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 OPA Cup series is supposedly to be skiing’s equivalent of baseball’s minor leagues. But last weekend’s racing in Ramsau was about as far from a dingy Southern ballpark as you can get. Surrounded by jagged, snowy peaks on a plateau in the Austrian Alps, Ramsau was the last stop on this year’s OPA circuit, which a contingent of U.S. athletes has been following for the last two weeks. Nearly a dozen Americans took part...
This past weekend a contingent of American athletes hit the road, looking for racing experience. Their first stop? Rogla, Slovenia, and two races on the OPA cup circuit. Rogla is no stranger to high-level racing – the venue has hosted World Cups in the past, and is considered a tough race, as it is at altitude, sitting 1500 m above sea level. While the snow coverage was a little sparse, and as the Americans arrived,...
Saturday morning wasn’t a bad one for APU Head Coach Erik Flora. Just before 9:30 a.m., his athlete Kikkan Randall won a World Cup sprint race in the Czech Republic. And by 10:30, his team had already racked up win number two, as Holly Brooks skied to a dominating victory in the 10 k freestyle SuperTour in Lake Placid. Brooks said she learned of Randall’s victory moments before starting her own race, and harnessed that...
APU’s Holly Brooks began her 2011 domestic campaign 50 days ago, with a pair of sprint qualifier wins in West Yellowstone, MT. One day before that campaign concludes, not much has changed. In Friday’s SuperTour in Lake Placid, a 6 k classic, Brooks led an APU sweep, with an eight-second victory over her teammate Kate Fitzgerald. Morgan Smyth was third, another five seconds behind. It was Brooks’s sixth win of the season, and with another...
The women’s 5 k classic SuperTour may have been held in West Yellowstone on Saturday, but the top of the results sheet read like an event from Scandinavia, with international skiers claiming three of the top four spots. Kristina Strandberg (XC Oregon) edged out Holly Brooks (APU) for the victory, while fellow Swede Maria Graefnings (U of U) rounded out the podium, ahead of Czech Eliska Hajkova (CU). Strandberg capped an excellent stretch of racing...
You had to look hard, but the signs were there. Over the past two years, Kate Fitzgerald’s results had been steadily progressing, topping out with a 14th place at last year’s U.S. Nationals. A few weeks ago, she was nearly as fast as 2010 Olympian Holly Brooks in a time trial with her club, Alaska Pacific University (APU). And in Thursday’s double sprint qualifier, she finished third and fifth. Still, no one expected Fitzgerald’s victory...