On an unsettled night for weather where it snowed off and on during the freestyle sprint heats in Lahti, two things were settled: The U.S. Ski Team hauled in two pieces of hardware, Jessie Diggins scored silver, Kikkan Randall took bronze.
FIS Cross-Country World Cup (Falun, Sweden): 15 / 30 k classic mass start Men’s report In the women’s 15-kilometer classic mass start on Sunday, Norway swept the podium with Marit Bjørgen taking the win in a time of 41:28.8 in Falun, Sweden. Crossing just half a second behind her was her teammate, Ingvild Flugstad Østberg in second place. Rounding out the podium was Heidi Weng in third (+8.1). American Jessie Diggins was the first to cross the line...
U.S. Cross Country Championships (Soldier Hollow): Classic sprints Jennie Bender of Bridger Ski Foundation and Kevin Bolger of the University of Utah won national titles in the classic sprints at 2017 U.S. Cross Country Championships at Soldier Hollow earlier Sunday afternoon. They each took narrow – but, for sprinting, relatively uncontested – victories, as each was in the lead coming into the stadium and led through the final 180-degree turn into the finishing straight. In the women’s race, Bender took the...
Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Noah Hoffman. There were moments in Sunday’s 9-kilometer freestyle climb up Alpe Cermis, the seventh and final stage of the 2017 Tour de Ski, that Norway’s Martin Johnsrud Sundby appeared to be putting some serious time into Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov up front. In the first two kilometers, Sundby as the runner-up entering the day had gained three seconds on Ustiugov, who had won all but...
Sweden’s Stina Nilsson didn’t fancy herself a favorite for this year’s Tour de Ski title, despite having won four stages and wearing the leader’s bib to start out today’s final race. And after about six kilometers of the 9-kilometer climb up the Alpe Cermis, everyone knew why. Heidi Weng, a Norwegian who had started 19.2 seconds behind Nilsson, had slowly gained ground on the Swede in the flat sections leading up to the climb itself....
Six laps. Three climbs per lap. Fifteen-kilometer classic mass start. If you’re in it to win it, where do you make your move? That was the kind of calculating Norway’s Martin Johnsrud Sundby was doing throughout Saturday’s Stage 6 mass start, the second-to-last stage of the 2017 Tour de Ski, in Val di Fiemme, Italy. Every time he rounded the 2.5 k loop, the man he needed to beat — Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov — was...
As the Tour de Ski drags on, the World Cup field is tiring. Nobody – atrial fibrillation in the Ruka, Finland, 10 k. “It is great to be on the podium again, especially after I crashed today,” she told FIS. “I had to fight my way back in the race but in the end I felt very strong.” While Kylloenen had praised her skis, one team wasn’t doing so. The Norwegians failed to reach the...
U.S. Cross Country Championships (Soldier Hollow): 10 k skate [UPDATED] Don’t bet against Caitlin Gregg (Team Gregg) in a distance skate event. The 36-year-old took another national title in the 10-kilometer freestyle individual start at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, earlier today in the first event of the 2017 U.S. Cross Country Championships. Gregg’s winning time was 27:00.6 on a cold, slow-snow morning at SoHo. Chelsea Holmes (Alaska Pacific University) was second, 2.2 seconds back,...
With the opening stages of the Tour de Ski in Val Müstair, Switzerland, behind us, we wanted to share some athlete and coach comments that didn’t make it into the race reports: *** On training over the holidays leading up to the Tour: “We were in three different main locations over Christmas: France, Austria, and Switzerland, depending on which athlete you were. You kind of come back and see where everybody is. I think we all know each...
It’s time for the International Ski Federation’s (FIS) 11th Tour de Ski. The 2017 edition takes place in three countries and four different venues. Racers will compete in seven stages over the course of nine days. The grueling Alpe Cermis — a 9-kilometer freestyle hill climb in Val di Fiemme, Italy — will be featured again as the final race to determine the overall Tour de Ski (TdS) results. Directly leading up to the multi-stage event, currently out...
FasterSkier contributor JoJo Baldus takes us through his whirlwind of Wordloppet experiences this past winter, sharing insider details only someone who actually raced each marathon event could understand.
For the fourth year in a row, Germany's Eric Frenzel was crowned the Nordic Combined World Cup overall champion after three days of competitions in Val di Fiemme, Italy. The long weekend started off with Americans Bryan and Taylor Fletcher racing to sixth in the team sprint for the best U.S. result in the event since 2013.
An APU skier and University of Alaska-Anchorage professor shares the story of his experience at last month's Marcialonga. "The Italians are famous for their snowmaking, but it's still impressive to see a 70 k long white stripe of manmade snow that runs along an otherwise brown valley," the author recalls.
The women’s overall podium at the 2016 Tour de Ski on Sunday was all red. Norway swept the top three, with Therese Johaug taking the overall title from Ingvild Flustad Østberg on the final climb, and Heidi Weng retained third. For the U.S., Jessie Diggins locked up 10th, Sadie Bjornsen was 14th and Liz Stephen posted the third-fastest time of day.
Your guide to the 2016 Tour de Ski, which kicks off Friday with skate sprinting in Lenzerheide, Switzerland, and spans three nations with eight races (World Cup stages) in 10 days.
Canadian star Alex Harvey had been pondering an unorthodox plan to classic ski up the Tour de Ski's final climb, but he pulled out after a lackluster result Saturday.
Liz Stephen found herself in fifth place in Saturday's 10 k classic mass start at the Tour de Ski, and she thought, why not? Why don't I belong here? She hung on to record her best-ever finish in the classic technique, and hopes to move from sixth up to fourth in the Tour's final stage on Sunday.
In the tightest race of the 2015 Tour de Ski, German Tim Tscharnke outsprinted four other non-Norwegian skiers to claim his best World Cup result of the season. The current Tour standings now leave the potential for a dramatic final Tour stage on Sunday.
Therese Johaug surprised nobody as much as herself when she passed Marit Bjørgen in the final meters of Saturday's 10 k classic mass start. Norway swept the podium again, but Aino Kaisa Saarinen of Finland turned in her best performance all season in fourth place, and American Liz Stephen finished an assertive fifth.
None of the venues slated to host stages of the Tour de Ski seem ready, given the warm temperatures and lack of snow in central Europe. FIS is reportedly in emergency meetings today to develop a backup plan for the event.