By Rachel Bachman Perkins and Gavin Kentch After a successful opening weekend of SuperTour racing in Duluth, Minnesota, athletes, coaches, and techs made the short trek down to Birkieland for three days of racing out of the Birkie Trailhead in Cable, Wisconsin. APU skiers Rosie Frankowski and Tyler Kornfield came into Friday morning as the points leaders for the early-season SuperTour races. By Sunday afternoon, the leaders were, unofficially, Alayna Sonnesyn of SMS and Zak...
By Gavin Kentch and Rachel Bachman Perkins The SuperTour returned this weekend with races in Duluth, Minnesota, held on the new snowmaking courses at Grand Avenue Nordic Center. The weekend included all levels of racing, with green juniors lining up to race alongside the veterans racing on the SuperTour, and a strong sense of community and cross-country ski energy across the board. Skiers like to ski; athletes were glad to be back. Alaska Pacific University...
It’s been a while. This country’s last races on the SuperTour, the highest level of domestic competition, occurred in Cable, Wisconsin, in February 2020 in connection with that year’s American Birkebeiner. Classic sprints were held on the Wednesday before Birkie weekend. (SuperTour points were likely also awarded for the Birkie marathon races a few days later.) Gus Schumacher won the men’s final; Nichole Bathe and Kaitlynn Miller were on the podium for the women. Schumacher...
A clean slate cancelation of U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s cross-country national racing calendar. That’s a piece of the collateral damage in the niche world of domestic ski racing. The cancellation includes SuperTour, U.S. National Championships, SuperTour Finals, and the Junior National Championships. We’ll get to how these races may be replaced in a moment. First, U.S. Ski & Snowboard set forth a series of bullet points regarding the reasoning and considerations for the wholesale cancelation....
The US SuperTour kicked off the first races of the new year at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center with a classic sprint. The event, dubbed the 2020 Lost Nation Cup, brings together senior athletes, EISA carnival teams, developing NENSA skiers, and citizen racers for a weekend of racing in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. “Retired” Craftsbury native Ida Sargent won the women’s race in a time of 3:55.47, followed by fellow CGRP athlete Kaitlynn Miller (+0.21),...
Updated with more quotes. The first three race days of both the NorAm and SuperTour series are complete and the athletes and coaches are digesting the lessons. It was free sprints Friday, classic distance Saturday, and interval start free technique distance on Sunday. The men started the Sunday with a four lap 15km followed by the women doing a 3 lap 10km. CGRP’s Ben Lustgarten nailed the pacing to win Sunday’s race in 42:56.0, just...
The NorAm series fully lived up to the North American Cup label in Canmore Friday with 1.3km free technique sprints to kick off a combined NorAm, SuperTour, and Mexican National Championships weekend. Full results for the weekend are on zone4, including live results every day. Friday featured sprints for the older age groups only (282 racers): Saturday is interval start classic, and Sunday’s race an interval start free. Before the races, there was chatter about...
Over and out on the SuperTour. The season-long series of races running from December in West Yellowstone, Montana to SuperTour finals in Presque Isle, Maine have concluded . Eighteen competitions in total with points allocated for each race, athletes are ranked in three categories: Overall, sprint and distance. The overall winners on the SuperTour, male and female, are guaranteed Continental Cup winner starts for World Cup Period 1 beginning in Nov. 2019. Kyle Bratrud (SMS...
Since Dec. 1, twenty-one-year-old Julia Kern (SMS-T2) has barnstormed the elite level domestic racing calendar. She qualified first and won the SuperTour freestyle sprint in West Yellowstone. The following weekend in the NorAm/SuperTour skate sprint in Sovereign Lake it was another win-win in the qualifier and final. In the next day’s 10-kilometer classic, Kern was third overall and the second American. Last weekend back in Vermont at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, Kern swept the...
The questions started rolling in this spring. How’s training going? Are you going for 2019 World Championships? What’s the plan for next winter? When you’re Caitlin and Brian Gregg, Olympians and local superstars in the Midwest, it’s hard to keep your athletic profile on the DL. Since buying a house on Theodore Wirth Park seven years ago, the couple has immersed themselves in the greater Minneapolis community — both in and out of skiing. They’ve...
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 the U.S. Continental Cup Skiers of the Year. Previous categories: Collegiate Skiers of the Year | Para-Nordic Skiers...
U.S. SuperTour (Ishpeming, Michigan): Friday, Saturday and Sunday The SuperTour circuit ventured to the Al Quaal Recreation Area in Ishpeming, Michigan, this past Friday, Saturday and Sunday for three days of racing Feb. 16-19. Day 1 In Friday’s 1.6-kilometer freestyle sprints, Kevin Bolger of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) posted a 2.69-second victory in the men’s final over his teammate Jack Hegman in second and 3.02 seconds ahead of David Norris of Alaska...
Two and a half weeks after U.S. nationals in Anchorage, Alaska, the SuperTour picked back up again on the East Coast in Craftsbury, Vermont, with two race days over a three-day span. The Craftsbury SuperTour opened Friday, Jan. 26 with classic sprints, then took a break on Saturday for the Craftsbury Marathon. SuperTour racers were back on course at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center on Sunday, Jan. 28 for the 5- and 10-kilometer freestyle individual starts....
Earlier this season, Logan Hanneman talked with FasterSkier about his laser-like focus on the 2018 Winter Olympics, which start on Feb. 10 in PyeongChang, South Korea. The 24-year-old Fairbanks native, who now lives and trains 300 miles south in Anchorage with Alaska Pacific University (APU), was specifically eyeing the men’s individual classic sprint on Feb. 13. Although first he has to qualify to get there. Entering this season, Hanneman was fresh off a skate sprint in West...
Another SuperTour season opened in West Yellowstone, Montana, one weekend later than usual this year but with a lot of the old standbys, including a twisty, technical freestyle sprint course and puzzling conditions for the classic distance race. In a crash-marred women’s final on Saturday, Dec. 2, Anne Hart of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team avoided a tangle between Caitlin Gregg (Team Gregg) and Caitlin Patterson, of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP),...
US SuperTour (West Yellowstone, Montana): Freestyle sprints Anne Hart and Nick Michaud were the big winners on opening day of the US SuperTour season at the Rendezvous Ski Trails on Saturday, taking individual victories in the women’s and men’s freestyle sprint finals, respectively. Hart led into the finishing straight to take the win in 2:52.49 minutes, 0.88 seconds ahead of Erika Flowers, her teammate on the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team, who placed second, and...
Note: This is the first of a multiple-part series on the 2018 Winter Olympic selection criteria for the U.S. cross-country ski team. A selection criteria and procedures for nomination to the U.S. Olympic team. Briefly put, what does it take to get to PyeongChang? And what factors will U.S. Ski Team (USST) coaches and (Lahti in 2017. First comes objective qualification via performance on the World Cup. Second comes the potential use of discretionary picks....
Alaska Pacific University’s (APU) 25-year-old Scott Patterson isn’t easily distracted. His is a busy schedule with a repetitive cycle like something out of the movie “Groundhog Day”. In Patterson’s case, the routine goes something like this: wake, eat, train, eat, work, train, sleep … repeat. “My general plan is I try to put in about 25 hours a week,” Patterson said over the phone from his home base in Anchorage. Just so we’re clear, that’s...
With the 2016/2017 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 outstanding American skiers competing primarily, but not exclusively, at the Continental Cup level. Previous categories: Collegiate Skiers of the Year...
VERNON, B.C. –The combined Noram/SuperTour last weekend at Sovereign Lake, British Columbia, produced some exciting skiing and some challenging photography conditions with almost non-stop snowfall both days. Some of our best photos that didn’t make the