Nordic Nation

Render it all down, it’s about the human element of competition on the World Cup. In this episode of Nordic Nation, we first speak with U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover and then with one of the team’s athletes crushing right now in the Tour de Ski, Jessie Diggins. The topic at hand: breaking down an International Ski Federation (FIS) document sent to coaches after each race called a “Competition Analysis”.

These are not publicly posted where one might expect to find them (with results and World Cup standings) on the FIS site, unlike the International Biathlon Union (IBU), which publishes similar competition analyses (but with a lot more information, like shooting speed and time spent on the shooting range). While Grover wasn’t sure why FIS doesn’t link to these, one thing’s for sure: these analyses can be tools for coaches and athletes in dissecting races beyond the televised checkpoints.

Jessie Diggins racing to fourth in the women’s 15 k freestyle at the World Cup in Davos, Switzerland, on Dec. 10. (Photo: Salomon/NordicFocus)

Specifically, we’ll discuss the competition analysis from the women’s 15-kilometer freestyle on Dec. 10 in Davos, Switzerland. Diggins placed fourth in that race. The FIS Competition Analysis is a tool coaches and skiers can use to see exactly where they skied effectively, and where they may have lost time. In Davos, pretty much Diggins skied fast.

Here’s a link to the Davos competition analysis. It’s useful to check it out a bit before listening to the podcast, but not totally necessary … but it does help.

And just to remain timely, here’s a FIS Competition Analysis from the Tour de Ski’s stage 4 women’s 10 k freestyle pursuit in Oberstdorf, Germany; Diggins placed fifth and her U.S. teammates had an impressive day as well.

Other references: 2016 FIS Cross-Country Homologation Manual

Time for the podcast. Thanks.

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Norway still dominates the World Cup. With both Martin Johnsrud Sundby and Heidi Weng wearing yellow bibs as overall World Cup Leaders, it seems not much has changed besides Weng supplanting Therese Johaug on the podium’s top step.

Norwegian Journalist John Rasmussen is our guest on Nordic Nation (Courtesy photo)

This past summer and fall, Norway’s cross-country community — which is arguably the entire nation — took a hit when both Sundby and Johaug were linked to doping. Much has been written about the technical aspects of their cases.

Nordic Nation reached out to Norwegian ski journalist John Rasmussen at Dagbladet, one of Norway’s leading newspapers. Rasmussen’s beat is the international and Norwegian ski scene. And since Google translate is not the most effective tool to go from Norwegian to English, we thought it best to get things straight from someone in the know.

“Doping in sport is so not on in this country,” Rasmussen said on the phone from Norway when we spoke on Dec. 15. “It’s considered such a shameful act, and particularly in cross-country, which is the national sport… If you’re caught cheating doing that, it’s probably like stealing from your neighbor. It’s not good.”

There’s more in this episode from Rasmussen. We talk of Johaug in the broader context of Norway’s sporting culture and the next steps in her doping case to be adjudicated late next month. There’s also some real world talk on what a parent says to a child who idolizes Johaug in a country where skiing is the sport of the people and the gods.

Click play to listen below or subscribe here on itunes.

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For non-traditional cross-country ski nations like the U.S. and Canada, bringing home Olympic hardware is the benchmark for success. The World Cup, although prestigious among fans and athletes, doesn’t share the same fanfare. And just below Olympic success, and again, off the general public’s radar are World Championship results. Canada has Olympic nordic sport hardware: Beckie Scott’s 2002 gold, Chandra Crawford’s 2006 gold, and the duo of Scott and Sara Renner winning silver in in the team sprint also in 2006. Recent World Championship awards include Alex Harvey and Devon Kershaw winning team sprint gold in 2011. Harvey followed that up with more world-champs hardware: a sprint bronze in 2013, a sprint silver in 2015, and bronze that same year in the 30 k skiathlon.

Shane Pearsall will take over as CEO of Cross Country Canada starting Jan. 1, 2017. (Courtesy photo)

Canada’s cross country scene is not lacking for international medals. Yet in recent years, the sport has received a smaller piece of the sports funding pie from government entities like Own The Podium (OTP), and from independent sponsors. Canada is now emerging into the women’s World Cup ranks again, Dahria Beatty recently advanced to the sprint quarterfinals in Davos, Switzerland — she finished 25th on the day. But for many years as the men’s team was loaded with Harvey, Kershaw, and Valjas, on and off the record the sense was that the women’s side of the equation languished. The responsibility for developing the sport in Canada ultimately falls to Cross Country Canada (CCC), the national governing body for the sport.

CCC’s most recent CEO, Pierre Lafontaine, remained in the job for a year. Starting Jan. 1, 2017, the CEO role will belong to Shane Pearsall.

Sound like a new name in cross-country ski circles? It is. Pearsall, 58, does come to the job with administrative experience in sport, for three years he served as Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton’s (BCS) chief operating officer. In terms of connection to potential sponsors, Pearsall also worked in the oil and gas industry for 25 years including a long stint with AltaGas, a primary sponsor of CCC and its World Cup team. As an athlete, Pearsall was an elite hockey player and was a member of the 1980 Canadian men’s national team.

In this Nordic Nation episode, Pearsall answers questions about his vision for CCC and how he’ll measure success.

Have a listen by clicking play below or subscribe on iTunes here.

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Yes, it’s that time of year and depending on who you are, it means two things: the World Cup is about to start and Noah Hoffman’s Fantasy Cross Country is live. In this episode, as with most things, Nordic Nation goes deep. We scour our digital rolodex for insider information. With the first weekend of racing soon upon us, we looked for the beta on who to pick for a fantasy team and who to leave on the proverbial sidelines.

We speak with the Hoff and the Oz of his Fantasy League, Adam Mahar. And we track down a winning player from last year who resides in Sweden. We also connect with FasterSkier’s resident gear tester savant, Jon Schafer — he’s a man of many names too, think Fast Big Dog and/or FBD. And finally about thirty minutes into the episode, we strike gold with two players from the Midwest; Kristor and Dean are their names. Seriously, we dug deep to find these guys. With their insights, we might just be onto breaking the European dominance in Hoffman’s Fantasy League. Last year 11 of the 13 prizes went to players on the other side of the Atlantic. 

Click the play arrow below to listen. (To subscribe to the Nordic Nation podcast channel, download the iTunes app. If you have iTunes, subscribe to Nordic Nation here.)

Have a podcast idea? Please email [email protected].

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It may be hyperbole, but “faster than a speeding bullet,” is a good place to start when thinking about biathlon at the World Cup level. Sure, race pace is slower than a speeding bullet, but watching masterful biathletes clean their shooting rounds on the way to victory deserves statements bordering on the hyperbolic. Most of us can imagine stumbling across a finish line, lungs burning. It’s a whole other realm of precision like suffering to pound out the kilometers while intermittently trying to hit a small target.

Clare Egan (US Biathlon) racing at an IBU World Cup last December in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)

This episode of Nordic Nation is the second of our two-part series on biathlon. The first segment featured Biathlon Canada veteran Rosanna Crawford. Up now, it’s US Biathlon’s Clare Egan. At 28, she’s now a full time International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cupper — and she picked up her first rifle at the age of 25. From Egan, we’ll learn what it’s like coming to the sport as a novice shooter with Olympic aspirations. From developing muscle memory to learning new coping strategies for when those bullets down exactly hit the bullseye, Egan fills us in. 

Clare Egan: Screen shot from the IBU World Cup. Egan shoots clean.

Click the play arrow below to listen to the podcast. (To subscribe to the Nordic Nation podcast channel, download the iTunes app. If you have iTunes, subscribe to Nordic Nation here.)

Have a podcast idea? Please email [email protected].

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It’s worth asking this question: could an entire continent having a love affair with a sport that combines skate skiing and shooting be wrong? There’s the raw, heart-thumping power of the skiing mingled with the laser-focus almost the zen-like quality of shooting at a quarter-size target. Throw in a few thousand fans with cowbells, horns,and a long winter night’s worth of libations, and you’ve got a sport that either live in person or broadcast on a screen has captured the wintertime sport scene in Europe.

For the diehard nordic ski fan, International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cups have for sometime been easily streamable on the Internet. If you were disinterested in the shooting, there’s obviously the skiing. But understanding the shooting process — where athletes immerse themselves in a mind-body flow shooting at small targets sandwiched between full-throttle ski laps — broadens one’s appreciation for the sport.

Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) skiing the second-fastest course time of second-leg relay skiers in the Oslo World Cup relay in February 2015. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus.com)

In this episode of Nordic Nation, Biathlon Canada veteran Rosanna Crawford brings listeners into the shooting range — in fact she debriefs her world champs personal-best race at the 2016 IBU World Championships in Oslo, Norway.

Hear those cheers roar after a target flips black with a direct hit? What’s not to love? Click the play arrow below to listen to the podcast. (To subscribe to the Nordic Nation podcast channel, download the iTunes app. If you have iTunes, subscribe to Nordic Nation here.)

Have a podcast idea? Please email [email protected].

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Liz Stephen has earned her stripes. For the last 11 years, the 29-year-old Vermont native has been part of the US Ski Team (USST). After veterans like Kikkan Randall, Stephen has become an anchor on the women’s team, which now carries with it expectations of top-20’s, top-10’s and podiums. At the age of 15, the Burke Mountain Academy alpine skier and runner switched to the skinny skis for good.

With her high energy and drive, she became a force on the U.S. junior cross-country ski scene. What followed were a string of results commensurate with her high turnover. In both 2013 and 2014, she was the 15th-ranked distance skier on the World Cup. A year later, that ranking was more than halved — she concluded 2015 ranked seventh in the Distance World Cup.

Liz Stephen (U.S. Ski Team) leads Caitlin Patterson (Craftsbury Green Racing Project) and the rest of the chase pack during the women’s 30 k classic mass start at 2016 U.S. Distance Nationals in Craftsbury, Vt. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)

Then, due to possible overtraining and some shaken confidence, Stephen’s results regressed to 28th on the distance list in 2016. Still good enough for an U.S. A-team nomination, but not what she expected.

“It’s not as though you worked any less hard, generally that’s not the case, sometimes it’s the opposite,” Stephen said during the podcast interview. “You feel like you worked really hard and none of it is paying off. It’s like a two-sided sword. Your results are going down. And instead of being, ‘All right, I can do this,’ gaining confidence, it’s the opposite. Every time you are getting a result you’re not proud of, your confidence is sinking a little bit lower. And for every percent your confidence sinks, that’s at least a place on the World Cup, if not two.”

In a world-championship year, Stephen is hoping to rebound individually and in support of her teammates on a medal-winning relay team. All that doesn’t seem so far fetched. Stephen skied the third leg in last season’s 4 x 5 k in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, in which the U.S. women skied to their historic-best second place in a World Cup relay.

The U.S. women placed a historic second for their best-ever relay finish at the 2016 World Cup 4 x 5 k in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. From left to right: Jessie Diggins, Sophie Caldwell, Sadie Bjornsen, and Liz Stephen. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)

Time for more high-turnover Stephen — click the play arrow below to listen to the podcast. (To subscribe to the Nordic Nation podcast channel, download the iTunes app. If you have iTunes, subscribe to Nordic Nation here.)

Have a podcast idea? Please email [email protected].

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Bryan Fletcher (U.S. Nordic Combined) jumping to 20th on the normal hill at 2015 World Championships in Falun, Sweden. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad)

Nordic combined is exactly that: a combination of the two discrete nordic-sport disciplines. There’s the cross-country side, which if you read FasterSkier regularly, you’re pretty comfortable with in terms of technique, gear, and the nuts and bolts of race dynamics. If you’re like me, the jumping side is a bit more foreign. I took the opportunity in this podcast episode to explore ski jumping.

For nordic combined competitions, it is the ski jumping portion that dictates the start order for the freestyle pursuit-style race. So to fully understand the discipline, and know why, for example, a skier starts one minute back from the morning’s ski-jump winner, I reached out to Bryan Fletcher, a 30-year-old old U.S. Nordic Combined Team veteran (he’s also a new dad), and Clint Jones, a former U.S. Ski Team jumper and currently a jumping coach and team director for USA Nordic, which encompasses nordic combined and ski jumping.

From those two we get a jumper’s perspective of a massive ski flying hill in Planica, Slovenia, and firsthand knowledge of jumping technique. Jumping may not be for the faint of heart, but understanding how it sets up the cross-country ski race after the jumps is critical to following nordic combined.

And when you listen to the podcast, you’ll hear Bryan Fletcher say this: “For me, I’m kind of an adrenaline junkie. I’ve done a lot of stupid adrenaline things in my life. And one of those is base jumping off of the bridge in Twin Falls, [Idaho]. And typically they recommend you have 100 sky dives before you ever go base jumping. Instead I spent two months learning how to pack a parachute, and then went and took six jumps off the bridge. And to give you perspective, base jumping I didn’t know anything about … However with ski jumping, you kind of have those rumors and commentary from other jumpers, I was more nervous getting on the bar of a ski flying hill for the first time than I was crawling over the railing of a bridge to base jump for my first time.”

You’ll also learn the difference between a ski flying hill — the type of jump Fletcher refers to in his base-jumping quote — and a regular, Olympic-style ski jumping hill. It’s always a good day to learn something new.

Click the play button to listen below.

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