U.S. Ski & Snowboard recently announced its U.S. Ski Team nominations for the 2022-23 season. Of the 22 athletes named to the team this season, six were not on the previous year’s roster, either newly named or renamed: Michael Earnhart, Walker Hall, Zak Ketterson, Will Koch, Finn O’Connell, and Sammy Smith. To help fans get to know these new(er) faces, FasterSkier is doing a series of interviews, providing insights into the factors that have contributed to development,...
U.S. Ski & Snowboard recently announced its U.S. Ski Team nominations for the 2022-23 season. Of the 22 athletes named to the team this season, six were not on the previous year’s roster, either newly named or renamed: Michael Earnhart, Walker Hall, Zak Ketterson, Will Koch, Finn O’Connell, and Sammy Smith. To help fans get to know these new(er) faces, FasterSkier is doing a series of interviews, providing insights into the factors that have contributed...
Believe it or not, it is mid-May. For those following a traditional cross-country calendar, this means the start of a new training year, building toward the 2022/2023 competition season. And, for many of the top American athletes, this means it’s time to make an annual pilgrimage to Bend, Oregon for the on-snow camp of the season at the Mt. Bachelor Nordic Center. The weather gods were kind to the camp attendees, with nearly a foot...
By Tom Horrocks May, 10 2022 U.S. Ski & Snowboard has announced the 22 athletes nominated to the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team for the 2022-23 season. Nominations include those active athletes who qualified based on the published selection criteria in the prior season. In addition to established veterans, including three-time Olympic medalist Jessie Diggins and two-time Olympians Rosie Brennan and Scott Patterson, the 2022-23 Team includes five new members. Moving up to the A Team and joining...
Anyone who has had the pleasure of interacting with Katharine Ogden, also commonly known as KO, can tell you that she is humorous, kind, and thoughtful – both in regard to others as well as in her own self-introspection. She is also a wicked good skier, proving herself both nationally and internationally in competition. Ogden recently shared that she was stepping away from professional skiing, having already experienced a range of career ups and downs...
Click here to read an account of physical therapist Ned Dowling’s first stint overseas with the US Ski Team in March, 2020. Holmenkollen, Norway. March 8, 2020 – Men’s 50k Classic World Cup. 33 degrees and raining. The ski jump was engulfed in clouds. Spectators were forbidden from attending the Super Bowl of cross country skiing due to the impending COVID pandemic. My first stint as a physical therapist traveling with the US Ski Team...
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. There wasn’t much to be decided, only facts to reaffirmed. In the last individual race of the World Cup season on Saturday, a 10-kilometer individual start freestyle in...
Skiing-wise, Ian Torchia has nearly done it all. And now, in life, he’s ready to do some more. In an Instagram post following the American Birkiebeiner, Torchia announced that he is retiring from professional skiing with his trademark blend of gratitude and humor, saying, “In the end I won’t remember the races won (a few) or lost (many more) but the lifelong bonds of teammates, the support of friends and family, and how special the...
It doesn’t get much better than a weekend of full sun, epic skiing and meetings with the king of Norway. But that’s what we’ve got for you after another fun weekend of racing, at Oslo’s classic Holmenkollen venue. With help from Canadian retired Olympian Jess Cockney, we break down the 30 k and 50 k from Saturday and Sunday, touch on the COVID outbreak that’s hitting World Cup teams including the U.S. and take the...
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. In Oslo on Sunday, came another sign of the times. The Holmenkollen Ski Festival, the beating heart and center of the modern sport of skiing since Torjus Hemmestveit won...
There’s a war going on in Ukraine, and we touch on its impacts on the World Cup. But ski racing is also continuing, so we’re forging on, with respect for and acknowledgment of the tragedy that’s unfolding in Europe. For a few hours at least, on Thursday, the classic Drammen city sprint provided one heck of a distraction, and Devon and Nat are back to break down some performances for the ages by Norway’s Maiken...
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. Cross country skiing’s most ancient, classic, weekend of racing in Norway (the Holmenkollen ski festival) began with a sprint through the center of Drammen, about 45-kilometers (30 mi)...
ZHANGJIAKOU, CHINA — Just about everyone involved with the U.S. Ski Team has a story about physiotherapist Zuzana Rogers fixing some weird corner of their body. “I had a dislocated cuboid bone, and she diagnosed it over Skype and essentially talked me through repositioning it, and I was better,” said Holly Brooks, the retired Olympic cross-country skier from Alaska. “It was insane.” Eli Brown, one of the team’s ski technicians, thought he had an Achilles...
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 team sprint: it’s the youngest event on the Olympic program, having been contested only since the 2006 Torino Games. The event has since become a marquee event...
Diggins’ historic accomplishment was glanced over by the giants of American media, falling back into harmful tropes that are all-too-common regarding women athletes. Reflecting on it re-centered how meaningful her vulnerability in sharing her struggle to overcome an eating disorder was to the skiing community, and was a source of strength for me. The Olympic sprint race on Tuesday in Beijing was perhaps one of the most nuanced and complex races in Olympic history. We...
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. In the sport of cross country skiing, the Olympic 15-kilometer individual start classic might be considered the “granddaddy of them all.” The technique was classic, as was the...
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. During the American broadcast of the 30-kilometer Skiathlon on Sunday, NBC Analyst Chad Salmela made the comment that race represented the “old-school” of long-burn, grind-it-out ski racing. That...
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. By: Ben Theyerl For ski fans whose parents were smart enough to record the 1994 Winter Olympics on VHS tapes, Lillehammer will forever be a World Cup venue carrying...
FasterSkier often publishes long profiles of athletes. This is not that article. Instead, please enjoy precisely 22 words about each of the 21 athletes currently on the U.S. Ski Team in this extremely brief, but numerically pleasing, preview of the 2021/2022 season. Athletes are presented alphabetically within each team, with age as of this season’s first World Cup race. All photos are screenshots from the current USST roster site. Any evocation of a certain song by...
In this episode, we connect with US Ski Team Head Coach Matt Whitcomb following the US Ski Team and National Training Group camp in Park City. Whitcomb answers a variety of questions to provide insight into the upcoming season leading up to the 2022 Beijing Olympics. A couple of notes: Firstly, you’ll notice some crackling in the audio on our end. We’re working out the kinks. Thanks for your patience. Also, if your interest...