For the past two years, Norway’s Petter Northug has been the best in the world. One look at the medals tables from the 2009 World Championships and 2010 Olympic Games serves as proof: Over the 12 competitions at those two events, Northug took gold in five of them, and reached the podium on two other occasions. FasterSkier had the opportunity to talk with Northug over breakfast in Las Vegas in July, immediately following the rollerski...
I step off the bus from the Strip into the Las Vegas evening and walk inside the Palms Casino, about 40 minutes early for the poker game between Marcus Hellner and Petter Northug. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I’m just coming off a two or three mile walk in search a loaf of bread, jostling tourists in 100-degree heat. The only place I can find to make my peanut butter and jelly sandwich is...
Winning at cards requires both luck and skill. On his fourth day of play at the 2010 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Petter Northug’s luck ran out–but not before he had survived long enough to win more than $20,000. With fewer than 700 players remaining from an original pool of more than 7,000, Northug was eliminated, on a hand that he had less than a 20 percent chance of losing. Late in the...
Petter Northug continued his run at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas on Monday, upping his chip count by 50 percent and advancing to the fourth day of competition. “During the three days he has played, he has not made a single mistake,” said Thorkild Gundersen, a journalist from Northug’s sponsor, Vi Menn Magazine, in an interview with the Norwegian website Nettavisen. After his third day of play at the tournament, Northug checked...
In Las Vegas, the house always wins. And in Tuesday’s head-to-head rollerski race between Marcus Hellner and Petter Northug, Northug was the house. On a course laid out by his Norwegian magazine sponsor—and modified at the last minute to give him a better shot at the win—Northug took the last two heats of a best-of-three series in the parking lot of the Palms Casino, evening the score with Hellner after losing to the Swede in...
11:28 PM: With ten minutes to go in the first day of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, it appears that both Petter Northug and Marcus Hellner have survived, and will head into a second round of play later this week. The two each have comfortable stacks of chips, and will be in decent position as the tournament continues on. 4:50: For once, it looked like Petter Northug was faced with a comeback...
Marcus Hellner one, Petter Northug zero. In an hour-long production worthy of two A-list celebrities, Hellner outlasted Northug in a one-on-one game of Texas Hold’em at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas on Sunday evening. Orchestrated by the Norwegian men’s magazine Vi Menn and the online gambling company PokerStars, the event showcased the kind of status that the two athletes enjoy in Europe. Clad in a crisp white button-down shirt emblazoned with a Norwegian flag...
If Petter Northug and Marcus Hellner had any doubts as to whether they’d be out of their element during the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, the high temperatures in the triple digits over the weekend should serve to quash them. The two may be Olympic gold medalists, but they’re also unseasoned card-players. If they hope to fare well in the tournament, the Scandinavians will have to better old-school pros, new-school math-whizzes, and hundreds...
FasterSkier will be in Las Vegas from July 3 to July 6 for the Petter Northug-Marcus Hellner poker showdown and rollerski race. The pair will face off in a head-to-head poker matchup on the fourth of July, play their first day of the World Series of Poker on July 5, and then compete in the rollerski race on July 6. FasterSkier has reserved a double room at the
From strippers to Cirque Du Soleil, there’s a lot to see in Las Vegas. But one spectacle setting up for this July is strange even by Sin City’s standards: a rollerski race between Olympic gold medalists Petter Northug (NOR) and Marcus Hellner (SWE). “Hopefully this will be something new in Las Vegas,” said Alex Øystå, editor-in-chief of the Norwegian magazine Vi Menn. “I don’t know how many people use skis there, but I guess not...