Nordiq Canada’s first major change announcement on November 16th was the decision to cancel the Period I trip to Lillehammer, Dresden, and Davos. (The Lillehammer races have been postponed, and have not been officially rescheduled.) “For us, it was chatting with our medical experts, assessing the situations here at home and what we were seeing happening overseas,” said Nordiq Canada’s High Performance Director Kate Boyd. “We had never planned to go to Ruka. And then...
Nordiq Canada Keeps Cross-Country Ski Athletes on Track During Pandemic by Unveiling FIS Cup Regional Race Series World Championship Trials set for Whistler; Canadian Ski Championships head back to Capital region Press Release CANMORE, Alta.— In an effort to provide a safe and competitive domestic race series while keeping athletes close to home during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Nordiq Canada has created an East-West FIS CUP Regional Race Series for the 2020-21...
The NorAm circuit moved east to the Nakkertok trails for three days of racing jointly hosted by Nakkertok Nordic, Club Skinouk, Chelsea Nordiq, and Kanata Nordic. Friday featured classic sprints, Saturday interval start free, and Sunday interval start classic. The event was also the Candy Cane Cup for the younger categories, as well as Ontario Cup 1 and Coupe Québec 1. 374 athletes in the U16, U18, and Open categories competed on Friday with many...
Updated with more quotes. The first three race days of both the NorAm and SuperTour series are complete and the athletes and coaches are digesting the lessons. It was free sprints Friday, classic distance Saturday, and interval start free technique distance on Sunday. The men started the Sunday with a four lap 15km followed by the women doing a 3 lap 10km. CGRP’s Ben Lustgarten nailed the pacing to win Sunday’s race in 42:56.0, just...
The NorAm series fully lived up to the North American Cup label in Canmore Friday with 1.3km free technique sprints to kick off a combined NorAm, SuperTour, and Mexican National Championships weekend. Full results for the weekend are on zone4, including live results every day. Friday featured sprints for the older age groups only (282 racers): Saturday is interval start classic, and Sunday’s race an interval start free. Before the races, there was chatter about...
Since Dec. 1, twenty-one-year-old Julia Kern (SMS-T2) has barnstormed the elite level domestic racing calendar. She qualified first and won the SuperTour freestyle sprint in West Yellowstone. The following weekend in the NorAm/SuperTour skate sprint in Sovereign Lake it was another win-win in the qualifier and final. In the next day’s 10-kilometer classic, Kern was third overall and the second American. Last weekend back in Vermont at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, Kern swept the...
Canmore hosted the second NorAm of the 2018/2019 season on December 13th, 15th, and 16th. The event also served as U23 and Junior World trials. By the end of the weekend, starts at the U23/Junior World Championships and the World Cup’s Tour de Ski would be earned. This event was originally scheduled for Whistler Olympic Park but had to be moved as a result of heavy rain and inclement weather forecasted into the immediate future. The...
Cross Country Canada (CCC) has appointed a new high-performance and development advisor, CCC’s CEO since November 2016. On the upside, he explained that another sponsor and investment firm, Haywood Securities, has agreed to sponsor the NorAm circuit as it has in the past. Asked if budget cuts were among the biggest challenges affecting CCC at the moment and the reasoning behind the latest layoffs, Pearsall said, “Yes. If things had stayed the same that would’ve...
The NorAm series moved west to Red Deer, Alberta, for Western Canadian Championships last week from Friday, Jan. 19 to Sunday, Jan. 21, with freestyle sprints, classic mass starts and relays at the River Bend Recreation Area trails. Each year, the NorAm circuit features both ‘Westerns’ and ‘Easterns’, which are intended to be regional championships so that the younger athletes have the opportunity to experience high-level racing closer to home. Easterns has been hosted by...
IBU World Cup (Ruhpolding, Germany): Men’s 20 k individual For France’s Martin Fourcade, the difference between a miss on the last shooting stage of the men’s 20-kilometer individual International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup on Wednesday versus perfect shooting wouldn’t have ultimately changed his result in Ruhpolding. Despite the one-minute penalty, which was tagged onto his total time after his lone miss of the day, Fourcade still won by a minute. The Czech Republic’s Ondřej...
U.S. Cross Country Championships (Anchorage, Alaska): Classic sprint Men’s report Caitlin Patterson did it. With a classic-sprint win on Monday, she successfully capped off an undefeated 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships, as the top American woman in all four races over the past week in Anchorage, Alaska. Patterson, of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project, qualified seventh then won the women’s 1.5-kilometer final by more than 2 seconds in 3:39.58 minutes. Finland’s Jasmi Joensuu, a junior...
IBU World Cup (Annecy, France): Men’s 10 k sprint (Note: This rundown has been updated to include quotes from US Biathlon’s Tim Burke and Sean Doherty.) Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Bø racked up his third-straight individual win of the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup season on Friday (and fourth non-relay win of 2017/2018), topping the men’s 10-kilometer sprint in Annecy, France. And he did so in head-turning fashion, beating French superstar Martin Fourcade, the race’s...
With the 2016/2017 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is excited to unveil its annual award winners for this past winter. Votes stem from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they are intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This set of honors goes to outstanding Canadian skiers competing primarily, but not exclusively, at the Continental Cup level. *** Katherine Stewart-Jones, U25 National team/NTDC Thunder Bay/Nakkertok...
The annual Eastern Canadian Championships are a special event in the Canadian winter. On paper, it is just another NorAm that provides opportunities to earn World Cup starts, national-team positions, and valuable International Ski Federation (FIS) points, but it has grown to be bigger than that. While Western Canadian Championships and Canadian nationals change their host venue each year, Nakkertok, Chelsea Nordiq, and Heats Women’s classic sprint podium: Maya MacIsaac-Jones, NST U25, 3:42.06 Sophie Carrier-Laforte, CNEPH, +0.66 Anne Hart,...
FIS Nordic Junior World Championships (Midway, Utah): 10/20 k skiathlon A Junior World Championships medal has been on Katharine Ogden’s mind for some time — two years, to be exact. “Every day in training, it’s kind of something that I think about. It’s the little thing that helps me push myself,” Ogden, a 19-year-old member of the Stratton Mountain School and U.S. Ski Team D-team, said in a post-race interview with the U.S. Ski Team on Friday....
The Black Jack mini tour represented the final chance for Canadians to earn World Cup Period 2 starts. A timely week of snow and colder weather delivered great skiing conditions after an unusually warm November wreaked havoc on most of the western ski areas. That same warm weather canceled the Bozeman combined SuperTour/NorAm, which reduced the selection races from seven days to five. Chelsea Holmes of Alaska Pacific University (APU) continued her winning ways in Canada,...
At the start of last season, Canadian cross-country skier Andy Shields one point. With some of his early season results –including a first place finish in last year’s NorAm skate sprint at Sovereign Lake, B.C. –Shields earned the opportunity to compete for Canada in two World Cup races in Planica, Slovenia. They were his first. A little less than a month later, Shields returned to Canada to compete in more domestic racing, and before he knew it, he found himself living...
VERNON, B.C. –The combined Noram/SuperTour last weekend at Sovereign Lake, British Columbia, produced some exciting skiing and some challenging photography conditions with almost non-stop snowfall both days. Some of our best photos that didn’t make the
Here's an in-depth look at the upcoming U.S. SuperTour schedule, addressing why the season’s first races won't be in West Yellowstone, why some SuperTour races are in Canada, why U.S. nationals are returning to Soldier Hollow so soon, why there is a skiathlon at Spring Series, etc.
Cendrine Browne used home-course advantage to command the women's classic individual start and freestyle pursuit last weekend at the NorAm at Mont Sainte-Anne, Quebec. She won the latter by nearly a minute and a half. Meanwhile, Bob Thompson led an NDC Thunder Bay podium sweep on Saturday, and Andy Shields skied away to the pursuit win on Sunday.