Reporting by: Nat Herz and Stuart Harden This reporting costs money. Please support this coverage with a voluntary subscription (below) so FasterSkier can provide this level of access to the sport we all love year-round.
Last week, the Stifel U.S. Ski Team announced the 2024 recipients of the Stifel Awards, named after the team’s title sponsor for the 2023-2024 season. Awardees for the “Athlete of the Year” and “Best Comeback of the Year,” among other categories, were nominated and voted on by team members and staff; with Stifel’s backing, those categories were awarded with a monetary prize attached. The 2023-24 season is the first time each discipline represented within the...
Asked for a reflection on the 2023-24 World Cup season, US Ski Team Head Coach Matt Whitcomb pointed straight towards one place; Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a sunny February day, filled to the brim with 20,000 people cheering loud and clear. “We often talk about athletes peaking for big events,” he said. “But I’d never considered that our American ski culture could peak for an event.” The specific dynamics between performance and...
U.S. Ski & Snowboard is launching a new campaign called, “What Makes a Champion” which will highlight an athlete from each of our teams, and focus on what makes them a champion. Jessie Diggins kicks it off. What Makes a Champion: Jessie Diggins Leann Bentley—Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team Press Officer—informs FasterSkier that a new “What Makes a Champion” video will be introduced each month leading into the 2023-2024 World Cup season. We’re...
U.S. Ski and Snowboard has announced the members of the 2023-24 National team, now officially known as the Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team. With a few notable retirements this spring a couple of shakeups were going to occur. The team uses a selection criteria which it has developed to try and balance proven performers with budding talent. It is a somewhat complex set of guidelines. Women’s Squad The women’s A Team members come as...
PARK CITY, UT (March 27, 2023) – Hailey Swirbul of the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team is ready to say goodbye to World Cup ski racing. The 2022 Olympian has formally announced her retirement from the World Cup circuit hours after crossing the finish line at the 2022-23 World Cup Finals in Lahti, Finland. 24-year-old Swirbul, an El Jebel, Colorado native, has been on the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team for years, represented her country at two World...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and 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. PLANICA, SLOVENIA — What a difference a year makes. Last February, the world’s top cross-country skiers were in China, hermetically sealed inside the Olympic Covid bubble. When they emerged to race, they...
U.S. Ski & Snowboard announced the 18 athletes of the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team that will compete at the 2023 FIS Cross Country World Ski Championships in Planica, Slovenia, Feb. 22 – March 6, 2023. The 2023 World Championships will take place in the Julian Alps at the Planica Festival Arena, a venue that features both cross country and ski jumping venues. Throughout the 12 days of competition, more than 2,500 athletes and staff...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and 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. If there is a common theme to the cross country skiing World Cup, it is change. Tweaks, adjustments, selections, illness, and injury all factor into who even makes it to...
The high alpine valley containing Livigno, Italy is as beautiful and sublime as any place on Earth, seemingly heaven-sent to feature the high drama of the FIS Cross Country World Cup; for the first time, Livigno was hosting World Cup races this weekend. That idyllic scene made Sunday’s Team Sprint all the stranger, since so many of the usual players and storylines were absent from the World Cup. As FasterSkier reported on yesterday’s Sprint, many...
Following a record-setting number of athletes competing in the U.S. Nationals in Houghton last week— over 400 skiers from across the US made the trip to the Copper Country—US Ski and Snowboard has announced the selections for the US World Junior and U23 Championships, to be held in Whistler, British Columbia from January 28th-February 4th. Athlete selections have also been announced for the U18 Nordic Nation’s Cup Trip, to be held in Jyvaskyla, Finland February...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and 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. Ben Ogden was going to risk it . . . This season, the young American skier has made a rapid push in World Cup sprints, twice racing to the verge...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and 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. In the third week of World Cup racing, the defining question seemed to be not who would be first to the finish line, but who was missing from the starting...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and 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. Lillehammer, Norway—that most timeless of ski venues—provided viewers with a familiar scene on Saturday: Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo exiting the final turn in the lead, gliding away from the field en...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and 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 contactinfo@fasterskier.com. Today, the World Cup moved to one of the most picturesque locations in Nordic skiing—Lillehammer, Norway—where the women contested the 10-kilometer freestyle individual start event. The trees in the forests surrounding...
Dear US nordic skiing community, The National Nordic Foundation (NNF) would like to extend a sincere thank you for the astounding display of generosity and belief in supporting a world-class skiing development system during last week’s Drive for 25. We are humbled, and incredibly grateful, to be part of a grassroots movement propelling our sport forward in this country. This year’s Drive for 25 further demonstrated that our American ski community is a rare one...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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. The temperature was a balmy -11℃ (12℉). A glow hung in the sky and new snow decorated the trees; a welcoming winter scene in Ruka, Finland. With the FIS Cross-Country...
Chris Grover is the U.S. Cross-Country Program Director, a position he’s held for three years. He sat down with FasterSkier’s Ken Roth to discuss the upcoming World Cup season, and an overview of the U.S. program. What exactly is the job of Program Director? I oversee all aspects of the program for team development, coaches’ education, events, budgets, selection criteria, and all other staff. This includes technicians, volunteer physical therapist, volunteer doctors, sports psychologist, and...
The 2nd annual Schutzenski Festival is set to be held at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah from October 10th-16th. This year’s Schutzenski celebrates the culmination of a full offseason calendar for Soldier Hollow and beyond, offering a full weekend of cross-country and biathlon rollerski racing on the world-class Soldier Hollow course. Held amid the beautiful Heber Valley fall colors, and featuring US Ski Team and US Biathlon Team members competing on home soil one more...
Earlier this month, the National Nordic Foundation (NNF), in partnership with the Women Ski Coach’s Association (WSCA) and the Olympic Women’s Cross-Country Book Project, announced the Trail to Gold Fellowship. The Fellowship aims to correct for a historical gender imbalance in U.S. coaching at the club, collegiate, and international level by providing fellows with funding to complete a two-week internship with the U.S. Ski Team on the World Cup this winter. The Trail to Gold Fellowship...