With a handful of gel packets stapled to his bib, American Noah Hoffman would have blended in better at the American Birkebeiner than into Sunday’s 50 k freestyle at the 2011 World Ski Championships. But make no mistake: the way he was skiing was still world-class. Hoffman made it more than 30 kilometers rubbing shoulders with the World Cup podium’s usual suspects—Petter Northug (NOR), Lukas Bauer (CZE), and Maxim Vylegzhanin (RUS)—before finally succumbing to the...
Last year the Canadian men proved that performance a week before a major championship event is meaningless as a predictor. The hope is that that is the case this time around, as well. Both the Canadians and Americans did not impress in their final distance tune-up prior to this year’s World Championships – but the general consensus was that there was little to be concerned about. Devon Kershaw led all North American finishers in 26th...
APU teammates Holly Brooks and Lars Flora maintained the top spots in the overall SuperTour standings, despite skipping the last five races in the Midwest. Brooks continues to hold a significant margin over another APU skier, Kate Fitzgerald, on the women’s list. Fitzgerald also skipped the recent Midwest swing of the US Continental Cup circuit. Maria Stuber (CXC), however, not only raced, she raced fast, and has climbed into the third spot overall. On the...
AUBURN, N.H. — Fischer Skis announced today that seven of the fourteen athletes selected to the 2011 U.S. Cross Country World Championship team choose to compete on Fischer Skis. The seven Fischer skiers competing in Oslo, Norway, at the famed Holmenkollen venue will be led by Kikkan Randall, the 2009 World Championship Silver Medalist. Randall, who just scored her second World Cup victory last week in the freestyle sprint in Liberec, Czech Republic, is joined...
Lars Flora finally got the hard course he was looking for. After the two distance races at last week’s U.S. national championship were held on relatively pedestrian courses—to Flora’s disappointment—Friday’s SuperTour race in Lake Placid, a 10 k classic, featured five trips up an unrelenting, steep climb: a full kilometer from the landing of the town’s Olympic ski jumps, all the way up to the take-off point. Flora (APU) made the most of the challenge,...
January 12, 2011 (Park City, UT) – World Championship silver medalist Kikkan Randall (Anchorage) will lead a strong 2011 U.S. Cross Country World Championship Team to compete at Holmenkollen in Oslo beginning Feb. 24. Randall is one of 14 athletes named Wednesday to compete in the biennial Championships. The International Ski Federation’s 2011 Nordic World Ski Championships are especially important this year, taking place in the heart of nordic skiing and in its most prestigious...
SuperTour action continues this weekend, as the domestic circuit moves from Rumford, ME, to Lake Placid for races on Friday and Saturday. Organizers are expecting between 325 and 350 athletes competing in a 10 k/6 k classic and a 15 k/10 k freestyle, headlined by competitors from the U.S. Ski Team and the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Club. With two hours until entries closed at noon on Wednesday, Noah Hoffman (USST), Lars Flora (APU),...
Dumped from the U.S. Ski Team (USST) after a sub-par 2010, Torin Koos (Methow ODT) clearly had something to prove coming into the 2011 U.S. National Championships—and he didn’t disappoint. With a victory in Saturday’s skate sprint, Koos collected his second title of the week, coming out on top in a frantic dash to the line with Simi Hamilton (USST) and Lars Flora (APU). Koos’s two victories in Rumford could easily serve as the opening...
One last national title is up for grabs on Saturday in Rumford, ME, as a skate sprint wraps up the 2011 U.S. championships. Rock-hard, borderline icy conditions should make for a lightning-fast, hectic day of racing around the 1.4-kilometer course. The men’s field is headlined by Torin Koos (Methow ODT), but he’ll have his hands full with Simi Hamilton, the U.S. Ski Team’s 23-year-old sprint stud. Koos won last Sunday’s classic sprint in convincing fashion,...
Interval start races don’t usually end with desperate lunges for the finish line. But that’s exactly how Thursday’s 30 k national championship concluded in Rumford—with CXC’s Tad Elliott sprawled on his back, the winner over APU’s Lars Flora. The scene may have looked ridiculous, but Elliott needed every inch. After an hour and ten minutes of racing, his winning margin over Flora was a mere tenth of a second. “I knew it was really tight,”...
Going into the 15 k classic race in Rumford, APU’s Lars Flora had a total of four national championships to his name. But to say that he had endured a dry spell would be an understatement: it had been 1098 days since his last title, which came in Houghton, MI in 2008. After two tough seasons, and a demoralizing defeat in Sunday’s sprint, the 32-year-old Flora finally broke through on Thursday to collect his fifth...
Classic distance races are on tap for the U.S. National Championships in Rumford, ME on Wednesday, after two days of rest to allow for optimal course preparation. Volunteers, coaches, and even U.S. Ski Team member Liz Stephen worked with heavy equipment and shovels throughout Tuesday, leaving a 2.5-kilometer loop available for racing at Rumford’s Black Mountain. Under clear skies and with temperatures cooler—in the 20’s—the action gets started with the women’s 10 k at 10...
After seeing Lars Flora (APU) dominate his first two heats in Sunday’s national championships classic sprint in Rumford, ME, Torin Koos (Methow ODT) was prepared for a showdown in the finals. Both wily veterans at ages 30 and 32, respectively, Koos and Flora were stacked up against a much younger crew, which was liable to run out of steam late in the day: two juniors in Erik Bjornsen (Methow ODP) and Skyler Davis (Stratton); Dartmouth...
APU’s Holly Brooks has been waiting all year to test herself against the eastern women—at least one of whom, Ida Sargent, raced on the World Cup this fall. If Sunday’s classic sprint qualifier results at nationals are the first measure, Brooks is on her way to acing that test. At Rumford’s Black Mountain, she skied to a three-second victory in the preliminary round over her teammate Sadie Bjornsen. Dartmouth’s Sophie Caldwell was third, with Morgan...
With U.S. Nationals looming, there’s quite a collection of domestic skiers who think they could ski to a podium finish in the biggest races of the year. Besides the eternal glory of winning a national championship, there’s more on the line: for seniors, the races will be their best shot of earning low National Ranking List (NRL) points, which will qualify them for World Championships, and for younger skiers a strong result could mean a...
One of the intentions of the tour format introduced to elite-level cross-country ski racing in the past few years is to allow sprinters and distance specialists to compete on a level playing field. That balance hasn’t been achieved yet at the World Cup level: None of the winners of the four editions of the Tour de Ski, men’s or women’s, have been pure sprinters. But in this weekend’s three-stage mini-tour held in Rossland, BC, organizers...
Veteran Lars Flora (APU) posted his first win of an already-successful 2011 season, capturing the top spot in the men’s 10km skate in the second day of the Rossland NorAm mini-tour. Flora edged Canadian World Cup skier George Grey by 2.1 seconds on a fast 5km loop, while fellow Canadian Drew Goldsack was third, +6.9. With a winning time of just under 22 minutes, Flora thinks it may have been his fastest 10k ever. “I...
So far this year, Drew Goldsack has been tearing it up on the NorAm sprint circuit. Goldsack, a member of Canada’s senior development team, had won every sprint he entered coming into this weekend’s mini-tour in Rossland, British Columbia. But while he had proven that he was the North American not on the World Cup circuit, he hadn’t had the chance to test himself against his teammates in Europe. Until now. On Friday, Goldsack was...
While Sunday’s Haywood NorAm 10 and 15 k freestyle races were held in Canada, it was the Americans who took the top step of both podiums – and convincingly. The men’s race started in sloppy conditions – approximately 20 centimeters of snow fell overnight, and continued right up until the start of the men’s race, resulting in ankle deep snow in some places. The men skied three loops of 5 k, and each one contained...
