From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.
ZHANGJIAKOU, China — Team USA won its first-ever mixed relay gold to close out the cross-country competition at the Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 on Sunday at Zhangjiakou National Biathlon Centre in Zhangjiakou, China.
Team USA’s 4 x 2.5-kilometer mixed relay featured Oksana Masters, Sydney Peterson, Dan Cnossen and Jake Adicoff guided by Sam Wood. They stormed to a 25:59.3 gold-medal finish.
China took silver in 26:25.3, and Team Canada captured bronze in 27:00.6. Defending world and Paralympic champions Ukraine finished fourth.
“I could not be more proud and more excited,” Cnossen said. “Really, it’s an honor to be part of this team knowing the caliber of athletes that I got to ski with.”
Cnossen, 41, became the most seasoned medalist for Team USA in Beijing. The gold-medal win also earned Masters a place in the history books as the most decorated U.S. Winter Paralympian with 14 career Winter Paralympic medals.
The 2022 Paralympic gold medal mixed relay team: guide Sam Wood, Oksana Masters, Sydney Peterson, Jake Adicoff, and Dan Cnossen (left to right). (Photo: Mark Reis / TeamUSA)
The relays were the only team events on the Para cross-country skiing program. The mixed relay featured four fast 2.5-kilometer laps that can be skied by an alternating team of two, three or four skiers and at least one man and one woman.
Masters raced a strong first leg to hand off to now three-time Paralympic medalist Peterson for leg two. Cnossen skied leg three to hold Team USA in fourth place. Adicoff and Wood turned up the heat for the final lap, rocketing into first place and never looking back.
“We started that so hot, “Adicoff said. “We were just really gas in the beginning, no holding back in the first part. By the time we were at the top of the course, we skied into the lead. From there, we just had to stay on our feet and bring it home. Getting that energy from our teammates for that first part of the race was critical.”
Jake Adicoff crosses the line for Paralympic gold in the 4 x 2.5 k mixed team relay. (Photo: Mark Reis / TeamUSA)
The American team competed with athletes across the sitting, standing and visually impaired classifications. The team felt confident coming into the race after strong podium performances across each classification over the last eight days of Paralympic competition.
“It’s not just one athlete carrying the load,” Cnossen said. “We have really, really strong athletes in all the categories. For me, I didn’t have some of the individual success here that I’ve had in the past, but it just goes to show when you get to be part of a team that lifts the performance.”
“It’s so much better being part of a team,” Peterson said. “There were five of us out there today, and I think all of us had great races. Thanks to everyone else supporting us back home and all the Team USA staff here supporting us.”
The team of Oksana Masters, Sydney Peterson, Jake Adicoff (with guide Sam Wood) and Dan Cnossen, take Paralympic gold in the mixed team relay. (Photo: Mark Reis / TeamUSA)
The gold-medal win fueled the 4 x 2.5-kilometer open relay, the final competition for Para Nordic in Beijing.
First-time Paralympians Max Nelson, guided by Simi Hamilton, and Drew Shea teamed up with veterans Kendall Gretsch and Ruslan Reiter for the final relay. The team placed ninth overall in 33:03.0.
“It was fun to watch everyone ski in the first race and to go out there and just give it all you got,” Reiter said.
Team Ukraine won gold in 28:05.3 thanks to a strong last leg by Anatolii Kovalevskyi guided by Oleksandr Mukshyn. France finished second for silver in 28:30.4, and Norway held onto bronze in 28:41.0.
Max Nelson, the youngest skier on the U.S. Para Nordic team in Beijing, fought for Team USA from the very start of the race in the leadoff leg.
“It was pretty crazy at the start trying to fight off a couple skiers for my spot,” Nelson said. “But I’m just honored to be here and race for Team USA. It was a great day.”
Max Nelson and guide Simi Hamilton lead off for Team The team of Oksana Masters, Sydney Peterson, Jake Adicoff (with guide Sam Wood) and Dan Cnossen, take Paralympic gold in the mixed team relay. (Photo: Mark Reis / TeamUSA)
The athletes made the most of the time on their course together in a sport that is normally focused on individual racing. Gretsch, who won three medals in biathlon and competed in all three cross-country races at these Games, said it’s exciting to see the athletes race head-to-head across the classifications.
“It is so crazy because there’s such a yo-yo between the legs of it so you can really like never count yourself out until the very end,” Gretsch said. “Everyone just has to go and give it their all for 2.5-kilometers.”
First-time Paralympian Drew Shea said this was a great way to end his first Games experience.
“This is pretty special in such an individual sport, just being able to fight for the next person who’s out there,” Shea said. “It’s not about you out there. It’s about the team so you’re just trying to make up every second and grind it out.”
Team USA’s Para Nordic skiers closed out a successful Paralympic Winter Games with 14 medals (four gold, eight silver and two bronze.)
Want to follow Team USA athletes during the Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022? Visit www.teamusa.org/beijing-2022-paralympic-games to view the competition schedule, medal table and results.
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Author Bio:
Katie Grunik is a digital content creator for TeamUSA.org. She is covering her second Olympic & Paralympic Games for teamusa.org and currently serves as the digital content coordinator for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee.
ZHANGJIAKOU, China — Team USA Para Nordic skiers Oksana Masters (Louisville, Kentucky) and Jake Adicoff (Sun Valley, Idaho), alongside guide Sam Wood (Harpswell, Maine) each won silver medals, and Sydney Peterson (Lake Elmo, Minnesota) took bronze in an exciting, fast-paced day of cross-country sprint racing at the Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.
Through five days of competition, the U.S. Para Nordic team has collected 10 medals in cross-country and biathlon at Beijing 2022, with three more days of racing to go at the Zhangjiakou Biathlon Center.
Oksana Masters takes silver in the women’s sitting sprint. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
Masters has won four medals — in all four races — at Beijing 2022 and now has won 14 medals in her Paralympic career. Masters, the 2021 world champion and 2018 cross-country sprint gold medalist from PyeongChang, finished just 1.7 seconds away from gold on Wednesday.
The cross-country and biathlon star powered up the hills on the 1-kilometer course and sprinted down the finish chute to nearly catch China’s Hongqiong Yang who won gold with a time of 3:18.2. Masters finished in 3:19.9 and Panpan Li of China earned the bronze in 3:31.0.
Team USA’s Kendall Gretsch (Downers Grove, Ill.) placed fifth, in 3:37.3.
Adicoff and Wood won their second silver medal of Beijing 2022 in the men’s visually impaired category, just 0.8 seconds away from gold. The duo hammered the sprint cross-country course in a time of 3:20.3, just behind Canada’s Brian McKeever, guided by Russell Kennedy. Sweden’s Zebastian Modin, guided by Emil Joensson Haag, took the bronze in a time of 3:37.8.
The silver is Adicoff’s third medal of his Paralympic career — and he’s gunning for two more cross-country medals in Beijing.
Jake Adicoff (right) with guide Sam Wood earn a second silver medal in the visually impaired freestyle sprint, their second medal in two races at the 2022 Beijing Paralympics. (Photo: Joe Kusumoto / Team USA)
“I said it before, but I’ll say it again — ‘We’re going to gun for gold,’” said Adicoff who is a three-time Paralympian who won silver in the 10k cross-country at the 2018 Paralympic Games in PyeongChang.
“Two more to go. We’re hoping for four for four (on the podium) so we’re right on schedule,” Wood said.
Adicoff said the fun of cross-country sprints is the opportunity to cheer on his fellow U.S. Para Nordic teammates. The entire team raced on Wednesday, which began with qualification rounds, a round of semifinals and the final to determine the Paralympic medalists.
“Being with this team is so much fun. Especially on sprint day. Sprint days are the best. You get to watch everyone and it’s an absolute blast,” said Adicoff. “The team had a good day, so we’re psyched.”
Peterson, who is competing in her first Paralympic Games, won her second medal of Beijing 2022, adding to the silver she won in long-distance cross-country. She completed the sprint cross-country in 4:12.1, behind Canada’s Natalie Wilkie (4:05.1) and Norway’s Vilde Nilsen (4:08.1).
“It was a super challenging race. There were a lot of components to it going throughout the day, but I’m super excited about how it all stacked up,” Peterson said. “I had a ton of people that were out there helping and cheering and it wouldn’t have been possible without all their support.”
Grace Miller races to 14th in the women’s standing freestyle sprint. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)Visually impaired athlete Max Nelson sprints to 14th with guide Simi Hamilton. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
A total of 14 U.S. athletes competed in the day’s events. For the women’s sitting sprint, Lera Doederlein and Erin Martin finished 14th and 16th respectively while Grace Miller took 14th in the women’s standing. In the men’s sitting competition, Dan Cnossen finished just outside a qualifying spot with a 13th place finish while Josh Sweeney finished 19th. Max Nelson took 14th place in the men’s visually impaired qualification round while Drew Shae covered the course in the first round of the men’s standing for 21st.
American teammates Dani Aravich, Ruslan Reiter and Aaron Pike made their way to the semifinal round finishing the sprint competition in 8th, 12th and 12th respectively.
Aaron Pike races into the sprint semifinal, finishing 12th. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
Nordic athletes will enjoy a rest day on Thursday. Racing is scheduled to resume on Friday, with the men’s and women’s individual biathlon. To follow and watch U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing competition from Beijing 2022 on NBC, which features more than 230 hours of coverage across NBC, Peacock, USA Network, the Olympic Channel, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports App. All events will be streamed live on NBC’s Peacock. Follow U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for daily updates from Beijing.
Kendall Gretsch takes gold in the sitting middle-distance biathlon event in Zhangjiakou. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
By Stephen Meyers
ZHANGJIAKOU, China — Team USA’s dynamic duo of Kendall Gretsch (Downers Grove, Ill.) and Oksana Masters (Louisville, Kentucky) won gold and silver in the women’s sitting biathlon middle-distance on the fourth day of competition at the Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.
The U.S. Para Nordic team has now collected seven medals across biathlon and cross-country skiing at Beijing 2022, with four more days of racing to go at the Zhangjiakou Biathlon Center.
For Gretsch, Saturday’s gold medal is the fourth gold —and fifth medal overall — in her Paralympic career. She won gold in the 6k biathlon and 12k cross-country events at PyeongChang 2018 and won gold in Para triathlon at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo six months ago.
Kendall Gretsch races to the line to take gold in the sitting middle-distance biathlon event. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
The dual sport star now has two medals at Beijing 2022, as she began the biathlon competition with a bronze in the women’s sitting biathlon sprint.
After receiving a penalty in the first round of shooting in Tuesday’s race, Gretsch shot clean the remaining three rounds and skied strong, with quick shooting, in the second half of the 10-kilometer race to overtake Masters and win gold in a time of 33:12.
“I’m really excited with today‘s race. I had a good day on skis and I’m happy with our performance. Hopefully we can build on that for the rest of the races too,” said Gretsch, who praised the U.S. Para Nordic team’s culture and support.
“We have such a strong program and great support from our team. The coaching and everything from waxing our skis so they are really fast, and helping us with nutrition, all the support that we get from the staff at Team USA is huge.”
Kendall Gretsch (right) and Oksana Masters (left) go 1-2 in the sitting middle-distance biathlon event during the 2022 Beijing Paralympic Winter Games. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
For Masters, Tuesday’s silver is the third medal she’s won in Beijing and 13th overall in her Paralympics career. She again shot clean — like she did en route to winning gold in the women’s sitting biathlon sprint — and finished 9 seconds behind Gretsch, in 33:21.
“I’m excited with a silver medal. This is my second biathlon medal in the Paralympic Games. This is my second consecutive biathlon medal that I’d shot clean for, which I don’t normally do,” said Masters who also won silver in long-distance cross-country.
“I’m so proud of myself. I was doubting myself coming in here and I think now what I can do is have confidence knowing I have put the work into it and I can do it. And try to make it a little faster so I’m not just giving away time in the race trying to get that shot.”
Oksana Masters goes three-for-three, adding a silver medal to her growing collection in the sitting middle-distance biathlon competition. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
Germany’s Anja Wicker won the bronze, in a time of 35:45.
Team USA’s Lera Doederlein (San Diego, California), competing in her first Paralympic Games, placed ninth.
Dan Cnossen (Topeka, Kansas) was the top U.S. finisher in the men’s sitting biathlon middle-distance, where he placed 12th with a time of 34:10. Aaron Pike (Park Rapids, Minnesota) finished 15th in a time of 36:49.
Dan Cnossen competes in the middle-distance sitting biathlon event during the 2022 Beijing Paralympics. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
Tuesday’s racing action also included biathlon middle-distance events in the standing and visually impaired categories.
The lone U.S. athlete competing in the women’s race, Dani Aravich (Boise, Idaho) skied to 11th place in her second Winter Paralympic race. She made her Paralympic debut in track and field at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
Dani Aravich skis to 11t in the middle distance biathlon competition, her second Winter Paralympic appearance. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
In the men’s standing biathlon race, Ruslan Reiter (Manchester, Maine) placed 12th and Drew Shea (Vienna, Virginia) took 13th. Reiter is competing in his second Winter Paralympics, while Shea is making his Paralympic debut. No U.S. athletes competed in the visually impaired category.
Racing returns to the Zhangjiakou Biathlon Center on Wednesday, March 9 with the men’s and women’s sprint cross-country.
Ruslan Reiter on course during the middle-distance biathlon competition in Zhangjiakou. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
To follow and watch U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing competition from the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Games, tune in to NBC, which features more than 230 hours of coverage across NBC, Peacock, USA Network, the Olympic Channel, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports App. Follow U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for daily updates from Beijing.
Oksana Masters races to a silver medal in the long-distance cross country sitting event on day two of the 2022 Beijing Paralympic Winter Games. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
U.S. Para Nordic star Oksana Masters (Louisville, Kentucky) won silver in the women’s sitting long-distance cross-country race on Sunday, her second medal of the Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.
Masters, a cross-country skier and biathlete, also won gold in the women’s sitting biathlon sprint on Saturday and now has 12 career Paralympic medals between the winter and summer Paralympic Games. Sunday’s silver medal comes six months after winning double gold in Para-cycling at the Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020.
The 2022 world champion in long-distance cross-county, Masters raced the 15-kilometer course at the Zhangjiakou Biathlon Center in a time of 43:38.8 — just 32 seconds behind China’s Hongqiong Yang, who won the gold with a factored time of 43:06. China’s Panpan LI finished with the bronze in 45:17.
Master’s silver medal matches the silver she won in long-distance cross-country at the Paralympic Games Sochi 2014.
Oksana Masters is on a medal streak, adding silver in the long distance cross country race to her gold in the biathlon sitting sprint. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
“I was trying so hard to get the gold,” said Masters, who admits she could have raced faster from the start. “I was trying to upgrade from silver in Sochi and the PyeongChang bronze, but I’m just so happy to be able to fight my way onto the podium.
“I can’t wait to see the U.S. flag being raised today at the medal ceremony [for biathlon sprint]. I was trying to not do my classic ‘go out hard and then die.’ Looking back maybe I was too reserved in the first few laps and then got to a spot where I didn’t have enough space to make up. This course is not really technical so there’s not a lot of places to make up time either. I wish there was more elements of skiing in it, but I think it challenged me in a really different way and I’m excited to see what the next few races have.”
Kendall Gretsch skis to fourth in the women’s long-distance event. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
Teammate Kendall Gretsch (Downers Grove, Ill.) finished just off the podium, in fourth, with a time of 46:26. She finished second, behind Masters, in long-distance cross-country at the Lillehammer 2022 World Para Snow Sports Championships in January. She won the bronze medal in Saturday’s sitting biathlon sprint.
Dan Cnossen (Topeka, Kansas) led the U.S. men in the sitting category, placing sixth with a time of 49:22. Former sled hockey champion turned Nordic skier Josh Sweeney (Glendale, Arizona), placed 16th in his Nordic debut. For Cnossen, Sunday’s long-distance race offered a new personal challenge.
“I don’t care what the result was today,” Cnossen said. “For me, this was a personal test. In my opinion, this is the hardest race that we do in the cross-country discipline at 18 kilometers. In the last Games we had in 2018, it was a 15-kilometer race.”
Dan Cnossen races the sitting long-distance cross country event on day 2 of the 2022 Beijng Paralympic Winter Games. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
“I’ve never done an 18-kilometer, and I just wanted that personal challenge. There’s a battle going on in your head [during the race]. And it’s against the part of me that wants to go a little easier or softer, to kind of not challenge myself as much. And so, it’s a personal test to see what I could do and I’m happy with that. I executed my race plan really well. I had gas in the tank on the last lap, which was the plan. So, success for me.”
A newcomer to Para Nordic skiing, Sweeney isn’t new to the Winter Paralympics. The retired Marine Corps sergeant earned a gold medal as a member of the U.S. sled hockey team at the Paralympic Winter Games Sochi 2014. After retiring from sled hockey, Sweeney competed for a few years in elite paratriathlon before transitioning to Para Nordic skiing in 2021 through the Challenged Athletes Foundation. He notes his experiences from the different sports aids him on the Nordic course.
“Having the different sport experience is [helpful]. Knowing, especially in the triathlon world, what good pacing can do for you and not getting too carried away with what everyone else is doing is big,” Sweeney said. “I’ve learned over all these sports that you have to trust yourself and your coaches, respect the process and just put in the work and you’ll be alright.”
Josh Sweeney races the men’s long-distance cross country sitting event on day two of the 2022 Beijing Paralympic Winter Games. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
China’s Peng Zheng and Zhongwu Mao, won gold and silver, respectively, and Canada’s Collin Cameron won bronze.
Racing continues Monday in Zhangjiakou with the men’s and women’s long-distance cross-country in the standing and vision impaired categories. Watch U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing competition from the 2022 Beijing Paralympics on NBC, which features more than 230 hours of coverage across NBC, Peacock, USA Network, the Olympic Channel, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports App. All events will be streamed live on NBC’s Peacock. Follow U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for daily updates from Beijing.
Oksana Masters (left) takes gold while Kendall Gretsch (right) earns bronze in the sitting biathlon sprint to open the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
By Stephen Meyers | March 05, 2022, 7:27 a.m. (ET)
Oksana Masters (Louisville, Kentucky) won the first gold medal for the U.S. at the Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 on Saturday in the women’s sitting biathlon sprint while teammate Kendall Gretsch (Downers Grove, Illinois) earned bronze on a cold, breezy day that included racing in the men’s and women’s biathlon sprint in the sitting, standing and vision impaired categories.
Masters, a biathlete and cross-country skier, won her fifth career Paralympic gold medal and 11th overall medal between the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games. Saturday’s gold was her first in biathlon; she won two silvers at the Paralympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 in the 6k and 12.5k biathlon.
“I can’t believe it, this is so amazing,” Masters said. “To be able to start off the Paralympic Games in Beijing and bring home a gold medal for Team USA is absolutely incredible. And it’s incredible because I get to do it with my teammate on the podium by my side again.”
“I think this just shows that there’s amazing stuff that’s going to happen for Team USA in the Para Nordic program.”
Oksana Masters takes her first gold of the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games in the sitting biathlon sprint. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
Masters now owns Paralympic gold medals in biathlon, cross-country skiing and Para-cycling. She won two cycling golds at the Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 six months ago.
Masters finished the 6k sitting biathlon sprint race in a time of 20:51.2. China’s Yilin Shan finished 15 seconds back with a time of 21:06 to earn the silver.
Gretsch — who also won gold at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo six months ago, in paratriathlon — earned the bronze, with a time of 22:47. The medal is the fourth of her Paralympic career. At PyeongChang 2018, Gretsch won gold in the 6k biathlon and 12k cross-country events.
“That was a tough race. The sprint is so short and you’re kind of going all-out the whole time. I’m happy to have the first race done and hopefully just build off today for the rest of the races,” said Gretsch, who also races the cross-country events. “It’s crazy [being back at the Paralympics six months after competing in Tokyo] and it’s feeling very different than Tokyo conditions today. I’m trying to channel how warm I was there. It’s always exciting to be at the Paralympics.”
Eighteen-year-old Lera Doederlein (San Diego, California) made her Paralympic debut on Saturday, also competing in the women’s sitting biathlon sprint, finishing ninth. It was Masters who encouraged Doederlein, who had been competing in sled hockey, to give Para Nordic skiing a try in 2019.
“It’s a pretty incredible experience for me to race [with Masters and Gretsch] especially since I’m only 18 years old and it’s my first Paralympics. It was incredible to experience this with them,” Doederlein said.
Dan Cnossen races to fourth place in the sitting biathlon sprint. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
Dan Cnossen (Topeka, Kansas), former Navy SEAL who won six medals in PyeongChang, led Team USA’s men on Saturday in the sitting biathlon sprint, placing fourth.
“I dug deep as far as I could, and this is perhaps the best biathlon race I’ve ever had. I know it may not have been my best result, but for me, it’s more about effort and I really think I put a complete race together today,” Cnossen said.
“Biathlon is a really challenging sport in the sense that you can always ski a little bit faster into the range or you can always try to take your first shot a little bit quicker, or the shots two, three, four, five a little bit quicker. I’ve got to be happy with how I raced today. I’m also happy to be out there with my teammate Aaron [Pike] and our women who had an awesome day. I would also say I’m really happy to see the Ukraine athletes out here today getting after it. With everything they’re going through, it’s inspiring to me to see them compete. I was thinking about them today when I was out there.”
Pike (Park Rapids, Minnesota) finished eighth. A constant in the Paralympics over the past decade, Pike is competing in his sixth Paralympic Games. He raced in Tokyo for U.S. Paralympics Track & Field, competing in the marathon.
Aaron Pike races to 8th in the sitting biathlon sprint to open the 2022 Beijing Paralympic Winter Games. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
In addition, Team USA had three athletes competing in the standing biathlon sprint.
Dani Aravich (Boise, Idaho), who also competed in track and field in Tokyo, placed 13th in her first race as a winter Paralympian.
In the men’s standing biathlon race, Ruslan Reiter (Manchester, Maine) placed 12th and Drew Shea (Vienna, Virginia) took 14th. Reiter is competing in his second Winter Paralympics, while Shea is making his Paralympic debut.
Ruslan Reiter races to 12th in the standing biathlon sprint. (Photo: Mark Reis / Team USA)
No U.S. athletes competed in the visually impaired category.
U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing athletes return to competition on Sunday, as cross-country action takes the stage with the men’s and women’s sitting long-distance races.
Follow and watch U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing competition from Beijing 2022 on NBC, which features more than 230 hours of coverage across NBC, Peacock, USA Network, the Olympic Channel, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports App. All events will be streamed live on NBC’s Peacock. Follow U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for daily updates from Beijing.
Oksana Masters crosses the finish line of a race in Lillehammer, Norway. (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
By Kristen Gowdy | Jan. 31, 2022, 6:02 p.m. (ET)
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO – Following a stellar world championships performance that saw Team USA earn 13 medals in Para Nordic disciplines, U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing today announced the six women, seven men and one guide who have been nominated to compete at the Paralympic Games Beijing 2022 in March.
Veteran athletes will lead the way in Beijing as Team USA looks to build on the 16 Paralympic medals won at the Paralympic Games PyeongChang 2018. Headlined by multi-time Paralympic medalists Oksana Masters (Louisville, Kentucky), Kendall Gretsch (Downers Grove, Illinois) and Dan Cnossen (Topeka, Kansas), the athletes nominated to the 2022 team sport a combined career total of 21 Paralympic medals. Of the 14 athletes, nine have previous Paralympic experience while five athletes will make their Paralympic debut.
“We have many athletes who thrive in these high-stakes competitions, who know what it means to represent Team USA as a Paralympian,” Eileen Carey, director of U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing, said. “We are looking to them, as well as our experienced coaching staff, to lead the newer athletes into Beijing 2022. We are motivated by the combination of experience and the high quality of our Paralympic rookies as a testament to the growth and bright future of our program; their success this Paralympic quad has shown us that we can reach new heights in March.”
A 10-time Paralympic medalist and recently crowned 10-time world champion, Masters is set to make her sixth Paralympic appearance. After winning double gold in Para-cycling at the Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020, Masters has continued her success on the snow, earning a medal in every world cup competition in which she has competed, as well as five medals at the recent Lillehammer 2021 World Para Snow Sports Championships. In Lillehammer, the multi-sport phenom earned her ninth and 10th career world championship titles and will look to put an exclamation point on her already historic 2021-22 season on the world’s biggest stage.
Gretsch, who is putting together a world-class resumé herself this season, also won gold in Tokyo in paratriathlon. She led Team USA in Lillehammer with three world championship titles and also added a silver as she looks to repeat the double gold she won in PyeongChang. The 13-time world championship medalist is headed into Beijing as a heavy favorite in the biathlon discipline, having won both titles in the Para biathlon events in which she competed in Lillehammer.
A six-time Paralympic medalist and retired Navy SEAL, Cnossen earns his third Paralympic team nomination in 2022. All six of Cnossen’s Paralympic medals came in PyeongChang, where he dominated in both cross-country skiing and biathlon. Cnossen is at his best on the Paralympic stage, where he will look to repeat his success come March.
Paralympic silver medalist Jake Adicoff (Sun Valley, Idaho) will team up with longtime friend and guide Sam Wood (Harpswell, Maine) to lead the U.S. in the men’s visually impaired class for his third Paralympic appearance. After taking several years off following his podium performance in PyeongChang, Adicoff accepted an invitation to join the team for a training camp last February, and hasn’t faltered since. He and Wood enter Beijing as one of the top podium contenders in the men’s visually impaired field. The duo have been putting together Adicoff’s best racing of his career, having recently combined for three medals – one of each color – in Lillehammer.
Paralympians Aaron Pike (Park Rapids, Minnesota) and Josh Sweeney (Glendale, Arizona) round out the men’s sitting class for Team USA. Pike, who recently won his second career world championship medal, a silver in the men’s individual biathlon, makes his sixth career Paralympic team. Also a prolific wheelchair racer and marathoner, Pike is peaking at the right time, having been in the podium mix in nearly all of his races this season. He is seeking his first career Paralympic medal in Beijing.
Sweeney, meanwhile, makes his first Paralympic team in Para Nordic skiing, having transitioned to the sport following a 2014 Paralympic gold medal appearance in sled hockey. The 2014 Pat Tillman Award for Service winner and retired U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant picked up skiing through the Challenged Athletes Foundation.
The final sit skiers on the 2022 roster, Erin Martin (Seattle, Washington) and Lera Doederlein (San Diego, California) are set for their Paralympic debuts. A former rock climber, Martin found Para Nordic skiing after sustaining a T4 spinal cord injury while climbing. She is also a registered nurse care manager who has served during the COVID-19 pandemic. Doederlein, meanwhile, also competes in sled hockey and Para-cycling. At just 18 years old, Doederlein, who was adopted from Russia, has found a mentor in the Ukraine-born Masters.
Standing skiers Grace Miller (Palmer, Alaska), Ruslan Reiter (Manchester, Maine) and Dani Aravich (Boise, Idaho) also bring Paralympic experience to the team. Miller and Reiter competed in PyeongChang, where Reiter’s best finish was seventh in the cross-country mixed relay, while Miller finished 10th in the 15-kilometer cross-country skiing race. Aravich made her Paralympic debut as a track and field athlete in Tokyo and along with Masters, Gretsch and Pike, will compete in her second Paralympic Games in six months.
Making their first Paralympic appearances and rounding out Team USA’s roster is standing skier Drew Shea (Vienna, Virginia), and visually impaired athlete Max Nelson (Mahtomedi, Minnesota).
Relatively new to Para Nordic skiing, Shea recently moved to Bozeman, Montana, to pursue the sport competitively with Crosscut Mountain Sports Center, his club team. A rising star in the sport, the 17-year-old Nelson made history as a high school junior last year when he became the first visually impaired Nordic skier to win an individual conference title in Minnesota.
The Paralympic Games begin on March 4, and Para Nordic skiing competition kicks off on March 5. Following record-breaking coverage of the Tokyo Paralympic Games, NBC has announced a historic broadcast schedule for its Winter Paralympic programming, which features more than 230 hours of coverage across NBC, Peacock, USA Network, the Olympic Channel, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports App. NBC’s scheduled programming also includes the first-ever Winter Paralympic Games primetime coverage.
For media requests and photo inquiries, please contact Kristen Gowdy at Kristen.Gowdy@usopc.org.
2022 U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing Paralympic Team
Women:
Dani Aravich, women’s standing
Lera Doederlein, women’s sitting
Kendall Gretsch, women’s sitting
Erin Martin, women’s sitting
Oksana Masters, women’s sitting
Grace Miller, women’s standing
Men:
Jake Adicoff (with guide Sam Wood), men’s visually impaired
The Para World Championships wrapped up in Lillehammer, Norway on Sunday January 23rd, with a mixed open relay event bringing athletes from across genders and race categories together into one thrilling capstone event.
Rewinding to where our previous coverage left off, Saturday’s schedule featured the final individual races of the Championships, a classic spring for standing athletes, and a cross country sprint for sprint skiers. As in able-bodied fields, a sprint involves a qualification round, followed by a semifinal and grand finale to decide the medalists. The number of athletes who make the semifinal varies based on category.
Highlighting the day, Oksana Masters took gold in the women’s sitting race, her sixth medal of the Championships (two of each color) and career 11th World Championship medal. This title was not certain until the final meters of the race, where Masters put in a final surge to overtake an athlete from Belarus just before the line.
Oksana Masters (right) sprints to the finish during the women’s sitting individual biathlon. (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
“It feels incredible,” Masters said in the Team USA press release. “It doesn’t feel that long ago that I was barely making finals in sprint, or I couldn’t finish a sprint without falling or breaking a pole. To be able to have a third consecutive world championship title in this event is just incredible.”
Another medal favorite based on her performances through the week, Kendall Gretsch also raced in the sitting finale, however, a late crash put her out of reach of the podium and she ended the day in fifth.
On the men’s side, Aaron Pike led the American men in the sitting sprint, placing well inside the top-12 to qualify for the semifinals. In his semi, Pike finished fifth and did not advance to the finale. Meanwhile, Dan Cnossen was 16th in qualification and did not advance to the rounds.
Dan Cnossen competes at the Para World Championships in Lillehammer. (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
In the women’s standing races, newcomer to the team Sydney Peterson earned her second silver medal of the week, in addition to a third place medal. Perhaps still gaining experience, Peterson felt her first two rounds of racing were not smooth, though it came together in the final round.
“I had some mishaps the first two races this morning so I’m glad that things worked out for the finals,” said Peterson to Team USA. “I’m pretty excited that was a really fun race. It will be fun to continue racing.”
A second standing athlete, Dani Aravich, was just shy of the top-eight in qualification, meaning she was unable to advance to the semifinal for her class.
Friends, teammates, and more recently athlete-guide pair, Jake Adicoff and Sam Wood fist bump after earning a gold medal in the 10k classic at the Para World Championships in Lillehammer. (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
“I’m feeling pretty good,” said Adicoff. “This is an improvement from the classic sprint in Canmore. We’re pretty happy with the result and it’s super fun racing out there. [We’re taking away] a little bit of confidence and then to be off that gold medal for two races now that’s what we’re looking for – gold in Beijing.”
On Sunday, the American squad fielded two relay teams in the mixed-gender, mixed-class 10-kilometer event. Given the variations in time based on sitting, standing, and subcategories within those groups, this makes for an interesting equation. Simultaneously, what better a way to highlight the diversity, talent, and teamwork seen across nations?
According to the daily Team USA press release, “relays were structured so that each athlete was assigned points based on their classification and gender, and the sum of each team’s total points could not exceed 335 for the mixed relay and 375 for the open relay. From there, it was head-to-head racing, and factored times did not come into play.”
Masters led an all-women’s team for the U.S., passing off to Peterson for the second leg, with Grestch racing third, and Aravich as anchor. Each of the women put together strong performances to keep their team within the top four, finishing in a cumulative time of 31:41.5.
The American women’s open relay team took fourth in the final race of the Para World Championships in Lillehammer. (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
“We didn’t know until yesterday how we were going to do the relays, so when our coaches told us it was all women, we were really excited,” Aravich explained in the press release. “When we looked at the points and how it was stacked up, we probably shot ourselves in the foot a bit because we didn’t come close to maximizing the points we could have had in the race. We set our expectations to have fun and end this trip on a high note, which we did.”
On the men’s side, Adicoff and Wood raced both the second and final leg of the relay, with Pike leading the team for the first leg and Cnossen racing third. Following a strong opener from Pike, Adicoff and Wood brought the men into second place, though they slipped back in the results over the next two. They finished the race in fifth overall, however, they were issued a 30-second time penalty for one of their exchanges, which bumped them down to sixth.
Jake Adicoff and guide Sam Wood race the long-distance skate, bringing home a bronze medal. (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
The next races on the Para World Cup calendar begin next weekend, running January 27th – February 1st in Östersund, Sweden. The 2022 Paralympic team will be named following these events on February 1st, leaving the team just over a month to prepare for the Games in Beijing, which kick off on March 4th.
Oksana Masters (left) and Kendall Gretstch (right) go 1-2 in the women’s 15k sitting long distance cross country race. (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
It’s late January and we’re deep into the race season. As the Olympics and Paralympics draw nearer, we’ve simultaneously just wrapped up the Tour de Ski, the U.S. Cross Country Championships, and another wave of SuperTour races. Never a dull moment in the racing world, the Para World Championships are currently well underway, running January 13-23rd in Lillehammer, Norway.
Normally occurring on odd years, the World Championships were postponed from last February due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, the event was called the Lillehammer 2021 World Para Snow Sports Championships. It was a hallmark event, as it is the first time that all snow sports have competed together in one location over the same dates.
Led by well-decorated veterans like Oksana Masters, Kendall Gretsch, and Dan Cnossen, the U.S. Para Nordic Team has put together a string of outstanding results at World thus far. Events have ranged from biathlon springs to cross country distance races, with athletes competing – and cleaning up – across all disciplines and distances.
Kicking off the series of events, Sun Valley’s Jake Adicoff took home his career first World Championship medal by winning the men’s visually impaired 10-kilometer middle distance race.
“It feels great,” Adicoff said of his performance, according to the Team USA Press Release. “Lillehammer has been skiing really well so far, I’ve been having a lot of fun here. It feels great to go and get that first podium, and hopefully we can go out and get some more here.”
Jake Adicoff and his guide Sam Wood put together a gold medal performance on the opening day of racing at the Para World Championships in Lillehammer, NOR. (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Adicoff retired in 2018 after earning a silver medal in the 10k and taking 4th in the sprint, however, he is making his return with a bang in this 2021/22 season.
Building momentum throughout the first day, 19-year-old Sydney Peterson earned a silver medal in the women’s standing middle distance race, with Gretsch earning the second gold medal for team USA in the women’s sitting 7.5k middle distance event. That’s three medals, two gold and one silver, on the first day of racing, along with an additional two athletes, Cnossen and Dani Aravich, earning top-10 finishes.
Dan Cnossen hits the range during the individual sitting biathlon event at the Para World Championships in Lillehammer, NOR. (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Joining the team in Lillehammer late after testing positive for COVID-19 on New Year’s Eve, Masters made a smooth return to competition, taking second place in her first race at Worlds, the sitting biathlon sprint on January 15th. The next day, the American women took first and third in the sitting biathlon middle distance race, with Gretsch earning her second gold medal of the week and Masters adding an 18th World Championship medal to her ever-expanding collection.
On point, a perfect shooting performance contributed to Gretsch’s gold, while Masters skied her way out of a significant deficit. Experiencing challenges on the range, Master’s racked up seven penalties, but made up her shooting with her skiing. In the men’s sitting race, Master’s partner, Aaron Pike, skied his way into the Top-10, a rank he has achieved in each of his World Cup races this season, leaving him primed for a medal.
Two days later on the 18th, Masters and Gretch again took the spotlight, going 1-2 in the women’s sitting 15k long distance cross-country race. Now reaching 19 total, this marked Masters’ 10th career World Championship gold medal.
“It’s absolutely incredible,” Masters said in the Team USA press release that day. “It feels like yesterday where I was that new athlete, never thinking that I would be a world championship athlete. So, to have 10 now … is incredible and it’s a testament to our team’s hard work. It’s not just me, it’s the whole team.”
Already an historic day for the U.S., Peterson and Adicoff continued the medal streak in the long-distance cross country races, with each athlete earning a bronze medal in the standing and visually impaired divisions, respectively. Four Americans competed that day, and four medals were won. How’s that for success?
Aaron Pike races the individual sitting middle distance biathlon event at the Para World Championships in Lillehammer, Norway. (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
As the final days of World Championship racing kicked off, Pike’s consistency paid off with a silver medal in the men’s sitting individual biathlon event. Missing just one target, matching the best result of the event, Pike finished 24 seconds back on the winner, Pavlo Bal of the Ukraine. This result is both a World Championship and overall World Cup career best for Pike, who is an accomplished wheelchair racer during the summer season.
“It was a tough day to be shooting out there, everybody’s missing so I was happy to come away with just missing one shot,” said Pike in today’s recap. “This is probably the windiest race we’ve had in three years. Every chance you get to put a bib on and race in a biathlon race is experience.”
Racing in the women’s sitting individual biathlon, Gretsch and Masters continued to dominate the field, taking first and third, respectively, to keep their medal streak alive and well.
Again performing well on the range, Gretsch missed just one target in four rounds of shooting and skied the second fastest time on course for a finish time of 52:25.0. While Masters skied the fastest time of day, she again faced challenges in her shooting, incurring five penalties, leaving her 3:00.7 behind Gretsch in the final results. In the women’s standing class, Aravich earned another top-10 finish in eighth.
With excellent shooting records, Kendall Gretsch puts together back-to-back gold medal performances in biathlon events. (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
After a day of rest, the Para athletes have two final days of racing in Lillehammer on the 22nd and 23rd, which feature a sprint for the standing and visually impaired categories on Saturday and a Mixed Relay on Sunday. Based on the week’s results, it’s clear that they are primed for another medal run in the upcoming 2022 Beijing Paralympic Games, which begin March 4th.
Livestreams of past and upcoming events, along with links to results can be found on the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Facebook page, or you can check out the remainder of snowsport events happening this week in Lillehammer by following along here.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing today announced the five Para Nordic skiers named to the national team and two skiers named to the development team for the 2020-21 season. All seven athletes represented Team USA at the Paralympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018.
“Our program is committed to developing athletes from their first-time experience to the top levels of Nordic skiing and biathlon,” said Eileen Carey, Director of U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing. “Our 2020-2021 National Team is representative of that commitment with a combination of up-and-coming athletes and those who are at the pinnacle of the sport internationally.”
The team is led by Paralympic gold medalists Oksana Masters (Louisville, Kentucky), Kendall Gretsch (Downers Grove, Illinois) and Dan Cnossen (Topeka, Kansas). At the 2019 World Para Nordic Skiing Championships, Masters won five world titles (middle-distance biathlon, middle-distance cross-country, cross-country sprint, biathlon sprint and long-distance cross-country) and garnered six total medals in Prince George, British Columbia.
Gretsch returned home as the 2019 world champion in the women’s sitting class of individual biathlon and additionally secured podium finishes in each of her events, claiming four silvers and one bronze.
Cnossen, a retired Navy SEAL, won a pair of medals at the world championships, racing to silver in the men’s sitting class of the middle-distance cross-country and cross-country sprint races. Pike secured the first world championships medal of his career – the bronze medal in the biathlon sprint – at the 2019 world championships.
Cnossen, Masters and Pike were set to compete at the 2020 World Para Biathlon Championships in Ostersund, Switzerland in March before it’s cancellation due to the on-going COVID pandemic.
The 2021 World Para Nordic Championships are scheduled to be held in Lillehammer, Norway from Feb. 11–20 as part of a historic first joint World Para Snow Sports Championships which will also include alpine skiing and snowboarding championships.
National A Team
Dan Cnossen
Kendall Gretsch
Oksana Masters
National C Team
Aaron Pike
Ruslan Reiter
Development Team
Joy Rondeau
Grace Miller
For more information, please contact Annemarie Blanco, U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing, at annemarie.blanco@usopc.org or 719-646-6921.
USPN coaches Eileen Carey (far left) and BethAnn Chamberlain (far right) with members of the women’s team at a recent training camp in Canmore, Alberta.
I believe in this mission and therefore want to highlight a program that is doing an exemplary job of developing, advancing, and retaining female coaches, yet has been largely absent from the conversation. That program is U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing (USPN).
When asked why he thought female coaches are so scarce in the Nordic world, John Farra, the former director of USPN, answered, “My theory would be that women are not encouraged as often or aren’t provided as many opportunities to take leadership roles in the Nordic space.”
This thought is consistent with research conducted by Dr. Nicole LaVoi and the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. Even without the research, plenty of women coaches can provide anecdotal evidence regarding the frustration of their experiences trying to break into a typically male-dominated field.
“How many women have stopped coaching because they don’t feel valued, or are not given opportunities to advance?” said Eileen Carey, current director of USPN. “If more women had better experiences coaching, we’d probably have more women coaches.”
This is why I was surprised when USPN invited me to test skis with the glide wax department at the Paralympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea in 2018. I had been coaching juniors with Durango Nordic Ski Club for five years, but was new to para-Nordic skiing and international level competition. USPN gave me the opportunity to learn.
One of the first things I noticed upon arriving in South Korea was that for the first time in my coaching experience, I wasn’t outnumbered by men. Of the 14 coaches and support staff members, seven were men and seven were women. Furthermore, the women, who included powerhouses like Carey, Kristina Trygstad-Saari, and BethAnn Chamberlain, were far from statistical tokens. (Chamberlain was just recognized by the USOPC as the Developmental Coach of the Year.)
“[John Farra and I] made the decision on how we wanted to build our staff based on who was really competent and who was good in a team environment,” said Carey. “We chose who was best for the job, and that happened to be half women.”
Oskana Masters focused and in the moment on the range during the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Joe Kusumoto)
In PyeongChang, USPN won a total of 16 medals, a tremendous increase from the three garnered during the 2014 Paralympics in Sochi, Russia. The 16 medals were comprised of six gold, seven silver, and three bronze and accounted for nearly half of the 36 medals won by Team USA at the Paralympics. Farra credits a large part of this immense success to Carey, who was head coach of the program at the time.
“What we experienced in Korea was this perfect symphony of human beings coming together with a purpose, without egos,” said Farra. “It was an unbelievable experience to be around so many passionate, powerful people who executed their roles so well. That was orchestrated by Eileen and her style of leadership.”
Another key member of the half female coaching staff is Chamberlain, who serves as the emerging athlete coach. She utilizes her trademark enthusiasm and approachability to coordinate with clubs nationwide to identify, recruit, and develop emerging athletes.
“BethAnn is ideally suited for this line of work,” said Farra. “Her intensity, her passion, she’s just incredible for wrapping people in and getting them fired up.
Chamberlain, who had a 15-year career as a professional biathlete before she started coaching, also offers USPN a fount of technical knowledge regarding all things skiing and shooting.
“She has an extensive background in biathlon, so when athletes are new, they get a pretty thorough introduction to the sport,” said Gary Colliander, USPN’s biathlon coach. “She’s also very easy to work with, so this develops a great opportunity for other coaches to learn from her as well.”
When I asked Chamberlain, who also has experience coaching for non-adaptive programs such as Boulder Nordic Junior Racing Team and the Loppet Ski Club, what her favorite aspect of working with USPN is, she referenced the out of the box thinking required to coach adaptive skiing.
“The goal is the same as it is in non-adaptive skiing and biathlon, to ski fast and hit targets, but your approach to get there is a little different,” Chamberlain said. “Just because a standing skier skis with two poles, is that really the way someone with one pole should ski? We don’t know all the answers. We don’t know a lot of the answers. So that forces us to be a little more open-minded, to consider other possible ideas and solutions.”
In fact, throughout my conversations with various individuals associated with USPN, this ability to consistently consider alternatives emerged as the number one hallmark of an effective coach.
Farra described Carey as, “hands down the best coach that I’ve worked with” specifically because she is, “someone who asks more questions than has answers.”
“She is always asking why? Why are we doing it this way? Why can’t we do it that way?” said Farra. “And by asking so many questions, she evolved from someone with former racing experience and some touchpoints with coaching to a large driver of the team’s success.”
Nick Michaud, a USPN development team coach, cited “the courage to say I don’t know” as one of the most important things he’s learned from both working with Carey and the team.
“To see someone like Eileen, who has been doing this a long time and is at the top of her game, admit ‘I’m not sure’ when I ask a question, and then for us to go figure it out, is such a cool process,” said Michaud.
“Being able to do that helps puts some autonomy on the athletes, it opens the door for a lot more learning, and it makes a more collaborative process. I think the moment you start assuming things or think you know everything, that’s when the growth and development stops.”
Obviously, inquisitiveness and humility are not qualities specific to gender. I do not think it’s a coincidence, though, that an organization that has grown and improved and succeeded by consistently asking what it can do differently exemplifies equity.
Oksana Masters of U.S. Paralympics Nordic is hugged by head coach Eileen Carey after her gold-medal finish in the women’s sitting 5 k cross country race at the 2018 Winter Paralympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Mark Reis/U.S. Paralympics)
At the introductory level, USPN strives to present opportunities for individuals to explore things they might not have otherwise thought possible. As athletes advance, USPN provides a framework for progression through the sport, which includes access to a range of highly-qualified professionals and resources. Assistant coach Trygstad-Saari handles initial communication with athletes, manages the logistics of the program, and in conjunction with Chamberlain, stokes enthusiasm. Michaud keeps a pulse on all groups and serves as a bridge for developing athletes who may be potential medalists.
At the elite level, athletes work with head coach Martin Benes and biathlon coach Colliander. They are also connected with a network of specialists within the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), such as a strength coach, a sports psychologist, and a nutritionist.
This is all of course facilitated by Carey, whose staff and athletes can’t say enough good things about her efficiency, expertise, and color-coded spreadsheets.
Dan Cnossen on his way to winning the men’s middle distance national title at the Paralympic Nordic Nationals at Craftsbury, Vermont. (Photo: John Lazenby)
“I’ve been really impressed with the caliber of coaching I’ve had in my eight years with the team,” said Dan Cnossen, an athlete on USPN’s National Team. Cnossen is a former Navy SEAL and a six-time Paralympic medalist. “They really consider and respond to athlete feedback. Tapping into the USOPC’s resources is also adding a lot of depth to the organization. The team is just getting better and better.”
The more I learn about how USPN develops Paralympic athletes, the more I realize how similar this process is to the way Nordic skiing should be developing female coaches. USPN removes barriers and provides opportunities for a minority population. This is analogous to presenting coaching as a viable career option to women and providing opportunities to pursue it.
Furthermore, USPN’s versatile approach and superlative support system allows athletes to not only explore skiing, but excel at it. Similarly, female coaches need professional development opportunities and a network of peers and allies, such as the WSCA, to thrive and advance in a traditionally male-dominated field.
What goes into creating successful athletes, coaches, and programs is vast and complex. Female leadership and gender equality may only be one piece of the puzzle, but I do believe it plays a powerful role. U.S. Paralympics Nordic provides a promising example for both the future of women’s ski coaching and promoting overall diversity in the sport.
As Michaud put it, “Hopefully we’re showing that we can mix up the way things are and be really good at winning medals.”
This insight into training para nordic athletes comes from Martin Benes, head coach of U.S. Para Nordic skiing. Benes joined U.S. Para Nordic in August 2018 after spending five years as the nordic ski director and head coach at Sugar Bowl Academy in Norden, CA. Benes responded via. email following a team training camp in Canmore, Alberta.
Martin Benes, head coach of U.S. Para Nordic, shares insight into structuring training for para nordic athletes. (Photo: Screenshot TeamUSA.org)
FasterSkier: Before taking this job, did you have any background in or connections to para sports? What have you learned in your time with U.S. Para Nordic?
Martin Benes: I had not had any background working with para athletes. As a junior I remember para Nordic skier Candace Cable training and racing in the Truckee-Tahoe area. I’d also seen the athletes at events here and there. I’ve been with the program a little over a year and just one full competition season. I feel like I’ve been constantly learning since I took the job, and a lot of that is just learning the individual athletes and how best to support them.
FS: Do you work with and write training for the whole USA para nordic crew or only certain athletes?
MB: I’m currently working with our National Team athletes which consists of four sit-skiers and one standing skier. It’s a little bit of a mix with how specific I’m getting in supporting training plans for those athletes. Educating athletes and supporting them as they make decisions for themselves is definitely the best thing I can do for athletes of this caliber. There’s some great collaboration happening with summer sport coaches for some of our sit-ski athletes and good support from clubs around the country for standing athletes.
FS: What are some of your takeaways in regard to coaching para athletes vs. able bodied? Are there different considerations in training philosophy? Similarities?
American Kendall Gretsch (l) racing in the 4 x 2.5 k mixed relay at the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. Her team finished seventh. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Mark Reis)
MB: Fundamentally, there is a lot of overlap from a physiology perspective. With any group of elite-level athletes, in comes down to individualizing their training so they get the most out of each camp or training block. With Para Athletes, that individualization becomes even more paramount. One challenge will always be what works best for each athlete and trying to maximize their training.
In addition, we’re dealing with different types of injuries that can limit how an athlete can prepare for the competition season. So we’ve got to take those into account and first and foremost ensure an athlete stays healthy enough to train to their full potential.
FS: When leading a training session for para athletes with varying abilities and needs, how do you structure workouts to ensure everyone gets what they need from the session? Does the look of this change in summer vs. winter?
USA Para Nordic Gold Medalist Dan Cnossen shows the paddle board he uses to prepare his upper body for sit skiing. (Courtesy Photo)
MB: One of the big things that we do is allow athletes to drive the sessions. We tend to seek out a lot of athlete feedback and learn where they’re trying to improve and try to support that. It leads to a lot of interesting conversations about technique and tactics. When we do group work, which is still important, we try to be very deliberate in structuring it so that all athletes can get something out of it. Those sessions are typically either agility- and skills-based or speed-work.
In the summer our seated athletes tend to do a lot of cross-training and we avoid ski-specific movements to give them an opportunity to mentally and physically reset. They obviously are doing a lot of work with their arms and so anything to change it up is a positive and contributes to their long-term athlete health.
It’s also about learning what their strengths/weaknesses might be and then adjusting training, strength, and technique to maximize their session.
FS: What or who should people keep an eye out for this season? What is the team most excited for?
MB: We’ve got a really strong National Team going into this season, and excited to hopefully have some new athletes qualifying for World Cup racing this season in January and February at our races in Germany. Certainly our returning World Champs medalists Oksana Masters, Kendall Gretsch, Dan Cnossen, and Aaron Pike are all contenders this season and Ruslan Reiter, a standing skier, has made some big gains over the summer. We’ve got a combined race with FIS in Dresden which will be an exciting event for everyone and also Biathlon World Championships in March in Sweden.
The women’s 6-kilometer sitting biathlon podium on Day 1 of the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, with Americans Kendall Gretsch (c) in first and Oksana Masters (l) in second, and Lidziya Hrafeyeva of Belarus (r) in third. (Photo: US Paralympics/Mark Reis)
Biathlon gold medalist Dan Cnossen of the U.S. celebrates his win in the men’s sitting 7.5 k biathlon sprint on opening day of competition at the 2018 Winter Paralympics on March 10 in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Mark Reis)
In the realm of para nordic sport, the 39-year-old medaled in each of the six biathlon and cross country events in which he competed during the 2018 Paralympic Games. At the 2019 World Championships, he Cnossen earned a silver medal in both the cross country sprint and middle distance races after a slew of podium finishes in World Cup events during the season.
Prior to his athletic career, Cnossen served as a Navy SEAL platoon leader. While deployed in Afghanistan in 2009, he was severely injured in an explosion after stepping on an IED (improvised explosive device). Recovery from this injury required the amputation of both of his legs above the knee. He received both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with Valor for his service.
FasterSkier connected with Cnossen via email during a recent on-snow training camp in Sweden to learn about the variety of training modes he utilizes to prepare for the winter ski season, which, as it turns out, includes some non-traditional activities.
“Over the last several years in the Nordic off-season, I’ve alternated between competing in running races— mostly 5Ks — hand cycling, and most recently a bit of prone paddle boarding. After a full ski season, I mentally can use a break from racing, but in a long off-season racing can be a great way to stay sharp. It needs to be balanced with these mental and physical recovery aspects, though. If I find myself really looking forward to a race, then I think this is a good indicator that I’m ready to go again.”
As paddle boarding and surfing seem a bit further removed from ski training than hand cycling or running, Dan explained how he came to these sports and how he incorporates them into his preparation for the winter season. Oddly enough, he was recognizing that the more traditional dryland training modes were not adequately preparing him for the demands of sit skiing.
“I have found that running is great for my cardiovascular development, and it rests my arms—a nice break from double poling all winter! However, if I run exclusively it doesn’t do the job over a long off-season and I’ll likely be under-developed in the upper body power required to be a good nordic sit skier. In addition to some roller skiing, which can be hard on the elbows, I started hand cycling several years ago. It’s great to be able to ride a bike, especially in the fall in New England.”
Always on the lookout for methods to improve in sport, Cnossen chanced into a low impact means of improving his skiing while out on the water.
USA Para Nordic Gold Medalist Dan Cnossen shows the paddle board he uses to prepare his upper body for sit skiing. (Courtesy Photo)
“Hand cycling puts a heavy load on the arms and biceps, which isn’t as useful for skiing, and when some friends in Rhode Island asked if I’d like to go prone paddling with them I said sure, not knowing really what it was all about. I had recently started surfing and knew that arms-only paddling was great for the kinds of muscles needed for double-pole skiing, and when I went on my first prone paddle on the ocean—in addition to struggling to keep up with my friends—I was hooked on this mode of training.”
Cnossen explained that prone paddling is similar to stand up paddle boarding, except for the body position and that the paddling is done with the arms and hands directly. The board is also narrower.
“You can either paddle on your belly in a prone position, with a stroke similar to freestyle swimming or the butterfly, or you can get up on your knees and do a double arm stroke. Not only does prone paddling get me out on the water—ocean, lakes, rivers—it’s a fairly niche sport that has a very close community as a result. Now, when I show up for the first Paralympic ski team camp in the fall, on snow in a ski tunnel in Europe, I feel the transition into double poling is fairly seamless and that is because of surfing and prone paddling.”
Outside of running, hand cycling, surfing, and prone paddling, Cnossen incorporates regular strength training throughout the summer. He also spends time at the range and pairs either running or a ski erg with shooting to round out his biathlon training.
Finally, Cnossen contrasted this summer training with his workload during the winter.
Dan Cnossen heads to the water for a prone paddle boarding session. (Courtesy Photo)
“In the ski season, the type and volume of training we conduct depends on where we are in the competition cycle. This could include a high volume phase, an intensity phase, a recovery week, and the tapering process before the major event of the season, which is typically towards its end. However, if I were to outline a typical training week it would usually contain two interval days on snow in the morning, likely with shooting for one of the two sessions at a high heart rate, followed by some type of strength work in the gym that afternoon. online games to play with friends
For the other days of the week, I’ll usually ski anywhere from 90-120 minutes or longer at an easy pace, focusing on technique and various drills to accomplish that aim. These long skis might involve skiing and shooting, or they might focus only on skiing. And there might be some recovery jogging thrown in there as well, if the roads outside aren’t too icy. It’s quite easy to over-do the training as a sit skier, since arms don’t recover as quickly as legs, so we’re constantly mindful of how we feel. I have incorporated this year a lot of mobility work both before and after training, and stretching after, and it’s making a big difference in how my back, shoulders and neck feel.”
Oskana Masters focused and in the moment on the range during the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Joe Kusumoto)
For this week’s Wednesday Workout, FasterSkier reached out to Martin Benes, the newest addition to the U.S. Para-Nordic coaching staff. Benes joined U.S. Para-Nordic this August, after five years working as the nordic skiing director and head coach at Sugar Bowl Academy in Norden, California. He is still currently living in California.
Benes’s primary work is with the Para-Nordic national team: A-team members Oksana Masters, Kendall Gretsch, and Dan Cnossen, as well as B-team member, Aaron Pike. Many of those athletes compete in sports outside nordic skiing–Masters also competes in handcycling, Gretsch in para-triathlon–permitting Benes to coach remotely fairly easily through the fall.
“In the summer/fall, we’re kind of operating on a camp schedule,” Benes said during a phone conversation indicating that since late August, his primary role has been writing athlete training plans. He has also facilitated three camps for U.S. Para-Nordic national team athletes.
American Dan Cnossen racing to second in the men’s 15 k sitting biathlon individual at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/ Maddie Meyer-Getty Images)
This first camp was in Torsby, Sweden, where national team athletes made use of the city’s ski tunnel from late September to early October.
“Then we had a camp out in Lake Placid, [New York]” Benes said. “They used their snowmaking to make us a small loop, which was really awesome of them. Obviously, with this level of athlete, it’s nice to be able to get on snow at least once a month, especially in the fall. We had a big group of development athletes there.”
Following the Lake Placid camp in late October, the athletes gathered once again, this time in West Yellowstone, Mont., for the Rendezvous Ski Festival held Nov. 20 until Nov. 24. Before returning to California, Benes stayed in Bozeman to work with the national team athletes for a week after the festival.
“I’ll be spending chunks of time up in Bozeman and be able to work with athletes up there going into race series,” Benes said.
The International Paralympic Committee’s first series of World Cup races kicks off Wednesday, Dec. 12 in Vuokatti, Finland. (For the International Paralympic Committee’s complete calendar of cross-country and biathlon competitions, click here).
Prior to this year, Benes’s primary coaching work has been with junior ski racers (he’s coached for Far West, Auburn Ski Club and Sugar Bowl Academy) and college-age athletes (he spent two years as the assistant coach for Bates College, his alma mater). On being an able-bodied coach for Para-athletes, Benes indicated that at its core, the philosophy of coaching is the same. At present, there are no former Para-Nordic athletes coaching with the program.
“The training principles don’t really change,” Benes said. “Yes there are things to be aware of physiologically, but in terms of the core principles, it’s not that different.”
Benes said that paralympic standing athletes’ development often mirrors fairly closely, that of able-bodied athletes.
“In terms of that athlete is going to have started skiing pretty young and probably trained with their club with some modifications,” he said.
There are currently two college athletes in the Para-Nordic program’s development program, Grace Miller (University of Alaska Fairbanks) and Mia Zutter (College of St. Scholastica).
Kendall Gretsch takes aim during the women’s 6-kilometer sitting biathlon at the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games on Saturday in PyeongChang, South Korea. She won the race to become the first American woman to medal in a biathlon event at the Paralympics (or Olympics). (Photo: US Paralympics/Getty)
“For the sit skiers, the biggest difference there is tactical and a little bit technical approach has to shift a little bit,” Benes continued. “It’s obviously a little bit different, but the principles are the same. And I think that obviously I’m pretty new to this program, but they’ve done a good job of codifying a lot of what has worked.”
“So I think there’s actually kind of a system in place of, these are the things that we need to deal with when people first start sit skiing and these are kind of the things that we’re looking for in potential sit-ski athletes,” he said. “I kind of had this luxury of coming into this program that has been successful in a lot of ways and has established itself as a program that’s doing a lot of things right. I have the opportunity to build on that with a strong staff in place.”
Like any other athlete-coach relationship, the biggest role Benes has is to facilitate the athlete’s own self-sufficiency within the sport.
“With this level of athlete, you’re individualizing more than maybe you would with able-bodied athletes in terms of training plans, in terms of strength plans, he said. “But ultimately you’re…helping guide them and giving them the framework to be successful and helping them be their own best coaches.”
With a little less than four years before the next Paralympics, Benes said that for now, his focus will be “taking the opportunity to try some new things and explore some new things without forgetting the pieces that have worked and building on those.”
“That’s kind of a vague answer, somewhat on purpose,” he added. “Basically this is a really good year for us to try some new things, without letting go of what has worked.”
The following text is a workout written by Benes.
***
Here is a workout I’ve used in the past at various points in the year with different levels of athletes. It was a staple with some of the senior-level athletes I’ve worked with during the summer and fall and I’ve also found it to be an effective workout during the race season if athletes are starting to feel flat racing. It’s a great workout for older juniors and up. For younger skiers, play some games instead.
The goal is to have a steady effort threshold effort and then mix in some surges/speeds where athletes are sprinting and forcing themselves to change gears and tempo from what is already a hard effort. In that respect, it is similar to a race effort where you have to change gears and respond to accelerations, especially in mass start or sprint racing. What separates it from just an all-out race effort is that the steady effort is more controlled and therefore guarantees that the athletes are able to increase tempo and speed.
I’ve used a few different modes but running with poles/bounding, rollerskiing, and skiing all are great options.Obviously, the mode depends on the time of year a little. Ideally, you have some rolling terrain so that in addition to the surges/speeds there are also some built-in recovery sections. So, onto how to set this workout up:
Find a suitable loop for running with poles, rollerskiing, or skiing. Ideally, it is gently rolling terrain. No hills that are too steep/long but with some good variety. The length doesn’t matter too much but if it’s too short it will get boring too fast. A loop that will take the athletes 4-6 minutes at threshold is good.
Aaron Pike (U.S. Paralympics Nordic) racing at the 2018 Winter Paralympics on a balmy day in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Joe Kusumoto)
On the loop, mark out (with cones, chalk, or dye) 2-4 short sections where the athletes will accelerate, do a speed, etc. You can mix up the specifics of the speeds. They could be forced technique, all-out speeds, accelerations, or any other variation. You’re looking for sections that should take approximately 10-20 seconds at speed.
You’re good to go. Depending on the athletes, you’re typically looking for 15-35 minutes of on time.
So, once it’s set up, have the athletes do a basic warm-up of 20 minutes of L1 activity, followed by 4 to 610-second speeds. Then decide how long the athletes will have for on-time. Typically, you would want to emulate a 5- to 10–kilometer race. So, in other words about 15-35 minutes of on time. Once they’re done, have them do a short cool-down and get their recovery on. Here is the step-by-step:
20-minute L1-L2 warm up.
4-6 by 10-second speeds. The focus here is quick movements.
15-35 minutes of threshold on the loop, with speeds on the marked sections. Speeds should be recognizable as a significant change in tempo/pace.
In this episode of Nordic Nation, we spoke with Dan Cnossen, who, at 38, has much to celebrate. This past winter, he raked in six medals (one for every race he competed in) at the Winter Paralympics — three in biathlon, three in cross-country — in PyeongChang, South Korea. But as he discusses in this podcast, the winning does not define him. Raised on a fifth-generation family farm outside Topeka, Kanasa, Cnossen went on to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy and now holds masters degrees in public administration and theological studies — both from Harvard.
Biathlon gold medalist Dan Cnossen of the U.S. celebrates his win in the men’s sitting 7.5 k biathlon sprint on March 10, the opening day of competition at the 2018 Winter Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Mark Reis)
On his path to the Paralympics, Cnossen served as a Navy SEAL platoon leader. He lost both his legs in an explosion in 2009 while on patrol in Afghanistan, and became a recipient of both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with Valor.
In the 42 minutes we have with Cnossen, we learn about perseverance and how a curious mind meshed athletics with theology.
Julia Kern leads Katharine Ogden, her fellow Stratton Mountain School (SMS) and U.S. Ski Team development team member, during the Snow Farm’s 21 k Snow Rake at the 2018 Merino Muster in Wanaka, New Zealand. (Photo: Garrick Cameron)
Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Simi Hamilton of the U.S. Ski Team (USST) and Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team, and Kevin Bolger of the USST and Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation.
***
It’s that time of year again where several members of the U.S. Ski Team, along with top-level skiers from the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) and Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team are training at the Snow Farm above the town of Wanaka, New Zealand.
The on-snow volume camp, which featured multiple days of racing, started Aug. 20 and continues through Sept. 10, and includes U.S. Ski Team (USST) athletes Jessie Diggins, Ida Sargent, Sophie Caldwell, Katharine Ogden, Julia Kern, Simi Hamilton, Kevin Bolger, and Paddy Caldwell, and coaches Matt Whitcomb, Jason Cork and Gus Kaeding.
According to Sophie Caldwell, conditions have been “amazing” for the duration of camp so far. “New Zealand had a great snow year and we’ve been lucky to have sunny days almost every day,” she wrote in an email to FasterSkier.
Japan’s Tomoka Satou (446) leads American Jessie Diggins (428) and others up a climb during the Merino Muster 42 k skate race on Sept. 1 at the Snow Farm in Wanaka, New Zealand. (Photo: Garrick Cameron)
Diggins called it the annual trip one of her “all-time favorite camps because the living at the Snow Farm is great, the food is outstanding, and you can step out the door right onto the 65+ km of trails!” she wrote in an email.
“I love having the chance to work on my on-snow technique for three solid weeks because that’s when I get to really see progress and make some changes in my striding,” Diggins wrote.
Apart from logging kilometers on snow and soaking up the vitamin D, the team has also spent time trail running in Wanaka.
“The highlight [of the camp] will probably be a crust cruise we go on in the next few days, but since we haven’t done that yet, some highlights so far are an awesome distance run down in Wanaka, and pretty much every day of bluebird skiing we’ve had up here!” Caldwell wrote.
The camp also coincided with the Merino Muster, a 42 k freestyle marathon that is part of the Worldloppet series, and the Winter Games NZ, which doubled as the Australia/New Zealand Cup FIS races and included three days of nordic racing this year at the Snow Farm: a 5/10 k freestyle individual start, a freestyle sprint, and a 10/15 k classic mass start..
Diggins finished a minute and 21 seconds faster than the second-place woman, Aurelie Dabudyk of France, while Hamilton edged Craftsbury skier Adam Martin by 3 seconds for the overall win.
“The day of the Merino Muster was gorgeous and sunny, with fast conditions,” Diggins wrote. “I loved getting the chance to race a long race, and starting with the men as one big field is really exciting! I hope to get to race the 42km race every year. Huge thanks to the volunteers and organizers for making it such a fun day.”
Crossing the finish line in 1:52:34 hours, Diggins placed sixth overall. Dabudyk was eighth overall and Alayna Sonnesyn (SMST2) was the third woman, 11th overall, 5:30 behind Diggins.
Meanwhile, Hamilton finished in 1:39:46, beating his time of 1:40:33 from last year’s race. Martin followed 3 seconds later, while Kyle Bratrud (SMST2) finished 24 seconds after from Hamilton in third, followed by Tomoka Satou of Japan in fourth (+45.0).
“The Merino Muster is always an awesome race,” Hamilton wrote in an email. “It actually lends itself to the type of intensity we are still mostly focused on in August/late September because the terrain and snow conditions usually make for a really good chance to get in about 1.5 hours of level 3 effort followed by a few minutes of really hard skiing in the last km before the finish. It’s a very rolling course and if you ski it in a pack with people switching leads it’s basically impossible to go much harder than level 3.”
Also on Saturday, Americans also took the top spots in the 21 k Snow Rake. Ben Saxton (SMST2) ran away with the overall win by more than 12 minutes in 47:48, while Paralympic sit skier Dan Cnossen placed second (+1:12:13) nine seconds ahead of Petr Sykora of the Czech Republic in third (+1:12:22).
Ogden was the fastest woman and second overall with a time of 50:29. Her SMS and USST teammate Kern finished 56 seconds later as the second woman, and Elizabeth Martin of the University of New Hampshire (UNH) followed in third, 7 minutes and 30 seconds behind Ogden.
With about 300 participants between three different races at the Merino Muster, Hamilton described the atmosphere as “super fun and light.”
“But the grooming always rocks and it’s just a really fun course to ski,” he added. “I think that in this day and age of social media being so huge and cross-country skiing gaining more attention in the US and world-wide, we’ll start to see more and more people showing up for the marathon. I feel like in the last few years alone their has been noticeably more attention and attendance each year. The quality of skiing is a small part of the race atmosphere here… New Zealand’s south island is one of the most beautiful parts of the world and the culture is so welcoming and comfortable.”
Many of the American skiers in New Zealand also competed in the Winter Games NZ races this week.
“The New Zealand Winter Games are also a huge opportunity to get back into racing mode and test out all the technique work we’ve been putting in so far!” Diggins wrote. “And if you know me, you know how much I adore 5km individual skate races, and we no longer get to do those on the World Cup. So I’m so grateful to the Snow Farm and race organizers for keeping such a fun and hard, fast race alive! I forgot how much it can hurt to go so hard for 5km, but it was fun to really get that lung burn back for the first time since last winter.”
Three days after her marathon win, Diggins won the 5 k skate at the Snow Farm in 15:02.6. The U.S. swept the top five with Sophie Caldwell finishing 10.5 seconds back in second place, Caitlin Patterson (CGRP) in third (+16.7), Sargent (USST/CGRP) in fourth (+1:02.6), and Kelsey Phinney (SMST2) in fifth (+1:16.6) out of eight women.
Kyle Bratrud (SMST2) gets a feed from U.S. Ski Team coach Jason Cork during the 2018 Merino Muster 42 k skate race at the Snow Farm in Wanaka, New Zealand. He finished third behind two other Americans. (Photo: Garrick Cameron)
In the men’s 10 k skate on Tuesday, Bratrud took the win in 27:48.1, 21 seconds clear of Kaichi Naruse of Japan in second, while Craftsbury’s Ben Lustgarten and Martin (CGRP) followed in fourth (+23.0) and fifth (+44.0), respectively. Eight men competed.
Wednesday featured 1.1 k skate sprints, which saw Sophie Caldwell take the win in a field of 10 women, ahead of Sargent in second and Phinney in third.
“The sprint was a short and tactical race that was awesome practice for what’s to come this winter,” Caldwell wrote. “It was really fun toeing the line with my USST and SMS training partners. On one hand, that final could have been any day of summer training, but it also could be a World Cup heat! It’s pretty cool to be pushed by so many strong training partners and friends and we were psyched to throw on a bib and put in a race effort.”
In the men’s final, Bolger landed the top spot on the podium, ahead of Saxton in second and Satou in third. Eleven men competed in the sprint.
“I really enjoy these early session races it gives us as races a chance to get in the mindset and practice real race strategy,” Bolger wrote in an email. “I wanted to go out there test myself, I approached every round like a final and attacked from the start getting out in front and leading into the finish, and was very happy to end the day on top, especially after a long camp down here with the US crew.
“… Coming down here and having a good result in the sprint is of course a huge confidence booster heading into the September/ October training months, but there is still a ton of preparation to be done,” he added.
On the final day of Winter Games NZ racing, Diggins continued her undefeated streak (after skipping the sprint), winning the 10 k classic mass start, while Patterson placed second and Sargent placed third. Saxton picked up his second win of the week, while Martin took second and Lustgarten third.
Complete results will be posted once they’re available.
“We have been incredibly lucky with weather and conditions this year,” Hamilton noted. “Usually, when you’re here at the Snow Farm for 3 weeks in the winter, you’re bound to get an extended period of really nasty weather and wind. But this year we’ve basically had sunshine and cold night time temps every single day, making for amazing skiing for pretty much 3 weeks straight. There is about 40-50 km of trails to ski when everything is groomed, so it’s essentially impossible to get bored. The highlight of our camp every year is a big crust ski up to and around Mt. Pisa. We are planning on getting out tomorrow [Friday, Sept. 7] because the crust hasn’t been great yet while we’ve been here, but conditions for tomorrow look promising. But even when we can’t get out for a huge adventure like that, it’s just one of the best and most fun places in the world to train.”
Brian McKeever (l) and Oksana Masters (r) are FasterSkier’s 2018 Para-Nordic Skiers of the Year. (Photos: Scott Grant/Canadian Paralympic Committee & Joe Kusumoto/US Paralympics)
With the 2017/2018 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is excited to unveil its annual award winners for this past winter. Votes stem from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they are intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This set of honors goes to outstanding Para-Nordic skiers on the international circuit.
American Oksana Masters reacting to her first gold medal in her third Paralympics, after winning the women’s 1.1 k sitting sprint in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Joe Kusumoto/U.S. Paralympics)
Undefeated in this category for the last four years of the FasterSkier awards, Oksana Masters had her best Paralympics yet this winter and overcame a major setback to do so. Just two weeks before the 2018 Winter Paralympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, Masters slipped on ice, injured her elbow and had to get surgery. Then, entirely propelled by her arms as a sit skier, the 28 year old competed in all six individual races in PyeongChang and medaled in five of them (she fell in the other and pulled out of the race shortly before the finish). In total, she racked up the first two Paralympic gold medals of her career (in her third Paralympics) plus two silver medals in biathlon — her first biathlon medals — and a bronze.
“I am absolutely truly speechless on this performance,” Masters told U.S. Paralympics after winning her second gold medal of the week in the women’s 5-kilometer sitting cross-country race (her first came in the cross-country sprint).
“I thrive and love the athlete lifestyle of eat, sleep and train,” she continued. “To put yourself to the ultimate test on that start line and seeing all your hard work come through, and not just that, it’s a whole team effort. … It’s not a one-person show. It definitely takes a village and we have an incredible team.”
Masters and her teammate Dan Cnossen accounted for 11 of Team USA’s 16 medals in nordic and biathlon in PyeongChang, which was more than five times the amount of medals the team brought home after Sochi in 2014.
Overall this season in the World Para Nordic Skiing rankings, Masters ranked first in women’s sitting biathlon and tied Germany’s Andrea Eskau for first in cross-country. In the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) overall World Cup standings, Masters placed third in both cross-country and biathlon.
Brian McKeever, Canadian Para-Nordic Skiing
Also our award winner last year, Brian McKeever became Canada’s most decorated Winter Paralympian of all time this winter with 17 career medals, 13 of which are gold. Three of those golds came in PyeongChang, and he captured bronze there with his teammates on the final day of racing, in the open relay, when Canada placed second in the mixed relay and third in the open relay for its first Paralympic relay medals.
Brian McKeever (r) follows guide Graham Nishikawa during the men’s visually impaired 20 k freestyle at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Along with guide Russell Kennedy, they won the race by over a minute for McKeever’s 14th Paralympic medal and 11th gold. (Photo: Scott Grant/Canadian Paralympic Committee)
This marked the fifth Paralympics for McKeever, 38, and he was accompanied by two guides, Graham Nishikawa (whom he skied with at the 2014 Sochi Games) and Russell Kennedy (who joined the Canadian Para-Nordic Team this year). Together, they won all three visually impaired cross-country races they competed in: the 20 k freestyle, classic sprint and 10 k classic.
In his first race of the Games, the 20 k distance race, McKeever, who was also Canada’s flag bearer for the PyeongChang Opening Ceremony, captured his 14th career medal — the most of any Canadian Winter Paralympian. In fact, he’s the most successful cross-country skier in Paralympic history, according to an IPC press release.
“I wasn’t aware of this record, but it is pretty cool,” McKeever told Cross Country Canada after the 20 k. “I think for me more than anything is this is a testament to our entire program. We’ve had so many great skiers leading the way for me with my brother, Robin, who is now coaching us, and Colette Bourgonje. Now it is awesome for me to be a part of a new generation that has arrived in Mark [Arendz], Colin Cameron, and the young women like Emily [Young], Brittany [Hudak] and Natalie [Wilkie], who are ready to carry the torch. I’m so excited to be around all of them this week and to be there cheering them on.”
Like the U.S., Canada tallied 16 medals between nordic and biathlon at the PyeongChang Paralympics.
Honorable Mentions: Mark Arendz (Canadian Para-Nordic) and Dan Cnossen & Kendall Gretsch (U.S. Paralympics)
Canada’s Mark Arendez gets a congratulatory hug after he won gold in the men’s 15 k standing individual biathlon race at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Scott Grant/Canadian Paralympic Committee)
While McKeever carried the Canadian flag at the PyeongChang Opening Ceremony, his teammate Mark Arendz was honored with waving it at the Closing Ceremony. In his third Paralympics, the 28-year-old Arendz had his best Games yet, taking a medal in all six events he competed in to make him the most successful Canadian at a single Winter Paralympics.
Arendz captured five individual medals in the men’s standing races in PyeongChang, including his first-career gold in the 15 k biathlon, silver in the 7.5 k biathlon sprint, and bronze in the 12.5 k biathlon, as well as his first Paralympic cross-country medals: bronze in both the sprint and 10 k classic, and silver in the mixed relay. He sat out the only race he didn’t medal in: the long-distance cross-country race.
“I came in here thinking I could get three medals, but to get six is incredible,” Arendz said on the last day of the Games, after his team placed second in the mixed relay for Canada’s first relay medal. “Today’s is a special one. I am happy we got this done, but there is no way I could do another race. I’m done.”
We mentioned Dan Cnossen earlier, but he’s worth mentioning again. Cnossen, 37, opened his second Paralympics with his first career medal at the Games — gold in the men’s 7.5 k sitting sprint. The next day, he placed second in the 12.5 k biathlon race, and from there, he kept up his medal streak through all six individual races. The total medal haul for the former Navy SEAL and current Harvard graduate student was one gold, four silvers, and one bronze.
Dan Cnossen of the U.S. celebrates his win in the men’s sitting 7.5 k biathlon sprint on opening day of competition at the 2018 Winter Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Mark Reis/U.S. Paralympics)
It wasn’t an easy feat. Cnossen considered pulling out of the last biathlon race — the 12.5 k — in order to compete in the final 10 k cross-country race in PyeongChang.
“I have an excerpt that says it doesn’t matter how you feel today, it doesn’t matter what your background is or where you’re coming from, all that matters is what you can do,” Cnossen told U.S. Paralympics after finishing second in the biathlon race. “I just tried to focus on what I could do today. Not the fact that I didn’t sleep well last night, that doesn’t matter. Just go out there and perform like I know I can.”
In all, Cnossen raced about 60 k over eight days.
“I came into the Games just trying to take it one race at a time and give it my all — each and every race — and not think too far ahead,” Cnossen said after placing second in the 10 k cross-country race the next day for his sixth-straight medal. “Just focus on the here and now, and soak up the moment and be in the present.”
His teammate Kendall Gretsch, a triathlete who recently took up nordic skiing and biathlon, opened her first Paralympics with gold in the women’s 6 k sitting sprint in PyeongChang. Gretsch, who turned 26 earlier this month, also won the 12 k biathlon race the next day.
In an interview with U.S. Paralympics, she described being “unsure” of how she’d stack up in PyeongChang. Days 1 and 2 of racing pretty much settled it.
“I knew that since our last World Cup I had improved a lot, but you never know until you race,” she said after her second-straight gold. “It’s a very humbling experience being able to hear your anthem, puts everything into perspective. Knowing that you’re here not just here for yourself but for your country, it’s amazing.”
Kendall Gretsch (r) and Oksana Masters at the 2018 Paralympics medal ceremony for the women’s sitting 6 k biathlon sprint after winning gold and silver, respectively, on the first day of competition in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Joe Kusumoto/U.S. Paralympics)
Two American flags and a Belarusian flag being hoisted to honor the medalists in the men’s sitting cross-country sprint at the 2018 Winter Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Americans Andy Soule and Dan Cnossen placed first and second, respectively, and Dzmitry Loban of Belarus finished third. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Joe Kusumoto)
Success to failure. Failure to success. Two trends of two extremes on the performance metrics on the international cross-country skiing spectrum. There are many in-betweens: scoring World Cup points with a top 30, top 10’s, any spot on the podium. There are the Olympic and Paralympic quads featuring a four-year buildup to North America’s singular focus on bronze, silver and gold hardware.
When considering how to develop talent, placing athletes on snow with the absolute best technology available, positioning athletes to medal, the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Program is an enviable high-performance model. That became evident this winter during the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. U.S. Paralympics Nordic hauled in 16 medals in a week about a month ago.
That many medals for a single team borders on excess. Pursuing the perfection that leads to near-excess has driven the U.S. team staff and athletes for years. Back in 2006 in Torino, Italy, the U.S. Paralympics Nordic team earned three medals. In 2010, in Vancouver, British Columbia, they tallied one medal. In 2014 in Sochi, Russia, they claimed three. This year in PyeongChang: 16.
“I think we have a few factors to our success,” Eileen Carey, head coach of the U.S. Paralympics Nordic team told FasterSkier in a recent phone interview. “We’ve built the entire team — every athlete who has been engaged in the last several years and the staff that we have built are totally committed to the goal of the team. There are not a lot of egos. Everybody has a role. Everybody is really good at what they do, and everybody executes on race day.”
That goal and the team’s execution amounted to 11 medals total between two athletes, both sit-skiers. Thirty-seven-year-old Dan Cnossen entered six races: three cross-country, three biathlon. He medaled in each. Oksana Masters, 28, took five medals: two in biathlon, three in cross-country.
In the leadup to the Games, with buoyant media coverage of para-athletes and opportunities to brand themselves more broadly, the narrative of athletes like Masters and Cnossen were hard to miss. Masters endured a Ukrainian orphanage until she was almost 8. Cnossen is a retired Navy SEAL and a Purple Heart and Bronze Star with Valor recipient. He lost both legs above the knee after stepping on an improvised explosive device (IED) while on patrol in Afghanistan in September 2009.
Biathlon gold medalist Dan Cnossen of the U.S. celebrates his win in the men’s sitting 7.5 k biathlon sprint on opening day of competition at the 2018 Winter Paralympics on March 10 in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Mark Reis)
Stories like those of Masters and Cnossen should make us appreciate for a moment our most basic gifts. Their stories are inspiring. That, according to Carey, misses the point when it comes to understanding what exactly manifested in PyeongChang.
“Sure, the Olympic and the Paralympic mission is to inspire people,” Carey said. “But the narrative about Paralympians has historically been far more about inspiration being the central storyline versus Olympians where the essential storyline as about their athletic prowess. The comments that I have heard about these Games are about the athletic performances of the athletes. Whereas in Sochi, and a lot what I have heard before, is a lot about the inspiration.”
Cnossen is a graduate student at Harvard. He receives some support from the school’s cross-country coach, but trains most often north of Cambridge Square at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in northern Vermont. There, Cnossen benefits from world-class biathlon instruction.
Carey explained that at last season’s 2017 PyeongChang test event, Cnossen performed better in the cross-country races there than in biathlon. As a world-class athlete, traveling several hours for countless four-day Craftsbury weekends and increasing his time spent training on the shooting range were some of the commitments Cnossen made, just like any other hyper-focused, hyper-driven athlete.
Carey also made clear what Craftsbury’s part was in developing Cnossen’s athleticism.
“As a sit skier, you don’t carry a rifle,” she explained. “When you are shooting, that means 100 percent of the time, someone is on the range loading pellets with bare hands when it’s cold outside and handing you your rifle. Dan would shoot three or four times a weekend when he was there, and they supported him 100 percent of that time. He won a medal in every biathlon event. That is Craftsbury’s success as much as anybody else’s.”
Masters’s own drama unfolded two weeks before the Paralympics when she slipped and fell on ice. She dislocated her elbow and chipped all three bones that meet in the elbow. After being operated on at The Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colorado, Masters remained a medal favorite in Korea.
She came to PyeongChang as an all-arounder in both biathlon and sitting cross-country. (Masters, also a multi-sport athlete, competed in rowing at the 2012 London Paralympics — where she earned a bronze medal — and cycling at the 2016 Rio Games.)
Oksana Masters (U.S. Paralympics Nordic) after winning her first-career Paralympic gold medal in the women’s sitting cross-country sprint at the 2018 Winter Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Joe Kusumoto)
In her first race in PyeongChang last month, Masters took silver in the biathlon sprint (behind her U.S. teammate Kendall Gretsch in first). Those medals, Gretsch’s first and Masters’s first in biathlon, set the stage for more gritty performances and Masters’s five-medal PyeongChang bounty. Inspiring? Yes. But more to the point, both were athletically dominant.
Masters’s dominance came with a very human off-race. On March 13, during the women’s sitting 10 k biathlon race, Masters fell in her sit ski onto her ailing arm and missed a total of six shots for six penalty laps. While she skied the extra laps, another U.S. coach encouraged Masters to pull herself out of the race. The team’s staff was concerned about her elbow and wanted to ensure her health for her three remaining races.
“I sprinted down the course and just stood in front of her in the middle of the course and pulled her off,” Carey said of how she ultimately persuaded Masters to not finish. “Oksana thought she was done midway through the Games. We X-rayed her again and came up with a plan and taped her elbow in a way that would provide more protection.”
At the 2010 Vancouver Paralympics, Andy Soule earned bronze in biathlon. His medal was the first Paralympic medal in the discipline for the U.S. team. Eight years later in PyeongChang, Soule, a 38-year-old Army veteran, who, like Cnossen, lost both his legs in Afghanistan, delivered the Paralympics equivalent to the “here comes Diggins” moment.
During the men’s sitting cross-country sprint final, Soule came into the last hill in sixth place. He then glided into fourth on final downhill before the last intensive double-poling push to the finish.
With lickety-split skis to match his upper body’s Thor-like power, Soule willed himself into medal contention. From literally out of the camera’s view and into front and center on the final stretch, Soule threw down and accelerated. Bronze, then silver, and at the line, gold came into play. The PyeongChang sprint win was Soule’s first-career Paralympic gold in three Paralympics — he also claimed bronze in the PyeongChang 12.5 k biathlon race. (Soule promptly retired from elite-level competition afterward.)
“Andy has spent a lot of time over the last four years doing a whole lot of stuff, like learning how to move fast on flats, which was something that we had identified from Sochi as being the weak link,” Carey said. “There was something otherworldly about those last 100 meters that was just incredibly cool to watch.”
Cnossen, Masters, and Soule symbolize the U.S. Paralympics Nordic team’s rise. Yet, Carey, along with the team’s high-performance director, John Farra, have been able to build a program that has positioned itself for future medals. Gretsch, 26, may be part of that future. She came to nordic skiing as a world-class para-triathlete and represents what Farra calls “talent transfer”.
“We are super proud with how our sit-ski program has evolved,” Farra said on the phone. “We are super proud that we can take athletes in a talent-transfer situation like Kendall and help her come from being a world champion in triathlon and have her transfer and learn the skills in a short period of time to now being one of the best in the world.”
In PyeongChang, Gretsch captured two golds in the first two races. She won the sitting biathlon sprint and the 12 k sitting cross-country events.
Winter Paralympic rookie Kendall Gretsch racing at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Joe Kusumoto)
Farra explained that their medal was the first for the U.S. in a visually impaired race at the “modern” Paralympics. The VI classes were historically split between B1, B2 and B3 classes. (B1 athletes have the least amount of vision.) The different classifications are used as a descriptor of each athlete’s degree of blindness. Formerly, each classification of athlete competed against the same classification athletes. For example, in the past, only B1’s competed against B1’s. Today, that format is defunct, and all classifications currently compete against one another. An athlete’s finishing time is adjusted based on their severity of blindness.
As Farra explained, in the “modern” VI medals are harder to come by.
Adicoff, a student at Bowdoin College and a member of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF), was competing at his second Paralympics. Kesselheim was a Paralympic rookie.
“They are a team,” Carey said of the Adicoff-Kesselheim pairing. “Visually impaired athletes and guides function much more, in my view, like a cycling team as opposed to a traditional ski racer. … The medal was won by both Jake and Sawyer. In that race, they worked together more effectively than I had ever seen them work together. They were more in sync; they were skiing closer to each other. There is a lot of challenges in guiding when it comes to the communication, and Sawyer is a great communicator. He is an amazing skier and athlete, but he is a great communicator and he has no ego. He was totally bought into being on that team.”
Guide Sawyer Kesselheim leads his U.S. teammate Jake Adicoff during the open relay on March 18 at the 2018 Winter Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Mark Reis)
The first day of the next Paralympic quad began on March 19, the day after the PyeongChang Paralympic Closing Ceremony. Yet Casey and Farra kept an eye on 2022 by nurturing and investing in more Paralympic rookies by exposing them to their respective sport’s highest level of competition. Grace Miller (standing , Alaska Nordic Racing), Ruslan Reiter (standing, Outdoor Sports Institute), Joy Rondeau (sitting, National Sports Center for the Disabled), and Mia Zutter (visually impaired, CXC/St. Scholastica) participated in their first, yet most likely not their last, Winter Paralympics.
“Having a larger community of people that consider themselves para-nordic skiers is motivating,” Farra said.
In the recent past, Farra explained that identifying and developing standing athletes has been a priority. The U.S. has already been a leader in supporting sitting athletes and providing them with top-end, sit-ski technology.
“We have just scratched the surface of finding a couple of standing and a couple of VI athletes,” Farra continued. “That’s got us pretty excited about the connections they have to their local clubs and colleges, too. We were motivated to bring them to these Games so they could get a taste of what is out there and hopefully, they left absolutely motivated to live a professional athlete lifestyle and train hard with their clubs and their home college programs.”
— Alex Kochon contributed
The 2018 PyeongChang Paralympics men’s sitting cross-country sprint podium at the medal ceremony, with Americans Andy Soule (c) and Dan Cnossen (r) in first and second, respectively, and Dzmitry Loban of Belarus in third. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Joe Kusumoto)Kendall Gretsch (r) and Oksana Masters at the 2018 Paralympics medal ceremony for the women’s sitting 6 k biathlon sprint after winning gold and silver, respectively, on the first day of competition in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Joe Kusumoto)
Canada’s Mark Arendez gets a congratulatory hug after he won gold in the men’s 15 k standing biathlon individual race on Friday at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Scott Grant/Canadian Paralympic Committee)
2018 Winter Paralympics (PyeongChang, South Korea): 12.5/15 k biathlon races
Mark Arendez lets out his trademark roar as he crosses the finish line of the men’s 15 k standing biathlon individual on Friday at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. He won for his first Paralympic gold and sixth-career Paralympic medal. (Photo: Scott Grant/Canadian Paralympic Committee)
Canada’s Mark Arendz captured his first Paralympic gold, the sixth Paralympic medal of his career and his fourth medal of the PyeongChang Games on Friday in the men’s 15-kilometer individual standing biathlon race — the longest and final biathlon event on the schedule.
Meanwhile, Dan Cnossen of the U.S. continued his medal streak with his fifth medal in as many races, taking silver in the men’s 15 k sitting biathlon. His teammate Oksana Masters raced to silver for her fourth medal of the 2018 Games in the women’s 12.5 k sitting biathlon, and two Canadians earned bronze with Collin Cameron placing third in the men’s 15 k sitting and Brittany Hudak taking her first Paralympic medal in the women’s 12.5 k sitting.
Arendz, 28, who placed second and third in two biathlon races at the 2014 Paralympics and once again finished second and third in two previous biathlon events at these Games, cleaned all four shooting stages to secure the win in 42:52.2 minutes. France’s Benjamin Daviet took silver, 58.3 second back, after missing one target (0+0+1+0) and having a minute penalty added to his time. Norway’s Nils-Erik Ulset shot clean for bronze, 1:14.5 behind Arendz.
“Every time I stepped on the podium this week, I kept thinking I want to hear ‘Paralympic Champion’ and then my name announced,” Arendz told Cross Country Canada, according to a press release. “I wanted nothing more than to hear my country’s anthem played. I’ve seen the maple leaf on top of the podium three times this week, but to finally have it behind the top step of the podium for me is an amazing feeling.”
“I wanted to be consistent and focus on the process all week. This race was my strength,” he said. “It is a shooting race and you have to go clean. The process was key today, and I just tried to make sure I hit those 20 targets. Once I got to that last bout I wasn’t going to miss, so I made sure of every shot before I pulled the trigger. In the end I was clean, the skiing was strong, and that is what I wanted.
“That completes the [medal] set for biathlon, and my first gold which means everything to me,” Arendz said of the last biathlon race of the 2018 Games.
Also in that men’s standing individual race, American Ruslan Reiter placed 15th with nine penalties.
Silver for Cnossen, Masters; Second Bronze for Cameron
American Dan Cnossen racing to second in the men’s 15 k sitting biathlon individual at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/ Maddie Meyer-Getty Images)
In the men’s sitting biathlon event on Friday, Cnossen and Cameron raced to second (+45.5) and third (+1:01.9), respectively, behind Germany’s Martin Fleig in first. Fleig shot clean and finished in 49:57.2, while Cnossen missed one in the last stage (0+0+0+1) and Cameron had a single miss in the second shooting (0+1+0+0). The silver was Cnossen’s third of these Paralympics, and he medaled in every biathlon race in PyeongChang (taking gold in the 7.5 k and silver in the 12.5 k).
“This is special because, for one, the conditions were so difficult,” Cnossen explained in an interview with U.S. Paralympics Nordic. “It’s snowing, it’s cold. It’s 30-40 degrees colder than yesterday. I’m getting a little bit tired. I had a bit of a mental battle this morning waking up. I was considering pulling out of the race because I really want to be fresh for tomorrow, so to overcome that and still put up a really solid performance is really quite good. I wish I could have cleaned that last stage – I missed one shot. Then I just really tried to hammer on that last lap.”
While the biathlon races are over, Saturday holds middle-distance cross-country races in PyeongChang.
“I have an excerpt that says it doesn’t matter how you feel today, it doesn’t matter what your background is or where you’re coming from, all that matters is what you can do,” said Cnossen, a 37-year-old retired Navy SEAL who was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with Valor from the Secretary of the Navy for his service in combat.
“I just tried to focus on what I could do today,” he continued. “Not the fact that I didn’t sleep well last night, that doesn’t matter. Just go out there and perform like I know I can.”
“I have an excerpt that says it doesn’t matter how you feel today, it doesn’t matter what your background is or where you’re coming from, all that matters is what you can do.” — Dan Cnossen, U.S. Paralympian and former Navy SEAL, after racing to his fifth medal of the 2018 Paralympics
Collin Cameron racing to his second bronze of the 2018 Paralympics on Friday in the men’s 15 k sitting biathlon individual in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Scott Grant/Canadian Paralympic Committee)
Cameron, 29, achieved his second bronze medal of the Games after placing third in the biathlon sprint then coming close in fourth in Wednesday’s cross-country sprint.
“This is awesome. This one is the sweetest one for sure,” Cameron said, according to a team press release. “That was a little redemption after the sprint day because I really wanted that one.
“I got very little sleep last night. I just couldn’t seem to settle,” he continued. “My coach told me some of the best athlete performances have happened after a bad night of sleep. I told myself to just settle down. I got the bugs out in that first lap, focused on pacing in every lap and just kept pushing.
“I came here wanting to get on the podium in cross country, and I’m going home with two biathlon medals. I didn’t expect that at all,” Cameron added.
Also in that men’s sitting biathlon race, Aaron Pike placed sixth with perfect shooting and Andy Soule finished ninth with four penalties (0+0+4+0).
In the women’s sitting biathlon individual, both Masters and Germany’s Andrea Eskau shot clean, but Eskau completed the course faster to claim gold in 49:41.2. Masters finished 18.8 seconds back for silver, her second biathlon medal of the Games, and Lidziya Hrafeyava of Belarus finished third (+1:15.8) with one penalty (0+1+0+0).
American Oksana Masters celebrates as she finishes second in the women’s 12.5 k sitting biathlon individual race on Friday at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Simon Bruty-OIS/IOC)
“I went from getting a sunburn a couple days ago during the sprints to freezing right now,” Masters, 28, said of Friday’s conditions to U.S. Paralympics. “The skiing is great, our skis are amazing, the team is amazing putting together some fast skis. I’m so happy I got a chance to redeem myself from the last biathlon race I didn’t get to finish.”
Masters did not finish the women’s 10 k biathlon race earlier in the week. She has been racing with an elbow injury throughout the Games.
“The way I looked at it, I wasn’t going to get defeated by this elbow,” she said. “I definitely know I wasn’t skiing at 100 percent, but I wanted to see where I was. I’ve trained four years, the day after Sochi ended. I counted the days, it was like 1,461 days – not that I’m counting – but I was not going to let that basically take away from my Games experience here.”
As for hitting all 20 targets on Friday, Masters said she was in the zone.
“I just focused on that ‘breathe, exhale, pause, squeeze,’ which is everything I’ve been training and practicing,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. I almost fell going around the corner telling my coach ‘I cleaned!’ I can’t believe it.”
In three biathlon races in PyeongChang, the U.S. team tallied seven medals. Going into these Games, the U.S. had one biathlon medal (Soule’s bronze from 2010) in the history of the Paralympics and Olympics.
In the women’s 12.5 k standing biathlon race, Hudak notched her first Paralympic medal and Canada’s first in a women’s standing biathlon event in third place, 2:23.9 behind Anna Milenina of the Neutral Paralympic Athletes (NPA) in first and 1:20.1 behind Ekaterina Rumyantseva (NPA) in second. While Milenina overcame two minutes of penalties (0+1+0+1) to take gold in 38:56.8 and Rumyantseva had two misses as well (0+2+0+0), Hudak shot clean.
Brittany Hudak hugging her teammate Emily Young after Hudak placed third for her first Paralympic medal on Friday in the women’s 12.5 k standing biathlon individual in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Scott Grant/Canadian Paralympic Committee)
“This is such an unreal day. There are so many emotions,” Hudak said, according to the team press release. “I just tried to think about the process throughout the race. I wanted to focus on shooting because I knew it was going to make a difference today.”
As she left the range in fourth after her last shooting stage, Hudak got a lift from her teammate Emily Young, who pushed to catch her and pull her around the final loop. Together, they clawed back five seconds and Hudak finished third, 3.7 seconds ahead of Ukraine’s Iryna Bui in fourth.
“I’m just so lost for words. It is so incredible,” Hudak, 24, said. “I knew I was in the medal mix heading into that last lap. Everyone was screaming at me to keep going. Emily kept yelling at me the whole way around, and I just tried to hang onto her. I was breathing so hard and gave it everything I had. I was so tired at the finish and wanted to collapse.”
Young finished the race in seventh with two penalties (1+0+1+0).
“I was hearing the splits around the course, and I knew after my second round of shooting I was out of the top four and there was a big gap,” Young, 27, reflected. “I just chased Britt down on the course, and once I caught her, started screaming at her to follow me and not get dropped. I was breaking the wind for her the whole way. I was pretty tired on that last lap, but just kept skiing hard and screaming at her to follow. I don’t know where I found the energy.
“She did awesome. Britt is my right-arm girl,” Young added. “I’m so proud of her. We both work so hard and I know how many hours she put into this. I’m just as excited for her as I would be for myself.”
The Paralympics enter their final weekend with middle-distance cross-country races on Saturday, starting at 10 a.m. Korea time (9 p.m. EDT on Friday), and conclude with mixed and open relays on Sunday.
Canada’s Mark Arendz with his first Paralympic gold medal after winning the men’s 15 k standing individual biathlon race on Friday at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Dave Holland/Canadian Paralympic Committee)
American Oksana Masters reacting to her first gold medal in her third Paralympics, after winning the women’s 1.1 k sitting sprint on Wednesday in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Joe Kusumoto)
2018 Winter Paralympics (PyeongChang, South Korea): Cross-country sprints
Hold onto your hats, this was a major day for both the American and Canadian teams at the 2018 Paralympics.
In the cross-country sprints on Wednesday in PyeongChang, Andy Soule and Oksana Masters of the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Program both captured their first-career Paralympic golds in the women’s and men’s sitting events, while Dan Cnossen skied to his fourth medal in as many races with a bronze to add to his collection.
Brian McKeever of the Canadian Para-Nordic Ski Team raced to his second-straight gold of the week in the men’s visually impaired sprint, with guide Russell Kennedy, and two of their teammates claimed bronze: Mark Arendz, in the men’s standing sprint for the first Paralympic cross-country medal of his career (following four biathlon medals) and Natalie Wilkie, the youngest member of the team at age 17, in the women’s standing sprint.
Andy Soule (r) of U.S. taking first in a photo finish with Dzmitry Loban (second from l) of Belarus, while American Dan Cnossen (l) takes third and Canada’s Collin Cameron (second from r) fourth in the men’s 1.1 k sitting cross-country sprint at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Chung Sung-Jun for Getty Images)
In the men’s 1.1-kilometer sitting sprint final, Soule won a photo finish with Dzmitry Loban of Belarus, after both crossed the line in 3:31.4 minutes. Cnossen finished 0.4 seconds back in third and Canada’s Collin Cameron was just 0.3 seconds off the podium in fourth (+0.7).
After skiing the pack throughout the final, Soule took the lead as the four racers entered the stadium together. In the finishing stretch, Loban, Cnossen and Cameron challenged him for the gold, but with a powerful surge and lean at the line, Soule, 38, notched the first gold medal after nearly 13 years in the sport. The U.S. Army veteran had previously earned bronze at the 2010 Paralympics and bronze in Tuesday’s 12.5 k sitting biathlon race.
American Andy Soule celebrates gold in Wednesday’s 1.1 k sitting sprint final at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Chung Sung-Jun for Getty Images)
“I chased the whole way,” he said. “I don’t think it necessarily hurt me to chase that much, it actually helped with a little bit of wind break. I think a good, tight tuck coming down the final hill put me in a natural line, and I knew I had a shot at a good sprint out. This is an incredible group to compete with. That kind of a finish … that’s what sprinting is all about.”
“I definitely lost a little gas in the final stretch,” Cnossen reflected, according to the press release. “My strategy was to tuck in behind the Belarus athlete in the beginning and then sprint over the bridge and try to hang on. Andy had such an awesome race. This is the second day in a row we’ve had two U.S. men on the podium which is just phenomenal.”
For Soule, the gold was his first in his third Paralympics, and his first Paralympic medal in a cross-country race (rather than biathlon).
“It means so much. It feels so incredible,” Soule said. “I couldn’t do it without incredible teammates pushing me all the time, and without incredible coaching and technical staff. I think it speaks to a great team effort that has really paid off for us.”
Cameron came within fractions of a second of achieving his second medal in his first Paralympics.
“I raced as hard as I could … it is what it is. I just came up a little short,” he said, according to a Cross Country Canada press release. “It is amazing that I got a medal this week in biathlon, I wasn’t expecting it, but that was behind me. I really wanted something here. This was the race I wanted a medal in. It was a close one.”
Also for Canada, Chris Klebl and Derek Zaplotinsky missed advancing to the final after both finished sixth in their respective semifinals.
American Oksana Masters kissing her first Paralympic gold at the medals ceremony on Wednesday night after she won the women’s 1.1 k sitting sprint at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Joe Kusumoto)
Masters, 28, won the women’s 1.1 k sitting sprint final by 2.1 seconds over Germany’s Andrea Eskau, crossing the line first in 4:06.7. The gold was Masters’s first in her third Paralympics, after she had previously collected five medals — two silver and three bronze — between the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London (where she placed third in a doubles rowing event), 2014 Winter Paralympic in Sochi, Russia (where she tallied one silver and two bronze in cross-country events), and PyeongChang (silver in the biathlon 6 k sprint).
Masters has notably been racing with an injured elbow throughout these Games. On Tuesday, she did not finish the 10 k biathlon race.
“I can’t believe it. I literally was starting to think this day would never happen,” she said of her win on Wednesday, according to the U.S. press release. “I knew that I wasn’t going to let yesterday be my last race. I couldn’t believe it, but at the same time, I knew I had it in me to dig deep a couple more times. I could not have done this without the USOC medical staff.”
In the sitting semifinals, her teammates Kendall Gretsch, who won the first two races of the 2018 Paralympics, and Aaron Pike, were eliminated after both placed fourth in their respective heats.
McKeever 2-for-2
Canada’s Brian McKeever (r) and his guide Russell Kennedy celebrate gold in the men’s 1.5 k visually impaired classic sprint at the 2018 Paralympics on Wednesday in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Scott Grant/Canadian Paralympic Committee)
A five-time Paralympian, McKeever, 38, racked up his 12th Paralympic gold medal (15th total medal) in the men’s 1.5 k visually impaired classic sprint. He finished 2.5 seconds ahead of Sweden’s Zebastien Modin (with guide Robin Bryntesson) in second place, with a time of 4:03.2. Behind them in the final, Norway’s Eirik Bye (with guide Arvid Nelson) finished third (+29.5) and Jake Adicoff (with guide Sawyer Kesselheim) was relegated to last (fourth place) for a technique violation.
McKeever has won all three Paralympic sprints since they were introduced in 2010. On Wednesday, he double poled the entire race.
“These sprint races are miserable,” McKeever said, according to a team press release. “They are so hard. The young guys are fast, and have natural snap. There is so much stress in sprint racing, and it goes all day long. I’m much more comfortable with the longer distances, but it was a great day for us. Russell carried the load for us today, and just thrilled we were able to cross the line first.”
Kennedy, 26, who competed at his first Olympics last month in PyeongChang, said it was tough battling it out in Wednesday’s soft conditions.
“We played things a bit more strategic in the semis because we knew the final was going to be a tough fight, and it was,” Kennedy reflected. “That first hill hurt a lot. Once I got to the top I was able to settle down and said to myself ‘OK, you got this.’ ”
While Kennedy guided McKeever to gold in the second half of Monday’s 20 k cross-country race, McKeever’s other guide, Graham Nishikawa (who skied the first half with him), joined McKeever on the podium. Wednesday was Kennedy’s turn at the medals ceremony.
“This is a new experience for me — especially coming from the Olympics where the focus is all on yourself,” Kennedy said. “Brian is such a strong athlete and guiding him requires a lot more communication. Competing here at the Paralympics is really rewarding because you do this as a team. It is hard at times to know if I’m going too hard or if he needs me to go faster, but it has been a lot of fun for me.”
Canada’s Mark Arendz en route to bronze in the men’s 1.5 k standing classic sprint at the 2018 Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. It was his first cross-country medal (fifth total) in his second Paralympics. (Photo: Scott Grant/Canadian Paralympic Committee)
In the men’s 1.5 k standing sprint final, Arendz tied Finland’s Ilkka Tuomisto for third place, and both were awarded bronze. They finished just 0.3 seconds behind Japan’s Yoshihiro Nitta in second, and 1.1 seconds behind Kazakhstan’s Alexandr Kolyadin, who won in 4:19.7.
“Sitting there in the finish waiting for the results of the photo finish, I was just hoping for a tie,” Arendz said, according to the team press release. “It was a really good race but I made a mistake down the finishing stretch switching to try and find a faster track and that may have cost me the whole race.”
The Paralympic medal was the first in a cross-country race for the 28-year-old Arendz, who has two silver and two bronze in biathlon races between these Paralympics and the 2014 Sochi Games.
“I came here for medals in biathlon and was hoping to get my first one in cross-country,” he said. “To come away with my first bronze in cross-country skiing means a lot. I couldn’t be happier.”
In the women’s 1.5 k standing sprint final, Wilkie raced to third for her first medal in her first Paralympics. She finished just a tenth of a second behind Norway’s Vilde Nilsen, who took silver, and 3.2 seconds out of first, which went to Anna Milenina of the Neutral Paralympic Athletes (NPA) in 5:11.1.
Canada’s Natalie Wilkie (r) finishing third, just 0.1 seconds behind Norway’s Vilde Nilsen (l) in second, for her first Paralympic medal on Wednesday in the women’s 1.5 k standing classic sprint in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Scott Grant/Canadian Paralympic Committee)
“It feels so awesome,” Wilkie said of her bronze medal. “This is my first Paralympics and I am just so happy to have won a medal.”
Four seconds behind Wilkie, her teammate Emily Young placed fourth (+7.2). Canada made up half of the six-woman final with Brittany Hudak placing sixth (+49.2)
“We are competing against each other, but we are also helping each other,” Wilkie said. “It was calming for me to have them there with me. We talked about strategy as a team before the final because the goal was for us to win a medal for Canada.”
Paralympic nordic skiers and biathletes have a day off on Thursday before races resume Friday with men’s and women’s long-distance biathlon races, starting at 10 a.m. Korea time Friday (9 p.m. EDT Thursday).
Canada’s Brian McKeever (r) and Russell Kennedy receiving their gold medals from the men’s visually impaired classic sprint at the 2018 Paralympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: Scott Grant/Canadian Paralympic Committee)
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