This summer, the U.S. Ski Team announced that it had hired Greta Anderson as the new Development Team Coach. FasterSkier caught up with Anderson on the afternoon of the official announcement to delve deeper into her coaching philosophy, precise job description, and only sort of tongue-in-cheek plans for world domination. Anderson’s hire was widely praised by both current and former athletes. Here’s Luke Jager, who’s known Anderson for nearly a decade starting in Alaska junior...
Press Release The Davis U.S. Cross Country Team welcomes two new staff members, including Greta Anderson as Development Team Coach, and Bjørn Heimdal a member of the World Cup Service staff, for the 2021-22 season. Heimdal joins the World Cup Service staff, replacing fellow Norweigen Per-Erik Bjørnstad. He has been running ski/wax service for Norweigan regional Team Elon Nord-Norge since 2017, and has experience as both a coach and competitor. “He came highly recommended...
I have been racing against David Norris for the past 10 years. We have battled head to head trying to crush each other. The end game was to earn valuable points on the domestic SuperTour circuit to qualify for World Cups. There have been many times we have swapped podium places at U.S. National Championships and U.S. SuperTours. As a one-time peer of David’s, I understand the need for funding and support to compete...
Last fall, one thing was certain — the pandemic would worsen. And it did. Rosie Brennan, summed up her feelings about traveling to Finland for the first round of World Cups by jumping in head first, masked, of course. “I don’t believe anyone knows the answer [to if we should or should not have a World Cup] as we are all experiencing this pandemic for the first time and still don’t have a full grasp...
According to the FIS database, sprints on the cross-country World Cup began during the 1996-1997 season. That year, American Simi Hamilton was nine years old. And if you listen to any of the Hamilton-lore floating around adventure circles, the Aspen, Colorado native was already eyeing deep-country adventure. We’ll touch upon this often here, but Hamilton moves in the mountains as few can. He’s capable of pushing at near race pace in technical terrain with a...
By the time you read this story, Vermont’s Sophie Caldwell Hamilton will have turned a fresh thirty-one. Her birthday is today, Monday, March 22. Although Caldwell Hamilton began representing the U.S. Ski Team on the World Cup in Québec City in 2012, she is profoundly Green Mountain State. Raised in Peru, Vermont near where she later attended the Stratton Mountain School, we’re pretty certain that, in a metaphorical sense, she bleeds maple syrup. As much...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and their A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage please contact info@fasterskier.com. This is a story that might make Jessie Diggins cringe. We’re here to render her efforts to the singularity of cross-country ski results. (A quick nod – her default is...
Perhaps, by the time you read this, Sophie Caldwell will have already sped her way around the sprint circuit in Ruka, Finland. The World Cup begins on Friday. At once Caldwell possesses a down-to-earth humility and a killer’s instinct to find the gaps and repeatedly progress through World Cup sprint heats. Off the course, she’s more likely to ask about your day than she is to dwell on a World Cup podium. We caught up...
A brave new world awaits World Cup skiers for Period I on the cross-country World Cup. The scheduling is the easy part, three race weekends reduced from four for Period I. The racing in Lillehammer, Norway, has been postponed due to Covid-19 precautions. In an email to FasterSkier, Cross-Country Program Director Chris Grover wrote the following when asked about the team’s protocols if an athlete tests positive for Covid-19. If someone in our group tests...
The cyclic nature of the U.S. Ski Team can be described as a slow churn. The team, most often, invests considerable time and resources on developing promising skiers. Roster turnover, from year to year, is rare. Among those rarefied athletes we take for granted as nearly always being part of the elite of elite is Sadie Bjornsen. Originally from the Methow Valley and now a resident of Anchorage, Alaska where she trains with APU, the...
The razor-thin margin for national team selection in the U.S. played out again this season with David Norris (29) not discretioned onto the U.S. team – the sporting actuaries stated he lacked future medal potential. On both sides of the aisle, making the team or not, the platitudes didn’t cushion the blow for a skier who has doggedly pursued endurance speed for over a decade. Norris earned his first national championship podium with a third...
This series comes to FasterSkier from the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Club A Day in the Life: APUNSC is checking in with Elite Team members of the course of the next few months to get a glimpse into what life looks like for elite athletes as training starts up again during a global pandemic. APUNSC is also running a fundraiser in which the Elite Team is working towards skiing 1,000 kilometers as a team...
This series comes to FasterSkier from the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Club. A Day in the Life: APUNSC is checking in with Elite Team members of the course of the next few months to get a glimpse into what life looks like for elite athletes as training starts up again during a global pandemic. Today we check in with Hunter Wonders (21), a member of the 2018 silver medal-winning 4 x 5 kilometer Junior...
A slight reshuffling of positions at U.S. Ski and Snowboard and longtime coach Matt Whitcomb has a new title: Head Coach. Whitcomb held the title of World Cup Coach last season. As the pandemic took hold in mid-March here in the U.S., Whitcomb holed up at his cabin in rural Vermont for a two-week solo quarantine. We caught up with Whitcomb via phone on April 23 from his cabin. This was a broad ranging interview....
Bright lights in PyeongChang. The men’s second semifinal of the Olympic freestyle team sprint was a career highlight moment for Erik Bjornsen. Fourteen teams would crowd the start lanes with Martin Johnsrud Sundby in bib 1. The Norwegian was paired with Johannes Høsflot Klæbo: The duo blessed with Sundby’s stamina and his younger counterpart’s break-from-the-pack speed. With Simi Hamilton racing the second, fourth, and sixth legs for the U.S., and Bjornsen leading off, the semi...
“Get whatever you want. I’m buying.” “It’s ok. I’ve got a card with me.” “No. You’re over here working for us. The least I could do is buy you a coffee and a bun.” Conversation over. Jessie Diggins bought my cinnamon bun and cappuccino. The same Jessie Diggins who won Gold at the last winter Olympics and is a regular on World Cup podiums just refused to let me buy my own snack at the...
In a typical season, you might expect late February in Lahti, Finland to look wintery. 61 degrees North latitude, ample snow on the ground and clinging to the trees, maybe even a reindeer? In fact, in a plug for the venue showed a woman skiing through a snow-laden town and arriving at the base of the towering ski jumps. But it was not so today. Women time-trialed through the woods for two laps on a...
The news came trickling out of Anchorage on November 2nd. U.S. Ski Team athlete Hannah Halvorsen was hit by a car while crossing a street in downtown Anchorage. “I was crossing a one way street, and a woman was turning into the lane, so she looked left where cars would be coming from and didn’t look right, where I was, and just turned right into the street and hit me at 25 miles an hour,”...
A national team uniform for cross-country skiing has to do a lot of things. At the most utilitarian level, it has to wick sweat and aid performance while an athlete pursues one of the world’s most demanding sports at temperatures between –4 F and 40, in steady snow or driving rain or anything in between. At the functional level, it has to let spectators and coaches identify where their athlete is out on the course,...
Call it what you want: national pride, national bias, flag-waving: the team relays elicit nationalistic tendencies. In Lillehammer, Norway, you might think and maybe expect it’s your birthright to see the hometeam crush. That’s been the recent norm almost without exception. Here’s the quick stats to either dispel or reinforce those tendencies: Norway has won nine of the last 11 relay races on the World Cup. Russia won the other two. In fact, Russia took...