Take a moment to visualize some iconic head-to-head finishes from recent global championships: Klæbo vs. Bolshunov in the 50 k, Oberstdorf, 2021; Nilsson vs. Johaug in the relay, Seefeld, 2019; Schumacher vs. Terentev in the relay, Lahti, 2019; Diggins vs. history in, well, you know, PyeongChang, 2018. What do these races have in common, besides drama, high-level skiing, and triumph and tragedy in equal measure? All of them feature a final downhill back into the...
The following opinion article was originally published on FasterSkier on June 20, 2015. It was written by Chelsea Little, who contributed sterling ski reporting to this site for nearly a decade before ultimately retiring from nordic ski journalism, though not from nordic skiing. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Simon Fraser University outside of Vancouver, B.C., where her research interests focus on community and meta-ecosystem ecology. The article was published roughly...
The season’s biggest races start in less than a month at a venue that is by all accounts well-designed, but also has yet to host an official FIS race. Here’s some of what is currently known about the National Cross-Country Skiing Centre in Zhangjiakou, 100-plus miles northwest of Beijing in the Hebei province of China. The Courses The races will be held at altitude. The stadium is located at an elevation of roughly 1,650 meters...
It’s always tough to make the Olympic team. It got tougher this year, due to smaller quotas for all nations interacting with some math that is disadvantageous to the American men. If you just want the executive summary of this article, here it is: The maximum team size, for any nation’s nordic team for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, is eight athletes per gender. If the Games started tomorrow, the Americans would be able to...