FasterSkier

Category: Team nominations

  • The Alpine Perspective: Athlete Support and the U.S. Ski Team

    The Alpine Perspective: Athlete Support and the U.S. Ski Team

    Megan McJames, an independent skier based in Park City, Utah, racing in Sun Valley. (Courtesy photo)

    “The biggest issue with the ski team is that they do not support athletes through thick and thin. They support the very top athletes well but other than that everyone else is constantly stressed out about re-qualifying for the team or raising enough money to be able to compete that season.”

    — Tim Kelley, 2015 World Championships U.S. alpine team member, UVM alumnus & assistant coach

    “It is very hard to watch some American athletes get everything and others get nothing. But I try to focus on surrounding myself with supportive people, keep training hard and ski as fast as I can. To me, there is nothing more fun in the whole world than skiing!”

    — Megan McJames, two-time Olympic alpine skier, four-time World Championships competitor

    This spring, U.S. Ski & Snowboard announced its nominations for the cross-country national team. It also released qualification standards for the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.

    Both created discussion in the cross-country ski world. The national-team nominations relied heavily on discretion on the men’s side; several athletes very close to making the objective criteria were not nominated. The Olympic criteria leave few direct options for qualification available to non-U.S. Ski Team (USST) athletes or those sent to the World Cup by staff discretion.

    Some of these strategies by the cross-country team leadership seem to contradict policies emphasized at the U.S. Ski & Snowboard level. But others might be consistent with how decisions are made in other disciplines.

    To try to get a better understanding of whether that was the case, FasterSkier checked in with two alpine skiers: 2015 World Championships team member Tim Kelley, a now-retired slalom specialist who is coaching at the University of Vermont (UVM); and Megan McJames, a veteran giant slalom specialist who has been racing independently for several years.

    Tim Kelley was not Ted Ligety, and Megan McJames is not Mikaela Shiffrin. Their perspectives are both based on their own experience, which is of bouncing on and off the USST and being selected to race internationally even when they were not national team members.

    Who Deserves National Team Support?

    That experience isn’t a mere byproduct of U.S. Ski & Snowboard policy. It’s by design as the organization tries to prioritize supporting young athletes with potential and older athletes who are stars – but cutting off development funds at some point after certain athletes reach the senior ranks.

    It’s a strategy that might sound familiar to cross-country skiers.

    Luke Bodensteiner, U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s Executive Vice President for Athletics, explained in an interview this spring that in his view, just being good enough to make a championship event doesn’t mean that his organization should necessarily invest in an athlete.

    “We are probably not as efficient [as we could be] in terms of putting resources behind specific athletes,” he said. “I believe we could have fewer athletes across the board … It’s a bit of a cultural adjustment. There was a time when it was like, take your six best athletes – in our estimation that’s not effective.”

    And so, across disciplines, U.S. Ski & Snowboard has developed criteria to say what “good enough” is. If the second-best or third-best athletes in the country don’t meet those criteria, then, well, teams are smaller.

    (They are not alone in this strategy; teams such as Canadian cross-country skiing and U.S. biathlon have gone through periods with very few senior women supported, for instance.)

    Athletes might not always agree with Bodensteiner’s assessment. Whether they are winning or not, U.S. Ski & Snowboard keeps picking them to represent their country; yet they aren’t recognized with national team status or support.

    “I never had World Cup podiums, but I am proud of my career and how I battled through injury and keep grinding it out,” wrote Kelley, who placed 23rd in his lone World Championships race in 2015 (as an independent racer) and had a 12th-place World Cup slalom result (as a USST member) in 2016, his final season of competition.

    Age-Specific Performance Standards

    The alpine national team criteria are fairly unique in taking age into account.

    The cross-country criteria do as well, but not to the same extent: they offer team membership to athletes with podium finishes at World Junior or U23 Championships, but no age-specific World Cup standards.

    Alpine is different. For instance, have a look at the 2017/2018 criteria. For all ages, the requirement to make the A-team is the same: a top-25 World Cup ranking in a single discipline, or a top 10 (for women) or top 15 (for men) World Cup ranking in alpine combined.

    After that, there is a tiered system. To make the B-team, women born in 1993 or earlier – so anyone older than 24 in this competition season – have to be ranked top 30 in the World Cup in a single discipline. Those born in 1994 can be ranked top 35, or have a top 45 World Ranking list standing. Born in 1995? Top 45 on the World Cup, or that World Ranking list. 1996 or younger? Top 50 on either list, or win a NorAm title.

    There’s not a lot of leeway.

    If you’re older than 24 and are ranked 26th in your discipline, it can be tough cookies. That happened to Resi Steigler, who was cut after a season where she was ranked 29th on the World Cup in slalom.

    “It’s not easy being an outsider,” Stiegler, who kept racing and never finished worse than 27th in the World Cups she entered the next season, told Ski Racing’s Warner Nickerson. “To wonder who stopped believing in me and to wonder who doesn’t want me there.”

    “This is exactly how I felt when I was on the chopping block,” Nickerson wrote in the piece.

    Stiegler was renominated to the A-team later, but it brings up the issue of whether she would have performed better, and represented the U.S. better, if she had more consistent support through the ups and downs – would she have returned to her best level sooner without all that doubt and stress?

    “The ski team should take on that burden and allow the athletes to focus on their training without the other distractions,” Kelley believes.

    Because he had that experience too. Despite being dropped from the USST – again – after the 2016 season where he had the 12th-place finish, Kelley had secured World Cup start rights for the 2016-2017 season after being the runner-up in the NorAm slalom rankings in 2016. He would have had to go it alone again on Redneck Racing, the team he founded with his brother Robby.

    He could have done it. The deciding factor in his retirement was that he underwent a fourth surgery to address recurring back problems. That was one surgery too many and at 30 years old he decided to call it quits.

    But many athletes his age in a similar position might be pushed out of the sport even without the injury issues Kelley faced, he said.

    “Unfortunately it takes a lot of determination and creative fundraising to keep competing at a high level outside the [USST], and actually even more inside the ski team since they cut funding for everyone except for the A-team (athletes top 25 in a disciple in the world),” he added.

    The lack of financial support for ‘B’ team members might also sound familiar to cross-country skiers.

    Overall, the inflexibility in supporting athletes didn’t make sense to Kelley.

    “I think the age stuff is ridiculous and pushes people out of the sport,” he wrote. “The ski team did all these studies that showed what age you had to accomplish certain bench marks and claimed that if you didn’t win a NorAm title by age 21, or score World Cup points by age 23 that you would never ‘make it’ in the sport. Which seems silly to me because if you cut everyone that doesn’t hit the benchmarks and they retire, of course they are not going to ‘make it’… A lot of very talented athletes retire too early because of the financial burden put on them by the U.S. Ski Team, and I believe that is the reason we have a few star athletes but not as much depth as other countries that support their athletes financially.”

    Representing Your Country

    McJames, now 29, was a top junior racer but was cut from the national team in 2012 and hasn’t gotten back on it. She has tried to stop thinking about the criteria she would need to do so.

    “When I set my goals I do not take into account USST criteria,” she wrote in an email. “There are pros and cons to being an independent athlete, but the best part is being able to design a program that only takes into account what is best for me athletically.”

    Since being cut from the national team, McJames has scored World Cup points every season except for one. She finished 30th in giant slalom at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and 21st at last year’s World Championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

    So despite not being recognized as a national team member, she is very much a reliable athlete representing the red, white, and blue.

    “I would like to work more closely with the USST when racing World Cups abroad,” wrote McJames, who will be back on the international circuit this year and looking for another Olympic berth. “It would be really helpful to me if they could provide training and race support when I am representing the country at World Cup races.”

    World Cup results are essential in that they are the only way to qualifying for the upcoming 2018 Olympics — there is no domestic qualification route. But when she travels to World Cups, McJames is on her own. She brings her own staff, often including coach/partner Cody Marshall, himself a former national team member. In her pursuit of top results she is separate from USST athletes.

    “I get no financial support from USST and they do not help me out with any support staff,” McJames wrote. “In other words, I pay for all expenses surrounding being a World Cup athlete. I learned the hard way is very difficult to compete with athletes supported by a national team when you are all alone. Now I hire a coach to come with me to World Cup races. But it is expensive to hire a full time staff. So I get my skis prepped at a shop in Park City called Podium, and maintain and wax them at races myself.”

    On that one, mileage may vary. Kelley wrote that he had a pretty good situation when he was racing on the World Cup, even when he wasn’t a national team member.

    “The coaches on the men’s U.S. Ski Team are great and they always gave me an opportunity to earn World Cup starts whether I was on or off the team,” he wrote. “That is one thing that I am very thankful for. The women are not as lucky.  I really want to emphasize how helpful [USST staff] were at all points in my career… Ian Garner, Ian Lochhead, Forest Carey, Bernd Bruner, Parker Gray were always really helpful and fair to me whether I was on or off the team. I was always given a fair shot to qualify for World Cup starts, and they provided a lot of training and help with travel.”

    What It Takes to Go Independent

    There are two ways to be an independent racer: as part of a team, or truly solo.

    Kelley started Redneck Racing with his brother Robby, Andrew McNealus, and Tucker Marshall in 2014. The team was based at Cochran’s, in southern Vermont, a ski area that has led Robby, Tim, and various other members of the extended Cochran clan to success through the decades.

    “Redneck Racing was formed as a way for us to have fun competing in the sport we love,” Kelley wrote. “It gave us the opportunity to keep competing while bringing attention to the fact that you can ski fast without a $24-million-dollar gym, and that paying $30K to be on the [USST] is not the only option.”

    Having your backyard ski hill as a training ground was a lucky situation, and not every athlete could rely on this, regardless of family connections.

    “Unfortunately, this only works well for slalom,” Kelley explained, since as a technical event slalom doesn’t require big mountains or huge vertical drops. “For example, downhill venues are so few and far between it would be very tough to train downhill outside of the [USST]. This is why most speed athletes retire when they do not re-qualify for the team.”

    This year, Redneck Racing consists of Robby Kelley – who turned down a spot on the U.S. Ski Team after he requalified, because he prefers his own approach – along with Marshall and Julia Ford.

    Redneck Racing wasn’t the only team that sprang up to fill the void. Team America, based in Vail, was another. Its senior program has gone in and out of existence as needs change, while the Team America Foundation has taken on projects like studying development trajectories in alpine skiing, funding a junior team, and helping to fund Redneck Racing.

    Last season, Team America supported senior racer Hig Roberts – who like many had been onto the USST and off again. He started a number of World Cups last season but never qualified for a second run. At the end of the year, Roberts won the national championship in giant slalom.

    McJames won the women’s title.

    “I often get asked why, being the second-best giant slalom skier in the country, I am not named to the USST,” McJames wrote. “If you ask them, they will simply say that I did not make criteria. As an athlete, it doesn’t matter to me what their subjective criteria or performance bands are, the bottom line is that I believe in my potential as an athlete and feel proud of the race results I have had over the past four seasons as an independent athlete.”

  • Inside the 2018 Olympic Selection Criteria with Chris Grover

    Inside the 2018 Olympic Selection Criteria with Chris Grover

    The PyeongChang venue as seen in February 2017. PyeongChang, South Korea, will host the 2018 Olympic Games this coming February. (Photo: FIS Cross Country/Twitter)

    Note: This is the first of a multiple-part series on the 2018 Winter Olympic selection criteria for the U.S. cross-country ski team. A parallel piece compares the cross-country team’s criteria with other U.S. winter sports.

    ***

    Friday, July 7, will mark seven months to go until the Opening Ceremony for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. As athletes across the country ramp up their commitment in this Olympic year, and #roadtopyeongchang trends across various social media platforms, FasterSkier takes a look at the recently released selection criteria and procedures for nomination to the U.S. Olympic team.

    Briefly put, what does it take to get to PyeongChang? And what factors will U.S. Ski Team (USST) coaches and (newly rebranded) U.S. Ski & Snowboard leaders apply in deciding who will be wearing red, white and blue next February?

    In this article, FasterSkier first breaks down the criteria themselves, then summarizes a recent interview with USST Head Coach Chris Grover about why these criteria were chosen and how they should work.

    Inside the criteria: World Cup performance, discretion and potential domestic picks

    The criteria themselves are little changed from the standards used to pick the American team for the last two international championship events, World Champs in Falun in 2015 and Lahti in 2017. First comes objective qualification via performance on the World Cup. Second comes the potential use of discretionary picks. Third, if any spots are left over, the highest-ranking athlete on a domestic points list may, but does not have to, be nominated to the team.

    As for the overall size of the U.S. team, a maximum of 12 male or 12 female athletes may be nominated, with a final team quota of probably 17 to 20 athletes to be determined closer to the Olympics themselves. (This is up from a total team quota of 17 in 2014, though ultimately only 14 athletes were named for Sochi, and the extra three American spots were redistributed to other nations.)

    The U.S. may enter up to four athletes in a single race at the Olympics. The six cross-country events in PyeongChang will be a skiathlon (15 kilometers for women and 30 k for men), individual classic sprint, freestyle team sprint, 10/15 k skate interval start, 4 x 5 k or 4 x 10 k mixed technique relay (classic, classic, skate, skate), and 30/50 k classic mass start.

    As for the criteria themselves for making the U.S. Olympic team: In order:

    1. Objective qualification via World Cup results

    Athletes who have achieved a top-eight finish in one of five specific races, or who have a top-50 ranking on either the World Cup sprint or distance list midway through Period II, will be named to the team.

    Most precisely, “Any eligible athlete that posts a top-8 individual final World Cup result during the selection period [Nov. 23, 2017, through Jan. 15, 2018] in the following events will be selected to the Team: Sprint C, individual start 10/15 km F, and 15/30 km Skiathlon.”

    Looking to the schedule for the 2017/2018 World Cup season, classic sprints will be held on Nov. 24, in Ruka, Finland; Dec. 2, in Lillehammer, Norway; and Jan. 3 in Oberstdorf, Germany (as part of the Tour de Ski). A 10/15 k freestyle individual start will be held in Davos, Switzerland, on Dec. 10. The only skiathlon on the 2017/2018 World Cup calendar will be held in Lillehammer on Dec. 3. Any athlete posting a top-eight final result in one of those five races will be named to the Olympic team.

    (The 10/15 k skate pursuits on the schedule don’t count for top-eight purposes – it’s only Olympic formats that are used for qualification. And the 10/15 k skate race in PyeongChang is an interval-start race, not a pursuit.)

    So that’s high finishes in individual races. As for cumulative performance across multiple races, “Athletes ranking in the top-50 in the distance World Cup standings or the top-50 in the Sprint World Cup standings as of January 15, 2018 shall be selected to the team.” Jan. 15 marks roughly the midway point of the World Cup calendar. By that point, 18 World Cup races will have been held.

    U.S. Ski Team member Sadie Bjornsen racing in the women’s 15 k skiathlon at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Bjornsen is a veteran member of the national team heading into another Olympic year.

    As of the comparable point in the 2016/2017 season, shortly after the Tour de Ski, USST members Sadie Bjornsen, Rosie Brennan, Sophie Caldwell, Jessie Diggins, Simi Hamilton, Noah Hoffman, Andy Newell, Kikkan Randall, Ida Sargent, and Liz Stephen had top-50 rankings in either or both disciplines.

    A maximum of five athletes per gender may be selected based on their Sprint World Cup rankings. Tiebreaking procedures come into play at that point if necessary, generally based on an athlete’s single best finish in a sprint race.

    1. Discretionary selection

    Spots on the U.S. Olympic team will presumably remain open after the application of the objective criterion of World Cup performance. In that case, “the USSA Cross Country Head Coach may use discretion … to determine team nominations” for additional spots on the Olympic team.

    Grover would at that point recommend additional athletes to a three-person committee, composed of U.S. Ski & Snowboard President Tiger Shaw, Executive Vice President of Athletics Luke Bodensteiner, and athlete representative Rosie Brennan.

    If Brennan stands exposed to a potential conflict of interest from discretionary selection (that is, through no fault of her own, she “stands to benefit privately from a decision made by the Selection Committee,” as would happen if she had not qualified objectively and were being considered for discretionary selection), then she would be directed not to engage in any conduct “meant to unduly influence” the selection committee regarding her potential selection to the Olympic team.

    Grover is then directed to consider any of (a) “outstanding competition results” from both this season and last season, (b) “Recent positive direction or trend of competition results indicating a potential for Olympic success,” or (c) “Indication of medal potential in future Olympic or World Championship competition (such as international age group results and rankings) that would be materially enhanced by selection to the team.”

    U.S. Ski & Snowboard was not required to make discretion a means of selection to the team. It also has the discretion not to use discretion at all; as the document states, Grover may use discretion to determine additional team nominations, but does not have to.

    1. Domestic selection. Maybe.

    If there are any spots remaining on the team after applying criteria (1) and (2), U.S. Ski & Snowboard may consider the highest-ranked domestic athlete, one per gender. But it technically doesn’t have to.

    (There is some ambiguity within the selection document itself as to whether more than one team spot could be filled via a domestic ranking list. On the one hand, selection criterion 3 uses the plural when it talks about “any remaining positions,” and “those positions may be filled.” On the other hand, it also mentions “the athlete with the highest rank on the 2018 Olympic Winter Games Selection List,” and both “athlete” and “rank” are in the singular. In practice, Grover clarified in a recent phone interview that the national team is potentially open to bringing more than one skier per gender, pointing out that four men and two women were brought to Lahti off the domestic rankings list.)

    The 2018 Olympic Winter Games Selection List, as with the comparable list for 2017 World Champs in Lahti, is essentially the “normal” 2017/2018 SuperTour points list, plus substantial bonus points for 2018 U.S. National Championships. An athlete’s best two finishes in a single discipline (sprint or distance, not skate or classic) will be counted.

    The SuperTour point totals system, and bonus points for podium finishes at 2018 U.S. nationals, appear to be precisely the same as those used last winter for Lahti. That is, first through third at the December SuperTour races will be worth 30, 25, and 21 points, respectively. The addition of nationals-only bonus points means that first through third in the four races in Anchorage count for 45, 35, and 26 points, respectively. When an athlete’s best two finishes are counted, a second and third at U.S. nationals (61 points) would be worth more than two firsts (60 points) at “normal” SuperTour races.

    For this reason, in last year’s preview for 2017 U.S. nationals, FasterSkier quoted longtime racer Kris Freeman as stating that “the allocation of bonus points to Nationals essentially makes the remainder of the SuperTours irrelevant. Nationals is now World Champ and Olympic Trials which is fine, but let’s call them what they are.”

    The math is the same this season as last season. This season, U.S. nationals start in Anchorage on Jan. 3, 2018. The four races there will be a skate sprint, classic sprint, 10/15 k skate interval start, and 20/30 k classic mass start.

    Discretion and selection to international championship events

    The appropriate role of discretion when selecting athletes for a World Ski Championships or Olympic team is a subject of recurring interest for fans and supporters of American cross-country skiing, and has frequently arisen on this site.

    For example, here’s USST Women’s Coach Matt Whitcomb in an interview with FasterSkier in July 2016, answering the question, “Is it fair to say that making discretionary picks is one of the harder parts of your job as a coach?” Whitcomb replied, “For sure. We love not to do it. But in any criteria, discretion can often be one of the most important pieces. We really envy these Olympic Trials [for the American track and field athletes for the 2016 Rio Olympics] that we’re watching right now, where the top three go and fourth is either an alternate or they don’t go, and it’s just much more objective.”

    And here’s Grover in January 2017, slightly ahead of the naming of the U.S. team for Lahti: “The real key thing is that, at the bottom of the selection, we followed the selection criteria. That’s key. Discretion really belongs to be used at the top, for those athletes who have a chance to come over and have big races at World Championships, and by big races I mean someone who can go on the podium, or the top five, top 10, or top 15. Look for some selections from USA, but I wouldn’t look for a lot of discretion at the end of the day.”

    Or here’s Grover in January 2014, discussing why he and the rest of U.S. team leadership abjured discretion completely in taking Brian Gregg to Sochi but not Matt Liebsch, when only 0.04 points separated the two on the domestic men’s distance list: “We really tried to apply the selection criteria in the most fair way possible.That becomes, for sure, a challenge, especially on the men’s side when you get down to the sixth, seventh, eighth guys, you’re really splitting hairs because the FIS points are so close at that point. Because they were so close we opted not to use discretion. It really wasn’t a fair way to do it.”

    (As things played out in Sochi, USSA selected 14 athletes out of a total possible quota of 17. Grover explained at the time, shortly after selections were made and before the Olympics began, that they had only intended to bring those athletes whom they planned on starting in races. “With seven women and seven men, we have our start positions filled,” Grover told FasterSkier before the Games. “Seven and seven was the magic number for us.” Liebsch is reported to have considered legal action to gain a spot on the U.S. team for Sochi, but found that that it was “too late” for him to do so. In Sochi a few weeks later, U.S. athlete Torin Koos did not start the 50 k skate race, a race format in which Liebsch had previously won at the American Birkebeiner.)

    The U.S. Ski Team’s views on discretion

    Grover, the longtime USST head coach, is aware that people feel strongly about the substance and application of selection criteria for U.S. championship teams. “I think overall I’d say people get a little bit mired up and tied up with selection criteria, and whether it’s fair or not, or how this potentially sees them falling within that criteria,” Grover told FasterSkier in a recent phone interview.

    But Grover has a simple message for domestic athletes hoping to go to PyeongChang: “All you need to do is to ski fast, you need to go out there and win races, or to reach podiums. And if you can do that, your chances of being selected to the team are quite good.”

    The current criteria are “better than ever, more fair than ever,” Grover continued. “I think [it] gives athletes the most direct path possible to a major championship team.”

    Grover urged domestic athletes not to obsess over the apparent prioritization of discretion over domestic race results as a means of picking the Olympic team. Addressing a hypothetical non-national team member, he said, “As as an athlete domestically, don’t get hung up in the order that those things come down in the selection criteria. Discretion has to be next, because a discretionary athlete that’s picked needs to be picked because they are a top athlete who should be on the team, who has somehow been missed by the selection criteria.

    “So that’s the placement it has to be,” he continued. “And that’s consistent with selection criteria across different disciplines, in different sports. So that’s just the way that the procedure needs to work. But it doesn’t mean that a large number of discretionary athletes will necessarily be selected prior to the domestic field.”

    The statements that discretion “has” to have this status, and that this is “consistent with … different sports,” are not necessarily correct. As reported today in another article on FasterSkier, discretion plays a less prominent role in every other U.S. Ski & Snowboard sport.

    Grover also underscored that the use of discretion within American skiing pales in comparison to its role in Norway or Russia.

    “We’re competing against teams that are using 100-percent discretion to name their teams,” Grover emphasized. “So in the U.S., we have kind of the most democratic, objective, fair, I guess you could say – other nations, our Scandinavian peers, might call this an American system that we use for selecting athletes. It’s very cut-and-dried.”

    The four countries that Grover mentioned by name in his interview as the Americans’ main competition – Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia – all finished ahead of the U.S. in the final Nations Cup standings for the 2016/2017 World Cup season.

    Grover also stressed that U.S. Ski & Snowboard used only one discretionary pick for the Lahti roster, taking USST athlete Erik Bjornsen. “And the reason that we used one discretionary spot to select Erik was because he basically fell between the two criteria. He didn’t quite make the top-50 in the world standard because he had gotten sick during the selection process, and he wasn’t home domestically to race in the races domestically, but I think very few people out there would argue that that wasn’t a good use or a smart use of one discretionary spot.”

    Grover further stressed that the team had used, as he initially put it, “zero discretion” when selecting athletes for Falun World Championships in 2015. (In a subsequent email to FasterSkier, Grover clarified that “We used zero discretion in the original selection of 16 athletes (8 men and 8 women) to the Falun Team, but we did add Ben [Saxton] at a later date via discretion after he finished 6th in the sprint at U23 Champs.”)

    Writing criteria for the top vs. the bottom

    Grover cited the decision to bring Erik Bjornsen to Lahti as an exemplary use of discretion, underscoring that Bjornsen was a skilled athlete who “had some of the very best individual results there” among American skiers.

    “So that is absolutely our intention,” Grover continued, “it has been our intention, and it will be our intention going forward, is that we use discretion on the rare case where there’s an injury, or an illness, with a top athlete, and/or the criteria fail to select someone that I think most everyone would agree should be there representing the United States.”

    At world champs in Lahti in 2017, Bjornsen finished 18th in the 15 k classic and teamed up with Simi Hamilton to finish fifth in the team sprint. At world champs in Falun in 2015, Saxton finished 54th in classic sprint qualifying, roughly nine seconds from making the heats.

    While Grover is confident that discretion is most appropriately used for a top-performing U.S. athlete, he acknowledged some issues regarding the final athletes selected (or not selected) to a team.

    Summarizing his discussion with domestic senior club coaches about the selection criteria used for Lahti, and any potential changes before PyeongChang, Grover said, “All the responses I got back were positive, people were like, Yeah, it worked well. It’s never perfect at the bottom, but I don’t really see any way to improve it.”

    Indeed, he noted, the U.S. Ski & Snowboard working group “struggled with” how to select “athletes at the bottom of the selection, and make it as fair as possible. And what you come up with at the end is, in the end there’s no real perfect way to do it, and there’s going to be challenges to the way that any selection criteria works at the very bottom of the selection.”

    Current success vs. preparing for the future

    Another issue surrounding selection is the question of current competitiveness vs. taking a young athlete to a “practice” Olympics just for the experience – that is, is the Olympics for development or for podiums. In 2014, for example, regarding the recently named team for Sochi, Grover said, “The Olympics is the pinnacle of the performance or competition pipeline.”

    Development occurs at many lower levels, Grover noted (Europa Cups, World Juniors, etc.), but “It does not and should not come at the World Championships or the Olympics. … It’s not a development trip; it’s a competition trip at the very highest level.”

    Similarly, earlier this year Grover explained that junior skier Katharine Ogden (a.k.a. “KO”) was not selected for Lahti on the grounds that “athletes should first aim to be successful at – in the age group that they’re competing against. So for KO, that means World Juniors, and being successful at World Juniors.”

    The third prong of discretionary selection for the current Olympic team, “Indication of medal potential in future Olympic or World Championship competition (such as international age group results and rankings) that would be materially enhanced by selection to the team,” may be said to go against these principles.

    But Grover explained that this “future medal potential” path to discretionary selection is rarely if ever used, even when the Olympic team is selected with an eye to current podium potential.

    “We haven’t used it that way,” Grover said. “Obviously the language is there if we were to choose to use it, but in the past we really have not used it that way, and I don’t anticipate using it going forward into this season. … We want … the fastest skiers on the start line in Korea, and those are the ones that we’re gonna be selecting.”

    Different standards for men and women?

    An additional issue in selecting American skiers is that the women are currently, proportionally speaking, faster than the men – that is, the U.S. women, as a team, have recently tended to achieve better results within the women’s World Cup field than the U.S. men do within the men’s World Cup field.

    It is also true that the international men’s field is more top-heavy than the women’s field, across the course of a single World Cup season, meaning that a greater number of World Cup points is needed to crack the top-50 of a discipline ranking.

    (As of the end of the 2016/2017 World Cup season, 50th place in the men’s distance ranking had 66 points; in the women’s distance rankings, 42 points. For sprinting, it was 28 points to make the top-50 on the men’s side, 22 points for women.)

    Perhaps for these reasons, multiple athletes have confirmed to FasterSkier the substance of a suggestion made at a recent athletes’ meeting at the season-ending 2017 U.S. Distance Nationals in Fairbanks: That the selection criteria should be made more challenging on the women’s side, such as by making the objective cutoff there be a top-40 or even a top-30 discipline ranking rather than top-50.

    “I understand where the person who asked that question, where kind of they’re coming from” Grover told FasterSkier, when asked generally if there had ever been discussions about making the objective criteria different between the genders.

    “They’re referring to the fact that there’s greater depth on the men’s side … there’s a lot more men ranked – that have FIS points that are say 30 and under, versus the number of women perhaps that have 30 FIS points or less.”

    (This is a correct statement about the distribution of FIS points, at least in distance rankings.)

    But, Grover continued, “top results are top results at the end of the day. And there’s three medals that are handed out, for men and for women. And if that means that selecting an athlete who ends up to be, say, 46th in the top, in terms of the top 50 in a discipline list by the middle of January, that athlete might be closer to contributing to a top result or a podium than one of the guys.”

    For this reason, Grover questioned the aims served by this suggestion. “Is the end objective for that person just to provide more opportunities for men to come over and be 50th place at the Olympics? Because if that is the objective, then I don’t think it’s worthwhile pursuing. What we’re trying to do is have top results … to really compete. And that means selecting those athletes who are the closest to the top placings.”

    Unfair advantages to Tour de Ski starters?

    Another concern raised about the criteria is the argument that, as Freeman wrote in his recent opinion piece on FasterSkier, “The Tour de Ski ended up being a points feeding frenzy,” given the attrition-ravaged field that saw only 31 women finish the seven-stage Tour. (There were 40 finishers on the men’s side.)

    Freeman also argued that it was illogical to use a non-championship event for selection to the USST, “whose primary stated goal is to win medals. … Is racing up a hill at the end of a nine-day tour really a fair way to determine who goes to the World Championships or Olympics?”

    Grover’s stance is that it’s more difficult to finish in the overall top 30 of the Tour de Ski than reach the podium at U.S. nationals. Due to recent changes in FIS rules that will allow more pure sprinters to start the 2017/2018 Tour de Ski without counting against their nation’s start quota, he foresees a greater number of finishers in this year’s Tour.

    “I would anticipate that this year you’re going to have much better numbers of athletes that are actually finishing the Tour,” he said, “and so the standard there won’t be quite as ‘easy,’ quote-unquote. It’s not necessarily easy, but won’t be as easy as it was this last year.

    “Is it easier to score points, even at the end of a Tour de Ski if you can survive it, versus to have a podium at U.S. nationals, given that a bunch of the top USA athletes are doing the Tour de Ski at the same time?” he asked. “I would still guess that it’s easier to reach the podium at U.S. nationals, and thereby that would make it an easier path for an athlete to make the Olympic team.”

    FasterSkier has separately addressed Freeman’s argument regarding the “access problem” of obtaining Tour or World Cup start rights in the first place. FasterSkier has also considered the approach used by the US Biathlon Association, which makes it “not a foregone conclusion” that athletes receiving World Cup starts will necessarily make the Olympics.

    The bottom line

    “At the end of the day,” Grover concluded, “I would anticipate that we’ll be able to bring the athletes that we want to bring so that we can fill every potential start spot at the Games. … We will fill every start at the Olympics.”

    Grover and U.S. Ski & Snowboard intend to do so by making sure “that we capture any athlete who can reach the podium, any athlete who can reach the top five, the top 10, the top 15. That’s the absolute critical element, is that we give ourselves the best chance to be successful.”

    And Grover believes that the current criteria are “the best way to do that.” We “were trying to create a more equitable, more concrete, easier to understand and visualize path for domestic athletes, racing SuperTour, to qualify for a major championship team,” Grover said. The result, he concludes, is “better than ever, more fair than ever. … So, you know, I feel good, I feel really good about the criteria, I feel like we got the most fair criteria for the Olympic selection that we’ve had, and I’m excited to see how it turns out.”

    — Jason Albert and Chelsea Little contributed reporting

    ***

    Stay tuned for more on this topic, including an article on American athletes’ reaction to the Olympic selection criteria and how they feel the exercise of discretion has affected them and U.S. skiing. And be sure to read about the role of discretion across other U.S. Ski & Snowboard sports, particularly biathlon.

  • The Cross-Country Olympic Criteria, in the Context of U.S. Winter Sports

    The Cross-Country Olympic Criteria, in the Context of U.S. Winter Sports

    U.S. nordic skiers Scott Patterson (1), Ben Lustgarten (14), Kris Freeman (9), Brian Gregg (behind Patterson) racing head to head in the 30 k classic mass start at 2017 U.S. nationals at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. Lustgarten went on to win for his first national title.

    Note: This is part of a series on the 2018 Winter Olympic selection criteria for the U.S. cross-country ski team. Read this parallel article for specifics on the criteria itself.

    ***

    When considering the criteria recently posted by the U.S. Ski Team regarding how cross-country athletes will be selected for the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, it’s useful to know some context about how selections are made in other sports.

    As described in a parallel piece, the criteria have three main components: a World Cup qualification process via top-eight results on one of five different days between November and mid-January, or else a top-50 World Cup ranking; discretion; and standings from the U.S. SuperTour and national championships.

    Some aspects of these criteria are consistent with common practices in other disciplines under the umbrella of U.S. Ski & Snowboard and across other winter national governing bodies.

    Others are not.

    For instance: of all of the U.S. Ski & Snowboard disciplines, the cross-country criteria were the last to be approved. The final signature of approval came on May 30, 2017, and the document was not posted online until June; on the other end of the spectrum, the freestyle skiing criteria got its last signature in June 2016.

    Secondly, though criteria for many of the ski and snowboard disciplines include discretionary clauses, few are featured as prominently as the discretionary clause is in cross-country skiing. Few individual winter sports use discretion so prominently, with the exception of figure skating (a judged sport).

    But at the same time, the lack of a guaranteed nomination route via domestic racing is not unusual, as several other sports will fill their Olympic rosters based only on international competition results.

    So considering different aspects of the criteria, which are in line with national best practices? Which likely came from cross-country team staff? Which are in line with, and perhaps generated from, U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s overall philosophy?

    Who knows what, when

    Most straightforward issue to address is the timing of Olympic criteria approval. Criteria were released later for cross-country skiing than for any other U.S. Ski & Snowboard discipline; in addition, sports independent of U.S. Ski & Snowboard: biathlon, bobsled, skeleton, luge, short- and long-track speedskating, hockey and curling had already published their criteria.

    Figure skating criteria could not be found on the U.S. federation’s website, but the official selection procedure had already been described on the NBC Olympic site.

    That means that cross-country skiing was the very last set of 2018 U.S. Winter Olympic team criteria to be published, a deviation from past Games. The 2014 Olympic criteria for cross-country skiing were signed in June 2012, more than a year and a half before those Olympics.

    “At best we would like the selection procedures to be made available to the athletes a year before the evaluative events that may be used to select [the Olympic team,” said Rachel Isaacs, a sport performance bid liaison for the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) who previously served as the organization’s team leader for sport performance.

    With the first World Cup races less than six months away at the time the criteria were posted, that didn’t happen this year.

    Isaacs said that the time frame is not a requirement, and that the organization offers flexibility. That means that there are no strict consequences for publishing criteria late.

    “We do realize that that can’t always be the case,” she said of the year-in-advance standard. “The informal guideline would be to make sure that the athletes know if a World Cup season is going to be used, certainly prior to the World Cup season starting … But we wouldn’t mandate that the first event of a World Cup season in 2017 — it wouldn’t be a year prior to that. We understand that they are still developing their selection criteria and qualification process.”

    In this case, the 2018 Olympic criteria for cross-country skiing are more or less identical to those used for 2017 World Championships, although U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover said that there had been discussions about whether to implement any changes.

    Isaacs also didn’t see a problem with the fact that the qualification period for the World Cups themselves was long past by the time the criteria were posted.

    “I think athletes know that the World Cup season is always part of, and I do want to emphasize a part of, the selection process,” Isaacs said, indicating that athletes should have known that qualifying for the early-season competitions would be important.

    Because of the Olympic criteria’s similarity to 2017 World Championships selection criteria, athletes might have been able to guess how things would shake out.

    As to the question of whether athletes might have planned their previous season differently if they knew the criteria further in advance — or built a multi-year training plan differently, or a single-season training plan that accounted for having to peak multiple times – Isaacs was dismissive.

    “Any athlete knows what she or he needs to do to best prepare themselves along with their coaching staff or whatnot,” she said, adding that responsibility for preparing did not rest with national team staff who develop selection criteria.

    Discretion in the main criteria

    The most controversial part of the criteria is likely to be the placement of discretion before a domestic qualifying mechanism.

    (Discretion also comes heavily into play at the World Cup level, discussed later in this piece.)

    After World Cup results and standings, the next way to qualify for the Olympics is via discretion: “If team positions remain open after the application of criteria 1 above, the USSA Cross Country Head Coach may use discretion (See Section 2 below) to determine team nominations.”

    (Note: USSA refers to the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association, which until June 19 was the name of what is now simply U.S. Ski & Snowboard, for which there is no official abbreviation.)

    The reason for that, according to U.S. Ski & Snowboard Executive Vice President for Athletics Luke Bodensteiner, would be to prevent a situation where the team roster had already been filled via objective criteria and coaches could not nominate a key athlete who had somehow not met the criteria.

    “We’ve got some interesting factors in cross-country, like with the team sprint, where arguably a different kind of athlete is best — and there aren’t that many team sprints to evaluate from,” he said in an interview. “The coaches have the ability to pick that roster in ways that don’t pin them down to results that may not be reflective of true performance.”

    The criteria specify that athletes may be selected via discretion if they have indicated the potential for Olympic success via results in the 2016/2017 or 2017/2018 season, have a recent positive trend towards success that would suggest strong performances at the Games, or show potential for medals in future Olympics in such a way that participating in this Olympics would be beneficial for development.

    That is consistent throughout U.S. Ski & Snowboard: the language describing what discretion should be based on is identical or nearly identical to wording in criteria documents from alpine skiing, snowboarding, nordic combined, freestyle skiing, and ski jumping.

    But for cross-country skiing, discretion is listed as the second criterion just as it was for the 2014 Olympics and 2015 and 2017 World Championships.

    That is a departure from other U.S. Ski & Snowboard disciplines.

    In alpine skiing, discretion is only listed as the last possible mechanism in a cascade of criteria – it is only to be used if four previous objective criteria, all based on World Cup results, fail to fill the team.

    And in snowboarding and freestyle skiing criteria, discretion is not even listed together with the objective mechanisms and is rather only described in a separate section of the criteria. There, too, discretion is to be used only if the objective criteria fail to fill the team roster.

    In nordic combined and jumping, discretion is listed as the second criterion – like cross-country skiing (which lists its two World Cup qualifying mechanisms together under one heading) – but the criteria also state, “There is no requirement that section 1.3.2 [discretion] be used for nominating athletes to the team.” That sentence appears nowhere in the cross-country criteria.

    Bodensteiner suggested that the different disciplines could not be directly compared, because alpine skiing, for example, has no Continental Cup-based qualifying mechanism.

    “Rather than looking at alpine having discretion as their last piece, I think the primary difference between alpine and cross-country is there’s not that third tier of domestic selection in alpine,” Bodensteiner said. “There’s more of a push to say, if we don’t have athletes that gain selection through the World Cup, then we probably don’t fill our quota.”

    Outside of skiing, some sports, like figure skating and hockey, use discretion exclusively with no objective criteria. Bobsled uses discretion widely; while there are objective standards for bobsled pilots, the pushers are assembled into teams based on discretion after having met minimum requirements through a long selection process.

    There are yet other sports which use objective criteria for most of the team selection, but deal with the possibility of a key athlete failing to meet the objective criteria for some reason by guaranteeing coaches the ability to use some discretion.

    In biathlon (as discussed on this site yesterday), one discretionary selection is hard-coded into the process – for the last athlete for the five-man or five-woman roster, meaning that the first four spots are already automatically filled by athletes best meeting the objective criteria.

    For bobsled pilots and for skeleton, too, the criteria state that if the U.S. receives more than one quota spot at the Olympics, the last team selection will be made via discretion. (If the U.S. gets only one sled, it will be selected based on objective criteria.)

    Such a system of leaving the last spot to discretion would seem to fulfill Bodensteiner’s idea of picking “an athlete” via discretion in case their suitability for a team event was not captured by individual results, for instance.

    Yet there is no cap in the cross-country skiing criteria for how many athletes could be selected via discretion. In the recent past, zero, one or two athletes per Championships have been picked using discretion.

    Bodensteiner seemed wary of using discretion in general, saying that “I know from experience that using discretion — particularly in the Olympics — is painful and it’s really not worth the challenges that it can create… unless this is something that really supports a medal objective.”

    But he stood behind the prominent inclusion of discretion in the cross-country criteria, even though it seemed anomalous among the other disciplines he oversees.

    “We put it in after the World Cup selection just to have that ability to make that assessment there, pick an athlete through discretion if we need to and then use the third criteria to fill up the team if we elect to fill up the team,” Bodensteiner said.

    And when pressed on whether that meant that only a small number of athletes would gain Olympic starts via discretion, Bodensteiner demurred.

    “We always want to leave the door open because you can never really anticipate everything that happens,” he said.

    International vs. domestic results

    Another aspect of the criteria sure to raise discussion is that it would be possible to fill the Olympic roster without ever dipping into the field of athletes who compete primarily within North America.

    The first two criteria for Olympic qualification come from the World Cup. First priority will be given to athletes who notch top-eight results in the period between Nov. 23, 2017 and Jan. 15, 2018 in classic sprints (in Ruka, Finland; Lillehammer, Norway; and the Tour de Ski stage in Oberstdorf, Germany), the 10/15 k freestyle individual start in Davos, Switzerland, or the 15/30 k skiathlon in Lillehammer.

    Second priority goes to athletes ranked in the top 50 of the distance or sprint World Cup standings at the end of this selection period.

    Add a discretionary selection or two, and particularly on the women’s side, it’s easy to imagine a team that completely bypasses athletes racing on the SuperTour and at U.S. nationals.

    There were just two domestic skiers nominated to the women’s World Championships teams in each of 2015 and 2017 (Caitlin Gregg both years, and Rosie Brennan in 2015 and Chelsea Holmes in 2017; between the three of them are one World Championships medal and two top-20 finishes).

    And the whole women’s team to the 2014 Olympics was picked based on World Cup results.

    International-based qualification priorities may rankle athletes who have not been offered World Cup starts and whose only opportunity to qualify for the Olympics is through domestic results. But in the wider world of U.S. sports, it isn’t all that unusual.

    As noted above, U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s Olympic selection criteria for alpine skiing completely bypass any domestic competitions, relying instead solely on international results.

    Ski jumping and nordic combined offer Olympic spots to the winners of Olympic trials (and only the winners, not also runners-up). But that is their first criteria, and all the rest are based on international results at the World Cup or Continental Cup level. Thus, if a World Cup athlete wins trials, the team will end up filled only with athletes competing internationally (barring the use of the discretionary clause). Domestic athletes have no direct opportunity to fill spots at the bottom of the roster.

    Outside of skiing, luge also bases all of its selections on the results of international-level competitions. Bobsled makes all of its objective selections based on international results, with the last spot being filled by discretion.

    Providing a domestic qualification route is not mandated or even suggested by the U.S. Olympic Committee.

    “There is definitely a range [of selection strategies] from the national governing bodies,” said Isaacs. “The sports are the experts. They tell us how they think they will pick the best team and we work with them to ensure a fair process.”

    Who gets to the World Cup?

    The key to making good team selections based on international results, it seems, is to get all of the best athletes to those international competitions. With World Cup results being the only way for cross-country skiers to absolutely guarantee a trip to the 2018 Olympics, who gets to even go to the World Cup may become critically important.

    And while U.S. Ski and Snowboard wishes to generally avoid using discretion to pick an Olympic team, that masks a potentially essential role discretion might play: in determining who races on the World Cup and can shoot for those top-eight finishes or top-50 rankings.

    At the time that the Olympic selection criteria were published, the criteria for how to qualify for the 2017/2018 World Cup and Tour de Ski were already posted.

    For Period 1, the only athletes guaranteed starts are those with a top-50 overall World Cup ranking from the previous season (Jessie Diggins, Sadie Bjornsen, Liz Stephen, Sophie Caldwell, Kikkan Randall, Ida Sargent, and Simi Hamilton), a top-30 Sprint Cup or Distance Cup ranking (Andy Newell), and the 2016/2017 SuperTour champions (Scott Patterson and Chelsea Holmes).

    And the only athletes guaranteed Tour de Ski starts by the U.S. Ski Team are those who are sitting in the top 30 of the World Cup overall or distance rankings at the conclusion of Period 1. The top 20 athletes in the Sprint Cup are also now guaranteed spots by FIS, outside of each country’s specific quota.

    That means that in order for any other athlete to qualify via the World Cup mechanism, they would need to be offered World Cup starts via discretion. The World Cup criteria state that “Discretionary selections, if any, may be based on a variety of factors, including competitions conducted outside of the selection period.”

    Bodensteiner stated that he supported the cross-country coaching staff in their ability to make discretionary picks at the World Cup level.

    “We’re using discretion maybe more on a strategic basis,” he said. “With Tour de Ski, there is sensitivity about team size and just our ability to really service the best athletes in that kind of environment. You also have specific considerations in terms of which actual disciplines and techniques are being competed in those different blocks of World Cup… But I also know [Head Coach Chris Grover] is using some of his ability to select athletes into the World Cup to think forward in terms of preparing an athlete over successive years for international success.”

    A top-eight World Cup finish is, obviously, not easy to obtain.

    Nor is a top-50 ranking, although last season Caitlin Patterson, racing Period 1 as the SuperTour winner, came close, ranking 54th on the distance list at Christmas. That wasn’t far from unprecedented: in 2011 Holly Brooks, the previous year’s SuperTour champion, was 20th on the distance list at Christmas. That 2011/2012 season, Diggins won the SuperTour. She went home for Christmas in 2012 ranked 40th on the World Cup distance list.

    (For men, such successes by SuperTour leaders sent to the first period of World Cup racing have been rare.)

    Providing specific athletes with a chance to notch an Olympic-qualifying body of work on the World Cup may or may not go into that decision-making process regarding who gets starts.

    But the question of who heads to the World Cup will likely to come into play, especially on the men’s side.

    While the World Cup criteria state that “USSA policy mandates that team selection criteria shall be principally objective (or performance-based) and that available start rights and team spots will not necessarily be filled,” only three men have objectively qualified to start World Cups in Period 1.

    Grover has already stated that he tentatively plans to send three more men to the World Cup for Period 1 – U.S. Ski Team (USST) members Erik Bjornsen and Paddy Caldwell, along with Noah Hoffman, who was not renominated to the USST this season.

    Those selections are not based on any documented selection criteria. This was also true of the (very successful) World Cup starts by Scott and Caitlin Patterson in PyeongChang, South Korea, last season.

    If one of the planned six men does not end up on the World Cup this fall – due to illness, injury, or some other factors – the USST might invite someone else. But even that is not straightforward.

    “World Cup Period 1 is a little problematic for athletes,” Grover said in an interview earlier this month. “If making the Olympics, for example, is a primary goal, which it is for most of the top senior athletes, it’s a little problematic for an athlete to decide whether they want to attempt to do that domestically, or on the World Cup. Obviously it’s easier to do that domestically. Not that it’s easy, but that it’s easier, for sure, to qualify at home versus to qualify on the World Cup. So if, for example, one of those six men weren’t able to make it, we might look at inviting another athlete, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we get turned down on that particular offer.”

    In terms of who such an offer might go out to, there are no written, clear-cut standards for what an athlete must do to receive one. It’s discretion, or nothing.

    “It’s pretty challenging to figure out, after a dryland training season, who is the next best athlete,” Grover said. “Everybody has just been training on their own domestically, in their clubs. And according to everybody, the training is going very well – but it’s quite hard at that point to reach down and say, OK, this is going to be the next best person to bring up.”

    In Conclusion

    Both U.S. Ski & Snowboard and the USOC document that fairness and openness are important in the selection process.

    “One of the keys that we have is that there’s always basically an objective pathway to the Olympics,” Bodensteiner said.

    “If it wasn’t fair – if it was picking somebody’s best friend or cousin – we would tell them that these would not be approved and they need to go back and redo the draft,” Isaacs said of the potential situation of a national federation writing criteria which didn’t meet USOC standards.

    But fairness and an open path to the Olympics are in the eye of the beholder.

    “Sometimes that might be really limited,” Bodensteiner said of the ability to qualify outright for an event. “In cross-country, sometimes it’s pretty limited. But there’s still the objective opening for an athlete to have that pathway.”

  • The Incrementalist: Scott Patterson Gets USST Nod

    Scott Patterson racing the second stage of the 2016 Ski Tour Canada, a 17.5 k classic mass start in Montreal. (Photo: Flyingpointroad.com/NNF)

    Alaska Pacific University’s (APU) 25-year-old Scott Patterson isn’t easily distracted. His is a busy schedule with a repetitive cycle like something out of the movie “Groundhog Day”. In Patterson’s case, the routine goes something like this: wake, eat, train, eat, work, train, sleep … repeat.

    “My general plan is I try to put in about 25 hours a week,” Patterson said over the phone from his home base in Anchorage. Just so we’re clear, that’s 25 hours per week working as a mechanical engineer. Beyond aspiring to the highest levels of the sport, Patterson has worked for the same engineering firm for five years — two as an intern and three as a part-time employee. He focuses on ensuring oil and gas pipelines are up to spec and corrosion prevention.

    Scott Patterson (r) leads Kris Freeman (c) and David Norris (l) into the ski exchange during the men’s 22.5-kilometer skiathlon at 2017 SuperTour Finals in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Photo: Lance Parrish, Fairbanks)

    If you think a classic-to-skate transition is tough, Patterson has dialed his training-to-work transitions.

    “One of the things I’ve noticed is that I really kind of figured out how to nail down the transition, Patterson said. “I eat my food faster, driving in the car. Just like every single little thing is made to kind of streamline the day. And you’d probably say it’s a little OCD but it’s how I get through it, so it works for me.”

    If you’re Patterson’s work boss, the question is has he clocked quality work time? If you’re Erik Flora, APU’s head coach, the question is has Patterson logged quality training? On average, Patterson said he trains two to two-and-a-half hours in the morning before a noontime arrival at work. He then trains another two to two-and-a-half hour block in the early evening. Amongst domestic skiers, he’s known to log a high volume of training hours.

    Patterson was officially nominated to the U.S. Ski Team (USST) B-team last month. The cyclic pattern of training and work has borne fruit.

    Scott Patterson double poling to the win in the men’s 10 k classic “pre-season” FIS race in November 2016 in West Yellowstone, Mont. (Photo: Ian Harvey/Toko)

    Patterson began this year’s SuperTour distance skiing campaign with a third place in the 15 k skate in West Yellowstone, Mont. Then a week later in an equally loaded domestic field, Patterson won the 15 k skate at the first NorAm of the season at Sovereign Lake in Vernon, British Columbia.

    Primed for his major objective of the year, qualifying for World Championships, Patterson figured one stellar race at U.S. nationals in early January would punch his ticket to Finland. The 15 k skate at nationals didn’t go as planned; he placed 16th (1:25.9 minutes back from the winner). And on a tricky waxing day for the 30 k classic mass start, Patterson finished fourth, about 12 seconds behind third-place skier Kris Freeman.

    “I was definitely pretty bummed out. … I got sick about two days before I jumped into the 15 k,” Patterson said. “It was rough. I was coughing up mucus the whole time and struggling .”

    U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover acknowledged in an interview last month that he wanted to extend Patterson an opportunity to race at the PyeongChang World Cup. His rationale was simple: of the domestic male skiers proving themselves in the early season, Patterson — having not qualified for World Championships — lacked a chance to test himself internationally.

    Patterson made the most of his chances, skiing to two ninth places in PyeongChang, South Korea, and placing 28th in the Holmenkollen 50 k classic mass start in Oslo, Norway.

    Two seasons ago, in 2015/2016, Patterson had 13 individual World Cup starts. His best results were 32nd in the Holmenkollen 50 k classic and the 38th fastest time on the day in the Ski Tour Canada’s 15 k skate pursuit. On the 2015/2016 SuperTour circuit, Patterson was consistent, winning the 15 k classic at 2016 U.S. nationals as well as another 15 k classic, and placing second and third in two 15 k skate races.

    Fast forward to this past season, 2016/2017, and the World Cup starts granted Patterson weren’t exactly a lifeline, but a knock on the door. Having missed out on his goal for the year, Patterson still understood a USST nomination wasn’t an outlandish expectation.

    “I was kind of thinking of it especially after Holmenkollen,” Patterson said. “Going into the year, I was hoping I could ski well enough, but after Holmenkollen, I was realizing that I had scored points a couple times. That is what Grover and I had talked about. If I can get a few more in Canada [at World Cup Finals] and show it at the end of the season that I am better than the domestic field, and then I figured I put my best foot forward with sickness and everything, that was the best I could do and hope for a nomination there.”

    With a path still open, Patterson finished the Quebec City World Cup Finals 41st overall, with the 30th-best time of day in the 15 k freestyle pursuit.

    APU’s Scott Patterson (1) on the podium with Team Gregg’s Brian Gregg (2) and APU’s Eric Packer (3) after the men’s 50 k freestyle mass start at 2017 U.S. Distance Nationals in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Photo: Max Kaufman)

    Patterson threw down an exclamation point to end the season at SuperTour Finals and U.S. Distance Nationals in Fairbanks, Alaska. He won both distance races — a 30 k skiathlon and 50 k skate mass start. When asked if he expected to dominate the domestic field in Fairbanks, Patterson was quick to answer.

    “Not at all,” Patterson said. “That 30th place in Quebec, I kind of felt like I was faking it for the whole race. I wasn’t quite sure where my fitness was. I did a lot of leading got the pack, it was myself and Florian Notz from Germany kind of leading most of the race and David [Norris] and Paddy [Caldwell] both pulled some pretty good results out of our pack. Leading that pack, I was never like I am feeling great. I was kind of like, ‘Well, I am leading, I guess I should try hard and make it look like I am feeling good.’ I had no idea going into Fairbanks. Even that first race, the classic [leg] felt all right. I wasn’t sure I could handle the pace very well [and] I wasn’t sure that I could really push it further. But in the skate [leg], things clicked perfectly.”

    Patterson was informed of his USST nomination in April. For now, he said, not much will change.

    “It means that I am going to a few more camps,” Patterson said. “I have to leave Alaska a few more times. Over the years, I have figured out what works for me. Flora has learned what works for me, too. We are proceeding along the same path regardless of the nomination. The nomination just gives a few extra resources. All that is a good thing.”

    Patterson also said he intends to race a full World Cup schedule, but currently his race schedule remains a work in progress. As far as early season objectives, Patterson is eyeing the World Cup 30 k skiathlon on Dec. 3 in Lillehammer, Norway.

    “And then I’d like to overall, definitely be in the top 50 … make those Olympic criteria for the World Cup,” he said.

  • From D to B: Paddy Caldwell’s Natural Progression

    From D to B: Paddy Caldwell’s Natural Progression

    American Paddy Caldwell (SMS/USST) on his way to qualifying 20th in the men’s classic sprint at U23 World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. He went on to place fourth in his quarterfinal and 18th overall for his best sprint result at U23 Worlds. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)

    Back in December of 2010, 15-year-old Patrick “Paddy” Caldwell was racing amongst grown men. He finished 17th in an International Ski Federation (FIS) classic sprint held in Craftsbury, Vt. Today, at 23, Caldwell skis for the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) Elite Team and is a newly minted U.S. Ski Team (USST) B-team member. To put things in perspective, during that 2010 Craftsbury sprint, Patrick O’Brien, Caldwell’s current primary coach and head of the SMS Elite Team, was nearly 23 at the time and placed fourth in the race.

    The USST has a well-established development pipeline. Here’s the basic philosophy: have skiers find success at each rung of the ladder before exposing themselves to deeper competition as they progress towards more rarefied races. From local and regional events to junior nationals, OPA Cup trips, NCAAs, senior nationals, to Junior and U23 World Championships, Caldwell has paid his dues, notched benchmark performances, and maintained the grind to find success at each incremental step.

    It wouldn’t be a stretch to say Caldwell embodies the spirit of a USST development model where skiers can remain in school, meet conflicting demands, and with a big dose of hard work and a smidge of luck, make progress as a skier.

    From D to B

    Initially, Caldwell was named to the U.S. D (development) team for the 2014/2015 season. He maintained D-team status until this spring when he was officially nominated to the B-team. (His cousin, Sophie Caldwell, remains on the A-team.)

    Paddy Caldwell (U.S. Ski Team D-team/SMS) racing to 46th overall and 25th for time of day in the men’s 15 k freestyle pursuit at World Cup Finals in Quebec City. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)

    In a phone interview two weeks ago, the Lyme, N.H., native explained that making the jump to the B-team wasn’t an explicit goal.

    “I don’t think I officially wrote that down in a goal section or something like that in the beginning of the year,” Caldwell said while finishing up spring classes at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. “By looking at it as sort of progression, it definitely has been a goal of mine. My goal was to be a competitive World Cup skier and that is a step that needs to happen.”

    Caldwell’s 2016/2017 objectives highlighted U23 World Championships at Soldier Hollow outside Midway, Utah.

    “I was really focused trying to peak for those events and put up the best results that I could in that field,” he explained.

    At U23 worlds, he earned two top 10s, placing ninth in both the 15-kilometer skate and 30 k skiathlon.

    Caldwell was granted starts for the World Cup’s closing weekend, a three-race mini tour in Quebec City. He placed 46th overall at World Cup Finals, but turned heads with a 25th-best time of day on the final-stage 15 k skate pursuit.

    In the near term, despite his promotion, it’s life as usual for Caldwell. There’s school to finish up and training hours to log. (Caldwell returned recently to Hanover from the USST’s first on-snow camp of the year in Bend, Ore.)

    “I think that is very much in the air,” Caldwell said when asked if he’d be racing a full World Cup schedule. “And it depends on a lot of things — foremost if I am skiing well. And those are plans I am still working out. I don’t know exactly what opportunities will be there. Those are things, discussions we’ll have later in the year.”

    Caldwell will remain under the guidance of O’Brien at SMS. And from a funding standpoint, Caldwell said he won’t see a bump in USST funding.

    “Not in terms of support from the U.S. Ski Team,” Caldwell said when asked if his B-team status came with greater financial support. “The last few years I have been really fortunate to be successful fundraising through the local community here in the Upper Valley in New Hampshire and Vermont. So I am really thankful for the support from local people in both the ski community and outside the skiing community. I think absolutely if I end up racing in Europe more, it will be a bigger expense, and those are things I am not completely dialed on yet.”

    Caldwell is officially a senior at Dartmouth, having earned 32 of 35 credits for his bachelor’s degree while studying geography and economics. In 2015, he won the 10 k skate at NCAA Skiing Championships.

    Paddy Caldwell (13) chases Kris Freeman in the 50 k freestyle mass start at 2015 U.S. Distance Nationals in Sun Valley, Idaho.

    “I feel really fortunate to go to Dartmouth College and be able to balance skiing and education,” he said. “One of my goals, I’ve always been aimed at finishing an undergraduate degree in a timely manner. I’m really thankful to be at Dartmouth where there is a flexible quarter system. I’ve taken off most fall terms since I have started at Dartmouth as well as winter and been able to go in the spring and summer fairly consistently.”

    As a discretionary pick for the USST, Caldwell has jumped a significant pipeline-hurdle. Domestically, his peers have been skiing in a tight pack — on this year’s SuperTour, the men’s side had several different standout performances.

    “I think there is an aspect of added pressure,” Caldwell said of his new B-team status. “But I also think that that is an inherent part of our sport. At the end of the day, it comes down to racing fast. That pressure is going to be there no matter what team you are on. It is something that I try not to focus on and just see it as an opportunity to keep growing as a skier and not as a target on my back, because I think it is easy to see it that way. Absolutely there will be some pressure from that, it’s also not something that I am unfamiliar with. I think it’s part of the sport. You have to, at least for me, just focus on trying to achieve results for my own growth as a skier and not focusing on the stuff going on around me.”

  • U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing Names 2017/2018 National Team

    U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing Names 2017/2018 National Team

    Three-time Paralympic medalist Oksana Masters won her third consecutive overall women’s sitting IPC World Cup globe in cross-country. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics)

    (Press release)

    COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Thirteen athletes, including seven U.S. Paralympians in Nordic skiing, were named to the 2017-2018 U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing National Team on June 1 by U.S. Paralympics, a division of the United States Olympic Committee.

    “The level to which our Nordic skiers have performed already is very inspiring,” said Paralympic Nordic Skiing head coach Eileen Carey. “Our veteran athletes have continued to improve as we approach the Paralympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018, and the addition of new members on our national and development teams is promising for the future.”

    Three-time Paralympic medalist Oksana Masters (Louisville, Kentucky) highlights the team after claiming four world championships titles during the 2016-17 season, including cross-country crowns in sprint, middle and long distances, as well as the sprint biathlon title. She capped off the season by securing her third consecutive overall women’s sitting world cup globe in cross-country at the World Para Nordic Skiing World Cup Finals in Sapporo, Japan. Additionally, Masters finished third in the world cup overall rankings in biathlon.

    Kendall Gretsch (Chicago, Illinois), Ruslan Reiter (Manchester, Maine) and Daniel Romanchuk (Mount Airy, Maryland) all make the national and development teams for the first time.

    Four military veterans are featured on the roster, including Dan Cnossen (Topeka, Kansas/Navy), Sean Halsted (Rathdrum, Idaho/ Air Force), Bryan Price (Belton, Missouri/Army) and Andy Soule (Pearland, Texas/Army).

    Team USA had a record-breaking 2016-17 season that finished with 33 world cup medals by five athletes, setting a record for the Nordic skiing team. Of the 33 world cup medals acquired, 12 were in biathlon. All A- and B-Team athletes reached the podium this past season, including first-time medals for Jake Adicoff (Sun Valley, Idaho) and guide Sawyer Kesselheim (Bozeman, Montana), as well as Aaron Pike (Park Rapids, Minnesota) at the PyeongChang Test Event.

    2017-18 U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing National Teams

    *Denotes U.S. Paralympian in Nordic skiing

    # Denotes U.S. Military veterans

    A Team

    • Jake Adicoff (Sun Valley, Idaho) – visually impaired skier*
    • Dan Cnossen (Topeka, Kansas/Navy) – sit skier*#
    • Sawyer Kesselheim (Bozeman, Montana) – guide
    • Oksana Masters (Louisville, Kentucky) – sit skier*

    B Team

    • Aaron Pike (Park Rapids, Minnesota) – sit skier*
    • Andy Soule (Pearland, Texas/Army) – sit skier*#

    C Team

    • Kendall Gretsch (Chicago, Illinois) – sit skier

    Development Team

    • Sean Halsted (Rathdrum, Idaho/Air Force) – sit skier*#
    • Bryan Price (Belton, Missouri/Army) – sit skier*#
    • Ruslan Reiter (Manchester, Maine) – standing skier
    • Daniel Romanchuk (Mount Airy, Maryland) – sit skier
    • Joy Rondeau (Granby, Colorado) – sit skier
    • Mia Zutter (Sun Prairie, Wisconsin) – visually impaired skier
  • CCC on Team Selections and ‘Moving Ahead’ with Half the Budget of Sochi

    CCC on Team Selections and ‘Moving Ahead’ with Half the Budget of Sochi

    The Canadian men’s relay after placing third for Canada’s best World Cup result in the men’s 4 x 7.5 k relay, with (from left to right), Lenny Valjas, Alex Harvey, Knute Johnsgaard, and Devon Kershaw. (Photo: Salomon/NordicFocus)

    What a year for Cross Country Canada (CCC). For the first time in history, its men’s team stood on a World Cup relay podium. Its top skier brought home his first World Championships gold and its women’s team pulled off its fourth-best world champs relay result on record.

    With the release of Canada’s 2017/2018 national-team nominations earlier this month, FasterSkier caught up with CCC’s High Performance Director Thomas Holland and the World Cup co-coach Ivan Babikov to discuss the program moving forward. 

    What’s changed since last year? Not much. With a strong season behind them, an Olympic season ahead and a solid coach and tech crew on board, Holland supported a sense of continuity for the upcoming season.

    “We’re not changing anything this year. We’re just making little improvements, which is a great thing,” Holland said on the phone on May 23. “We’ve got stable coaching, stable technical team …. We’re just adding one more camp. We used to always do four, with cutbacks we went to three, so now we’re stepping it back up to four.”

    Almost all of the 14 athletes named to the senior team are returnees, but two made the jump from the World Cup B-team to the A-team: Knute Johnsgaard and Jess Cockney. With the advance, both Cockney and Johnsgaard will join A-team veterans Alex Harvey, Len Valjas and Devon Kershaw.

    Canadian teammates, coaches and support team celebrate Alex Harvey’s win in the men’s 50 k freestyle mass start at the 2017 Nordic World Championships in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)

    Babikov, a former World Cup skier who transitioned to coaching last year, works with team physiologist Jessica Kryski to write training plans for everyone but Harvey on the men’s World Cup team (despite Kershaw being based in Norway).

    For the second-straight year, Babikov is teaming up with Louis Bouchard, Harvey’s personal coach and head coach of the Pierre-Harvey Training Centre (CNEPH), who coaches U25 Team member Cendrine Browne as well. As World Cup co-coaches, Bouchard and Babikov are able to divide the workload and travel required throughout the year, and specifically, five months abroad.

    “It’s hard to be on the World Cup circuit all the time for staff,” Babikov said on the phone. “[Louis and I] both have families, so it’s worked out well when we’re subbing for each other once in awhile so athletes have a national-team coach with them all the time. We have a good mix with his experience and my experience on the other side as an athlete. I think I’ve learned from him and it’s been great.”

    While the World Cup A-team remains all-male, three women were nominated to the B-team: Emily Nishikawa, Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt, and Dahria Beatty of the Alpine Insurance Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA). These women will work with Chris Jeffries, head coach of the AWCA, who plans to travel with the team on certain trips to Europe as well. 

    Tuesday, May 30, marked the last day of the team’s first official camp of the season in Mont-Tremblant, Québec, which started May 21 and included the entire national team minus Kershaw.

    According to Babikov, Kershaw would be at the second men’s World Cup team camp in Park City, Utah, from June 26-July 11. A month later, those six men (including B-team member Graeme Killick) will head to Livigno, Italy, for their third camp Aug. 16-Sept. 3, while the women’s team and Jeffries head to New Zealand for an on-snow camp.

    For the fourth and final camp, both the men’s and women’s World Cup teams, along with the Canadian U25 Team, which includes Julien Locke (Black Jack), Browne (CNEPH), Katherine Stewart-Jones (NTDC Thunder Bay), Maya MacIsaac-Jones (Rocky Mountain Racers), and the senior team’s only newcomer Gareth Williams (Telemark), will return to Park City for a dryland camp Oct. 5-24. An all-encompassing Alignment camp is scheduled for early July in Thunder Bay, Ontario, but due to other camps happening simultaneously, the World Cup team members will not be attending, Babikov said.

    Heading into the upcoming World Cup season, Harvey remains Canada’s lone athlete in the Red Group (top 15 in sprint or distance World Ranking list) and is accordingly the only one receiving full funding for training camps. According to Holland, the six men that form the World Cup training group (World Cup A-team plus Killick) are receiving funding from Own The Podium (OTP). He reiterated that OTP allocates funds based on medal potential. 

    “They’re funding the medallist people, the potential people,” he said. “Primarily, that’s Alex Harvey. We did get a medal in the relay last year on the World Cup, part of that group [Harvey, Kershaw, Johnsgaard, and Valjas] is included as well. Len Valjas had a medal on the World Cup too, [in the team sprint] with Alex … and additionally, we want a training group. They support that idea of having a good training group here around Alex. That adds up to six men.

    “After that, it doesn’t change much from last year,” he continued. “There’s not a lot of money outside of that [Own the Podium support] window. There’s support on the World Cup, etc., but your question was has it changed. … We don’t have more money, we have actually less money.”

    Compared to past Olympics, CCC’s budget this year is about half of what it was for the 2014 Sochi Olympics and “a lot less than what we had in Vancouver,” Holland said.

    “It’s a tight budget,” he added. “I’m not going to sit here and whine about money because we also had a tight budget last year. We’ve had cuts for three years leading into last year, and still — small team, small budget — we did pretty good. Our attitude is that we have a little bit more money this year we’re getting from Own The Podium and we’re doing an additional camp for the men. … We’re not changing a lot, except adding a camp and having good preparation. There’s less money, but we’re going to get the job done.”

    From his viewpoint, ongoing annual budget cuts have especially hurt development programs with a “lack of money to really invest in the future,” he said. Yet development remains a priority.

    “You’ve probably heard of the ‘NextGen’ funding. Expect that there’ll be some kind of announcement this year,” Holland said. “We have a plan in place, and we’re making changes, regardless of not having a lot of money, in how we go about that next generation, in testing and development.”

    In order to continue creating opportunities for up-and-coming talent, CCC is now working more closely with clubs, permitting some national-team members to continue their work with club coaches, while simultaneously training with national team. Out of nine World Cup team members, seven are not affiliated with training centres (only Harvey is listed as CNEPH and Beatty is part of the AWCA).

    “We’ve never said everybody has to join a training centre,” Holland said. “I guess what we’ve said is, if you’re on the national ski team, you had to be in a training centre. … That is an option for U25 athletes, but once you’re on the World Cup team, we still have a centralized model. What we’re doing is broadening.”

    Since the training-centre model was instated in 2006, the level of coaching in clubs around the country has improved, Holland explained. That makes it less essential for an athlete to belong to one of three training centres.

    “They provide education and good services in six or eight clubs across the country,” he said. “You’ve got to have a club that has a coach who is well-experienced, can write a good yearly training plan that makes sense. … There’s also requirements to come and be tested here [in Canmore], for those athletes, to participate in national ski team camps, etc. So it’s not just cutting them loose, it’s more of a closely integrated model. Trying to integrate more with the divisions and the clubs. When you do that, you know your dollar goes farther.”

    Bottom line, Holland reiterated that CCC is “moving ahead despite not having the resources.”

    “We ran a World Cup team program with significantly less money, but we’ve been pretty good at finding ways to do things inexpensively [through] collaboration with divisions and clubs,” he said. “We’re also extending some of our national senior team programming to the clubs. That’s a big change.”

    Gareth Williams (Telemark Race Team) on his way to a personal-best 11th in the men’s 20 k skiathlon at 2017 Junior World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com)

    Because of this change, 19-year-old Williams, in his first year on the senior team, will continue to work with his club, Telemark, while also training with the national team.

    Financially, not much separates Canada’s World Cup B-team from its U25 (Under 25) Team.

    “In terms of support, there’s not a lot of difference,” Holland said of the two teams. “I think it’s mainly an age factor. If you’re coming through U25, you’re expected to meet a little higher standard for that B-team. Whereas Gareth Williams, we want to look at that as more talent development. … By the time they hit the B-team, we expect them to be at the World Cup level.”

    In addition to his international results last season (including an 11th place in the skiathlon at Junior World Championships), Williams was also named to the U25 development team because of the value seen in the years ahead of him.

    “Gareth, as a junior, has a few years to develop for us, to put into his program,” Holland said. “We have clearly defined benchmarks of who gets on the team. For Gareth, it’s written in our criteria, top 12 at World Junior championship result.”

    “We have to look to the future and look ahead and develop younger guys and give them a nod and give them recognition so they have something to work for,” Babikov said. 

    A few of the senior team nominations, including Bouffard-Nesbitt, who was injured in a car accident in February, and MacIsaac-Jones, who struggled with a foot injury and had surgery this spring, were based on the “force majeure” clause.

    “Some people who were sick at the wrong times last year,” Holland said. “Health is a big concern … that’s a primary thing that we’ll be on top of this year. Then the other people, I wouldn’t call health. … Athletes get injured, we like to stay with them as long as we see that there’s a good recovery plan and the injuries are taken care of. I won’t say that those injuries aren’t serious. As the hockey players say, it’s day-to-day on the comeback.”

    As for which Canadian skiers you can expect to see starting World Cup Period 1, Holland confirmed there will be at least 11: seven men and four women. The seven men include the five A-team members who “have met the Olympic Winter Games (OWG) Nomination Criteria outlined in CCC’s OWG Internal Nomination Procedures for the Olympics”, according to Holland, with standout results last year (in individual or team events). Killick will also start the season on the World Cup, as will Russell Kennedy as the Continental Cup leader.

    The four women all competed at 2017 World Championships: Stewart-Jones (who is also the Continental Cup leader), Nishikawa, Beatty, and Browne.

    And Nishikawa, Beatty and Killick all met “alternate qualifying criteria” for the Olympics.

    The Olympic team size is a minimum of four men and four women, Holland explained in an email. “The primary criteria takes precedent over the alternate criteria if the maximum number of athletes is established under the primary criteria.” Olympic selections will be finalized in January.

    But in the meantime, CCC will aim to host selection races for Period 1 World Cup starts on Frozen Thunder in Canmore in early November.

    “We don’t have criteria yet, but potentially we would add one or two more male sprinters, and at least another female athlete,” he said of the Period 1 team. “I’m not going to get into specifics, because we still have to write the criteria, but that’s the intent coming out of our spring meetings. You’ve got a pretty good World Cup group there in November/December.

    “I think it’s good to note we’re a little different, the way we do things, than the U.S.,” Holland added. “After we see what happens in December, then we look at our Olympic trials, which will be in Mont-Sainte-Anne in January. That’s how we’ll pick the rest of them.”

    In terms of medal potential at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in February, Holland said the goal is one, for starters.

    “We’re just looking for a medal,” he said. “Always, two is better than one, but our focus … [is on] where our medal chances are. How do we maximize those opportunities for each? Certainly in the relay, we’ll be shooting for the bronze because we’ve done the analysis. For Alex, he’s going to ski in as many events as he can. So it depends on day to day, how he comes into the games. You know he can medal in sprints, he can medal in the 50 k, and everything in between. We’re just optimizing every opportunity.”

  • U.S. Ski Team Nomination Breakdown with Head Coach Grover

    U.S. Ski Team Nomination Breakdown with Head Coach Grover

    Jessie Diggins celebrates after anchoring her team to bronze in the women’s classic team sprint on Feb. 26 at 2017 World Championships in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Dustin Satloff/dustinsatloff.com)

    Shortly after the U.S. Ski Team (USST) formally announced its 2017/2018 cross-country team, FasterSkier reached USST Head Coach Chris Grover on the phone for his comments. Grover is in Bend, Ore., for the team’s traditional on-snow camp.

    “We have nine athletes who made the objective criteria to make the 2018 U.S. Ski Team,” Grover said. “Eight that are on the A-team, all of whom finished in the top 30 in the world in either sprint or distance. And then Katharine Ogden, who as a medalist at the World Junior Championships, made the objective criteria that way.”

    Below are the eight A-team athletes and Ogden, who was renominated to the development “D” team, that met the USST’s objective criteria for team selection.

    A Team

    Men

    • Simi Hamilton (Stratton Mountain School Elite Team)
    • Andy Newell (SMS Elite)

    Women

    • Sadie Bjornsen (Alaska Pacific University)
    • Sophie Caldwell (SMS Elite)
    • Jessie Diggins (SMS Elite)
    • Kikkan Randall (APU)
    • Ida Sargent (Craftsbury Green Racing Project)
    • Liz Stephen (Burke Mountain Academy)

    D Team

    • Katharine Ogden (SMS)

    The USST’s 2018 cross-country nomination criteria, as it relates and is applied to athletes meeting the objective criteria, remains straightforward.

    • Attain top-50 ranking in the 2017 final World Cup Overall ranking list.
    • Attain top-30 ranking in the 2017 final World Cup Sprint or Distance ranking list.
    • Attain top-20 ranking in the 2017 FIS final sprint or distance points list.
    • Attain a top-3 individual finish at the 2017 Junior World Championships or U-23 World Championships.

    Six women finished the season ranked in the top 50 in the World Cup Overall ranking list: Diggins (6th), Bjornsen (16th), Stephen (28th), Caldwell (33rd), Randall (36th), and Sargent (44th). Notably, Diggins, Caldwell, Sargent, Randall, and Bjornsen all ranked in the top 30 for the final World Cup Sprint list, too, and Diggins, Bjornsen and Stephen all finished in the top 30 on the final World Cup Distance list.

    Nineteen-year-old Ogden earned an individual bronze in the 10-kilometer skiathlon at the 2017 Junior Worlds.

    Hamilton and Newell were the two men that met the objective criteria, with Hamilton ranking 30th on the final World Cup Overall list and ninth in the World Cup Sprint standings and Newell 28th on the final World Cup Sprint list.

    The remainder of the USST were discretionary selections. The athletes nominated to the team under the discretionary guidelines are as follows:

    B TEAM

    Men

    • Erik Bjornsen (APU)
    • Paddy Caldwell (SMS Elite)
    • Scott Patterson (APU)

    Women

    • Rosie Brennan (APU)

    D TEAM

    • Ian Torchia (Northern Michigan University)
    • Hannah Halvorsen (Sugar Bowl Academy)
    • Julia Kern (SMS Elite)

    As Grover explained, the USST’s use of discretion should not perceived as murky. Built into the criteria are aspects of fulfilling “individual markers” or competition results, “attitude and commitment”, illness or injury, and the heavily weighted medal potential.

    “We are trying to incorporate athletes who we see are on a path to winning a medal at the highest level, at the Olympic level or at the World Championship level,” Grover said. “Can we make a strong case suggesting that an athlete is on the path to winning the medal? It’s really a difficult call. What are the metrics that we’ll be using: FIS points? Should we be using World Cup points? Should we be using placing at World Juniors or U23s, at NCAAs or SuperTours? There are so many different places where athletes are coming from, so many different places where they are competing. Are they all equal? No, of course not.”

    What often makes discretionary selections difficult is that USST coaches must make assessments about future potential using real-time accomplishments between skiers skiing on the World Cup and those skiers competing at the World Cup and Continental Cup (i.e. SuperTour).

    “You can’t really compare someone who has been competing on the World Cup to someone who has been competing at a Continental Cup level,” Grover explained. “So that’s a real challenge for us. Yes, you can look at FIS points – that’s one thing we have always done, for many years. We’ve taken that athlete and tracked FIS points and age in distance or sprint, whatever that athlete’s strongest discipline is, and we try to see where they are compared to the best skiers in the world, the top 10 athletes in sprint or distance of that sex in the world.”

    Grover knows the FIS point system is not necessarily the best indicator of a U.S. skier’s potential on the World Cup.

    “One of the big challenges that we had using that methodology is that our FIS points as a nation in the US are artificially low,” Grover said.

    Grover believes FIS points are “artificially low” because the U.S. collegiate system has numerous European athletes with low FIS points that compete nearly every weekend on the NCAA circuit or FIS-sanctioned races. As a result, those skiers bring some U.S. skiers’ FIS points down.

    “The same thing happens occasionally when the U.S. Ski Team comes back from Europe,” Grover said. “The U.S. women in particular but also some of the men, and they bring good points and then they are not perhaps at their sharpest at SuperTour Finals, and other athletes are able to improve their points by coming close to or beating these athletes. And so that really drives our points down. We’re just not in the European pool enough to have points that are directly compared to European counterparts. The isolation, the way that points come over and they get passed around, and then they stay isolated over here, it prevents us from our points being representative of where people are compared to their European peers.”

    Athlete by Athlete

    American Erik Bjornsen (33) racing to the 11th-fastest time of day in the men’s 15 k freestyle pursuit at World Cup Finals in Quebec City for his career-best World Cup result. He finished 25th overall. (Photo: Gretchen Powers)

    For the B-team, let’s go athlete by athlete, those nominated and those not, to get a better picture of the whys and hows of USST discretionary selection. (Note that all of the D-team members from last year were renominated and will accordingly be invited to team camps.)

    “About Erik Bjornsen for example, and why was he nominated to the team,” Grover said. “For a number of reasons, but one thing that we see is that he could contribute to a medal in the team sprint, which is an event where he and Simi were fifth at this World Championships. … [Erik is] a guy who is scoring points in sprints in the World Cup occasionally, some points in distance occasionally. He is a hybrid between aerobic and anaerobic capacities, and that lends itself rather well to team sprint. We feel like he has strong potential there.”

    Bjornsen also skied to an impressive 18th (+1:56.7 behind the winner) in the 15 k classic at the 2017 World Championships.

    Patterson is the lone new face nominated to the USST.  “[Scott] just keeps coming up in conversation and he’s a really really interesting skier,” Grover said. “He got sick before U.S. nationals and then was sick for part of U.S. nationals and did not ski particularly well, at least by his standards for national championships in Soldier Hollow.”

    The Anchorage-based skier did not make 2017 World Championships team. Yet at the start of the season, before his illness, he placed third in the 15 k classic in the West Yellowstone SuperTour and won the 15 k skate in the Sovereign Lake NorAm in mid-December.

    “So this past winter, we knew he’s definitely one of those next guys — can we find some opportunities on the World Cup to start him?” Grover said.

    Scott Patterson (APU) racing the anchor leg of the mixed relay at U.S. Distance Nationals in late March in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Photo: Lance Parrish, Fairbanks)

    Last season, Patterson was offered World Cup starts in PyeongChang, South Korea, and Oslo, Norway. In a thin PyeongChang World Cup field, he placed ninth in both the 30 k skiathlon and team sprint. At Holmenkollen in Oslo, Patterson was the top American man, skiing to a 28th in a loaded field. Patterson also qualified for World Cup Finals in Quebec.

    “And the cool thing was everywhere he went, he scored World Cup points as a 25-year-old athlete,” Grover said of Patterson’s potential. “So he’s a young guy who has got a big history of training. He’s training a lot and training really well and he’s also seizing these opportunities and showing in a very difficult men’s field that he’s a young guy who can grab some World Cup points.”

    Patterson went on to dominate U.S. SuperTour Finals and Distance Nationals at the end of the season, winning both the 20 k skiathlon and 50 k freestyle mass start in Fairbanks, Alaska.

    Addressing the question of why Patterson was given starts in PyeongChang and Oslo despite not leading the SuperTour at the time or qualifying for World Championships, Grover said Patterson had nearly fallen through the cracks. They needed to see he how he might perform on the World Cup.

    “Last year it was a challenging year for us as a national-team staff to look back at what was happening domestically and to make much sense of who was skiing well,” Grover said. “For example, in the first four distance races of the year, Yellowstone, Silver Star, and the two at Soldier Hollow, we had four different men win the four distance races. And of the four first sprint races, in those locations, I believe we had four different men win those four sprint races. And different athletes that were winning qualification in some cases versus those that were actually winning the day result for the sprint. So it was a very unclear picture in terms of who was skiing well … especially on the men’s side.”

    Of the skiers winning some of those races outright, Grover knew Patterson was promising, yet he wasn’t able to demonstrate it internationally on the World Cup or at World Championships.

    “So we wanted to find opportunities for Scott,” Grover said.

    Patrick “Paddy” Caldwell, 23, was bumped from the D-team to B-team status.

    “Paddy, he’s been on the D-team for a few years; he’s obviously been on the radar,” Grover said.

    Caldwell placed ninth in both the 15 k freestyle and 30 k skiathlon at the 2017 U23 World Championships. He also qualified for World Cup Finals in Quebec, where he skied the 25th-best time of day in the 15 k freestyle pursuit.

    “Just given where he is in terms of his ability and his age, we felt like it was the right move for him to move from the D-team to the B-team,” Grover said.

    Longtime USST member Noah Hoffman was not renominated to the team, but he has been offered World Cup Period 1 starts.

    “I think Noah would be the first to admit that last season was pretty disappointing, by his standards,” Grover said. “He and I were able to talk about expectations going into the season and Noah had struggled for a few years on the World Cup previous to this past season. …  And so we just talked that we need to make progress towards an eventual medal in the sport. So this year needs to be a step forward and unfortunately it wasn’t. It wasn’t the results Noah wanted to see and unfortunately it wasn’t the result that we were hoping to see from Noah.”

    Hoffman, 27, finished the season ranked 51st on the World Cup Overall list, a single point from the top 50 needed to meet the team’s objective criteria.

    “We hope that Noah gets back in there and starts skiing closer to his potential and starts making progress towards that medal,” Grover added. “Absolutely, the door for sure is never closed for Noah or any athlete.”

    On the women’s side, Rosie Brennan, 28, was renominated to the B-team. This past season on the World Cup, Brennan earned eight top 30s (the benchmark for scoring World Cup points). Her best finish, beyond her 23rd-best time of day in the Tour de Ski’s final climb, was a 22nd in La Clusaz, France, in the 10 k freestyle mass start.

    Rosie Brennan (43) racing to a season-best World Cup result of 22nd in the 10 k freestyle mass start on Dec. 17 in La Clusaz, France. (Photo: Toko/NordicFocus)

    “Rosie is another interesting case,” Grover said. “It’s very hard to differentiate right now between Rosie Brennan, the skiing that she is doing, versus Caitlin Patterson, for example, or Chelsea Holmes. Yes, Rosie has been a little bit stronger in some races, but she has also had some more opportunity. However, we are really looking towards Rosie as a potential leg in a 4 x 5 kilometer women’s relay at a World Championship event. She has contributed a 5 k classic leg to a podium in Lillehammer, and she also skied a terrific leg in Ulricehamn — I want to say 12 seconds from the fastest on that particular leg in that relay this year. So she’s someone we are really looking towards for a potential relay leg. So there are athletes like that where it’s hard to differentiate sometimes between some of the domestic athletes who are really starting to blossom, who we are starting to take a lot of notice of them, but Rosie is somebody who … is in shape and ready to go when we get to Korea this winter.”

    On the non-nomination side of the equation are Holmes and Patterson.

    “Chelsea, she is someone who we have discussed a ton this spring,” Grover said. “And this is a conversation I’ve had with Chelsea as well. Is she a 5 k skier right now? Maybe, maybe not. She has certainly shown her ability in longer events. Her one standout international result from this season is a longer event in skating.”

    The 30-year-old Homes placed 13th in the marquee 30 k freestyle mass start at 2017 World Championships.

    “Does that, at this particular moment, suggest that she might be able to provide a 5 k classic leg in the relay? Not at this particular moment,” he said. “We have a lot of skaters on the women’s side right now. Our skating ability is quite high. So at this moment it doesn’t pencil out, but does that prevent her from being considered in the future for anything? Absolutely not.”

    Scott Patterson’s older sister Caitlin, 27, remains on the USST radar as well.

    “Caitlin is somebody else that we’ve discussed quite a bit,” Grover said. “She’s made a big step forward in the last year she started to score World Cup points and really flirting with that edge of the top thirty on a regular basis. So we absolutely have our eye on her. … Of course Chelsea is Continental Cup leader for Period 1, so she will be skiing World Cup Period 1. And then we’ll assess where she is at that point. Anything can happen at that point. She might be someone that’s skiing really well and we want to keep on the World Cup.”

  • U.S. Cross Country Nominates 2017/2018 National Team

    U.S. Cross Country Nominates 2017/2018 National Team

    On Wednesday, the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association (USSA) formally announced its nominations for the 2017/2018 cross-country ski team in a press release. Most notably, Noah Hoffman was not renominated, Scott Patterson was named to the B-team, where he’s joined by Patrick “Paddy” Caldwell, who made the jump up from D-team status.

    “After a strong 2016-17 season, including three World Championship medals and nine World Cup podiums, the Team is looking for medals in the upcoming 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang,” the press release stated.

    “Each athlete accepting the nomination to U.S. Ski Team receives world class program support, along with access to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Center of Excellence, as well as athletic benefits including an elite coaching, sport science, sports medicine and high performance staff, and education opportunities,” it continued.

    Note that these are nominations rather than a set-in-stone team.

    “An official team announcement will be made in the fall,” the release added.

    FasterSkier will follow up on the selections. In the meantime, here is a look at the selection criteria and the nomination breakdown below:

    A TEAM

    Men

    • Simi Hamilton (Aspen, CO; Stratton Mountain School Elite Team; 5/14/87)
    • Andrew Newell (Shaftsbury, VT; Stratton Mountain School Elite Team; 11/30/83)

    Women

    • Sadie Bjornsen (Winthrop, WA; Alaska Pacific University Nordic Center; 11/21/89)
    • Sophie Caldwell (Peru, VT; Stratton Mountain School Elite Team; 3/22/90)
    • Jessie Diggins (Afton, MN; Stratton Mountain School Elite Team; 8/26/91)
    • Kikkan Randall (Anchorage, AK; Alaska Pacific University Nordic Center; 12/31/82)
    • Ida Sargent (Orleans, VT; Craftsbury Green Racing Project; 1/25/88)
    • Liz Stephen (East Montpelier, VT; Burke Mountain Academy; 1/12/87)

    B TEAM

    Men

    • Erik Bjornsen (Winthrop, WA; Alaska Pacific University Nordic Center; 7/14/91)
    • Patrick Caldwell (Lyme, NH; Stratton Mountain School Elite Team; 2/18/94)
    • Scott Patterson (Anchorage, AK; Alaska Pacific University Nordic Center; 1/28/92)

    Women

    • Rosie Brennan (Park City, UT; Alaska Pacific University Nordic Center; 12/2/88)

    D TEAM

    Men

    • Ian Torchia (Rochester, MN; Northern Michigan University; 3/8/96)

    Women

    • Hannah Halvorsen (Truckee, CA; Sugar Bowl Academy; 2/19/98)
    • Julia Kern (Waltham, MA; Stratton Mountain School Elite Team; 9/12/97)
    • Katharine Ogden (Landgrove, VT; Stratton Mountain School; 11/17/97)
  • A Lock Since 2008, Hoffman Not Renamed to U.S. Ski Team

    A Lock Since 2008, Hoffman Not Renamed to U.S. Ski Team

    American Noah Hoffman (r) racing alongside Norway’s Daniel Stock during the 30 k skiathlon at this year’s World Cup in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)

    Monday afternoon, Noah Hoffman announced on his blog: “After my disappointing season, I was not renamed to the U.S. Ski Team,” he wrote.

    Those were the words beginning the post’s fourth paragraph. As the lead into that news, Hoffman referenced his big-volume 2016/2017 training load and subsequent lackluster results, as well as his near off-the-grid month adventuring in Utah’s desert country.

    As of late Monday night, the 2017/2018 U.S. Ski Team (USST) nominations had not been released publicly. USST Head Coach Chris Grover declined to comment on the team’s newest iteration or Hoffman not being renamed to the team until a formal announcement is made through the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association (USSA).

    Team nominations and configurations are a near constant work in progress. As every USST skier understands, renomination is no guarantee. At 27, Hoffman has been a member of the USST since 2008, is a 2014 Olympian, and represented the U.S. in the last four World Championships.

    Noah Hoffman racing last December in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo: Toko/NordicFocus)

    From the start of the World Cup season in Kuusamo, Finland, on Nov. 27, 2016, through the finale in Quebec City on March 19, Hoffman’s desired results never materialized. He skied the 15th-fastest time of day on the famed Alpe Cermis final stage of the 2017 Tour de Ski and placed 30th or better in four other World Cup races — scoring World Cup points. He had a season best of eighth place in the 30-kilometer skiathlon in PyeongChang, South Korea, but the PyeongChang field was thin without any seeded World Cup skiers in that race. So in effect, Hoffman’s eighth place came with an asterisk.

    By the numbers, Hoffman’s potential renomination to the USST was a nailbiter. The USST’s non-discretionary criteria for national-team status is top 50 on the overall points list. Hoffman finished the season 51st with 123 points. The 50th placed skier on the list, Norway’s Håvard Solås Taugbøl, had 124 points.

    “For the team nomination, there was more of a sense of relief of knowing,” Hoffman said on the phone Monday evening from Putney, Vt.

    “I knew … literally, from coming back from Korea when I got sick, that it was going to be really, really close to being top 50 in the world if I didn’t score more points after that,” he added. “I probably didn’t know exactly how close I was going to be, but then in Quebec, it became clear that it was going to be really, really close to either hanging in the top 50 or not. So I finished the last race and I checked the overall list and saw that I was 51st and one point off of 50th and I was like, Well, I didn’t qualify, and I don’t really have any results.”

    Hoffman understood that quantitatively, the season’s math might possibly add up to a renomination. Yet qualitatively, he acknowledged his 2016/2017 results were void of any eye-popping result.

    “I couldn’t have been any closer,” Hoffman added. “One World Cup point after scoring a hundred and twenty something, but didn’t really have any results that were going to be totally clear that I could be discretioned on.”

    Hoffman explained he was notified by Grover by phone approximately one month ago.

    “I knew it was going to be a question,” Hoffman continued. “I suspected that was going to be the answer and now I know and we can all move on. It’s not personal in any way, shape or form.”

    For the foreseeable future, Hoffman, a Colorado native, will live and train in Hanover, N.H., close to his coach Zach Caldwell, who resides in Putney. In addition, Hoffman has been offered World Cup Period 1 start rights.

    “Grover said to take some time, figure out what I wanted to do and then come back to him and talk about start rights,” Hoffman explained of their initial conversation three to four weeks ago. He called Grover back a week or two later to discuss just that.

    “Once I decided definitively that I wanted to ski again, I was pretty sure that I wanted to ski Period 1 as opposed to staying in this country and trying to make the Olympic team that way, which is probably the easier way,” he said. “Because I want to be one of the best skiers in the world and I believe that I can, my goal has never been to qualify for the Olympics. I want to be skiing best in the world and I believe I can do that all season long and I want to prove it.”

    Stay tuned for a more in-depth story on Hoffman and news about the U.S. national-team nominations as they become available.

  • Cross Country Canada Nominates 2017/2018 Team

    Cross Country Canada Nominates 2017/2018 Team

     

    On Friday, Cross Country Canada (CCC) released its national-team nominations for the 2017/2018 season. The senior team includes 14 athletes, just one of which is a newcomer: 19-year-old Gareth Williams, who was on the junior national team last season.

    In an Olympic year, Jess Cockney and Knute Johnsgaard made the jump up to A-team status, joining three other men (Alex Harvey, Len Valjas and Devon Kershaw), four were nominated to the B-team, and another five (including Williams) made the U25 (Under-25) Team.

    The Para-Nordic Ski Team expanded from four official team members last year to 11 this year. Joining Brittany Hudak, Mark Arendz, Chris Klebl, Brian McKeever and his guide Graham Nishikawa on the World Cup Team are Collin Cameron and Emily Young (formerly Weekes).

    Below are the senior, junior and para-nordic team nominations:

    National Ski Team

    Senior team:

    World Cup A-team

    • Alex Harvey (CNEPH)
    • Len Valjas
    • Devon Kershaw
    • Jess Cockney
    • Knute Johnsgaard

    World Cup B-team

    • Graeme Killick
    • Emily Nishikawa
    • Dahria Beatty (Alpine Insurance AWCA)
    • Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt

    U25 Team

    • Julien Locke (Black Jack)
    • Cendrine Browne (CNEPH)
    • Katherine Stewart-Jones (NTDC Thunder Bay)
    • Maya MacIsaac-Jones (Rocky Mountain Racers)
    • Gareth Williams (Telemark)

    Junior team:

    • Natalie Hynes (Whitehorse)
    • India McIsaac (Rocky Mountain Racers)
    • Annika Richardson (NTDC Thunder Bay)
    • Hannah Mehain (Sovereign Lake Nordic)
    • Lisle Compton (NTDC Thunder Bay)
    • Catherine Reed-Métayer (Skibec)
    • Étienne Hébert (Montériski/AIAWCA)
    • Rémi Drolet (Black Jack)
    • Reed Godfrey (Canmore Nordic)
    • Ty Godfrey (Canmore Nordic)
    • Nicholas Beaulieu (Orford)
    • Antoine Cyr (CNEPH)
    • Félix Longpré (Club Nordique MSA)

    Para-Nordic Ski Team:

    World Cup Team

    • Mark Arendz (Rocky Mountain Racers)
    • Collin Cameron (Laurentian Nordic)
    • Brittany Hudak (Sturgeon River Nordic)
    • Chris Klebl (Fast Trax Run & Ski Club)
    • Brian McKeever (Fast Trax Run & Ski Club)
    • Graham Nishikawa (guide)
    • Emily Young (Telemark)

    Development & Prospects Team

    • Sébastien Fortier (Skibec)
    • Derek Zaplotinsky (Strathcona Wilderness Centre)
    • Ethan Hess (Nordic Racers)
    • Natalie Wilkie (Larch Hills)

  • Canada Enters 30, U.S. 27 at World Cup Finals in Quebec (Updated x3)

    Alex Harvey racing in the men’s 15 k freestyle pursuit at Stage 4 of the Ski Tour Canada last year in Quebec City. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad.com/NNF)

    For the second-straight year, the World Cup’s season-ending races will be held in Canada, with Québec City hosting 2017 World Cup Finals, this Friday through Sunday. Canada initially announced a roster of 30 (15 women, 15 men) for the three-day mini tour, and the U.S. selected 27 (15 women and 12 men), with both countries maximizing their Nation’s Group “home” quota for the event in downtown Québec City.

    Note: On Tuesday, Cross Country Canada (CCC) announced it would be releasing a revised roster “due to some CPL points errors in calculations,” according to a press release. On Thursday, FasterSkier confirmed that the list included the same 15 women and 15 men that were originally published on FasterSkier.

    And on Wednesday, Quebec organizers announced that the times of each race would be moved back an hour “upon FIS recommendation” to satisfy international broadcast schedules. The updated times are listed below.

    2017 World Cup Finals race schedule (updated Wednesday):

    (All times Eastern Daylight Time)

    • Friday, March 17: Freestyle sprint (qualifier starts at 11:45 a.m.; heats at 2:15 p.m.)
    • Saturday, March 18: 10/15 k classic mass starts (women’s race at 10:40 a.m.; men at 1 p.m.)
    • Sunday, March 19: 10/15 k freestyle pursuits (women’s race at 11:20 a.m.; men at 12:45 p.m.)

    Here are the North American lineups, as well as info on the U.S. selection criteria, and Canadian selection criteria.

    Canada

    Women:

    1. Dahria Beatty (National U25 Team/AWCA)
    2. Emily Nishikawa (World Cup B-team)
    3. Cendrine Browne (NST U25 Team/CNEPH)
    4. Katherine Stewart-Jones (NST U25 Team/NTDC Thunder Bay)
    5. Sophie Carrier-Laforte (CNEPH)
    6. Katie Weaver (Junior National Ski Team/Hollyburn)
    7. Annika Richardson (Junior NST/NTDC Thunder Bay)
    8. Lisle Compton (NTDC Thunder Bay)
    9. Annika Hicks (AWCA)
    10. Sadie White (NTDC Thunder Bay)
    11. Andrea Dupont (RMR)
    12. Frédérique Vézina (CNEPH)
    13. Alannah MacLean (NTDC Thunder Bay)
    14. Mia Serratore (NTDC Thunder Bay)
    15. Laura Leclair (Junior NST/Chelsea Nordiq)

    (Note: Jenn Jackson of Lappe Nordic declined her spot)

    Men: 

    1. Alex Harvey (World Cup A-team)
    2. Devon Kershaw (World Cup A-team)
    3. Len Valjas (World Cup A-team)
    4. Jess Cockney (World Cup B-team)
    5. Graeme Killick (World Cup B-team)
    6. Knute Johnsgaard (NST U25 Team/AWCA)
    7. Russell Kennedy (Canmore Nordic/Team R.A.D.)
    8. Gareth Williams (Junior NST/Telemark)
    9. Andy Shields (Lappe Nordic)
    10. Bob Thompson (NTDC Thunder Bay)
    11. Joey Foster (Team Hardwood)
    12. Julien Locke (NST U25 Team/AWCA)
    13. Evan Palmer-Charrette (NTDC Thunder Bay)
    14. Brian McKeever (Canadian Para-Nordic Ski Team)
    15. Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier (CNEPH)

    USA

    Women: 

    1. Kikkan Randall (U.S. Ski Team A-team/APU)
    2. Sadie Bjornsen (USST A-team/APU)
    3. Liz Stephen (USST A-team)
    4. Caitlin Patterson (CGRP)
    5. Rosie Brennan (USST B-team/APU)
    6. Erika Flowers (SMS Elite)
    7. Jennie Bender (BSF)
    8. Julia Kern (USST D-team/SMS Elite)
    9. Liz Guiney (CGRP)
    10. Kaitlynn Miller (CGRP)
    11. Chelsea Holmes (APU)
    12. Becca Rorabaugh (APU)
    13. Jessie Diggins (USST A-team/SMS Elite)
    14. Sophie Caldwell (USST A-team/SMS Elite)
    15. Ida Sargent (USST A-team/CGRP)

    (Note: Katharine Ogden, of the SMS Elite Team and U.S. Ski Team D-team, declined her spot due to “ongoing stomach issues,” according to U.S. head coach Chris Grover. Guiney was the first alternate as she was next on the SuperTour list.)

    Men:

    1. Andy Newell (USST A-team/SMS Elite)
    2. Noah Hoffman (USST B-team/Ski Club Vail)
    3. Erik Bjornsen (USST B-team/APU)
    4. Matt Gelso (SVSEF)
    5. David Norris (APU)
    6. Ben Lustgarten (CGRP)
    7. Cole Morgan (SVSEF)
    8. Patrick Caldwell (USST D-team/SMS Elite)
    9. Jack Hegman (SVSEF)
    10. Brian Gregg (Team Gregg/Loppet Nordic Racing)
    11. Scott Patterson (APU)
    12. Simi Hamilton (USST A-team/SMS Elite)
    A view from the steep hill on the sprint course with the stadium area in background, as seen during training last year in Quebec City, one day before the third stage of the 2016 Ski Tour Canada. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
  • Canada Names Lahti World Championships Team

    Canada Names Lahti World Championships Team

    Left to right: Canada's Len Valjas, Alex Harvey, Knute Johnsgaard, and Alex Harvey after their historic third place finish in the men's 4 x 7.5-kilometer team relay on Sunday in Ulricehamn, Sweden. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
    Left to right: Canada’s Len Valjas, Alex Harvey, Knute Johnsgaard, and Alex Harvey after their historic third place finish in the men’s 4 x 7.5-kilometer team relay last month in Ulricehamn, Sweden. All four were named to the 2017 World Championships team. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)

    Earlier this week, Cross Country Canada announced its team for the upcoming 2017 World Championships in Lahti, Finland. The following athletes (six men and five women) were also selected to the Feb. 18-19 Otepää World Cup, the weekend before the championships.

    Alex Harvey (CNEPH/World Cup A-team)
    Devon Kershaw (World Cup A-team)
    Len Valjas (World Cup A-team)
    Jess Cockney (World Cup B-team)
    Graeme Killick (World Cup B-team)
    Knute Johnsgaard (AWCA/NST U25 Team)

    Emily Nishikawa (NST U25 Team)
    Dahria Beatty (AWCA/NST U25 Team)
    Cendrine Browne (CNEPH/NST U25 Team)
    Katherine Stewart-Jones (NTDC Thunder Bay/NST U25 Team)
    Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt (AWCA/NST U25 Team)

    This will be the first senior World Championships for Johnsgaard, Beatty, Browne, and Stewart-Jones.

    For more on the selection process and criteria, click here.

  • Inside the Lahti World Champs Roster with Chris Grover

    Inside the Lahti World Champs Roster with Chris Grover

    The U.S. took two out of three spots on the podium in Tuesday's 10 k freestyle at 2015 World Championships. From left to right at the medals ceremony: silver medalist Jessie Diggins (USA), gold medalist Charlotte Kalla (Sweden) and bronze medalist Caitlin Gregg (USA) at the medals plaza on Tuesday night in Falun, Sweden.
    You may remember this from the last World Championships: The U.S. took two out of three spots on the podium in the 10 k freestyle at 2015 World Championships. From left to right at the medals ceremony: silver medalist Jessie Diggins (USA), gold medalist Charlotte Kalla (Sweden) and bronze medalist Caitlin Gregg (USA).

    On Wednesday, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) announced its team nominations for the International Ski Federation (FIS) 2017 Nordic World Ski Championships, scheduled for Feb. 22-March 5 in Lahti, Finland. Following the announcement, FasterSkier spoke with U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover to discuss the reasoning behind some specific skiers who were or were not named to the team.

    Applying the criteria

    First, a quick review: FasterSkier has previously discussed the substance and the operation of the objective selection criteria based on World Cup performance. These objective criteria placed the following members of the U.S. Ski Team (USST) onto the Lahti team based on their performance during the 2016/2017 World Cup season: Sadie Bjornsen, Rosie Brennan, Sophie Caldwell, Jessie Diggins, Simi Hamilton, Noah Hoffman, Andy Newell, Kikkan Randall, Ida Sargent, and Liz Stephen.

    All 10 athletes were ranked in the top 50 of the sprint and/or distance standings that were released earlier this week. USST member Erik Bjornsen ranked slightly outside the top-50 cutoff for both disciplines (59th for sprint and 60th for distance), and so is technically a discretionary selection.

    That leaves six additional athletes without USST status who were also selected through the exercise of discretion by the Selection Committee: Kyle Bratrud, Tad Elliott, Ben Lustgarten, and Cole Morgan for the men, and Caitlin Gregg and Chelsea Holmes for the women.

    Craftsbury Green Racing Project's Ben Lustgarten on his way to winning the 30 k classic mass start at U.S. Cross Country Championships on Tuesday at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah.
    Craftsbury Green Racing Project’s Ben Lustgarten on his way to winning the 30 k classic mass start at U.S. Cross Country Championships on Jan. 10 at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah.

    Lustgarten (70 points), Bratrud (63) and Elliott (56) are the top-three men in the distance ranking of the 2017 Championship Selection List. (The list takes an athlete’s best two finishes per discipline, including bonus points for U.S. nationals.) Morgan (70 points) is facially tied with Ben Saxton (also 70) on the men’s sprint list. (For more on why Morgan over Saxton, keep reading.)

    Holmes (80 points) and Gregg (63) are top two on the women’s distance list, followed by Katharine Ogden (60) and Caitlin Patterson (52). The top-ranked domestic skier on the women’s sprint list, Kaitlynn Miller (60 points), was not selected for Lahti.

    The principles of discretionary selection

    This summer, USST Women’s Coach Matt Whitcomb told FasterSkier that making discretionary picks was one of the harder parts of his job, saying, “We love not to do it.” But, he added, “in any criteria, discretion can often be one of the most important pieces.”

    Grover previewed how USST coaches might apply that discretion when he spoke with FasterSkier earlier this week, following the individual skate sprint in Toblach but before Wednesday’s announcement.

    “We do pay very close attention to what is happening in those races [at U.S. nationals],” Grover said. “And we are following them live as best we can from over here. We’ve been paying very close attention, and we’ve had some discussions.”

    Grover added that they had specifically been discussing “who we would start in which races in Lahti, because we absolutely want to fill every start spot, and we want to be able to have an alternate there in most cases as well, and that makes for some tough choices. Who’s skiing well domestically, who’s skiing well on the World Cup; it’s occasionally challenging to figure out which athletes are faster when they have the Atlantic Ocean between them.”

    Grover mentioned at the time that he hoped to follow and apply the selection criteria fairly rigorously and systematically.

    U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover supervises a classic-technique drill at an on-snow camp last month at Mt. Bachelor in Bend, Ore.
    U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover supervises a classic-technique drill at an on-snow camp in May at Mt. Bachelor in Bend, Ore.

    “The real key thing is that, at the bottom of the selection, we followed the selection criteria,” Grover said. “That’s key. Discretion really belongs to be used at the top, for those athletes who have a chance to come over and have big races at World Championships, and by big races I mean someone who can go on the podium, or the top five, top 10, or top 15. Look for some selections from USA, but I wouldn’t look for a lot of discretion at the end of the day. That doesn’t mean that we won’t use some, but we have a selection criteria, and we’ve created a clear path for athletes to visualize, and see how they are going to make it to the World Championships team, and we have to be very careful to honor those athletes, and their coaches, and their programs, and their hometowns, by selecting the athletes who came to the table, and raced fast, and won races. That’s the key for us.”

    Grover seemed willing to temper the strict application of objective rankings with some more objective consideration of conditions on the ground, particularly following a U.S. nationals where some races featured rather variable weather.

    “Of course we’re going to take everything into account,” Grover said, “take the waxing situation into account, tough waxing days. I know that some people struggled, I know that some teams struggled, that’s unfortunate. You absolutely want to see a national championship where it’s easy waxing, and then you get to see who is the best athlete out there. I’m also getting petitions from athletes who are like, ‘Yes, I felt sick during U.S. Nationals.’ And that’s tough too. You want to see everybody healthy, and having an easy wax day.”

    “It’s occasionally challenging to figure out which athletes are faster when they have the Atlantic Ocean between them.” — Chris Grover, U.S. Ski Team head coach

    But “at the end of the day,” Grover concluded, “we set up a selection criteria that was designed to give athletes a chance to have a bad race, to be sick for weekend, to give teams a chance to miss the wax, that’s why we only take the best two out of four distance races, and/or the best two out of four sprint races. That’s why the selection period is more than just U.S. nationals, but also includes the races from Yellowstone and Silver Star, so athletes have the chance to demonstrate their ability over a longer period of time, and to be able to throw out some bad races.”

    FasterSkier previously discussed the theory that the bonus points given for podium finishes at U.S. nationals made solid performances there potentially decisive for an athlete’s selection.

    Naming names

    As Grover adumbrated earlier this week, the selection of the male skiers not currently on the USST was based directly on skiers’ standing on the Lahti points list. Those selections “are very straightforward,” Grover told FasterSkier on the phone on Thursday. “We went right off of the Lahti selection list.”

    Grover added that they felt the need for only one more sprinter, in light of already having Hamilton, Newell and Erik Bjornsen on the team.

    Cole Morgan (SVSEF) racing to 12th in the men's 10 k classic FIS race in late November in West Yellowstone, Mont. (Photo: Ian Harvey/Toko)
    Cole Morgan (SVSEF) racing to 12th in the men’s 10 k classic FIS race in late November in West Yellowstone, Mont. (Photo: Ian Harvey/Toko)

    So why Morgan over Saxton for that one sprint spot, when both athletes had 70 points and were tied for first on the selection list? Tiebreakers.

    “That had to go down to like a four-way tiebreak procedure in order to determine which athlete to select,” Grover recounted. “Because they both had a first place from SuperTour, they both had two second-place finishes, and so it was only by going to their fourth race, where Cole prevailed over Ben. So that was tough, and definitely as excited as we are for Cole, that was tough for Ben, to be in that situation.”

    The tiebreaking race was “the skate qualifier only in Nationals.” Morgan finished 5.11 seconds and 17 places ahead of Saxton in Thursday’s demi-sprint, with Morgan clocking 3:20.23 and sixth vs. Saxton’s 3:25.34 and 23rd.

    Turning to distance skiers, Grover said, “So then we had four sprinters that we wanted to start, and then we obviously needed some distance skiers. And we felt like with Erik Bjornsen and Noah Hoffman on the team, that if we went out and got three more additional distance skiers that we would have the depth that we needed to effectively fill start rights, plus have an alternate, in the distance races at Lahti, which is why we went and got the three guys. We just went right off the distance points list.”

    That’s it for the men. As for the women, among American distance skiers, Gregg has a sterling championships résumé: bronze in the 10-kilometer freestyle at Falun in 2015. This performance, and Gregg’s ability to peak for it, figured heavily in the decision to go down to second on the women’s distance list and name Gregg, Grover noted.

    “We definitely … view Caitlin as a really incredible distance skier,” Grover said, “somebody who has the ability, or at least has proven the ability in the past, to be able to target an event, train for an event, a certain event, prepare for it, and then ski quite well at that event. And of course I’m referencing the Falun 10-kilometer race from two years ago. We named her to the team as a potential starter for the women’s 30 k freestyle. And typically Caitlin has been somebody who’s great at the long-distance skating in particular, and gets stronger as the race gets longer. So we’re not guaranteeing start positions for any athletes right now, but Caitlin for sure will be a strong contender to race that last race for women at the World Championships.”

    So Gregg was second on the distance list, but why not go down to Katharine Ogden (often referred to as “KO”) in third? In large part because of her youth – Ogden is still only 19 years old – and a concern for appropriate development.

    “We absolutely agree that athletes should first aim to be successful at – in the age group that they’re competing against,” Grover said. “So for KO, that means World Juniors, and being successful at World Juniors. And that should be, in my opinion, the absolute focus of her year this year.”

    The women's 20 k classic mass start podium on Tuesday at 2017 U.S. nationals at Soldier Hollow, with winner Chelsea Holmes (c), runner-up Katharine Ogden (l), and third-place finisher Caitlin Patterson.
    The women’s 20 k classic mass start podium on Tuesday at 2017 U.S. nationals at Soldier Hollow, with winner Chelsea Holmes (c), runner-up Katharine Ogden (l), and third-place finisher Caitlin Patterson.

    He added that the strength of the current American women’s team made it questionable whether Ogden, despite her talent, would necessarily be stronger than any other option. The coaches would ask, “‘OK, yes, if we were to bring you to the [senior] World Championships, what are the actual events that we would start you in? Are you one of the best four women in the United States in those events?’ There most likely, at this particular moment, is not starting space for her. … She’s going to be an absolute talent for the future, but we also have one of the strongest, if not the strongest women’s team in the history of U.S. skiing. So it’s tough to break into that group when you’re limited to four starts.”

    And what about Caitlin Patterson, an athlete who began the 2016/2017 season in Europe and scored World Cup points in the opening weekend, but never quite made the top 30 thereafter?

    Patterson was “one that we talked about, for sure,” Grover said. “However, she was not even the next woman on the points list behind Caitlin Gregg. That was Katharine Ogden. … So any time you’re talking about using discretion and using it at the bottom of the list, and then jumping over athletes that are on the list to use that discretion, then it becomes quite complicated.”

    Much as with Ogden, Grover noted that the strength of the current women’s team made it difficult to easily pencil Patterson in as a starter: “Our women’s team is so strong,” Grover said, “we didn’t necessarily see a race where we said, ‘You know what, Caitlin Patterson is within the top four women that we want to start in that particular event.’ It would have been a different situation if we didn’t have so many women making the objective criteria for World Cup in front of her.”

    But Grover noted that Patterson was not necessarily off the team for good: “So it puts Caitlin Patterson in a really tough spot, and we definitely want to see her have more opportunities, and we are in fact trying to provide her more opportunities by actually offering her some World Cup starts in the next few weekends that she’s going to take advantage of. And we’ll see what happens. If she’s able to have some outstanding results, we may reconsider.”

    As Grover alluded to regarding Patterson, the U.S. roster is not quite set in stone. “I think it’s important to recognize that we … may decide to add a man, or a woman, later to the World Championships Team,” Grover emphasized.

    “We have not maxed out what our quotas are for that event by any means,” he continued “And if we see an outstanding result of some kind, either at World Cup or say U23s/World Juniors, we may choose to add somebody to the team, which we did … two years ago in Falun, when we added Ben Saxton after he’d been sixth in the sprint at the World Juniors. So nobody has guaranteed start rights at the Lahti World Championships. And it may be that our team grows slightly. Or it may stay the same; we just don’t know yet.”

    End of an era?

    And finally, a look back for a historical note before everyone looks forward to next month’s races in Lahti: Assuming that he is not added to the roster in the next few weeks, this will be the first American international championship team without Kris Freeman since 1997. Freeman, currently of Team Freebird but a USST member for 11 years before that, was named to a total of 15 championship teams from 1997 to 2015. He was at Falun in 2015, Sochi in 2014, Val di Fiemme in 2013, Oslo in 2011, Whistler in 2010, Liberec in 2009, Sapporo in 2007, Torino in 2006, Oberstdorf in 2005. He was at Val di Fiemme, for the first time, in 2003, Salt Lake City in 2002, Lahti in 2001, and before that, he was also at three FIS Junior World Championships: Štrbské Pleso, Slovakia, in 2000; Saalfelden, Austria, in 1999; and Pontresina, Switzerland, in 1998.

    Freeman at the 2009 World Championships in Liberec. (Photo: Swix Sport)
    Kris Freeman competing at 2009 World Championships in Liberec, Czech Republic. (Photo: Swix Sport)

    The last time Freeman was not named to an American championship team was Junior Worlds in Canmore in February 1997. To put that in perspective: top junior skiers at those races included Kristina Smigun, Axel Teichmann, Per Elofsson, and Lukas Bauer. American juniors racing at Canmore in 1997 included Rob Whitney, Pat Casey, and Lars Flora. Recent national champion Kevin Bolger (University of Utah) was 3 years old. Recent Nationals podium finisher Katharine Ogden was not born yet.

    Freeman told FasterSkier a week ago at U.S. nationals that, even if he were not selected to his second Lahti team, he intended to keep competing for at least one more winter with an eye to Pyeongchang: “Still in it, I’ll be back next year and hopefully make the Olympic team.”

    USST athlete Kikkan Randall keeps alive a streak going back to World Juniors at Štrbské Pleso in 2000. Counting 2017 in Lahti, she has been named to 16 championship teams (nine World Championships teams, four Winter Olympics teams, and three World Juniors teams) in that time.

    And USST skier Andy Newell was named to his 14th championship team, continuing a streak that dates back to World Juniors at Szklarska Poręba in 2001.

    Races in Lahti begin with the skate sprint on Feb. 23.

  • Cervenka Sweeps Youth/Junior Biathlon Trials; 15 Named to U.S. Team

    Cervenka Sweeps Youth/Junior Biathlon Trials; 15 Named to U.S. Team

    "The youth men's sprint podium on Dec. 28 in Jericho was (l to r) Jake Pearson, Vasek Cervenka and Eli Nielsen. Cervenka topped every race at Youth and Junior Biathlon Trials. (Photo: USBA)
    The youth men’s sprint podium on Dec. 28 in Jericho was (l to r) Jake Pearson, Vasek Cervenka and Eli Nielsen. Cervenka topped every race at Youth and Junior Biathlon Trials. (Photo: USBA)

    The United States Biathlon Association (USBA) held three days of youth and junior biathlon trials racing in Jericho, Vermont, January 28-30. At the end of the series, USBA named this year’s team to Youth and Junior World Championships.

    The competitions are slated for February. But the location is pending. The Championships were scheduled to be held in Ostrov, Russia, but the event was stripped from Russia due to allegations of state-sponsored doping and manipulation of anti-doping samples at other competitions previously held in the country.

    Vasek Cervenka of Mount Itasca was the most successful athlete of the week. Cervenka, a youth competitor (under 19), nevertheless topped all men — including the junior racers (under 21). Cameron Christiansen of Nisswa NW finished 20 seconds back, besting the junior men’s field.

    Cervenka then extended his lead in the next day’s pursuit. Cody Johnson of the Outdoor Sports Institute passed Christiansen to finish 31.1 seconds behind Johnson and take the junior win.

    On day three it was back to sprint racing with Cervenka taking another vicotry, this time a 10.9-second win over Travis Cooper of National Guard Biathlon.

    In the opening women’s sprint, Amanda Kautzer of Loppet Nordic Racing took the win. Like Cervenka, Kautzer is a youth but also topped the junior field. Hannah Streinz of the Outdoor Sports Institute placed second (+42.2) and the top junior.

    But in the pursuit fellow youth Chloe Levins of Mountain Top Nordic raced to the front with only two penalties, besting Lexie Madigan of the Auburn Ski Club – who also had just two penalties – by 1:35.4. Nina Armstrong of Harvard College, the top junior, finished +4:54.2 with 11 penalties.

    Then in the last day’s sprint, Madigan topped Levins by 15.5 seconds, with Armstrong again the top junior, +1:24.9.

    USBA also named the athletes for the IBU Junior Cup (January 26-29 in Pokljuka, Slovenia) and the IBU Junior European Championships (February 1-5 in Nove Mesto Na Morave, Czech Republic). The women’s team will be Ellingson, Levins, and Kautzer, and Cervenka, Christiansen, Cooper, and Johnson will comprise the men’s team.

    Youth and Junior World Championships team nominations

    (from USBA press release)

    Youth Women
    Chloe Levins (Rutland, Vt./Mountain Top Nordic Ski Club)
    Amanda Kautzer (Plymouth, Minn./Loppet Nordic Racing/Michigan)
    Lexie Madigan* (Truckee, Calif./Auburn Ski Club)
    Grace Gilliland (Eagle River, Alaska/Alaska Biathlon)
    Helen Wilson** (Eagle River, Alaska/Anchorage Biathlon Club)
    *Lexie Madigan is below the age described in the IBU Rules and is awaiting confirmation for her participation.
    **Helen Wilson is named as First Alternate to the team in the event that any member is not able to participate.

    Youth Men
    Vasek Cervenka (Grand Rapids, Minn./Mt. Itasca)
    Jake Pearson (Casper, Wyo./Casper Mountain Biathlon Club)
    Alex Kilby (Anchorage, Alaska/Alaska Winter Stars)
    Eli Nielsen (Stehekin, Wash./Methow Valley Biathlon)

    Junior Women
    Siena Ellingson (Minnetonka, Minn./Loppet Nordic Racing)
    Hannah Streinz (Hersey, Maine/Outdoor Sports Institute)
    Nina Armstrong (Lake Placid, N.Y./Harvard College)

    Junior Men
    Cameron Christiansen (Pequot Lake, Minn./NNW)
    Travis Cooper (Kenai, Alaska/National Guard Biathlon)
    Cody Johnson (Fort Kent, Maine/Outdoor Sports Institute)
    Peter Carroll (Truckee, Calif./Auburn Ski Club Biathlon Team)

    Trials Results

    December 28 – December 29 – December 30

  • Tandy, Beaudry Snag Final Two Spots on Biathlon Canada’s World Cup Team

    Tandy, Beaudry Snag Final Two Spots on Biathlon Canada’s World Cup Team

    Left to right: Biathlon Canada's Rosanna Crawford, Julia Ransom, Megan Tandy and US Biathlon's Susan Dunklee at the start of the women's 7.5 k race on Wednesday Nov. 9 at this year's Biathlon Canada team selection time trial races at Frozen Thunder in Canmore, Alberta. (Photo: Matthias Ahrens)
    Left to right: Biathlon Canada’s two preselected athletes Rosanna Crawford and Julia Ransom, followed by Megan Tandy and US Biathlon’s Susan Dunklee at the start of the women’s 7.5 k sprint on Wednesday, Nov. 9, at Biathlon Canada’s team selection trials at Frozen Thunder in Canmore, Alberta. (Photo: Matthias Ahrens)

    Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday: five days. For five days after Biathlon Canada’s team selection time trials in Canmore, Alberta, a few athletes still found themselves waiting to hear whether to not they made the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup racing team for the first trimester of the 2016/2017 season. By late Tuesday afternoon, however, the wait was up.

    A men’s and women’s team roster was posted to Biathlon Canada’s homepage revealing that for the second season in a row, Nathan Smith, Brendan Green, Scott Gow, Christian Gow, and Macx Davies were nominated to the men’s squad. All five had been preselected and would now officially take the five available spots on the men’s national team.

    With five senior national-team women competing for four World Cup spots, selection for the women’s team would require a little more maneuvering. Both Rosanna Crawford and Julia Ransom had been preselected for the World Cup team, while Sarah Beadry, Emma Lunder, and Megan Tandy had been preselected for the IBU circuit, meaning one woman would not make the World Cup team.

    Decisions on who would be nominated, according to Biathlon Canada’s High Performance Director Eric de Nys, depended on performance results from the team time trials, which took place last Wednesday, Nov. 9, and Thursday, Nov. 10.

    Sarah Beaudry anchoring the Canadian women's relay to eighth place in Oslo, Norway, on Sunday. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus.com)
    Sarah Beaudry (Biathlon Canada) anchoring the Canadian women’s relay to eighth place in Oslo, Norway, last winter. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus)

    “The criteria was such that, we looked at the two trial races on the 9th and the 10th to see if we could could create a ranking list based on those performances; that’s essentially how those ladies were chosen,” de Nys said on this past Wednesday, Nov. 16. “So after the ranking came out, it went Rosanna [Crawford], Julia [Ransom] then Megan Tandy in third. Then actually fourth and fifth were two juniors [Nadia Moser and Megan Bankes], and Sarah [Beaudry] was sixth. But the fourth and fifth juniors, they’re not World-Cup eligible, we have to send them to the IBU Cups so that they can become World Cup eligible. And that’s how Sarah came to be the fourth lady.”

    Though her first day of racing at the time trial was not what she had hoped for, the 22-year-old Beaudry indicated excitement about the prospect of more racing at the World Cup level.

    “The first race wasn’t what I was hoping for but I managed to pull together a better race on day two,” Beaudry, a Biathlon Canada B-squad member, wrote in an email. “I definitely went into trials very nervous which affected my shooting and I am hoping that I got that out of my system before the World Cup starts. I am really excited to head to Europe and improve on my performances from trials.”

    Canada's Megan Tandy blasts through the second leg of the women's relay at the IBU World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria. Tandy's clean shooting helped advance Canada to eighth place at the end of her leg. Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus
    Megan Tandy (Biathlon Canada ‘Eh!’ Team) racing in the women’s relay at the 2015 IBU World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria, last December. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)

    Tandy, an “Eh!” Team member, arrived in Germany shortly after the announcement. She explained that for her, being nominated to the national team was no guarantee.

    “There was certainly no guarantee of selection for me,” Tandy wrote in an email. “We had 2 pre-qualified women and I needed to prove myself in order to be nominated for one of the remaining 2 World Cup spots.  From my own perspective, yes, I expected to be selected.  My season goal is to set new personal bests which for me, means placing regularly in the top 25 or better on the World Cup circuit.  No easy feat, but if that is what I am aiming for, I had to go into the trials races expecting my best effort to be enough for a World Cup spot.”

    De Nys further explained that only the two sprint races on Nov. 9 and 10 were used to select the women’s squad for Trimester 1, though using summer training and other time trials could have been used at the national-team program’s discretion.

    “… We did have the authority, I guess, to look at training and other things like that,” de Nys said of the selection process. “… It just came down to the trials and Sarah [Beaudry] happened to go a little quicker on that day than Emma [Lunder], who is the next in line after Sarah.”

    Beaudry’s B-squad teammate, Lunder, did not make the World Cup team, but was nominated to race the IBU circuit for Biathlon Canada. With greater World Cup point performances from those named to the Trimester 1 team, however, another spot could be added to Biathlon Canada’s squad, opening up the opportunity for athletes like Lunder make the women’s team again.

    “There’s a big push from Biathlon Canada and from the women’s program themselves to increase their quota in that being the number of women we can start in the World Cup,” de Nys said. “As a team, if we can improve our general overall performance, because in the World Cup you score nation’s cup points from your first three women, so if our women are better positioned, we score more points. So at the end of last year we were 11th. If we were 10th, we could have five starts quota.”

    The Canadian women's relay team after placing 11th on Saturday: (from left to right) Rosanna Crawford, Audrey Vaillancourt, Sarah Beaudry, and Megan Heinicke. (Photo: Rosanna Crawford)
    Biathlon Canada’s women’s relay team after placing 11th at a December 2014 World Cup: (from left to right) Rosanna Crawford, Audrey Vaillancourt, Sarah Beaudry, and Megan Heinicke (now Tandy). Vaillancourt retired this past spring after being nominated to Biathlon Canada’s B-squad. (Photo: Rosanna Crawford)