In their first team sprint together, Americans Ida Sargent and Sophie Caldwell placed fifth on Sunday, while the U.S. men's team of Andy Newell and Simi Hamilton missed an early tag and ended up being disqualified in the final. “It was disappointing for sure, but it was a good call by the jury," U.S. head coach Chris Grover said.
Three Canadians missed the heats by slim margins on Saturday, with Len Valjas placing 31st for the third time in a World Cup skate sprint this season and Maya MacIsaac-Jones finishing 31st in the women's race, followed by Dahria Beatty in 32nd. “It’s a great start, it’s exciting and that’s why we have them over [there],” head coach Justin Wadsworth says.
Born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon, Dahria Beatty of the Alberta World Cup Academy recently packed her bags for the second period of World Cup races in Europe and is ready to represent Canada on the U25 B-Tour.
The NorAm youth movement continued into the second weekend of the Canadian domestic series on Saturday at the Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre, with three new athletes reaching the podium in the freestyle sprints.
The Rocky Mountain Racers team has a standby dryland workout called Ski Specific Strength that's as useful as it is brutal. While rollerskiing uphill, athletes pull a coach on a bike behind them, while their coach applies the brakes. "It’s pretty black and white if your power is going in the wrong direction," Andrea Dupont says.
Rocky Mountain Racers recently returned from its annual fall camp in Park City, Utah. Athlete Maya MacIsaac-Jones recaps the team's two weeks there, including a sprint time trial with the local Wasatch Nordic Ski Academy.
Katharine Ogden, racing in her first-ever Junior World Championships, earned the best distance result for any American at junior worlds since 2002. She placed sixth in Friday's 10 k skiathlon, while Katherine Stewart-Jones led the Canadian women in 14th.
17-year-old American Katharine Ogden finished an impressive 11th in her first-ever race in the Junior World Championships, while Katherine Stewart-Jones led the Canadian women and took 25th. In the men's race, Canada's Alexis Dumas placed 30th and was the top North American in a race dominated by the Russian team.
Last year in his Junior World Championships debut, Thomas O’Harra placed 54th in the freestyle sprint. The 18-year-old APU skier placed 14th on Tuesday in the opening race of 2015 Junior Worlds in Almaty, Kazakhstan -- the 1.3-kilometer classic sprint -- and three Canadian women made the quarterfinals as well.
With the second weekend of NorAm racing taking place Friday and Saturday at Sovereign Lake, here's a look at who could be some of the top contenders on a regular basis throughout the season, and who could potentially earn race starts in Europe.
Rocky Mountain Racer (RMR) skier Maya MacIsaac-Jones recaps her team's two-week, high-performance camp in Park City, Utah. "Because of RMR’s cross-country/biathlon mix, Soldier Hollow was the perfect place for training," she writes. "Coaches were able to coordinate shooting practices for the biathletes with simultaneous rollerskiing sessions for the cross-country side of the team."
It would’ve been so easy to dwell on the numbers, results and superficial measures of success. But racing is about so much more than that. Canada’s juniors, particularly its women, understood that. They worked hard and finished 13th, and the Canadian men took 15th.
Nakkertok's Katherine Stewart-Jones led the Canadians on Day 1 of the Junior World Championships, placing 25th in the classic sprint. Excited with her result, she was one of two Canadians to qualify for the heats; Alexis Turgeon (CNEPH) made it through in 30th.
For several North American skiers in their first World Cup or team sprint, it was easy to get nervous on Friday. Many took a deep breath, looked around them and smiled as they realized what they had already achieved.
How fast is Maya MacIsaac-Jones? At a recent NorAm sprint in Rossland, British Columbia, the Albertan had the fastest qualifying time of any junior, covering the course more than eight seconds faster than any of her competitors. She went on to win the junior race, despite the fact that she’s only sixteen – three years younger than the other podium finishers. And if that isn’t impressive enough, MacIsaac-Jones’ time in the qualifier would have put...
If Drew Goldsack and Graham Nishikawa were not already familiar with each other, they should be by now. That’s because the two Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA) athletes are locked in a tight battle over the top spot in the NorAm rankings – and the battle became even closer after this weekend, as Goldsack won the NorAm mini-tour in Kelowna, B.C. Goldsack, also a member of the Canadian National Ski Team (CNST) emerged victorious Sunday,...