Jack Novak has never been to Asia before. Lauren Fritz has skied on five continents. Both Alaska Pacific University skiers are crossing the Pacific Ocean this week to race in the tenth annual China Tour de Ski, which begins in Changbaishan on January 1. Expect camels, long bus rides, communal poop shacks – oh, and a $36,000 purse.
How will domestic skiers qualify for World Championships? Who's racing this year? What an we expect from the 2015 SuperTour? To answer these questions and more here is FasterSkier's SuperTour preview, which gives you and in-depth look at how competition will shape up on the domestic front.
With two seniors and two postgrads on its elite team this year, Ski & Snowboard Club Vail decided to drop the name "HomeGrown" and call them the SSCV Elite, while spending more time and resources on junior development in Colorado.
Grethe Lise-Hagensen served as Montana State University’s Head Nordic Coach from 2003 to 2014. During her decade as head coach, Hagensen brought the team from a state of near non-existence to ranking third in the nation. In May of 2014, Hagensen’s contract was not renewed by the university’s administration. FasterSkier sat down with Hagensen in July to talk about her time at the helm of the MSU program and the accomplishments she achieved during her ten years as head coach.
A lot of people might not know who Emil Johansson is. To SuperTour spectators and most of the 200-plus racers in West Yellowstone on Friday, he was an unknown: a Swede racing in the green suit of his home club IK Jarl Rättvik. An exchange student at the University of Colorado in Boulder, he's not part of the team. It was hard to know what he was capable of.
You probably know the players, the four main guys that make up SSCV/Team HomeGrown, but here's the scoop on what they're up to and what each is aiming for in the lead up to Sochi.
After starting off last season with a bang — a win in West Yellowstone and a trip to the Canadian World Cups — Ryan Scott finished his 2012-2013 campaign feeling unsatisfied. To reinvigorate his training before the Olympic year, he's taking a trip to Norway this June to train with friends and compete in a few races.
Still waiting to hear from your favorite North American skier that failed to qualify for the Quebec World Cup heats on Saturday? We've got their responses.
The American nation’s group athletes in Quebec City this week are about to take the biggest stage of their athletic careers. None of them are content with just having made it, however; these athletes want to compete.
When it was all said and done — the qualifying, the heats, the nervous skiing around between races — Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s Reid Pletcher emerged on top of the freestyle sprint field in Bozeman, Mont., scraping by Erik Bjornsen (APU/USST) and Ryan Scott (SSCV Team HomeGrown) in the final meters.
WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont. — Friday’s distance results in the first SuperTour of the season weren’t easy for everyone to swallow, especially not Ryan Scott of Ski & Snowboard Club Vail/Team HomeGrown. His coach Eric Pepper racked it up as a bad day. “He went out a little hard, blew up pretty hard [and] didn’t have great legs,” Pepper said on Saturday. Still, seeing he ranked 78th in the 9-kilometer skate individual start hurt. “That was...
Ready or not, the 2013 SuperTour season is fast approaching. Here’s what you need to know about the domestic race scene this year. At this point, we’ve pretty much said everything we can about the twelve senior ski programs in the U.S. We ran a series throughout the summer highlighting each team’s past accomplishments and goals for the future. Read back through ‘em for comprehensive rosters and standalone previews (scroll down for links). Now that...
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. – Friday morning’s U.S. Ski Team workout at the Mt. Van Hoevenberg nordic trails wasn’t designed to be too hard. According to men’s coach Jason Cork, the idea was to run with poles and ski bound for 45 minutes at Level 3 – a sort of tempo pace. Once a couple dozen athletes between the U.S. Ski Team (USST) and National Elite Group (NEG) got going around the designated loop, most realized...
Members of the U.S. Ski Team’s National Training Group (NTG) spent last week in Park City, Utah, for a training camp centered on group training and exposure to the resources at the Center of Excellence. Athletes joined interval sessions with the national team on the rollerski track at Soldier Hollow and underwent a series of physiological tests for assessment and feedback on their development. The camp was a new addition over last year’s schedule; the...
This is one of several previews in a quick-and-dirty series on U.S. elite teams. We asked coaches to send their 2012/2013 rosters and tell us what’s new for the coming season. We will be publishing additional reports over the next few weeks. Teams are presented in no particular order. Team: Ski & Snowboard Club Vail (SSCV) Team HomeGrown (Vail, Colo.) Coaches: Dan Weiland (nordic program director), Eric Pepper (head coach) Roster: Sylvan Ellefson, Tad Elliott (U.S....
ERZURUM, Turkey — With two gold medals in as many days at the World Junior/U23 Championships, Russia is clearly on top of its mens’ sprint game. Gleb Retivyk (RUS) took home a decisive win on Tuesday, skiing into the stadium in the final out of reach of his competitors, and maintained his lead all the way around the last corner and through the straightaway. His compatriot Evgeniy Belov (RUS) took second, and in a fight...
RUMFORD, Maine — The major story to come out of the final race of the 2012 U.S. Cross Country Championships was Torin Koos’s disqualification for obstruction of competition (which he plans to appeal). But in addition to the drama, an entire classic sprint day went on at Black Mountain. When the A-final field took the line Sunday afternoon, it was difficult to know what to expect. Koos seemed like the only safe bet to be...
After crossing the finish line in first in the U.S. Nationals classic sprint A-final, Torin Koos (BSF/Rossignol) was disqualified for moving into a lane in front of Ryan Scott (MSU/Team HomeGrown) before completely clearing Scott’s skis, which resulted in contact between Koos’ tails and Scott’s tips. A course controller saw the pass, and after the conclusion of the race, reported a violation to the jury. Per International Ski Federation (FIS) rules, the competition jury deemed...