Canada threw down an impressive fifth place finish in Friday’s men’s 4×10 k relay, finishing just seconds from the medals. We caught up with the team afterwards in the mixed zone — here are our interviews with, in order, Tony Cyr, Graham Ritchie and Olivier Leveille. (We interviewed scramble leg skier Xavier McKeever earlier in the day, which is why he’s not featured in this clip.) We’ll be back tonight with a recap of the...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage pleasecontact info@fasterskier.com. While it was perhaps not the final event originally planned for the season, today’s 4 x 5-kilometer freestyle mixed relay in Falun, Sweden shaped up to be quite a way to...
Editor’s note: FasterSkier’s initial coverage of the women’s relay at this year’s FIS Nordic Junior World Championships in Oberwiesenthal, Germany, gave just the facts: The American women, fourth in this event a year before, skied their way up to second this year. This was entirely true, but didn’t get at the whole story. FasterSkier analyst Devon Kershaw, in a podcast shared later that day, hinted at some of the madness behind these facts, proclaiming early in...
Call it what you want: national pride, national bias, flag-waving: the team relays elicit nationalistic tendencies. In Lillehammer, Norway, you might think and maybe expect it’s your birthright to see the hometeam crush. That’s been the recent norm almost without exception. Here’s the quick stats to either dispel or reinforce those tendencies: Norway has won nine of the last 11 relay races on the World Cup. Russia won the other two. In fact, Russia took...
Last Saturday, the American women placed fourth in the U20 relay at 2019 World Junior Ski Championships. In any other year before 2017 this result would probably be headline news; considering that the Americans had the youngest team in the race (you can compare athlete birthdates from the women’s race here if you really want to get into the minutiae), this may well be headline news next year, or the year after that, when the same...
Canada had never won a championships relay medal - until today, when the men came together for bronze in Oslo, a result that both surprised them and didn't. "We’re teammates, we’re friends, but we’re fighting every day to be better than each other, said Nathan Smith. "I knew that if we had a better day it was possible. Not so likely, but possible."
22-year-old Canadian biathlete Julia Ransom just wanted to score some World Cup points this year - top 40's - to feel like she was on track. She blew that goal out of the water in the Antholz, Italy, on Saturday, shooting a perfect 20-for-20 and skiing to 19th place.
The IBU doing away with the double-pole zone and trying something new for relays and mass starts: only three lanes, and skating right off the bat. Will it work? Three of the women who started Sunday's relay - including two-time World Cup Champion Kaisa Makarainen - are unconvinced, saying that in a small, competitive field, it's potentially unfair for some teams to start 20 meters behind the front compared to just one row back in the old format.
Russian anchor Anton Shipulin using perfect shooting and blistering skiing to emerge as the fastest of a four-man lead pack in the waning minutes of a scintallating men's biathlon relay race, capitalizing on a stunning collapse by Norwegian anchor Emil Hegle Svendsen.
It's not every day that you find yourself sprinting for all you're worth down the finishing stretch of the Olympics against Martin Fourcade. But that's just what happened to Canada's Nathan Smith, who not only dueled with Fourcade to the end, but beat him. "I thought I had good chances,” Smith said. “I’m usually pretty good at sprint finishes.”
The Ukrainian women's biathlon team was careful not to learn too much about what is happening in Kiev, so that they could focus on their relay race and deliver something that might cheer the country up: a gold medal, Ukraine's first in a winter Olympics since 1992. The women called for a moment of silence in their press conference to honor the 77 dead in Kiev uprisings.
Japan's Akira Lenting, 23, got one start at the Olympics, in the men's relay. But a bad day for the rest of his team meant that things didn't go as planned.
For Norway, the country's collapse at the Olympics has prompted fevered news coverage, and speculation that the team’s coaches, and ski technicians, could lose their jobs after the games.
Photos from a bright and warm day at the Laura cross-country venue, where Sweden picked up a sensational win and a strong and spirited cheering section helped the U.S. women through a tough race.
For the second time this season, a women's World Cup biathlon competition was called off mid-race due to deteriorating conditions. On Sunday, it was fog that enveloped the stadium in Antholz, Italy, making it impossible to see the targets on the shooting range. Megan Imrie (CAN) and Annelies Cook (USA) were on course at the time, and talk about what happened.
Sitting in fourth place at each of the first three handoffs, the Canadian men were in the game for the entirety of today's World Cup biathlon relay in Antholz, Italy. They eventually finished sixth - the first time any of them could remember going to the flower ceremony as a team. France won the race, anchored by Martin Fourcade.
Canada has pared its World Cup squad down to just the men who will represent their country at the Olympics - and with qualifying off their shoulders, they can now focus on just racing. That was a relief to everyone as Canada skied and shot to a successful relay performance on Thursday.
RUHPOLDING, Germany – With the ultimate result decided by just one tenth of a second, yesterday’s men’s 4 x 7.5 k relay here was an exciting one. Here are some photos of the action.
Russia skied a consistent and fairly unremarkable race to win the biathlon World Cup 4 x 6 k relay. But the biggest story was Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle, whose aggressive skiing and near-perfect shooting took Germany from 18th to 1st on the second leg. Was her mid-race comeback a metaphor for her career, now that the Olympic skier has switched to biathlon?
Fresh snow couldn't keep the US women's relay from matching their best ever 4.5 Classic/Free Relay time. Randall, Bjornsen Stephen and Diggins claimed a bronze medal despite near disaster and broken ski pole. A second US women's relay team clinched 12th to close the second weekend of World Cup racing