Sports fans talk a lot about home field advantage. Which team will play at home at Game 7 of the World Series? Or in the playoffs before the Stanley Cup? Home turf and the swells of a crowd whose numbers are skewed toward the home team has an undeniable effect. Yes, the Norwegian team of Tiril Udnes Weng, Ingvild Flugstad Østberg, Therese Johaug, and Heidi Weng won yet another 4×5-kilometer relay with a time of...
2019 U23 World Ski Championships in Lahti, Finland 15 k/30 k Classic Mass Start Link to Doug Stephen’s images from Lahti. Of the four Russian athletes starting the 15-kilometer classic mass start in Lahti, Finland three placed in the top four. Anna Zherebyateva won in 40:31.4 minutes as she was able to stretch her nine-second gap at 10 k to 23.5 seconds by the finish. Also from Russia, Lidia Durkina placed second (+23.5), Germany’s...
(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Americans Lauren Jortberg and Ian Torchia.) U23 World Championships (Goms, Switzerland): 15/30 k skiathlons On the final day of U23 World Championships racing in Goms, Russia stole the show in the women’s and men’s skiathlons. Anastasia Sedova led them in the first race of the day on Friday, the women’s 15-kilometer skiathlon, which she won in 44:03.6 minutes. Russia swept the podium and had four...
(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Americans Lydia Blanchet and Ian Torchia.) U23 World Championships (Goms, Switzerland): 10/15 k classic Russia put two in the top three in both the women’s and men’s races on Wednesday at U23 World Championships in Goms, and for the second-straight race, Canada’s Monday’s skate sprint), finishing third, 29.6 seconds behind Kirpichenko. In Monday’s sprint, Kirpichenko qualified fourth and ended up fifth in the final. She is...
FIS Nordic Combined Junior World Championships (Park City and Midway, Utah): Normal hill/5 k [UPDATED] In the individual normal hill/5-kilometer Gundersen on Saturday, the last nordic-combined competition of 2017 Nordic Junior World Championships, American Ben Loomis captured his first top 10 in his third Junior Worlds in ninth place. Eighteen-year-old Loomis jumped to 10th then picked off one place in the 5 k to finish ninth, 1:22.3 minutes behind the winner, Germany’s Vinzenz Geiger. Geiger...
A year ago, Canada’s breakthrough at the Ski Tour Canada classic sprint in Canmore, Alberta. Beatty lives and trains in Canmore as a member of both the Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA) and Canadian National U25 Team. She led the NorAm (Continental Cup) standings at the end of last season, reiterating her position as freestyle sprint prologue at U.S. nationals at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. Then on Tuesday, on the same 1.3-kilometer sprint course...