ANCHORAGE — Luke Jager spent most of his cross-country ski career training and racing with a tight group of talented, up-and-coming American men — the first ever to win a gold medal in the relay at the World Junior Ski Championships.
Two of Jager’s teammates on that relay squad, Gus Schumacher and Ben Ogden, have made the leap to the top-level, international World Cup, where both have collected podiums in the past two seasons — along with J.C. Schoonmaker, another early career standout who trains with Jager in his hometown of Anchorage.
Jager, 24, has also raced on the World Cup in recent years. But by his own admission, he hasn’t kept up with the meteoric rise of his peers. So this season, he decided to stop chasing them.
Instead of racing this week at the Tour de Ski, a grueling World Cup stage race in Europe, Jager chose to stay stateside and compete on the American domestic circuit — including at the U.S. National Championships in his home city this week.
In Saturday’s classic-technique sprint race, the decision paid off with a title, as Jager beat two other Alaskans, Michael Earnhart and Murphy Kimball, for the win.
“It definitely has taken a lot of the pressure off — just being like, ‘I’m going to go out there and do my best,’” Jager said afterward. “We’re all pretty dang lucky to be doing this sport in the first place.”
Jager’s title was the second awarded in a series of three championships at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park, with the final event, a classic-technique distance competition, scheduled for Sunday. (Another sprint will be held Tuesday, but it’s not a national championship.)
The races have drawn hundreds of competitors from across the country, including a number of Europeans who have been recruited to race at American colleges. One of those recruits, Andreas Kirkeng, a Norwegian studying at the University of Denver, actually edged out Jager at the finish line Saturday, but was not eligible for the U.S. title.
The women’s race played out similarly. Two Europeans — Sweden’s Erica Laven, racing for the University of Utah, and Estonia’s Mariel Pulles, racing for Team Birkie — were the top two finishers.
But Sammy Smith, the third athlete across the line, won the U.S. title as the first American. It was just the second race of the season for Smith, who spent the fall playing soccer for Stanford University and had just 10 days of on-snow training before the championships.
“I wasn’t really sure what to expect at all,” Smith said afterward. “I’m grateful to be out here and have a chance to race.”
Erin Bianco, racing for Bridger Ski Foundation, and Dartmouth College’s Nina Seemann, finished fifth and sixth to round out the U.S. podium. Eve Duchaufour, a French athlete racing for the University of Denver, crossing the line in fourth.
After a frigid first day of racing in Anchorage, Saturday’s individual-start qualification round began with the thermometer a few degrees higher. But the warmth quickly drained out of the air as the wind picked in the afternoon, just as the skiers began their head-to-head heat racing.
Athletes draped heavy orange blankets around their shoulders like capes as they walked to the start line, dropping them just before the start of each heat.
Jager had the fastest qualifying time in the men’s race, then won his quarterfinal and semifinal heats. He matched up in the finals against Kirkeng, Earnhart and Kimball, along with Florian Knopf, a German racing for the University of Denver, and Middlebury College’s Jack Christner.
Jager led from the start and stayed at the front for much of the 1.3-kilometer course before Kirkeng poled past him on the final meters of the homestretch. And yes, in case you were wondering: Jager acknowledged that he was not entirely content with a national title in which one of his competitors reached the finish line first.
“I guess I was like, ‘Dang, I think I just lost like 600 bucks,’” said Jager, referring to the difference in payouts between first and second place. “I was bummed. But Andreas is so strong and I love racing against him, so I can’t complain. I was good and beat.”
Nonetheless, Jager said he’s benefited from a mental adjustment that came after some tough days of racing last season. While his teammates and friends like Schumacher, Ogden and Schoonmaker reached new heights, Jager struggled on the World Cup in his strongest discipline, the sprint — advancing out of the qualifying rounds and into the heats just once in eight starts.
“We were all young — it was so sweet and so fun and we were like this group, this cohort that was super put together. I was super proud to be a part of it. And I love those guys — they’re totally like family,” Jager said in an interview earlier this week. “But then as we got older, those guys just kept getting better and kept getting better. And it felt like I was still stuck, so I was really grasping on to trying to maintain my identity as part of that.”
He added: “My focus wasn’t in the right place. I was focused on having my breakthrough so I could join the club. I wasn’t focused on performing — and, like, on myself, and what I need to do.”
Jager’s outlook was grim enough last year, he said, that there was a period when he indulged in some “mopy” thoughts about retirement.
But instead, he ended up with a new mindset and a shift in focus inward.
That included some changes to his summer training. Jager said that while there’s currently a trend toward “polarization” in training — making hard workouts even harder and easy workouts even easier — he did the opposite, making his easier workouts a little faster and harder. That change, he said, has made him more durable in races when the pace starts to ratchet up.
So far, it’s been working for Jager. In addition to Saturday’s title, he had what he described as an unusually strong fourth-place result in Thursday’s individual-start distance skate race — a format that’s historically challenged him at U.S. nationals. He also won two races on the domestic SuperTour circuit earlier this winter.
“I think every skier has their way, right?” said Erik Flora, Jager’s coach at the Alaska Pacific University club team.
Flora, a veteran coach who’s also worked with retired Olympic medalist Kikkan Randall and World Cup standout Rosie Brennan, said he wishes that athletic development could be “linear” — steadily upward and regular. But in his experience, he said, “it just isn’t.”
“Everyone goes through these gains, and they go through settles,” Flora said. “It’s just waves.”
Smith, Saturday’s women’s champion, is still riding a wave on its way up.
At just 19 years old, she’s a prodigy who’s already spent parts of two seasons racing on the World Cup — and has a world junior championships silver medal in her trophy case from last season.
But as most of her competitors spent the fall training and sharpening for ski racing, Smith was doing something completely different: traveling the country with Stanford’s soccer team.
Smith, who plays a defensive-minded position called outside back, wasn’t a starter as a freshman this year. But she got playing time in 13 games, according to Stanford statistics, on a team that made it to the national semifinals.
Smith’s sister Logan, who also plays for the Stanford soccer team, said that because the squad competes in the Atlantic Coast Conference, players spend much of every other week on the road. They typically travel on Tuesdays to the East Coast, play games Thursdays and Sundays, and fly home Sunday night.
As for school?
“Mondays. And the weeks we don’t travel,” said Logan Smith, who was watching the races at Kincaid with her family this week.
The grueling soccer schedule meant that Sammy Smith fit in training for cross-country skiing when she could. But she described it as “the first time I was really able to focus on one thing.”
She said she expected that her first event in Anchorage, “was not going to be great” — and she finished 12th on Thursday.
On Saturday, though, she looked like a podium contender from the start, winning both her quarterfinal and semifinal heats. In the final, she said she slipped on her first four or five strides and was trailing the pack leading out from Kincaid’s stadium. But she made up ground on Duchaufour, Bianco and Seemann as the pack climbed over the big hill on the course to take home the American title.
After U.S. nationals, Smith said she plans to race at world juniors in Italy and hopes to compete on the World Cup, as well.
“It’s also definitely a balance with school,” she said.
But Smith said she hopes to continue with both soccer and cross-country skiing as long as she can. And she dreams of competing in the Olympic Games in both sports.
U.S. Ski Team coaches would “love to have her pick skiing,” said Cross-Country Development Director Bryan Fish, who was on hand for Saturday’s race.
“But from a U.S.A. perspective, we’re just happy that she’s here,” Fish said. “Our job is to support her in the best way that we can.”
