Marit Bjørgen overcame the spectator roars for Sweden's Stina Nilsson to hold off the home-crowd favorite by 0.42 seconds in the women's classic-sprint final on the first official day of 2015 World Championships in Falun, Sweden. Bjørgen captured her 13th World Championships gold, Nilsson notched silver and Norway's Maiken Caspersen Falla took bronze.
Sweden's Stina Nilsson surged past Norway's Ingvild Flugstad Østberg to win the World Cup women's 6 x 1.2 k freestyle team sprint in Otepää with the same crew that won the Olympic bronze medal at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Without the big show of Marit Bjørgen in Saturday's classic sprint, Norway's Ingvild Flugstad Østberg rose to the occasion, notching her first World Cup classic-sprint victory and fourth podium of the season.
Three Americans made the quarterfinals on Saturday in the second World Cup classic sprint of the season: Sadie Bjornsen, Simi Hamilton and Andy Newell. None of them advanced to the semifinals, and while it wasn't a bad day, most were left wanting more.
How much did Norway’s Marit Bjørgen have left and could anybody beat her? That was the question on Sunday in the women's 1.3 k freestyle sprint on the last day of racing before the holiday break. One young Swede came close.
As so often on the World Cup lately, it’s not a question of who will fight for the victory, but how the competition between Marit Bjørgen and Therese Johaug will unfold. Sunday held a sprint showdown between the two in the women's 10 k classic pursuit on the last day of the Lillehammer World Cup mini tour.
Therese Johaug wasn't sure if last week's 42-second win over teammate Marit Bjørgen was a fluke. While she wasn't able to dominate by as big of a margin in Saturday's 5 k freestyle, Johaug did top Bjørgen again -- this time by 0.3 seconds -- on Day 2 of the mini tour in Lillehammer, Norway.
Marit Bjørgen's gotten used to winning opening mini tours in Kuusamo, and she seems to have no problem getting off to a strong start in the first of three races in Lillehammer, either. "It is always fun to win," she told NRK after her second-straight World Cup sprint win in Friday's 1.3 k freestyle sprint.
Therese Johaug took the fun out of fighting for first, proving herself untouchable throughout Sunday's two-lap 10 k classic on the first day of World Cup distance racing in Kuusamo. Teammate Marit Bjørgen knew the race was for second and narrowly edged Sweden's Charlotte Kalla.
In the middle of the day under the lights in Finland, Marit Bjørgen opened the season with a result that likely only surprised herself. "I am grateful to win today,” she said. "It’s still a sprint." Two other Norwegians joined her in the final, as did Slovenia's Katja Visnar, American Ida Sargent, and Russia's Natalia Matveeva -- but not Justyna Kowalczyk.
One of Norway's rapidly rising stars, Ingvild Flugstad Østberg, 24, took the time to chat with FasterSkier last weekend after her first FIS race of the season. Here she offers advice for anyone training full time: "You have to go for quality over quantity,” she says. “I used to just want to do more and more and more ... but what you do really matters more."
Barbro Kvåle, a 22-year-old Norwegian junior world champion in ski orienteering, joined the ranks of Therese Johaug and Marit Bjørgen on Sunday, winning the women’s 1.2-kilometer classic sprint by three-tenths of a second in Beitostølen, Norway.
In the final two days of the 2014 Blink Festival Americans Lowell Bailey and Tim Burke jumped onto the podium in the biathlon mass start and sprint races.
Teammates on the U.S. Ski Team and Alaska Pacific University, Kikkan Randall and Sadie Bjornsen tallied the best distance results of their respective careers on Sunday at Holmenkollen, the ultimate distance race of the season. Randall worked her way up and attacked late to finish 12th, and Bjornsen skied consistently with a pack of Norwegians to place 14th.
With three teammates skiing at the front of the women's 30 k freestyle mass start from start to finish, it was no surprise it was Norway, and it wasn't exactly stunning that they dominated the podium. However, the last several hundred meters of the race turned out to be the most exciting, with Marit Bjørgen executing in her usual fashion. The victory made her the most successful woman in Winter Olympics history.
The Norwegian women were back to their usual selves with skis to match as Ingvild Flugstad Østberg and Marit Bjørgen won the classic team sprint for Østberg's first gold, Bjørgen's fifth, and the team's first-ever team sprint win at the Olympics.
Maiken Caspersen Falla and Ingvild Flugstad Østberg emerged with Norway's first gold and silver in the same event of the Olympics on Tuesday, topping the podium in the women's freestyle sprint. Slovenia's Vesna Fabjan captured third, and Sophie Caldwell emerged in sixth for the U.S.
If anyone was going to deny Kikkan Randall of her third-straight skate sprint win, a feat that hasn’t been achieved on the World Cup since Marit Bjørgen's similar winning streak in 2006, it was most likely going to be Bjørgen. The 33-year-old Norwegian stayed calm and collected to do so, leading three Norwegians in the top four as Randall finished fifth in Sunday's Toblach sprint.
Sunday's classic team sprint in Nove Mesto was destined to be a showdown between Finland and Norway. Saarinen led the race for Finland in the final lap until a burst of speed from Østberg on the final climb secured a Norwegian victory.
Ingvild Flugstad Østberg outshone her fellow Norwegians in Tuesdays freestyle sprint race in stage 3 of the Tour de Ski. Setting the fastest qualifying time around the 1.5 k course, she continually proved her speed throughout the day to seize the coveted red leaders bib of the Tour de Ski.