BEND, Oregon — Late last month, FasterSkier reached out to U.S. Ski Team (USST) Head Coach Chris Grover to discuss the team’s And then Kevin obviously had one of the best entrances to the World Cup of any U.S. athlete in history. So he really showed up and he did exactly what he needs to do to demonstrate that he absolutely has a ton of potential. That was an easier call for us. The questions...
last year’s World Cup squad are retirees Andy Newell (the latter of which isn’t exactly retiring), and Rosie Brennan. Simi Hamilton leads the men’s team as its lone A-team member, while Sadie Bjornsen, Sophie Caldwell, Jessie Diggins, and Ida Sargent are all back on the A-team. The B-team includes three returners — Erik Bjornsen, Paddy Caldwell and Scott Patterson — as well as 25-year-old rookie Kevin Bolger, out of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation...
With the 2017/2018 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is excited to unveil the last of its annual award winners for this past winter. Votes stem from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they are intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This set of honors goes to the North American Performances of the Year in cross-country, biathlon and nordic combined. Previous categories:...
With the 2019 International Ski Federation (FIS) Nordic World Ski Championships the next major championship on the docket, Garrott Kuzzy, a 2010 U.S. Olympian who lives in Innsbruck, Austria, interviewed the chief of course for the 2019 World Championships in Seefeld, Austria. Via email, he asked Thomas Unterfrauner about preparing for the event, which will run from Feb. 20 to March 3. *** Garrott Kuzzy: How is the atmosphere around Seefeld leading up to the 2019...
With the 2017/2018 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is excited to unveil its annual award winners for this past winter. Votes stem from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they are intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This set of honors goes to coaches of North American teams in any nordic discipline, at any level – although in an Olympic and...
2018 U.S. Distance Nationals (Craftsbury, Vermont): 30 k classic mass start Jessie Diggins swept SuperTour Finals once again, after doing so 2016 SuperTour Finals the year before in Craftsbury, Vt. Back in Craftsbury on Tuesday, and coming off three-straight victories in the classic sprint, 10-kilometer freestyle mass start and mixed relay with her Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team teammates, Diggins, 26, pulled out her fourth-straight win in her last race of the season: the...
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): Mixed relays For the second-straight year at the SuperTour’s season-ending Spring Series, the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team won the mixed relay, with three of the four athletes who raced on last year’s 4 x 5-kilometer mixed relay squad. Simi Hamilton, Sophie Caldwell, Paddy Caldwell, and Jessie Diggins combined for the win on Sunday in Craftsbury, tagging off in that order, with Diggins crossing the finish line first...
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): 10/15 k freestyle mass starts Jessie Diggins won her second-straight race in as many days at 2018 SuperTour Finals and Erik Bjornsen pulled out a victory in the men’s 15-kilometer freestyle mass start on Saturday in Craftsbury. Diggins, of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team and U.S. Ski Team (USST), won the women’s 10 k freestyle mass start in 25:56.0 minutes, just 1.2 seconds ahead of her USST...
2018 U.S. SuperTour Finals (Craftsbury, Vermont): Classic sprints The end of the racing season is just around the corner. The U.S. SuperTour Finals (a.k.a. Spring Series) kicked off Friday with 1.3-kilometer classic sprints at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, and four other days of racing are set to follow on Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The U.S. Ski Team (USST) made the trek from Europe less than a week after racing at World Cup Finals in...
FALUN, Sweden — NOR. USA. USA. Looking at the results monitor, those were the tri-letter country codes that popped into the top three at the end of the women’s 10-kilometer freestyle pursuit at World Cup Finals on Sunday. The “NOR” belonged to Marit Bjørgen of Norway, who ended her 2017/2018 World Cup season with yet another win. In Sunday’s pursuit, the 37 year old led from start to finish and ended where she started, in...
FALUN, Sweden — To those watching, even to those racing, the winner was the woman who had led most of Saturday’s 10-kilometer classic mass start: Norway’s Marit Bjørgen. “Marit and Tiril [Udnes Weng], another Norwegian young girl, they were skiing really fast and I thought that they would be first and second,” Norway’s Ingvild Flugstad Østberg told FasterSkier after the race. Seven minutes after the start gun, Bjørgen had moved to the apex of the...
FIS Cross Country World Cup Finals (Falun, Sweden): 10/15 k classic mass starts Men’s report Day 2 of World Cup Finals in Falun entailed 10- and 15-kilometer classic mass starts on Saturday, and in the first race of the day, Finland’s Krista Pärmäkoski pulled out a thrilling finishing-sprint victory over Norway’s Marit Bjørgen. After American Jessie Diggins led early in the first 2.5 k loop, Bjørgen set the tone from the front for most of...
FALUN, Sweden — Even the sky had predictions for Sweden. Without a cloud in sight, cerulean blue and a golden sun served as Falun’s backdrop for the opening race of the 2017/2018 World Cup Finals on Friday: the 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint. Exactly nine weeks ago in the city sprint held in Dresden, Germany, Sweden’s Hanna Falk was showing shades of greatness. In the first race of the new year, the 28-year-old Swede claimed the Dresden...
FIS Cross Country World Cup Finals (Falun, Sweden): Freestyle sprints Men’s report In the last sprint of the season and the first race of the three-day World Cup Finals in Falun, Sweden’s Hanna Falk and Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won their respective 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint finals, while Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla and Klæbo claimed the season-long Sprint Crystal Globes and Sophie Caldwell of the U.S. placed third in the Sprint World Cup. Falk started Friday...
DRAMMEN, Norway — Barring the spectators cheering from their apartment balconies, the most marked aspect of Wednesday’s 1.2-kilometer classic sprint course was the finish line. It crosscut the top of a 15-meter climb. Throughout the day, no skier closed out Drammen’s uphill finish better than Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla. After winning the day’s qualifier in a time of 3:19.44 minutes, Falla won her quarterfinal in photo-finish fashion and outlunged Sweden’s Stina Nilsson to place first...
FIS Cross Country World Cup (Drammen, Norway): Classic sprints Men’s report The cross-country World Cup hit the city on Wednesday, with classic sprints contested in the Oslo suburb of Drammen on snow which had been trucked onto the streets. And the crowd was rewarded with wins by two Norwegian favorites: Maiken Caspersen Falla in the women’s sprint and Johannes Høsflot Klæbo in the men’s race. In the women’s final, Falla and Natalia Nepryaeva of Russia battled at the lead for...
(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from American Caitlin Patterson.) The 2018 Olympics were pretty successful for Finland, in terms of cross-country skiing: Iivo Niskanen won gold in the 50 k and Krista Pärmäkoski earned silver in the 30 k and bronze in the skiathlon and the 10 k skate. After the Games finished, the FIS Cross Country World Cup moved to Finland, but on the first day of competition – skate...
FIS Cross Country World Cup (Lahti, Finland): 10/15 k classic Men’s report Racing at home in Finland, Krista Pärmäkoski picked a good time to collect the second World Cup victory of her career, and again in a 10 k classic. Pärmäkoski’s first win came in the 10 k classic in Planica, Slovenia, earlier this season. In second was Russia’s Natalia Nepryaeva, who picked up her first World Cup podium. The current U23 standings leader, Nepryaeva’s time was 20.9...
Eight points. That’s the number that separated Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla and Sweden’s Stina Nilsson in the Sprint World Cup standings before Saturday’s freestyle sprint in Lahti, Finland. Three sprints. That’s the number of World Cup sprint races that remained in the 2017/2018 calendar, one of which took place on Saturday. With one down and a classic sprint and skate sprint to go, Falla’s lead has grown to 28 points. It’s not much, with 150...
FIS Cross Country World Cup (Lahti, Finland): Men’s & women’s freestyle sprints Men’s report The defending world championships from the 2017 freestyle sprint prevailed again in Lahti on Saturday, with Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla winning the women’s 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint final and Italy’s Federico Pellegrino coming out on top in the men’s 1.6 k final at last year’s World Championships venue. Falla’s rise to the final started with her qualifying in 12th, 7.96 seconds off the...