second victory over Tobias Anger of Germany in a 10 k classic race. While Freeman was clearly the big story of the day, the morning actually started off with the women’s 5 k race. With a huge 45-meter climb partway through the course and a mostly downhill finish for the last kilometer or more, it was a fast and...
The first race of the weekend in Munio, Finland, went off without a hitch this morning, as Kikkan Randall cruised to a victory in the 1.1 k skate sprint. In a change from last weekend, both the men and women raced on the same course – a 1,110 meter point-to-point beginning with a steep pitch straight out of the start. The course then wound around some more gradual uphills and finished with a steep downhill...
FIS kicked off its winter race season in Munio, Finland and Rybinsk, Russia this weekend. In Muonio, the first race of the year was a classic sprint, contested Sunday morning in frigid temperatures, which drew a variety of athletes from around northern Europe. The Craftsbury Green Racing Project was the only American team in attendance, but they turned heads as Ida Sargent, racing in her U.S. Ski Team suit to avoid an NCAA violation, qualified...
More than 150 training days, countless kilometers of rollerskiing, and dozens of loads of dirty laundry: A summer and fall’s worth of preparation will be put to the test in just over two weeks, when the U.S. Ski Team (USST) makes its departure for Europe. All seven members will fly to Finland on November 7 for a weekend of tune-up racing north of the Arctic Circle in Muonio. From there, the squad will part ways,...
Every region in the U.S. seems to have its own iconic dryland hill climb. In Alaska, there’s Mount Marathon. Out west, it’s Agony. In the Midwest—well, uh… forget about the Midwest. But in the northeast, there’s one of the most brutal: the Whiteface Climb to the Castle. Okay, okay, we know. Mount Marathon’s got more history. Agony’s steeper. This year’s Climb to the Castle is only the fourth-ever edition of the event. But there’s no...