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. After a long hiatus from international racing, the top athletes found themselves on the start line once again, ready to contest the first event of the 2022 Winter Olympics. First up,...
The most special of special guest on the podcast today, Kristin Størmer Steira. Størmer Steira, a retired Norwegian ski star, chats it up with Devon from Lillehammer, where the two are busy raising two young daughters. According to a 2014 FasterSkier article on the couple, evidently, Kershaw’s “great smile”, a legacy of his youth in Sudbury, won Størmer Steira over. In her own right, Størmer Steira was a Norwegian ski star. Back in 2005, Størmer...
And the World Cup beat goes on. Nearly 70 men lined up in Oberstdorf, Germany for a 15/15-kilometer skiathlon, battling across techniques in front of a Bavarian Alp backdrop. The venue will be the home of the 2021 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships. The 3.75 k course in Oberstdorf featured a variety of terrain, with the Burgstall hill climb bringing athletes to the high point of the course. To increase the pulse in the long...
Imagine for a moment that only months ago, at about 33 years old, you were in your prime — with World Cup globes on the mantle, six World Championship medals presumably in a drawer somewhere, and four Olympic medals (three of which are from the 2014 Games and will be awarded post-Sochi since the Bjornsen placed 42nd overall, over five minutes back from Sundby, that day’s winner. Bjornsen’s strategy paid off on Sunday. In a...
On an unsettled night for weather where it snowed off and on during the freestyle sprint heats in Lahti, two things were settled: The U.S. Ski Team hauled in two pieces of hardware, Jessie Diggins scored silver, Kikkan Randall took bronze.
Canada’s Alex Harvey is still on the podium. Then there’s the U.S. women’s team, with athletes in fifth, 10th and 12th in the Tour de Ski standings after big-time performances in Oberstdorf, Germany. Harvey kept himself in third overall and ahead of Switzerland’s Dario Cologna with a strong pursuit finish on Wednesday, and Jessie Diggins led her U.S. teammates on consecutive days, notching second on Tuesday for a career-best skiathlon result and holding onto fifth...
In the final kilometer of Tuesday’s 10-kilometer skiathlon in Oberstdorf, Germany, American cross-country skier Jessie Diggins saw a chance to grab her second World Cup win of the season. It came on the final lap up a 35-meter tall climb, just a few hundred meters from the finish. All she had to do was go over the top and ace the next downhill – a downhill where she had been flying by other racers all...
Stage 6 of the Ski Tour Canada featured a brutal course for both the women's 15-kilometer and the men's 30 k skiathlons. It was simply survival of the fittest as the classic loop featured a grueling 1.2 k climb while the skate leg was punctuated by dicey soft-snow corners navigated at high speed.
At one point in Saturday's World Cup skiathlon, Alex Harvey wanted to give up. He didn't and ended up 10th, and what's more, Canada placed 21st, 23rd and 24th with Graeme Killick, Devon Kershaw and Ivan Babikov. Noah Hoffman rebounded from 36th at the ski change to finish 25th.
Of the five U.S. women that started Saturday's skiathlon, four of them finished in the top 30 and one was just outside in 37th. "It’s nice that everyone is starting to feel like themselves," said Sadie Bjornsen, who led the team in 20th after skiing in the top 20 throughout the race.
Alex Harvey approached Saturday's 30 k skiathlon with a winning mindset and came out with bronze, his second medal in as many races so far at 2015 World Championships. "A medal today is as good as gold," Canadian National Team Coach Justin Wadsworth says, "We couldn’t want anything more." Russia's Maxim Vylegzhanin outlasted Switzerland's Dario Cologna for his first world title.
Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt (Rocky Mountain Racers) didn't have a great start, but she held off a charging Russian to finish 12th in the 15 k skiathlon at U23 World Championships. She believes she accomplished something else, too: potentially earning a place on Canada's team to senior World Championships in Falun.
American Ian Torchia led the North American men on Friday, placing 11th in the 20 k skiathlon at Junior World Championships, while Alexis Dumas of Canada finished 18th. Meanwhile, the Russians swept the podium for the second-consecutive race.
USST athlete Jessie Diggins earned her second fifth-place of the weekend in the 7.5 k + 7.5 k skiathlon in Rybinsk, Russia. Diggins led the USST women to place four skiers in the top-20 with Liz Stephen in seventh, Sadie Bjornsen in 13th, and Rosie Brennan in 20th.
Russian Yulia Tchekaleva won the women’s 15-kilometer skiathlon Sunday by 15.6 seconds, earning her first-ever World Cup victory and delivering her best result of the season on home turf in Rybinsk, Russia.
You know that moment after the transition in a skiathlon, when your skis seem to be sliding all over the place and your arms and legs say, "what!?" A team of researchers, including former Gustavus Adolphus skier Sarah Willis, investigated what's going on physiologically.
While the 15 k skiathlon, the first cross country ski race of the Olympic Games, could have been a warm-up, it turned into much more for the U.S. women: Jessie Diggins rocketed her way into eight, the best finish ever by a U.S. woman at the Games, and Liz Stephen placed 12th.
After all the buildup and accompanying action of Saturday’s cross-country and biathlon competitions, the first of the 2014 Winter Olympics, there was plenty to talk about on Saturday. Here are some of the soundbites that didn’t make the race reports.
World Champion at long last, Dario Cologna (SUI) played the waiting game on Saturday in the 30 k skiathlon at the 2013 Nordic World Ski Championships while others attempted futile breakaways. It paid off in the end; he won the race by almost two seconds over Martin Johnsrud Sundby (NOR). Our photos from the race...
It was a sea of red on Saturday at the front of the women's 15 k skiathlon at World Championships. Marit Bjørgen took home her second gold medal of the week with an impressive show of strength on the final climb that left the field in her dust.