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Keishin Yoshida

Johaug and Tønseth take Beitostølen, Norway Classic Openers

After an 18 month suspension for a positive out of competition positive doping test, during which Norway’s thirty-year-old Therese Johaug could build hour upon hour of base fitness and fine tune the engine with no race-stress, she arrived in Beitostølen, Norway on Friday and didn’t skip a beat. In temperatures hovering around 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and low-level clouds descending on the course, Johaug established herself as the early season favorite amongst a deep Norwegian National Team...

Friday Rundown: Beitostølen FIS Opening Race and More

  Welcome to The Rundown, your quick primer of need-to-know information about the day’s racing. We’ll be updating this digest as the day goes on with additional results, photos and quotes. The Rundown is NOT a race report; stay tuned for complete race reports later today with interviews from the day’s top racers. *** FIS cross-country Beitostølen, Norway: 10 k/15 k classic The race results are in from today’s 10-kilometer individual start classic FIS race in Beitostølen, Norway....

Closing the Gap: Racing in the Dark

Editor’s Note: The following is part of a series proposed by Maks Zechel, a 20-year-old Canadian cross-country skier embarking on his first season training abroad. In August, he made the big move to Norway, where he’ll be training and racing with Team Asker for the entire winter. Through these updates, Maks hopes to share his personal “observations, stories and lessons learned” to help close the gap between North American and Scandinavian nordic skiing. Previous posts: #2, #4, #6, and

FIS Nordic Combined Junior World Championships (Park City and Midway, Utah): Normal hill/5 k [UPDATED] In the individual normal hill/5-kilometer Gundersen on Saturday, the last nordic-combined competition of 2017 Nordic Junior World Championships, American Ben Loomis captured his first top 10 in his third Junior Worlds in ninth place. Eighteen-year-old Loomis jumped to 10th then picked off one place in the 5 k to finish ninth, 1:22.3 minutes behind the winner, Germany’s Vinzenz Geiger. Geiger...

Saturday Rundown: Ulricehamn, Antholz, Chaux-Neuve, Zuoz, Whistler, & Truckee (Updated x6)

U.S. SuperTour (Truckee, Calif.): Classic sprints [UPDATED] Less than a week after being men’s 30 k classic mass start champion at this year’s U.S. nationals — won Saturday’s SuperTour classic sprint as well. Lustgarten, of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project, raced to a 1.58-second victory in the men’s A-final at the Auburn Ski Club in Soda Springs, Calif., finishing in 3:03.4. Ben Saxton, of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team, placed second, and Reese...

Japanese Men’s Team Puts in Hours on the Glacier in Quest for Olympic Qualification

Japan sets draconian Olympic qualification standards for its athletes: if they can't land at least three top-12s in World Cup racing, then skiers are stuck at home and quota spots handed out by FIS go unfilled. The Japanese men have qualified as a relay team, but are working extra hard to prepare for early season World Cups where they hope for results that will allow them individual starts as well. For now, that means many hours on snow in Stelvio, Italy.

this cool split graph of the relay race to see just how impressive the Japanese were. Oh, and just in case you think that FasterSkier is under-selling the achievement of the young Japanese men, they have a grand total of 62 career World Cup starts combined. For comparison, the Russian team that they edged out for 6th has over 170 trips to a World Cup start line between them. After the tragic earthquake and tsunami...