Longtime Canadian racer Jesse Cockney joins us to recap a surprisingly exciting men’s pursuit race at the World Championships in Planica, Slovenia. We’ll be back tomorrow. Send your questions to devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com.
Carrying the momentum from the first day of racing into a second distance event, athletes lined up once more at the Whistler Olympic Park for a 10 / 15-kilometer interval start classic. Over 130 men and 90 women participated in the open categories, representing clubs across Canada and the United States. Adding a springtime layer of complexity to remind us that we are officially past the equinox, temperatures in Whistler hovered above freezing while a...
Sunday kicked off a week of racing at the combined Canadian Cross-Country National Championship and U.S. Super Tour Finals event held in Whistler, British Columbia. Hosted by the Black Tusk Nordic Events Society (BTNES) on the Whistler Olympic Park courses, this event also offers junior and U23 skiers a preview of the courses for next year’s Junior and U23 World Championships. With Paranordic, Nordic Combined, and both junior and senior cross-country events, it looks to...
Canada was successful in delivering the team to Beijing and getting them on snow in Zhangjiakou. The decision to go above and beyond in isolating athletes before a carefully planned drive to a charter flight worked, although other countries also succeeded with a more laid-back approach. What can fans expect from the Canadian team in Beijing? It all comes down to qualifying and performing. Qualifying Canada had an Olympic quota of four women and three...
The Canadian Prep Camp in Sovereign Lake and SilverStar, BC prior to the 2022 Beijing Olympics sounds like a nordic skier’s heaven. A two-week ski vacation with 100 kilometres of perfectly groomed snow. A private room above a great coffee shop (pain au chocolate!) and next door to some great beer. January weather just below freezing with enough falling snow to make every day a hardwax day. Two weeks of what locals call superhero snow. A...
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 please contact info@fasterskier.com. Last weekend in Ruka, a new season of World Cup racing came in like a lion. Right off the bat, there were so many storylines to follow. Here, we’ll...
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 please contact info@fasterskier.com. By Ryan Sederquist It was another very cold day in Ruka, Finland. Temperatures hovered between -19 and -23.2 degrees Celsius around the course, rising to -18.6C by the start...
The Devon Kershaw is back from summer hibernation! This week, Devon takes a break from medical school to break down the first big tune-up races of the season in Muonio, Finland. Joining him are the show’s new co-host, former FasterSkier reporter Nat Herz, along with Canadian athlete Russell Kennedy, who popped a huge result in one of the races in Finland. Russell catches us up on the European circuit; we also discuss Charlotte Kalla’s recently...
CANMORE, Alta.—Eight Canadians are readying themselves to head to Europe in the coming weeks to open the highly-anticipated Olympic and Paralympic season while bringing the maple leaf to the World Cup cross-country skiing start line. Nordiq Canada will send a dynamic group of four women and four men who are determined to climb up the international rankings in the first three weeks of World Cup action before returning to Canada for the holiday break followed...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and their 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 please contact info@fasterskier.com. It’s the last hurrah, folks. Roughly a year after the COVID-19 virus achieved its global pandemic title, the World Cup finds itself at the end of a season that once...
Yellow bibbed as the overall leader of the World Cup, out first on Sunday’s 30 k classic pursuit in Trondheim, and Norway’s Pål Golberg starting 34 seconds back: this was the situation Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov found himself in as he pulsed from the start. Thrown into this mix of tension was a helter-skelter mish-mash of weather. On and off again snow, blustery winds, and temps hovering right near that wax tech’s no man’s land of...
Takeaways from Stage 5 (of 6) of the Ski Tour 2020? Alexander Bolshunov no longer has his minute-plus cushion to Pål Golberg in the overall, and Johannes Høsflot Klæbo is rounding into G.O.A.T. (Greatest-Of-All-Time) form. The 23-year-old Bolshunov, a Russian powerhouse who won the Tour de Ski last month, ranks Stage 5 final results Tour overall standings |
With the course re-routed from the original 38-kilometer mass start skate to essentially an out and back into Meråker, Norway’s ski stadium, the day belonged to Russia’s Alexander Bolshunov who appears, at this point in the season, to be unstoppable in the distance events. In a post-race interview, Devon Kershaw noted that men paced it World-Cup comfortable for much of the first portion of the race. In other words, the effort up-front, although speedy for...
Let’s explain. The format was basic, a freestyle sprint. Otherwise, that’s where sprints as we know it ended. The 0.66-kilometer course shot off from the start up a gradual V2-able climb. It then rounded a left-hander where athletes descended what looked like a salted banked turn found in a X-Games terrain park. Down to the course’s bottom zoomed the skiers. Then things turned skyward. The course ascended a mini-Alpe Cermis lasting around one-minute for the...
Picking up where we left off in Östersund, Sweden: a pursuit start 15-kilometer classic. Unlike the women’s field where Therese Johaug “administered a beatdown”, creating a large time gap for herself, the margins for the men were much smaller. A glance at Final Results | Time of Day Results
Fresh snow greeted day two of the Mont Sainte-Anne Trials for the interval start classic. With athletes battling to qualify for U20/U23 World Championships in Oberwiesenthal, Germany and three separate World Cup trips (Falun/Scando Tour, Sprint Tour, Canmore), it was never going to be a simple matter of skier against the clock. Racing started with the open men’s 15km on a 5km loop that was shared by all the elite categories. Early on, it looked...
Canada took a step back from the World Cup circuit this weekend and focussed attention into development series. As the country tries to build momentum in a post Alex Harvey world, the focus has moved away from World Cup podiums and towards a consistent presence in the top 30. The road to the World Cup goes through local and regional races on the way to national/continental races. One of the development challenges in Canada is...
In contrast to yesterday’s open valley sprints, Sunday’s 15-kilometer interval start freestyle was tucked and nestled on the shady side of the valley. Firm snow and less than optimal oxygen concentrations greeted athletes. Davos sits at just over five thousand feet in altitude. As far as the race narrative, so much for fairy tales in lovely Davos. Dario Cologna, the Swiss ski star sat for a time in the fur-lined leader’s chair. Davos, according to...
Canada is moving into a new era in skiing. An era with less World Cup podiums and more emphasis on developing future podium athletes. “Train at what you want to be good at. If its climbing, climb. If it is chess, play chess. Ski training has many elements of course, but in the end the best training to race fast is to race.” — Erik Bråten, National Team Head Coach In the near future,...
United States Overall in Nations Cup Last Year: 5th Women’s Ranking 2018/2019: 4th Men’s Ranking 2018/2019: 11th Americans to Watch: Seven men and nine women will be lining up in stars and stripes for the World Cup’s opening: Finland’s Ruka Triple. Three race series features a classic sprint followed by a two-day distance pursuit. At the top of the ranks, Jessie Diggins (USST/SMS T2) finished the 2019 season 6th in distance and 7th in sprint....