January 12, 2011 (Park City, UT) – World Championship silver medalist Kikkan Randall (Anchorage) will lead a strong 2011 U.S. Cross Country World Championship Team to compete at Holmenkollen in Oslo beginning Feb. 24. Randall is one of 14 athletes named Wednesday to compete in the biennial Championships. The International Ski Federation’s 2011 Nordic World Ski Championships are especially important this year, taking place in the heart of nordic skiing and in its most prestigious...
Interval start races don’t usually end with desperate lunges for the finish line. But that’s exactly how Thursday’s 30 k national championship concluded in Rumford—with CXC’s Tad Elliott sprawled on his back, the winner over APU’s Lars Flora. The scene may have looked ridiculous, but Elliott needed every inch. After an hour and ten minutes of racing, his winning margin over Flora was a mere tenth of a second. “I knew it was really tight,”...
With U.S. Nationals looming, there’s quite a collection of domestic skiers who think they could ski to a podium finish in the biggest races of the year. Besides the eternal glory of winning a national championship, there’s more on the line: for seniors, the races will be their best shot of earning low National Ranking List (NRL) points, which will qualify them for World Championships, and for younger skiers a strong result could mean a...
Bryan Fish’s jump to the U.S. Ski Team from his job running the Central Cross-Country (CXC) program was one of the most significant coaching changes of the spring. Fish, who over the last few years helped to build CXC’s elite team into one of the most powerful in the country, left some big shoes to fill. Enter Jason Cork, who was hired to replace Fish after two years as the assistant coach at Michigan Tech...
It took him four tries, but the U.S. Ski Team’s Kris Freeman can add a victory at the Whiteface Climb to the Castle to his list of accomplishments. “I finally won the Climb to the Castle!” Freeman said. Stymied in three previous attempts by inferior competition with superior rollerskis, Freeman left his teammate Noah Hoffman behind at halfway mark of this year’s edition of the five-mile race, skiing unchallenged to a 39-second victory. Ben Sim, the...
There are workouts where you finish battered and beaten, muscles packed with lactate. And then, there are days when you just go out and ride your bike. Tad Elliott does 70 percent of his training on two wheels, but there’s one workout that he especially relishes: a 68-mile loop near his home town of Durango, Colorado, that he rides with his friend Troy Wells. Unlike some of the more painful sessions one might do on...
Every region in the U.S. seems to have its own iconic dryland hill climb. In Alaska, there’s Mount Marathon. Out west, it’s Agony. In the Midwest—well, uh… forget about the Midwest. But in the northeast, there’s one of the most brutal: the Whiteface Climb to the Castle. Okay, okay, we know. Mount Marathon’s got more history. Agony’s steeper. This year’s Climb to the Castle is only the fourth-ever edition of the event. But there’s no...
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...
Big changes to the team roster and the coaching staff are this spring’s news for the Central Cross-Country Ski Association (CXC). 18 athletes and three coaches will comprise the 2011 team for one of North America’s largest and fastest-growing clubs. Vacating the post of head coach that he held since the formation of CXC in 2006, Bryan Fish has accepted a position with the US Ski Team (USST) as Continental Cup coach. Jason Cork will...
With just several days before the first-ever National Training Group camp in Park City, USSA has released a list of participants, including many of the top young skiers in the country. The group is led by Ida Sargent, currently attending Dartmouth College and a member of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project. With a strong season, Sargent established herself as arguably the second-best female sprinter in the US behind only Kikkan Randall. She placed an impressive...
With Thursday’s announcement of team nominations, seven skiers are in line for spots on the 2011 US Cross-Country Ski Team. This number is down from the 11 last year, and 18 in 2009. One rookie was nominated, and five athletes were not invited back, accounting for the decline. According to USSA Nordic Director John Farra, the decrease in team size was not due to budget cuts. While the there was belt-tightening across the board when...
“That was definitely a surprise.” Tadd Elliott, 2nd place 2010 American Birkebeiner 2010 Birkie Top Three This year’s 37th American Birkebeiner was won by Fabio Santus, of Milano Italy. Coming into the Birkie, Santus was ranked 2nd on the FIS Marathon Cup list after taking second at the Italian La Sgambeda and winning the Austrian Dolomitenlauf earlier this season. Santus won the Birkie with a time of 1:56:58.6. Tad Elliott finished second, in 1:57:06.7, and...