I thought it would be nice to collect all the cross-country skier retirement posts in one place, in case you missed some along the way. Â So here they are… Rene Sommerfeldt (GER) Sabina Valbusa (ITA) Anna Olson (SWE) Sara Renner (CAN) Virpi Kuitunen (FIN) Claudia Nystad (GER) Reto Burgermeister (SUI) Milan Sperl (CZE) Laurence Rochat […]
Tagged retirement, retrospectiveBiathletes retire too! Â I will be the first to admit that I know a lot less about biathlon than cross country, though, so these athlete profile posts for biathletes will be as much for my benefit as yours. Martina Beck is (was) a very fast German biathlete. Â The International Biathlon Union has a nice article […]
Tagged biathlon, martina beck, retirement, retrospectiveWho? Â Yeah, I’d never heard of her either. Â One of the coolest parts of working on this website is learning how much I didn’t know about international ski racing. The fact that I don’t know about this Swiss skier doesn’t really say anything about her (she’s done 115 World Cup races, 7 World Championship races […]
Tagged laurence rochat, retirement, retrospectiveThe career retrospectives took an unintentional week off last Friday due my being distracted by the Tour. Milan who? Â Again, a skier who’s name I should probably know, but did not. Â He’s a Czech skier who’d been competing internationally since around 2000. Particularly since he looks like a fun guy. Sperl won a Bronze medal […]
Tagged milan sperl, retirement, retrospectiveThanks to NordicXplained I’ve been alerted to several more athletes retiring after the 2009-2010 season. Â These next three may be somewhat less famous than the other skiers I profiled, but that doesn’t make them less important or less interesting! Â For instance…
Tagged retirement, reto burgermeister, retrospectiveA late addition to the skier retirement series is German Claudia Nystad (before she married she raced under the name Claudia Kuenzel; FIS hyphenates her name, so I will too). Kuenzel-Nystad has quite a few Olympic and World Championship medals, although most of them were in relays. Â She has 8 medals (all gold and silver) […]
Tagged claudia kuenzel-nystad, retirement, retrospectiveFinnish skier Virpi Kuitunen is among the group of retiring skiers this year and she’s next in line for a retrospective look at her career. First we need to dispense with the issue of doping. Â Kuitunen was caught using a banned blood plasma expander at the 2001 World Championships in Lahti, Finland. Â She received a […]
Tagged retirement, retrospective, virpi kuitunen