Flashback to 1964. That’s six years after the mega-fad of hula hooping, and five years before the psychedelic haze of Woodstock. A time when the country teetered towards war protest and Tricky Dick … (as in, “I am not a crook.” — Richard Nixon). What could possibly supplant hula hoops and pending cultural disruption? You guessed it, cross-country skiing. In 1964, John Caldwell wrote the first edition, of eight editions in total, what’s now...
When it comes to U.S. Regional Elite Group (REG) training camps, there are a few running themes that remain consistent across the country and from year to year. In the West and
(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Canadian coach Ivan Babikov on his team’s recent camp in Park City, Utah.) Two days after Andy Newell and Erika Flowers tied the knot in Bozeman, Mont., seven members of the men’s U.S. Ski Team and eight U.S. women’s team members jumped into an intensity training block at their respective dryland camps in Park City, Utah, and the Methow Valley in northern Washington. The 10-day camps...
Earlier this month, a group of leaders from World Taekwondo stood smiling before flashing cameras and their newly unveiled organization logo. Since 1973, the sport’s governing body was known as the World Taekwondo Federation, using the acronym WTF to represent its globally recognized organization and mission. But recent mas organizational mark (the master mark accompanied by the words “Ski & Snowboard”), and the launched on June 18. (Article continues below) The idea to change the logo emerged during...
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....
Note: This is part of a series on the 2018 Winter Olympic selection criteria for the U.S. cross-country ski team. Read this cross-country athletes will be selected for the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, it’s useful to know some context about how selections are made in other sports. As described in a on the NBC Olympic site. That means that cross-country skiing was the very last set of 2018 U.S. Winter Olympic team criteria to...
originally posted his audio interview: “Few athletes remain at the top end of endurance for five years, let alone a single decade. New Hampshire native Kris Freeman, at 36, has been chasing fast times and fast skiers around cross-country ski loops for 16 years as a professional. For much of that time, Freeman was a staple on the men’s US Ski Team (USST). He posted the best results for a US skier in over two...
Just over 24 hours before race day, Caitlin Patterson’s mind was made. The pre-registration deadline for the 2017 USA Track & Field (USATF) Mountain Running Championships in North Conway, N.H., was up and she was going to spontaneously do it. Written down in her summer plan was to enter few footraces, and this one promised both a challenging field and relatively short, two-hour drive from her training base in Craftsbury, Vt. The competition also offered an opportunity to...
Back in December of 2010, 15-year-old Patrick “Paddy” Caldwell was racing amongst grown men. He finished 17th in an International Ski Federation (FIS) classic sprint held in Craftsbury, Vt. Today, at 23, Caldwell skis for the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team and is a newly minted U.S. Ski Team (USST) B-team member. To put things in perspective, during that 2010 Craftsbury sprint, Patrick O’Brien, Caldwell’s current primary coach and head of the SMS Elite Team, was nearly 23...
(The following op-ed is an opinion piece submitted by an author unassociated with FasterSkier. Viewpoints do not necessarily reflect that of FasterSkier’s staff or sponsors. We fully support open dialogue and encourage the use of the comments section at the bottom of this page to express varying views. To submit an op-ed, email in its 2018 national team selection criteria. pneumonia. The World Cup start rights that were given to Patterson baffled the rest of...
You should be in Bend. Bend, Oregon. Right now. For all of my “shallow readers” in the audience, those unable to focus on any piece of written work longer than 140 characters (you know who you are), you can stop here. You’ve both learned everything you need to know and also everything your SnapChat-addled brain can handle, so you’re done. For those of you with attention spans longer than those of fruit flies, dig in,...
Monday afternoon, Noah Hoffman big-volume 2016/2017 training load and subsequent lackluster results, as well as his near off-the-grid month adventuring in Utah’s desert country. As of late Monday night, the 2017/2018 U.S. Ski Team (USST) nominations had not been released publicly. USST Head Coach Chris Grover declined to comment on the team’s newest iteration or Hoffman not being renamed to the team until a formal announcement is made through the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association (USSA). Team...
Happy May! With the start of a new training year, FasterSkier scanned social media for a sense of how nordic skiers kicked off Day 1 (and the days before) of the 2017/2018 season. Kikkan Randall of the U.S. Ski Team (USST) and Alaska Pacific University (APU) “sneaking in some secret Mom training” while pushing her son Breck on April 30: View this post on Instagram Excited to kick off a new training season tomorrow! (Sneaking in some secret Mom training...
With spring in full swing and many skiers returning to training, this week’s Wednesday Workout is presented by University of Utah Ski Team member, Kevin Bolger. While most of his athletic accomplishments from this past season are nordic-based — he’s a NCAA All-American, the 2017 Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association (RMISA) U.S. nationals classic sprint champion — most of Bolger’s spring workouts mean giving skiing a spring ‘break.’ *** It’s no secret that natives of Sweden, Norway and other overseas nations often...
FIS Medical Guide (To subscribe to the Nordic Nation podcast channel, download the iTunes app. If you have iTunes, subscribe to Nordic Nation here.) Have a podcast idea? Please email
Spring Series opened earlier this week in Fairbanks, Alaska, with skiathlon races on Monday and freestyle sprints on Wednesday to wrap up the 2017 SuperTour season. Here is a photo gallery from
Canada’s Alex Harvey has had one heck of a season. In January, he reached the top of a World Cup podium for the first time in three years. The following weekend, he helped Canada to its first-ever relay podium and two weeks before that, won the men’s team sprint in Toblach, Italy, with his teammate Len Valjas. A little more than a month later, he earned his first individual World Championships gold. The 28-year-old Harvey kept the ball rolling...
IBU Biathlon World Cup (Kontiolahti, Finland): Single Mixed Relay In the last single mixed relay of the season, Susan Dunklee held the lead after two loops of skiing. She was looking for a top tag-off to American Lowell Bailey, but she crashed on a downhill. Nevertheless, she was able to focus on the shooting range and climb back into podium position. The leaders were gone, however: Simon Eder and Lisa Therese Hauser of Austria ran away with the...
LAHTI, Finland — Here’s the basics: fast and firm tracks, cloudless skies, and once again a stacked field for the final event of the 2017 Nordic World Championships: the men’s 50-kilometer freestyle mass start. Over the course of the 50 k, Canada’s Harvey had to think about one thing: be up front near the top three in order to shadow Norway’s Martin Johnsrud Sundby’s inevitable gut punch in the last kilometer. What he didn’t have...