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Team Sprint

Unlucky American Men Finish 14th in Team Sprint

A few hours before their teammates made history in the women’s race, Americans Andy Newell and Erik Bjornsen got unlucky in the team sprint semifinals at World Championships. Bjornsen fell in a tangle with France and Finland on his third leg the U.S. lost contact with the leaders as they began to take off at the front. They wound up finishing seventh overall in the heat, 26.97 seconds behind the leaders, and failed to advance to the final.

Cockney, McMurtry Join Forces to Win Canadian Nationals Team Sprint

QUEBEC CITY – Two tiny specks charging toward the finish, Graham Nishikawa and Jesse Cockney appeared to merge into a single lane, and then suddenly jolted in opposite directions. Whatever made them move must have been significant, and it could have explained why Nishikawa lost his lead and ultimately the classic team sprint at the Canadian Ski National Championships on Saturday. Turns out it was just water in the tracks on a balmy afternoon at...

Jones, Thomas Run Away with Team Sprint at Canadian Nationals

QUEBEC CITY – As Alana Thomas stood in the finish pen on the Plains of Abraham and looked back beyond the line, she smiled as Perianne Jones cruised down the final stretch. The Canadian National Team member was going to win by a mile – or maybe a kilometer, figuratively speaking in Canadian terms. While Jones didn’t quite have a full lap on the 11 other teams in the open classic relay at the Canadian...

This weekend’s World Cup Nordic Combined competition featured three days of racing in Seefeld, Austria—the resurrection of the Team Sprint event on Friday, and a HS 109/Gundersen 10 k each on Saturday and Sunday. France came away with the most dominant overall performance of the weekend—or rather, Jason Lamy Chappuis did. He teamed up with Sebatien Lacroix to win the team sprint, and then nabbed the top result in both individual competitions. The U.S. put...

Swedes Sensational in Team Sprint Win in Oslo

Norwegians Petter Northug and Marit Bjoergen have now both sat out a race at World Championships – not Charlotte Kalla though, and the Swedish star has no plans to take a day off. In another day at the office, Kalla teamed with Ida Ingemarsdotter to win the women’s World Championship classic team sprint in Oslo, Norway, skiing away from Finland and Norway in the last lap. The team sprint features pairs of athletes, alternating laps,...

If you took a hard look at the start list for Tuesday’s 15 k classic at the 2011 World Championships, you might have noticed a few names conspicuously absent from the start list. Foremost among them was Norway’s Petter Northug—the winner of Sunday’s 30 k pursuit in Oslo, and silver medalist in last week’s individual sprint. Norway’s coaches sat Northug to keep him fresh for Wednesday’s classic team sprint, in which he and Ola Vigen...

The third place by Canadians Chandra Crawford and Dasha Gaiazova in Sunday’s team sprint in Dusseldorf was a breakthrough for both women. For Crawford, it was her first World Cup podium finish in three seasons, and her first-ever in the team sprint, while for Gaiazova, it was her first-ever World Cup podium, period. FasterSkier was able to catch up with Crawford after the race to hear about the hectic racing in Dusseldorf, how she and...

The days of the world championships of interval training may be numbered. That’s the moniker that some Europeans use for the team sprint, which appears on the schedule for every Olympics and World Championships—but rarely on the World Cup. According to U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) Nordic Director John Farra, the International Ski Federation (FIS) has convened a working group that will investigate the potential for doing away with the team sprint and replacing...

Norwegian Men Finally Golden as Northug Closes

Whistler, British Columbia – He had to wait, but Petter Northug finally got to show off his dominating sprint finish against his perennial whipping boy Axel Teichmann.  Northug and teammate Oystein Pettersen won the first gold by the Norwegian men’s cross-country ski team since 2002 in the team sprint competition at Whistler Olympic Park. The high-pressure system that has brought unusually sunny weather to Whistler held out for one more day.  Firm tracks in the...