How does a high school student from Massachussetts end up skiing on a glacier with the best athletes from the United States and Canada in the middle of the summer? The answer is a program, and a promise for other young skiers. Corey Stock, a 17-year-old racer who usually represents the Cambridge Sports Union, was nominated this year to be a member of the National Training Group (NTG), a program of the U.S. Ski Team....
(Author’s Note: While some of the athletes and coaches contacted by FasterSkier for this story were willing to openly discuss birth control, many wished to remain anonymous rather than allow the public to make assumptions about their sexual choices, a desire that FasterSkier respected. For these sources, pseudonyms will be marked with an asterisk (*) the first time they appear, and they will subsequently be referred to by first name, rather than last name like...
The 2011-2012 U.S. Ski Team (USST) roster has been out since April, and on the surface, the biggest piece of news in the announcement was sheer numbers. With seven men and five women named to the team, the squad is nearly twice the size it was last year. In order to take advantage of their new strength, USST coaches decided to officially split the team into a men’s and a women’s squad—an arrangement that follows...
The question may not have been burning on Thursday, but at the very least, it was smoldering: Would any of the junior men attempt to double-pole Friday’s classic sprint? At last weekend’s World Cup races on the same course in Otepaa, Estonia, Norway’s Eirik Brandsdal double-poled through his qualifier and all three heats to edge out his teammate, Ola Vigen Hattestad, for the win. Only a handful of others tried the maneuver in the preliminary,...
For U.S. ski fans, this year’s World Junior and U-23 Championships, which begin Wednesday in Estonia, have the potential to be pretty sweet. On paper, the American squad is as good as any from the last five years, and deeper, too. No fewer than five of its athletes will go on to compete at the World Ski Championships in Oslo later this winter. With Estonia experiencing one of its best winters in years, and two...
During the 2011 US Senior Nationals in Rumford, Maine, the US Ski Team named 12 athletes to the J1 team that will compete at the Scandinavian Cup races in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, at the end of the month. Rookie Stella Holt, Glacier Nordic, is one of them.
The Alaska Pacific University women’s team was finally dethroned on Thursday—but it took a world-class athlete to do it. After Holly Brooks and Sadie Bjornsen took the first two races of this week’s U.S. National Championships in Rumford, the U.S. Ski Team’s Liz Stephen finally broke up the monopoly with a persuasive win in the women’s 20 k. Brooks preserved her squad’s pride by placing second, 58 seconds down, while Morgan Arritola (USST) was third....
This weekend’s World Cup city sprints in Dusseldorf aren’t supposed to start in the airport. But the American and Canadian ski teams will be cutting it pretty close. Thanks to a strike by Finnair’s flight attendants, the two squads’ sprinters are spending Thursday night in Finland and departing for Germany on Friday—giving the teams a buffer of roughly 24 hours before the start of the races on Saturday. American Andy Newell’s schedule will be even...
Greetings from Central Finland (where the temp was a balmy -25C upon waking up this morning)! The sun has set on the Nordic Opening and everyone has packed their bags and headed either to the next races or homeward. As a final wrap-up, the weekend was packed with lots of action. The Nordic Opening is one of the only places where you can see Nordic skiing, ski jumping and Nordic combined all in one weekend...
After a half hour of skiing Saturday, Kris Freeman had earned himself $500, 29 World Cup points, and one top-10 finish. By his own account, Freeman’s ninth place in the season-opening 15 k freestyle in Gallivare was “a hell of a day,” and it was the top finish for the American men. Noah Hoffman followed with a stellar 31st, while Andy Newell and Chris Cook turned in lackluster results in 87th and 102nd, respectively. Freeman...
This trip marks one of the premier steps of the elite athlete and coach development pipeline in the U.S. The U.S. Ski Team is pleased to announce the 2011 staff: Matt Whitcomb, Trip Leader, Junior Head Coach U.S. Ski Team Bryan Fish, U23 Head Coach, U.S. Ski Team Randy Gibbs, Head Service, U.S. Ski Team Andrew Johnson, Service, University of Vermont Casey Fagerquist, Service, Alaska Pacific University Justin Beckwith, Service, Green Mountain Valley School Amy...
Evidence of autumn abounds at the U.S. Ski Team’s camp in Sun Valley. Temperatures on Thursday struggled to break 50 degrees, there’s snow in the mountains outside town, and with three time trials over the next week and a half, the team’s training focus has shifted from volume to intensity. But despite the signs of the inexorable creep towards winter, nobody’s getting ahead of themselves. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, still,” said...
The World Cup opener is still 100 days away, but for the U.S. and Canadian national teams, the 2010-2011 cross-country season kicks off today with a 10/15 k classic mass start event. The race is part of the ANC series – the Australian and New Zealand Continental Cup. It is being held at the Snow Farm in New Zealand, and will feature an elite, if small, field. The U.S. Ski Team (USST) will start their...
When Kris Freeman, Andy Newell, Kikkan Randall, and the four other members of the U.S. Ski Team (USST) head out on the first ski of their on-snow camp in New Zealand this week, they will have at least 7,657 reasons to appreciate it. That’s number of miles separating Wanaka, the site of the team’s camp, from Park City, Utah, where the team is headquartered. The USST leaves Sunday for New Zealand, and for the next...
High-caliber junior athletes flocked to Craftsbury Outdoor Center in Vermont on June 25 for the five-day Regional Elite Group (REG) camp. The week provided attending skiers with a chance to train with and learn from some of the country’s best coaches. This year saw some changes to the general REG plan, including more time trials and the requirement that athletes wear numbered bibs for all workouts, fostering a greater spirit of competition and professionalism. “I...
Andy Newell (USST) may not have been racing against the best skiers in the world in the National Training Group’s sprint time trial at Soldier Hollow on Tuesday, but he certainly was not lacking in motivation. “If there’s one thing World Cup sprinters don’t want to do, it’s be juniored,” said Matt Whitcomb, the U.S. Ski Team’s World Cup coach. Newell won the men’s time trial by 13 seconds over Erik Bjornsen (MOD) and Reid...
The first annual National Training Group (NTG) camp in Park City is underway, and participants were challenged early on with the infamous Agony Hill Time Trial on the first day. Alexa Turzian (SVSEF/CU) and Caitlin Patterson (Alaska Winter Stars/UVM) tied in the women’s race, both posting a time of 18:40. Kate Dolan (BSF/DU) finished third, 40 seconds back. Scott Patterson (Alaska Winter Stars/UVM) edged Reid Pletcher (SVSEF/CU) by two seconds in the men’s event, clocking...
Tomorrow fifteen of the top junior nordic athletes from around the country will amass in Park City for an intensive ten days of physical and educational training with the U.S. Ski Team. 25 athletes were named to this National Training Group (NTG) by the USST based on racing results from last season’s Junior National, U.S. National, U23 and World Junior Championships. The goal of the camp, say USST Coaches Chris Grover and Matt Whitcomb, is...
There are very few coaches for whom taking a job with the U.S. Ski Team (USST) is a step down in intensity. But after 300 days on the road last year as head coach of the Central Cross Country (CXC) program, that might just be the case for Bryan Fish. Last week, Fish was announced as the USST’s new Continental Cup coach, completing a USST staff reorganization that began in April when Chris Grover took...
The IOC hasn’t yet decided on a location for the 2018 Winter Olympics. But it’s safe to say that the road to those Games travels through Slovenia, at least for some of America’s cross country skiers. Thanks to a $10,000 grant from the National Cross Country Ski Education Foundation (NCCSEF), and more funding from the U.S. Ski Team, a group of 15 athletes has set up shop in the resort town of Rogla. There, the...