After her first World Cup in Drammen, Norway last winter, which immediately preceded World Championships, Jessie Diggins came to a realization about professional ski racing. “I get it now — why people work so hard, train for so many years, push themselves right to the edge in races,” she wrote. From the tone of her writing, Diggins is clearly having a blast being a professional skier. Her enthusiasm for the sport is palpable; it’s as...
Jessie Diggins (CXC/USST) has her eyes set on bigger and better things down the road, but that has not stopped her from turning in an impressive series of races in West Yellowstone. On a cold, sunny morning in Montana, Diggins hammered through the 5km classic race in a time of 14:58.2, good for a 13.7 second victory over Kate Fitzgerald (APU). Jennie Bender (CXC) concluded the opening SuperTour weekend with another strong race, taking third,...
With the weather changing drastically throughout the morning today’s West Yellowstone SuperTour was quite a spectacle. The ladies skied 10km, the men competed for 15km and the FasterSkier crew tried to keep up at several different locations on the course. Ladies’ 10km Skate: Men’s 15km Skate: Contributing camerawork by Audrey Mangan.
In her first time racing the SuperTour opener in a number of years, Morgan Arritola (Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation) seemed to feel right at home in West Yellowstone, MT, taking victory on Thursday in the women’s 10 k freestyle by 14.7 seconds over runner-up Jessie Diggins (Central Cross Country) and Caitlin Gregg (CXC, +27.9). “It was tough,” said Arritola after finishing. “[I planned] to go out and ski as well and controlled as I...
With four separate races run in West Yellowstone on Wednesday, there was a lot going on. Here are bits and pieces of what didn’t make the official race report cut: On Getting the Season Started “At the start of the season you never quite know where you’re at, it takes a bit of time to get into the race season. We typically try to have our athletes start in good shape.” Chris Jeffries, Alberta...
Whomever came up with the overused aphorism “no guts, no glory,” certainly was not referring to cross-country ski racing. But Saturday’s SuperTour Sprint Showdown provided plenty of images that would do just fine adorning the front of a cheap tee-shirt. There was some measure of glory (albeit in the first race of the season), and fortunately, the guts were of the figurative sense—though given the sounds coming out of many skiers in the finish corral,...
With the biggest squad in recent memory, the U.S. Ski Team (USST) looks to continue building on last season’s results on the World Cup this year, starting with the salvaged opener on November 19. Mild weather put the Americans’ travel plans in limbo last week, delaying their arrival to Europe. With their planned tune-up race in Beitostølen, Norway canceled, Saturday’s race in Sjusjøen will be the first time most of the U.S. contingent puts on...
a new profile picture. While Freeman was strong, Randall was pure dynamite. The exciting Alaskan earned 400 more points than her previous best season on the World Cup, finishing 10th in the race for the crystal globe, and third in the Sprint Cup standings. She even had the Norwegians shaking in their boots before World Championships. Randall earned four World Cup medals last season, including two gold. One in a skate sprint in Drammen, Norway,...
MarweRollerSkis.com 2011 Team Marwe Kikkan Randall-#1 ranked skier in the US; World Cup Winner! Andy Newell-#1 ranked skier in the US; #5 ranked Sprinter in the World! Sadie Bjornsen-2011 World Championships 9th Place, 2011 US Nationals 10k Classic Champion Jessie Diggins-2011 World Championships Team, 2011 US Nationals Skate Sprint Champion Simi Hamilton-2011 World Championships Team, 2010 Olympian Liz Stephen-2011 World Championship Team, 2011 US Nationals 20k Skate Champion Tim Burke-2-Time Olympian, 2010 Biathlon World...
FasterSkier Rookie of the Year It is hard to define a “rookie” in cross-country skiing. First year on the World Cup? First season as a senior? First year in college? First year skiing? We keep it loose and give the award to skiers who take a major step forward while moving up to a new level of competition. Rookie of the Year (women): Jessie Diggins (USA/CXC Elite) The choice for the female Rookie of the...
The following is the USSA’s list of nominations for the 2012 U.S. Cross Country Ski Team. The nominations include those athletes who qualified based on published selection criteria. The USSA will announce the actual team roster later this spring, naming those athletes who accept the responsibilities of being a part of the U.S. Ski Team and who are planning to compete in the 2012 season. Athletes nominated to the 2012 U.S. Cross Country Ski Team...
The U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team (USST) for the 2011-2012 season is expected to be announced in a few hours, according to John Farra, the program’s director. The nominations haven’t been made public yet, but in making them, Farra and Chris Grover, the USST head coach, have faced a familiar dilemma: add a number of athletes to the squad, and dilute an always-tight budget, or preserve the higher levels of support that come with a smaller...
If there was anyone who deserved a beer after Saturday’s hill climb in Sun Valley, it was Kikkan Randall. After winning four straight races here—and the first three in the four-stage SuperTour Finals—Randall (APU/USST) had a whopping 1:23 head start over her nearest challenger in the four-kilometer hill climb up Dollar Mountain, which was handicapped based on results from earlier this week. Randall could have taken it easy. But that’s not the approach that gave...
The way Kikkan Randall skied in Sun Valley on Wednesday, she still wasn’t beatable. But at the very least, she showed that she’s human. Randall had won Tuesday’s prologue, the opening stage of the 2011 SuperTour Finals, with a thoroughly dominating performance, putting more than 15 seconds into her nearest competitors in a seven-minute race. In Wednesday’s 10 k mass-start classic, Randall (APU/USST) was again impressive—at least, for nine kilometers. Heading out on her last...
Kikkan Randall isn’t particularly professorial, what with her pink hair and her affable demeanor. But since arriving back in the U.S. last week, fresh off the World Cup circuit in Europe, Randall (APU/USST) has been teaching lessons, all right, with the trails of Sun Valley as her classroom, and the North American women’s field as her pupils. After Sunday’s unit on distance classic skiing, Tuesday’s session was on how to ski a skate prologue. In...
Most 19-year-old women racing in their first-ever 30 k would be satisfied just to finish. But on Sunday in Sun Valley, Jessie Diggins (CXC) did much more: she came away with a podium at the U.S. National Championships. After 91 minutes of classic skiing—three-quarters of it with the leaders—Diggins ended up in third place, with just enough gas left in her tank to hold off Morgan Arritola (USST) on her last trip up the course’s...
In the U.S. National Championship in the 30 k last year, Kikkan Randall (USST) somehow pulled off a win in northern Maine just 72 hours removed from racing in Europe. This year, with a full week to recover from World Cup Finals, at least Randall’s biological clock was set to the right time. But Sunday’s classic race presented its own challenges: the Alaskan had to overcome a brutal course, the strength-sapping effects of altitude, and,...
Going into the third day of Junior Olympic competition, Friday’s skate individual start, four athletes had a chance to sweep all individual events: Hamish McEwen (Cambridge Sports Union) in J2 boys, Marion Woods (Alaska Winter Stars) in J2 girls, Logan Hanneman (FAST) in J1 boys, and Jessie Diggins (CXC) in OJ girls. When the day was finished, only McEwen was knocked off the top step of the podium. (He was still second!) Woods, Hanneman, and...
Feisty, unintimidated, and encouraging—if ultimately overmatched. That’s probably the best way to describe Jessie Diggins’ effort at World Championships on Thursday, in which she anchored the U.S. women to a ninth-place finish in the 4×5 k relay. It’s also an apt description of the performance of the entire U.S. team, which fought hard to its best World Championships women’s relay result in over a decade, but was ultimately left three minutes behind the winning Norwegians....
The US women continued a solid start to the 2011 World Championships, placing three skiers in the top-30 for the second consecutive race in the women’s 15km pursuit. With an almost impenetrable fog blanketing the Holmenkollen ski stadium, spectators traded ears for eyes – the roar of the crowd alerting those just 100 meters down the track that the racers were coming. The pea soup certainly did not slow race winner Marit Bjoergen (NOR), who...