For those of us suffering from the post-ski-season let down—or for those who simply can’t get enough ski-related content—an effective way to help address these issues will be to take 46 minutes to view “Kikkan,” a nicely produced short documentary about the life of Kikkan Randall. Presented (sponsored) by L.L. Bean and Providence Health Alaska, the film includes details of Randall’s childhood, ski career, cancer struggle, and personal life. The movie is a candid chronological...
In a press conference on Wednesday, the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) announced that it will once again support a Division I ski team, starting this season. For the time being however, the program will only have alpine skiing. Both the president of the university and the university’s athletic director were present for the announcement, marking the moment. “It has been truly amazing to see how much the program’s return has energized our community,” said...
After technique work on snow comes race effort on rollerskis. Racing Thursday evening in Hitra, Norway, Ben Ogden led four American men when he placed 18th in a field of nearly 100 in the 54-kilometer classic mass start, the opening race of the Toppidrettsveka race series in the Trondheim region of western Norway. Ogden finished 50.2 seconds back of the winner, and 10.4 seconds off the podium. He was followed by fellow USST athletes Finn O’Connell...
If it’s August, it must be time to ski. Head Coach Matt Whitcomb and roughly half the men on the U.S. Ski Team, accompanied by a couple of well-known distaff guests, have spent the last week on snow in the Torsby Ski Tunnel in southwest Sweden. They raced in the nearby Inge Bråten Memorial rollerski race earlier today, and will compete in the Toppidrettsveka rollerski series in Norway starting on Thursday. It’s a multi-stage Scandinavian...
ANCHORAGE — Watching training sessions at a Regional Elite Group camp, the summer training series held around the country for the nation’s top junior skiers, is one part tantalizing glimpses of the future of American skiing, ten parts the cumulative reality of a lot of focused work in the present. These kids are fast, they are committed, and they are strong. But long-term success in endurance sport takes time, and they know it. Judging from...
On Monday, June 20th, the Ski Associations of Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and Croatia made good on threats issued after the FIS Congress in May, and filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) contesting the voting procedure that elected the unchallenged FIS President Johan Eliasch. The four nations argue that it was unlawful to deny them the option of voting no to Eliasch, and that the election procedure violated FIS statutes and...
Woods brings wealth of collegiate Nordic team competition, coaching and leadership to SVSEF SUN VALLEY, Idaho – June 19, 2022 – Effective August 1, 2022, Becky Woods will step into the role of Cross Country Program Director at Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF). Woods comes to SVSEF from Bates College in Lewiston, ME, where she served as the Head Men’s and Women’s Nordic Ski Coach alongside additional leadership roles from 1994 to 2022. “We are thrilled to welcome...
The following article was initially published on FasterSkier on April 2, 2003. It was written by Pete Vordenberg, who at the time was the assistant coach of the U.S. Ski Team, under head coach Trond Nystad. Nystad’s boss was Luke Bodensteiner. The development coach was Chris Grover. Athletes on the men’s national team included Justin Wadsworth, Carl Swenson, Torin Koos, Kris Freeman, and Andrew Johnson, plus a grand total of one (1) woman, Wendy Wagner....
This press release originally appeared on fis-ski.com on Wednesday, March 18, 2022. May marks the month of the FIS Committee meetings, debriefing the season and setting up task and changes for the upcoming ones. All proposals that were elaborated by Sub-Committees and working groups members came on the table of the Cross-Country Committee (CCC) on Wednesday, 18th May. The Committee discussed them and forwarded the confirmed proposals on to the highest authority in FIS, the...
The following article was first published on FasterSkier in June 2009. It is reprinted now in advance of the upcoming announcement of athlete nominations for the 2022/2023 U.S. Ski Team, a subject of perennial interest for American ski fans. Based on the published objective criteria for team naming and athletes’ current world ranking, it appears that multiple athletes who are current or recent NCAA skiers will be named to next year’s national team. Like many...
By Kevin Brooker Increasing the value of a product is important. Consumers are drawn to the idea of high tech being better than run of the mill technology. To catch the attention and dollars of consumers, the marketing team will often use terms like “Aircraft Grade” or “Medical Grade” to make the ski manufacturers’ offerings more attractive. The idea being, if some material is good enough for the high tech and safety conscious aviation industry, it...
When reaching out to Sun Valley’s Annie Pokorny to learn more about her decision to become a technical delegate and her experience so far, it was also on the radar that Pokorny’s friend and former teammate Kelsey Phinney was also engaged in the process. As it turned out, Pokorny had been a leading influence in Phinney’s decision to become a TD herself. Like Pokorny, Phinney is a 2016 graduate of Middlebury College, before continuing with...
A team of familiar faces is soon headed to the American Birkebeiner, and rumor has it, their race suits will be something to behold. Spearheaded by brand ambassador Simi Hamilton, the team of Sophie Hamilton (Caldwell), Sadie Maubet-Bjornsen, Liz Stephen, Matt Gelso, Sylvan Ellefson, and Erik Bjornsen will be racing as members of the mountainFLOW Eco Wax team. Based in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado, where Hamilton grew up, mountainFLOW Eco Wax is the...
A pair of American skiing pioneers skied up Mt. Mansfield, Vermont in 1946, skied down to settle a bet, and in the process created a race that’s remained true to the individual and communal spirit that sustains nordic skiing to this day. At one point in time, skiing was simply a way to get from point A to point B. Take stock of humans gliding on snow at this moment in 2022, though, and it can...
ZHANGJIAKOU, CHN — International Ski Federation officials say they’re exploring backup options for season-ending races in Russia amid fears of a war between that country and Ukraine, though they’re still planning on holding the event as scheduled next month unless circumstances change. The final races of the top-level World Cup are scheduled to be held in Tyumen, Russia, in an oil-rich area in Siberia — about 1,000 miles away from the border with Ukraine, where American...
You can find the introduction to this three-part series on the development of the Chinese ski program here. Creating a Generation of Skiers China, pursuing Olympic medals on home snow, signed deals in 2018 to train Chinese skiers in Norway and Finland. The first hurdle would be filling these programs with potential skiers. To that end, a talent building program was initiated and young professional athletes in the second tier of rowing, kayaking, and running...
ZHANGJIAKOU, CHINA — Russia, and its flag, are officially barred from the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, a ruling that stems from continuing doping violations following a massive, state-sponsored scandal at the 2014 Games in Sochi that included cross-country skiers. But other Russian cross-country skiers are still competing here, under the flag of their country’s Olympic committee. And on Sunday, in their first race of the Games, Russian men took the top two places. Star Alexander...
Salmon for Skiing Over the last four years China has undertaken perhaps the grandest experiment in cross country skiing history: can hundreds of athletes cherry picked from other sports and given seemingly unlimited resources be turned into Olympic medalists in nordic events? Chinese athletes have never medaled in any of the nordic disciplines, and their teams head into the Olympics as the darkest of dark horses. Success, in the form of medals, is key to...
Take a moment to visualize some iconic head-to-head finishes from recent global championships: Klæbo vs. Bolshunov in the 50 k, Oberstdorf, 2021; Nilsson vs. Johaug in the relay, Seefeld, 2019; Schumacher vs. Terentev in the relay, Lahti, 2019; Diggins vs. history in, well, you know, PyeongChang, 2018. What do these races have in common, besides drama, high-level skiing, and triumph and tragedy in equal measure? All of them feature a final downhill back into the...
ZHANGJIAKOU, CHINA — After months of headlines about coronavirus tests, travel logistics and geopolitics, Beijing’s Olympic cross-country skiing venue, on the eve of its first competition Saturday, has emphatically changed the subject. To the winds of Zhangjiakou. Icy gusts billowed athletes’ training bibs, filled the resort town’s immaculately groomed ski tracks with dry, squeaky powder and generally consumed everyone’s attention Friday — from the team members who shielded their faces with buffs and layers of...