The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) discovered a major snafu this week in the leadup to the Sochi Winter Olympics when it rendered Moscow's antidoping laboratory -- the one that's expected to test Olympic athletes in less than three months -- sub-standard.
FS staff member Emily Schwing catches up with the voices and brains of NBC's commentary at the upcoming Sochi Olympics, Chad Salmela and Rob Whitney, who will likely cover nordic, biathlon and nordic combined at the 2014 Winter Games.
In a coincidence of timing, the AP has uncovered illegal dumping of construction debris which threatens half the water supply to Sochi - just as the new Olympic city hosts IOC members for a conference on sport and the environment. As leaders discuss whether the Olympics can have a sustainable legacy, will they address these recent concerns?
USBA picked 11 athletes to send to Europe this fall, based on trials races this summer in Jericho and last week at Soldier Hollow. Some of them will be picked for Sochi - but who? We clarify the qualification process, as well as getting some comments from High Performance Director Bernd Eisenbichler about the performances he saw in Utah last week.
You saw what Kikkan Randall could do last season when hampered by a six-week injury that interrupted fall training. This time around, she’s healthy and ready to show the world what she can accomplish. Randall is doing just that in a blitz of media and commercial appointments.
Billy Demong’s in for a big weekend. A short detour to his old stomping grounds in Lake Placid, N.Y., for the US Ski Jumping and Nordic Combined Championships this weekend will be followed by a Monday morning flight to Europe for his team’s final overseas training camp in Austria and Germany.
Ever wonder how skiers from places like Argentina get to go to the Olympics? The meet qualifying standards just like everybody else, while also meeting their own nation's criteria. Even in a place like New Zealand, it's not easy. " I do not understand New Zealand's reluctance to support winter sport, other than those in the top 16 in the world,” national-team member Sarah Murphy says.
After a three-year break from World Cup racing, Torin Koos returned to the international scene last year and picked up where he left off with a top 20 finish last March. As the 33-year-old prepares for what could be his fourth Olympic Games, he thinks of last season as a stepping stone to more progress in 2014. "I feel like I’m coming into this year with some momentum and still with a lot to prove as well, to myself," Koos says.
We’re 199 days and counting if you’re keeping track of how much time remains until the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and we know many of you are. In case you haven’t been reading every ounce of pre-Olympic coverage, we’ll do our best to stay on it and provide relevant nordic updates throughout the next sixth months.
The Sochi Organizing Committee showed off, for the first time, the beautiful meals that will be up for grabs at the Olympics in February. Across the nordic sports, North Americans could medal in, we estimate, four events - and if you start talking a little crazy, maybe almost a dozen sets of the handcrafted hardware could come back across the Atlantic.
In his first year as a senior, Canada's Kurtis Wenzel - last year's World Junior Champion in the individual - saw his season progress as normal. Then, at the very end, things got exciting: he got the surprise call to race in his first World Cup, at the Olympic venue in Sochi, then returned home to win his first national championship.
The Canadians will be the first to admit that things didn't go so well for them at the recent World Cups in Sochi. But they aren't letting it get them down - after all, next year is a completely different training cycle, and they won't be peaking for anything but the Olympics. With an unusually full roster that even included Brendan Green, they made the most of their preview.
In fourth place just seconds from the front after two legs of Sunday's 4 x 7.5 k relay, the U.S. men went on to place tenth after losing out on a photo finish with Slovakia. They appreciated the chance to preview the Olympic courses, but with dangerous crashes and complaints about the difficulty of the trails, they expect to see a different Sochi when they come back in a year's time for the Games.
Take a multi-time World Champion, a speed demon who has improved enough on the range to win World Cups - and then add a junior racer and an Olympic gold medalist skier who recently turned biathlete. It's not the usual formula, but it got Germany a win over Ukraine and Norway in the women's biathlon relay in Sochi today.
Dmitry Malyshko stunned the field on the third leg of the men's biathlon relay when he shot perfectly and skied his way from tenth place to first. With a strong anchor leg by Evgeniy Ustyugov, Russia took a big win in the competition - but journalists complained that the men weren't doing enough for their fans.
Annelies Cook finished 18th and Susan Dunklee 25th in the World Cup sprint in Sochi, Russia today. With only three women and no team for tomorrow's relay, the sprint and individual races were the only chances the U.S. women had to race on the Olympic course before next year; here's what they thought.
Next year’s Olympics could be good news for France and bad news for everyone else, as Martin Fourcade clocked the fastest course time for the second race in a row and picked up a huge 42-second victory in the 10 k sprint.
"It's beautiful and it's very strange," U.S. biathlete Annelies Cook said of the new Olympic venue in Sochi, which sits just next to the cross country trails on the slopes of a steep mountain chain. From racing to the athlete village, from unusual rules about rifles to pleasant surprises with washing machines, biathletes are learning what life will be like at next year's Games.
Susan Dunklee placed seventh in today's World Cup test race at the brand-new Olympic venue, while Annelies Cook skied to 14th, the best result of her career - which all bodes well for next year's Games. But the even better news for the U.S. is that both were clean through three stages and ranked fourth and fifth, showing the promise for even better results to come. Darya Domracheva dominated the trails for a big win.
While Martin Fourcade of France joked that now he has his gold medal from Sochi, Tim Burke finished the day with important insight, too: namely, that he can ski among the fastest times on the trails that will hold Olympic competition next winter. With only one missed shot in the 20 k race, the American made the top five for the second competition in a row.