One down, two stages to go. Sweden's Calle Halfvarsson has both the Lillehammer mini tour's early lead with a win on Friday's sprint, and an increasingly firm grip on the World Cup Overall. Canada's Alex Harvey is happy to lurk in 12th heading into tomorrow's skate distance race.
The Weekend Roundup is back! Just because the Olympics are over doesn't mean the season is finished. Catch up with the renewed World Cup action in Lahti, Finland, the IBU Youth World Championships, and the Vasaloppet.
Out of 17 Norwegians in Saturday's World Cup 15 k classic race, Pål Golberg wasn't the favorite. The 23 year old ended up notching his first World Cup victory in Lillehammer, and lesser-known teammate Didrik Tønseth surprised (himself) in third.
Just when spectators thought he might falter, Petter Northug rebounded from a nearly five-second deficit midway through Friday's 2.5 k prologue to win his second-straight race of World Cup Finals by 2.1 seconds over teammate Pal Golberg. Norway showed its strength on the modified course, putting six in the top seven.
It was a feel-good day for the top three in the men's 1.5 k classic sprint at World Championships on Thursday, with Russian Nikita Kriukov claiming his first gold and Norway's Petter Northug and Canada's Alex Harvey making the podium in second and third, respectively.
No one has ever raced skied the sprint course at World Championships at full speed before in a pack of six before. There is not yet a standard script written for these 1.2 k and 1.5 k loops, and when athletes don’t know what to expect from their competitors in a tactics-drive sprint heat, an exciting race is sure to follow.
Eirik Brandsdal (NOR) entered the day planning on being aggressive, and the strategy paid off. Brandsdal skied away from the field in the final of the Drammen classic sprint, winning for the second time this season. Brandsdal may not have been the favorite in this race, but his win certainly was no surprise. The same cannot be said of second-place finisher Lenny Valjas of Canada. The towering Canadian used a strong double pole and impressive...
Elbows, crashes, spills and thrills – that’s an average World Cup freestyle Team Sprint event in Dusseldorf, Germany, and the action on Sunday was no different. Sweden’s top pairing of Jesper Modin and Teodor Peterson emerged from close-quarters racing to take the top step of the podium, narrowly edging out Russia I, Nikita Kruikov and Alexey Petukhov. After taking gold and bronze in the sprint Saturday, Ola Vigen Hattestad and Paal Golberg of Norway I...
Despite cold rain pelting down on the city, Dusseldorf, Germany, was hopping Saturday afternoon. And rightly so, as even without Swedish sprint star Emil Joensson taking part, the best of the World Cup sprinters were on hand to tackle the rocket-fast course. The venue consisted of roughly 1900 meters of snow with an icy glaze on top. While the women did just one lap, the men were primed to race two loops of...