For the third time ever, the IPC World Championships are being held in the U.S. and kick off Friday with the opening ceremony in Cable, Wis. Team USA is ready, according to coach Eileen Carey. “We are thrilled to get another chance to test out some of our training and racing strategies," she says. "Having the opportunity to do that on home snow is a great bonus for us.”
This week's workout comes from U.S. Paralympics coach Eileen Carey, who shares a fun head-to-head speed session that works on both technique and tactics. "This type of workout is important for our program because we often have training sessions with athletes with a wide range of experience levels and/or with different impairments competing against one another," she says.
While the three medals U.S. Paralympics Nordic won in Sochi are still fresh, the team's moving on and doing everything it can with the money it has to be a leading force in Paralympic cross-country skiing and biathlon. "Medals are good, but they’re not critical," director John Farra explains. "I think they’re going to be more critical in Pyeongchang.”
Last week, the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Team toyed with a new kind of training at the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center: technique on a rollerski treadmill using live-video feedback. Oksana Masters was nervous before, but ramped it up to 10 mph at a 10-percent incline before the workout was over.
James Upham had a good run in Sochi: his Paralympic skiers won three medals - the first by U.S. women in 20 years - and before that at the Olympics Susan Dunklee, a college skier he had recruited to be a biathlete, turned in the best performance ever by a U.S. woman. Now he's returning to his home of Maine as an assistant coach at Bates College.
The U.S. Paralympic Nordic skiing team closed out the 2014 Paralympics on a high on Sunday as Oksana Masters won bronze in the women’s 5 k sit ski cross-country race at the Laura Cross-Country Ski Center. “I am in complete shock and amazement,” says Masters, the most successful U.S. Paralympic cross-country female.
Tatyana McFadden rose to the occasion yet again to notch the second U.S. silver medal in cross-country skiing at the Sochi Paralympics, becoming the second woman to do so in the last 20 years. Just 0.1 seconds back from gold, the Russian-born McFadden medaled in front of both her adoptive and birth mothers.
Oksana Masters won silver in the women’s 12 kilometer cross country race in the second day of competition at the 2014 Winter Paralympic Games in Sochi. The medal ends a 20 year medal drought for U.S. women’s paralympic cross country skiing. Masters reacted her medal saying, “I really have to thank my training from rowing because it prepared me well for skiing; I am so happy right now.”
At the 2014 Winter Paralympics from March 7 to 16 in Sochi, Russia, nordic skiing and biathlon will account for more that half of the available medals. How will the United States fare in the medal chase? The team's high-performance director, John Farra weighs in.
U.S. Paralympics recently nominated 16 Nordic skiing athletes and two guides to its 2014 U.S. Paralympic Team to compete in biathlon and cross-country skiing at the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, March 7-16.
Rounding Soldier Hollow’s 2.5-kilometer sit-ski course on Tuesday, Oksana Masters and Lt. Dan Cnossen muscled through methodically, powerfully. Even with two victories apiece behind them from earlier in the week at U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing Nationals, these two had business to tend to.