Lillehammer cancels World Cup events. Norway, Sweden, and Finland pull from the World Cup after the opening weekend in Ruka citing COVID safety concerns. To an outsider, these headlines paint a seemingly bleak picture of the start of the race season. However, an international time trial featuring a skate sprint day Friday and distance event Saturday sparked hope for the American team as they remain in Europe focused on the upcoming weekend of racing in...
U.S. Ski and Snowboard Press Release U.S. Ski & Snowboard has announced the Davis U.S. Cross Country Ski Team nominations for the 2020-21 season. Nominations include those active athletes who qualified based on published selection criteria in the prior season. “The 2021 U.S. Cross Country Team has more depth than any team in modern American cross country ski racing history,” said Davis U.S. Cross Country Team Program Director Chris Grover. “From our seasoned veterans who...
On March 13th, the rapidly evolving situation with COVID-19 caused the World Cup to come to an abrupt halt. Quebec, Minneapolis, and Canmore: all cancelled. SuperTour finals: also cancelled. For some U.S. athletes including Gus Schumacher and Katie Feldman, this meant missing their first ever World Cup starts. For others, like Andy Newell, it meant missing his last. Jessie Diggins was in sixth place in the
You may have heard that the World Cup is returning not only to North America, but also to American soil, within the next few weeks. The world’s best skiers will be contesting sprint races in Québec City on March 14 and 15; a sprint in Minneapolis on March 17; and distance races plus a mixed relay in Canmore on March 20-22. For all six races, including the five across the border, the U.S. has an...
Yellow bibbed as the overall leader of the World Cup, out first on Sunday’s 30 k classic pursuit in Trondheim, and Norway’s Pål Golberg starting 34 seconds back: this was the situation Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov found himself in as he pulsed from the start. Thrown into this mix of tension was a helter-skelter mish-mash of weather. On and off again snow, blustery winds, and temps hovering right near that wax tech’s no man’s land of...
Takeaways from Stage 5 (of 6) of the Ski Tour 2020? Alexander Bolshunov no longer has his minute-plus cushion to Pål Golberg in the overall, and Johannes Høsflot Klæbo is rounding into G.O.A.T. (Greatest-Of-All-Time) form. The 23-year-old Bolshunov, a Russian powerhouse who won the Tour de Ski last month, ranks Stage 5 final results Tour overall standings |
Let’s explain. The format was basic, a freestyle sprint. Otherwise, that’s where sprints as we know it ended. The 0.66-kilometer course shot off from the start up a gradual V2-able climb. It then rounded a left-hander where athletes descended what looked like a salted banked turn found in a X-Games terrain park. Down to the course’s bottom zoomed the skiers. Then things turned skyward. The course ascended a mini-Alpe Cermis lasting around one-minute for the...
Picking up where we left off in Östersund, Sweden: a pursuit start 15-kilometer classic. Unlike the women’s field where Therese Johaug “administered a beatdown”, creating a large time gap for herself, the margins for the men were much smaller. A glance at Final Results | Time of Day Results
The six-stage Ski Tour 2020, which runs from Sweden to Norway over the next week, began Saturday in Östersund, Sweden with the men’s 15-kilometer individual start skate. The race began with twilight immersing Östersund with the sky eventually morphing into black as the seeded group of skiers looped around on what FIS called a 4.71 k course. This much can be concluded after a single day of what will be a hotly contested tour: the...
Around and around they go. Due to lack of snow in Falun, Sweden, the men again wheeled their way around a manmade ribbon of snow, skating six icy 2.5-kilometer laps. Reduced from 30 to the 15 k distance and without the long, steep climb for which the course is usually known, how athletes would fare was yet to be determined. Along the way, two sets of 15 bonus points were available for the top ten...
Thousands of spectators, slate skies, and a manmade loop of snow laid down in the otherwise green-brown Falun, Sweden ski stadium greeted the World Cup on Saturday. After a weekend hiatus last week, racers contested a 1.4-kilometer classic sprint in one of Sweden’s skiing epicenters. The main World Cup sprint star, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, was absent. The twenty-three-year-old Klæbo broke two fingers last week. According to Norwegian broadcaster NRK, he will be reevaluated on Feb....
It was dizzying in Dresden for the skate team sprints. The man-made loop of lightning-fast snow had skiers going literally round and round for a total of 11 exchanges between teammates. Each skier skated a single 0.7-kilometer lap, for a total of 7.8 k. Each skier raced six laps. Turn your head dizzy. The Women’s Final The finals consisted of ten teams. Sweden I animated the race with its display of pull ahead speed late...
The metaphors are rife when describing the rough and tumble nature of the urban environment. Most often we think of pine forest, alps, and Hansel and Gretel valleys as the backdrop for the World Cup. To foster interest and in-fill a dense schedule of racing, city-sprints are nothing new when it comes to populating the World Cup calendar. Places like Dresden provide a contextual backdrop to a Europe steeped in history. The city is often...
The hunter becomes the hunted. Looking back on previous tours, Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov has not worn the leader bib going into the pursuit stage except for the 2016/2017 tour in Oberstdorf, Germany. That year, Ustiugov won six of the seven stages, placing second in the mass start classic in Stage 6, but still raced up the final hill climb with a significant buffer for the overall victory. This year, Ustiugov was the man to beat....
New day, new venue, almost a new decade. The 2019/2020 Tour de Ski continued in Toblach, Italy with a 15-kilometer interval start skate. In the war of attrition that is the tour, the first stages set the tone. Hopefuls for the overall win seek to establish their position near the top without expending too much energy to hold up for the long haul. We saw this in the first stage, where the men’s field remained...
With lickety-split snow and a two-lap course lined with fans, Stage 2 of the Tour de Ski (TdS) in Lenzerheide, Switzerland, a 1.5-kilometer skate sprint, sent a few ripples through the field, but solidified Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo as the TdS front runner. Yesterday, Klæbo, in second place, ceded little time to two of his main rivals for the overall, Russians Sergey Ustiugov, who won Saturday’s mass start skate, and Alexander Bolshunov, who placed third....
The starting corral was blocked by a wall of red before the start of the 15-kilometer mass start freestyle in Lenzerheide, Switzerland. Of the top ten ranked athletes, eight hailed from either Norway or Russia, interrupted only by Iivo Niskanen of Finland and Lucas Chanavat of France. Front and center was last year’s victor Johannes Høsflot Klæbo. He became the youngest Tour de Ski Champion at 22 years of age after holding off Russia’s Sergey...
From under the umbrella to inside the snow globe. Fat flakes were falling in Planica, Slovenia at the start of the freestyle team sprint. A painful mix of speed and endurance, each team member skied three 1.2-kilometer laps for a total of 7.2 k. Comprising the victorious Norway I team, Sindre Bjørnestad Skar and Erik Valnes stopped the clock at 16:54.52. Fellow countrymen Håvard Solås Taugbøl and Gjøren Tefre took the Norway II team to...
With a snaking artificial loop of snow in a drizzly, and sometimes thundering Planica, Slovenia, the men’s World Cup field competed in a 1.25-kilometer skate sprint on Saturday. What Planica lacked in wintery vistas, it provided with fast technical racing during a day of topsy turvy weather. Racing was suspended after the quarterfinals when a robust lightning and hail storm moved in. With loud thunder booms reverberating during the weather delay, the competition organizers aptly...
Davos, Switzerland: gifted athletes, throngs of spectators lining the course, plenty of Vitamin-D and a spectacular day for the 1.5-kilometer freestyle sprint. Racers chased down and skied away from their long afternoon shadows as the sun moved across the cloudless bluebird sky. The crowds were in for a treat. In sprint racing, heats often have significant variance. Some will be fast, some will be slow with a final upsurge in intensity at the end. In...