Thursday, August 4th 1:00 to 3:00 PM White Clouds Golf Course. Sun Valley, ID White Clouds is just off Sun Valley (Trail Creek) Road across the street from Sun Valley Golf Clubhouse/Nordic Center, Sun Valley, ID The L100 Coaches Certification clinic is free to all USSA licensed coach. The clinics include dryland technique drills as well as drill progressions on classic and skate rollerskis. All ages and levels of coaches are welcome. The...
Kris Freeman (USST) had one last chance to nail it. A type 1 diabetic, Freeman had had two straight races in Sun Valley in which his efforts had been stymied by the disease. Saturday’s freestyle hill climb up Dollar Mountain, the final race in the four-stage SuperTour Finals, was his last shot to get it right. He did, which allowed him to leave behind three other athletes on the toughest section of the four-kilometer course,...
If there was anyone who deserved a beer after Saturday’s hill climb in Sun Valley, it was Kikkan Randall. After winning four straight races here—and the first three in the four-stage SuperTour Finals—Randall (APU/USST) had a whopping 1:23 head start over her nearest challenger in the four-kilometer hill climb up Dollar Mountain, which was handicapped based on results from earlier this week. Randall could have taken it easy. But that’s not the approach that gave...
Four down, one to go. The best season of Kikkan Randall’s career is almost over, and she’s going out in style, having won four straight races at the SuperTour Finals and U.S. 30 k Championships in Sun Valley. The latest was Friday’s classic sprint, in which she skied into the finish with a clear, two-and-a-half second lead over her roommate, Canadian Chandra Crawford, with Utah’s Maria Graefnings in third. Under a hot sun, the finals...
After the quarters and semifinals of Friday’s classic sprint in Sun Valley, it looked like there would be two separate races in the men’s final. The first would be for Andy Newell (USST/SMS), who had dominated his first two heats and looked to be in a class by himself. The second would be between Lars Flora (APU) and Mike Sinnott (SVSEF), who were locked in a battle for first place in the overall SuperTour sprint...
At the top of the results sheet for Friday’s classic sprint qualifier in Sun Valley, there weren’t any surprises: Kikkan Randall, Ida Sargent, and Chandra Crawford were the top three women, and Andy Newell, Simi Hamilton, and Skyler Davis were the top three men. But scanning down and looking through the rest of the top 30, one name was conspicuously absent: that of Kris Freeman, who was the overall leader of the SuperTour Finals mini-tour...
Kikkan Randall isn’t particularly professorial, what with her pink hair and her affable demeanor. But since arriving back in the U.S. last week, fresh off the World Cup circuit in Europe, Randall (APU/USST) has been teaching lessons, all right, with the trails of Sun Valley as her classroom, and the North American women’s field as her pupils. After Sunday’s unit on distance classic skiing, Tuesday’s session was on how to ski a skate prologue. In...
In Tuesday’s 3.3 k prologue in Sun Valley, the top-seeded men started last. So it wasn’t that much of a surprise when Simi Hamilton finished his race with a big lead—there were 42 of the continent’s strongest skiers still to come. The surprising thing was what happened next. One by one, each of those 42 men came to the finish line and failed to touch Hamilton’s time. Andy Newell: 18 seconds down. Leif Zimmermann and...
The cross-country ski season’s last stand begins on Tuesday, when the final domestic races of the year kick off in Sun Valley, ID. The mini-tour known as the SuperTour Finals will start with a 3.3/2.8 k freestyle prologue on a stout course, followed by three more races in four more days. The winner of both the men’s and women’s overall will be the first competitor to arrive atop a ridge on Dollar Mountain, a local...
Most 19-year-old women racing in their first-ever 30 k would be satisfied just to finish. But on Sunday in Sun Valley, Jessie Diggins (CXC) did much more: she came away with a podium at the U.S. National Championships. After 91 minutes of classic skiing—three-quarters of it with the leaders—Diggins ended up in third place, with just enough gas left in her tank to hold off Morgan Arritola (USST) on her last trip up the course’s...
In the U.S. National Championship in the 30 k last year, Kikkan Randall (USST) somehow pulled off a win in northern Maine just 72 hours removed from racing in Europe. This year, with a full week to recover from World Cup Finals, at least Randall’s biological clock was set to the right time. But Sunday’s classic race presented its own challenges: the Alaskan had to overcome a brutal course, the strength-sapping effects of altitude, and,...
No, he probably didn’t have what it takes to beat Petter Northug—nor even Marcus Hellner, for that matter. But on Saturday in Sun Valley, Kris Freeman (USST) wasn’t racing those guys. Instead, he was pitted against the North American domestic field in the U.S. National Championship in the 50 k, with a race plan that could perhaps be best described as “don’t mess it up.” He didn’t, despite tricky waxing conditions, and one gambit that...
Kris Freeman (USST) will be the odds-on favorite to win Saturday’s U.S. national championship in the 50 k classic. But the way his last two seasons wrapped up, just making it to the start line in Sun Valley, ID, is a victory in and of itself. In late March, 2009, Freeman was recuperating from surgery on his legs to relieve the debilitating symptoms of exertional compartment syndrome; he had been forced to end his season...
The Second Annual Sun Valley Nordic Festival will take place January 29-February 6, 2011. The festival features 9 days of activities, races, clinics and fun events along with a discounted, 9-day valley-wide Nordic trail pass, $13,000 prize money, discounts on demos/rentals, lodging and dining which showcase and celebrate Sun Valley’s well-deserved reputation as “Nordic Town USA”. Highlights of the festival include: Ski the Rails & Hailey Music Celebration– a family-friendly “ski at your own pace”...
SUN VALLEY, ID (Sept. 14) – World Championship medalistAndy Newell (Shaftsbury, VT) and top distance athlete Liz Stephen (E. Montpelier, VT) and Noah Hoffman (Aspen, CO) and 2010 Olympian Morgan Arritola, Fairfield, ID (Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation; Fischer, Salomon, Kris Freeman, Andover, NH (Andover Outing Club; Fischer, Alpina, Alpina, Swix ) 10/14/1980* Kikkan Randall, Anchorage (Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center; Fischer, Salomon, Salomon, Swix) 12/31/1982* Noah Hoffman, Aspen, CO (Aspen Valley Ski Club;...
Evidence of autumn abounds at the U.S. Ski Team’s camp in Sun Valley. Temperatures on Thursday struggled to break 50 degrees, there’s snow in the mountains outside town, and with three time trials over the next week and a half, the team’s training focus has shifted from volume to intensity. But despite the signs of the inexorable creep towards winter, nobody’s getting ahead of themselves. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, still,” said...
The Boulder Mountain Tour (BMT), along with the Sun Valley Nordic Festival has secured a substantial prize money package. With the help of the city of Sun Valley, nearly $13,000 in prize money will be paid to the top ten finishers in the men’s and women’s races for the 2011 BMT–as well as the second annual Thursday night co-ed sprint relays in downtown Ketchum, ID. The BMT is the centerpiece of the nine-day Sun Valley...
Hailey, ID - Girls on the run had their final 5k race today. They endured the wind and the cold with sporadic precipitation that ranged from sleet and snow to rain, interspersed with blasts of sun! Great job to all who participated - way to complete ...
Hailey, ID - Girls on the run had their final 5k race today. They endured the wind and the cold with sporadic precipitation that ranged from sleet and snow to rain, interspersed with blasts of sun! Great job to all who participated - way to complete ...
Hailey, ID - Girls on the run had their final 5k race today. They endured the wind and the cold with sporadic precipitation that ranged from sleet and snow to rain, interspersed with blasts of sun! Great job to all who participated - way to complete ...