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.
Category: US Nationals
US Nationals is the premier event of the season. The top skiers in the country battle for championship titles. Coverage of events and related news.
Novie McCabe of APU narrowly winning over Kendall Kramer and Alayna Sonnesyn. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
CRAFTSBURY, Vermont — Craftsbury’s SuperTour Finals 40k highlighted some awesome battles amongst the top American men and women. The women started off the day with some extremely fast conditions on the winding and punchy Craftsbury 5k loop. The men took on the course later in the morning and conditions were mostly firm besides the south facing hills.
The women’s race broke into a lead pack of 5 that held strong until a sprint finish. APU’s Novie McCabe narrowly took the win over Kendall Kramer of APU and Alayna Sonnesyn of Team Birkie. Luci Anderson of Team Birkie and Craftsbury’s own Margie Freed, both 2026 Olympic biathletes, finished 4th and 5th.
The early leaders of the women’s 40k heading up Screaming Mimi hill. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
In an interview with Craftsbury’s Sheldon Miller after the race, McCabe said that “it was really fun to ski with such a great group of girls.” In regards to her difficult last couple of seasons, McCabe said that “it’s nice to have these good days again. It’s super fun to be back racing this year.”
Margie Freed, mostly a biathlete in the last few seasons, said that “it was really nice to not carry an extra ten pounds on my back, but I was a little sad to not be able to lay down in the middle of my race.” She thanked her coaches for helping her keep track of the lap count.
Alayna Sonnesyn, the Team Birkie athlete that narrowly missed out on the Olympics, said that the top three broke away at the top of the Screaming Mimi climb. When asked how her race went, Sonnesyn said “it was great, it was so fun to be out here. Conditions were fast and furious, kind of like the Birkie this year.”
The men’s 40k leaving the stadium. (Photo: Steve Snider)
The men’s race was tight with the top 14 coming in less than 60 seconds behind the win. Gus Schumacher of APU ended up edging out John Hagenbuch of Dartmouth for 1st. Kevin Bolger of Team Birkie finished 3rd.
Jake Brown in his last race for Craftsbury Green Racing Project taking the lead up Screaming Mimi. (Photo: Steve Snider)
Hagenbuch said that he has been fighting through some illness since the Lake Placid World Cup Finals.“I didn’t win today, but I was still smiling out there and really just taking in what was my last race for Dartmouth.”
Gus Schumacher also said that the conditions were really fast and it was hard to get away from the pack. He and Zak Ketterson were pushing at the front when Zak had an unfortunate fall within the last few hundred meters: “I was given the first place position and just went for it from there.”
The award ceremony’s after the races highlighted the 40k, junior 20k and 2025-2026 SuperTour awards.
Thank you to Sheldon Miller of Craftsbury Outdoor Center for the post-race interviews with athletes.
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The SuperTour Relay start on Saturday afternoon. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
CRAFTSBURY, Vermont — The second day of racing at Craftbury’s SuperTour Finals brought on some hard-hitting team relays. The “Club Relay” had a diverse array of club skiers young and old, along with some college teams. In the afternoon, the “SuperTour Relay” featured the North American pro teams along with the top eastern college squads.
Craftsbury groomer, Eric Hanson, captured Anders Weiss of BSF and Jack Young of Craftsbury Green Racing Project skiing in front of the dump truck responsible for keeping the course open. The truck was stuck on course the d prior year and pushed off to the side with one of their Pistenbully groomers. (Photo: Eric Hanson)
The afternoon raced proved to be quite entertaining as conditions held firm. Team Birkie’s first relay squad won, upsetting APU’s first squad by 46 seconds. Alayna Sonnesyn, Kevin Bolger, Lucy Anderson, and Zak Ketterson held off the APU’s four 2026 Olympians that included Kendall Kramer, Zanden McMullen, Novie McCabe, Gus Schumacher. Craftsbury’s home team of Margie Freed, Brian Bushey, Michaela Keller-Miller, and Jack Young finished in 3rd.
Team Birkie, APU and Craftsbury’s relay teams filling the podium. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
Team Birkie was ecstatic with their win. Their second team also came within 6 seconds of the podium. BSF’s team came in 4th of the 33 teams.
Luci Anderson’s leg put on a significant gap to the APU team that they would keep through the race. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
In the morning, an additional 33 relay teams and 132 racers in total took on the 5 kilometer lap that Craftsbury staff worked hard to keep open through the recent warm spells. Hundreds of dump trucks and many more snowmobile sleds patched thinning spots on a sections of thinning snow. Eric Hanson, a Craftsbury groomer of 25 years, said that they’ve spent hundred of hours moving snow onto the race course over the last month.
33 teams starting the Club Relay in the morning. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
The Club Relay showcased the often-mentioned perk of Nordic skiing: it’s a lifelong sport. With the youngest competitors in the single digits and the oldest many decades in, it was a celebration of the sport and the joy that comes from friendly competition. While most teams donned their spandex suits, some teams added some flair with outfits that surely boosted their speed.
Ollie Burruss, Craftsbury’s Nordic Race Director, making the college skiers nervous with his lead in the first leg of the Club Relay. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
All but 7 relay teams were pairs of 2 women and 2 men. The mixed relay was won by “UVM Gold” with Owen Young, Molly Moening, Benon Brattebo, and Caleb Boyce throwing down to narrowly beat out their teammates on “UVM Green.”
Benon Brattebo of UVM leading the first leg of the Club Relay. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
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Ben Ogden, the Vermonter, taking the cake in the men’s sprint final. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
CRAFTSBURY, Vermont — Craftsbury Outdoor Center kicked off the first of the SuperTour Finals races with a classic sprint on Friday. Yesterday’s weather brought gnarly, foggy, and temperatures in the 50s. Craftsbury’s grooming crew has been putting in long hours over the last few weeks to ensure that conditions would hold on through a warmup. Overnight, they prepared the 1.5-kilometer course that baked under the strong spring sun, creating saturated spring conditions even with temperatures below freezing.
Most of the top American competitors came to cap off their long race season, many of whom are freshly off the electric World Cup Finals. Following up huge events like the 2026 Olympics and the World Cup Finals in Lake Placid, one might think that races in the quaint Northeast Kingdom of Vermont would be a quiet, less competitive affair. Today’s competition couldn’t compete with the 10,000+ fans across the state border last weekend, but it proved to be a tight and fierce battle for sprinters to finish off their season.
85 men and 63 women started the qualifier, representing an array of professional domestic teams, Canadians, Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association (EISA), and junior racers.
Ben Ogden of SMS T2 won the men’s qualifier with nearly 3 seconds over Gus Schumacher of APU. Murphy Kimball, the 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Alaska – Anchorage, qualified in an impressive eighth, only getting beaten out by elder World Cup regulars.
U20 Murphy Kimball heading to an 8th place in the qualifier. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
Erin Bianco of BSF won the women’s qualifier by over 3 seconds over second-place Canadian and Alberta World Cup Academy athlete Katie Weaver. Mia Gorman is a U16 athlete for the neighboring Mansfield Nordic Club who finished the qualifier in 27th, beating out all other junior women and making the heats with the big dogs.
Erin Bianco winning the qualifier by over 3 seconds. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
Ogden moved comfortably through the heats, eventually winning the men’s final over APU teammates JC Schoonmaker and Gus Schumacher, who finished in second and third, respectively.
Men’s final starting at Craftsbury Outdoor Center. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
Ben Ogden of SMS T2 was very happy about racing in his home state. “It’s a bit more chill” he said in comparison to the World Cup and Olympic stages that he’s been prominent on this season. Ogden also mentioned that, even though the race environment was low-key, the competition was stiff with the U.S.’s top skiers duking it out for the top of the podium.
In addition to representation from many different clubs throughout the heats, the women’s side saw a shake-up in the competition when the third qualifier, Lauren Jortberg of Mansfield Pro/NCPH, fell in the final. Canadian Katie Weaver and her Alberta World Cup Academy teammate Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt finished first and second. In an interview after the race, Weaver said “conditions were fun, crazy and a bit hectic.”
Canadians Katie Weaver and Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt embrace after their strong finish for first and second overall. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
Emma Albrecht took the top domestic position in third place with her first Supertour win in a sprint race. Erin Bianco of BSF and Alayna Sonnesyn of Team Birkie rounded off the domestic podium.
Albrecht crossing the finishing line as the first American and 3rd overall. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
Albrecht was very happy with her racing throughout the day: “The biggest feat for me is being competitive this late in the season.” When asked about her tactics in the heats with the warm spring sun softening the track, she said that she had to “find a rut and see it through.”
Logan Drevlov of Loppet Nordic Racing and Claire Serrano of Craftsbury won the junior heat finals.
Temps are forecasted to drop into the single digits overnight before 4 x 5 km team sprint competitions throughout the day. Tune in for more pictures and results tomorrow.
JC Schoonmaker (APU) and Kevin Bolger (Team Birkie) side by side in the heats. (Photo: Tryg Solberg / FasterSkier)
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The men’s Classic Sprint heats got started with quarterfinal number one at the US Nationals Cross-Country Ski Championship at Mt Vanhoevenberg in Lake Placid NY. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)
The last day of the U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships in Lake Placid arrived the way honest days in this sport often do. The snow at Mt. Van Hoevenberg had been churned and scoured by a week of racing and changing weather, its surface no longer pristine but revealing, the kind that gives little for free. Legs were tired. Arms were tender. Expectations had been trimmed back by accumulated kilometers and decisions already made.
For the men lining up for the classic sprint, this was not simply a final chance at a national title. In an Olympic winter, nothing is ever only what it claims to be. The sprint was an audition—not necessarily for Olympic selection, but for relevance. For future start rights. For the ability to say, credibly, that range still exists.
Sprint qualification, in particular, has a way of stripping sport down to its essentials. No drafting. No hiding. One lap to explain yourself. As has been said all week about sprints, it does not matter how clever you are in the heats if you cannot arrive there in the first place. In Lake Placid, that truth shaped the day from the first starter onward.
Fin Bailey (UVM) makes his way up the Lake Placid sprint course’s signature climb. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)
Qualification: where the day declares itself
Qualification mattered here in a way that went beyond podiums and medals. With sprint start rights in the World Cup largely determined by qualification speed, the men knew exactly what was at stake. If this were a sorting mechanism, it was a blunt one.
The fastest man through the course was John Schwinghamer, whose time at the top of the board set the early benchmark. But the story quickly widened. Pierre Grall-Johnson followed closely, and then Will Koch, who would soon become central to the day’s most unusual tactical thread, placed third.
A few seconds farther back sat a cluster of names that told a deeper story: athletes with distance pedigrees, athletes chasing U23 selection, athletes managing fatigue from a long week and still trying to produce speed on demand.
Among them was Zanden McMullen, who qualified tenth, solid but not dominant. “The qualifier felt a little off,” McMullen admitted. “I didn’t feel smooth and thought I skied poorly through the terrain. I was happy to qualify and have another chance to improve on the day.”
That, in retrospect, was the quiet warning shot.
Classic striding versus powerful double poling was one of the key storylines in the men’s Classic Sprint. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)
A decision made in minutes
If qualification is the most honest part of sprinting, it is also where improvisation sometimes reveals itself. Koch arrived at the start line with little margin and even less certainty.
“I was already pretty tired going into the classic sprint,” Koch said. A bonk midway through the 20-kilometer freestyle earlier in the week had drained his reserves, and classic sprint had never been his strength. “With about ten minutes to go before my qualifier, I still couldn’t get my classic skis to kick.”
The decision that followed was not theoretical. Koch asked his coach to prepare a pair of skate skis — not as a backup, but as a commitment. He reached the start with roughly 90 seconds to spare, hoping that strength alone might be enough to advance.
Third in the qualifier erased doubt immediately. “When I ended up third, I knew it was the right call,” he said. “I never even tested a classic ski the rest of the day.”
The gamble would ripple through every round that followed.
Will Koch (SVSEF) powered through the qualification and heats, double poling on skate skis. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)
Heats: when fatigue starts to speak
Classic sprint heats at Mt. Van Hoevenberg reward clarity. The course offers opportunities, but they are conditional. Mistime a move, and the course and competition punish hesitation. Get trapped behind the wrong skis, and speed evaporates.
Koch’s plan was simple and exhausting: lead early, create space before the climb, and survive long enough for glide to matter again. “If I could crest the climb with the group, my skis would be fast enough to carry me through,” he explained.
For a time, it worked exactly as intended.
But others were playing different games.
Zach Jayne arrived at the sprint with a different set of calculations. Already qualified for U23 Worlds and carrying a narrow SuperTour points lead, his goals were layered. “I wanted to finish strong,” Jayne said. “I also wanted to make the final so I could displace other U23 athletes and help ensure my teammate Max Kluck made the trip.”
Jayne, Koch, and teammate Carl Rune all opted to double-pole the heats on skate skis, a choice that paid dividends early. “It worked really well in the quarterfinal,” Jayne said. “But as the rounds went on and fatigue built, I was definitely wishing I’d brought a pair of klister skis.”
That fatigue — cumulative, unrelenting — became the quiet theme of the afternoon.
Zanden McMullen (APU) showed he had made the right calculations for himself in the final, creating a gap on the large climb, which he was able to maintain on the final downhill. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)
Trusting kick in uncertain snow
While some chased glide, Max Kluck made a different bet. His week had been defined by nerves more than novelty. “I was more nervous than I’ve been in years,” Kluck said. “I knew my U23 spot was on the line.”
The snow tempted experimentation, but Kluck resisted. “I was pretty certain I wanted to stay on classic skis unless the weather took a major turn,” he explained. “I stuck with my gut.”
The reward came immediately. In the quarterfinals, Kluck ran the climb with confidence, kick biting cleanly while others labored, arms already beginning to pay the price. “I figured I might be able to make double-poling work once,” he said. “But I didn’t think I could personally do it four times.”
His solution was economy. By trusting his wax and striding more often, Kluck preserved his upper body for the finishing straight — a detail that would matter later.
UVM’s Fin Bailey was showing he was on form and a threat for the podium throughout the heats, but his final got off to an unlucky start with a broken pole. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)
The final: legs versus arms
By the time the final assembly was complete, the calculus was visible even from the sidelines. The men who had double-poled all day carried speed — and fatigue. Those who had relied on kick carried legs.
McMullen understood the equation precisely. “Going into the final, I knew the few boys that double-poled all day would be tired,” he said. “My plan was to keep them in reach before the final climb and then gap them.”
Snow conditions had continued to degrade, wind and rain complicating grip and timing. McMullen’s classic skis, however, remained reliable. “Our classic skis felt good,” he said. “I didn’t think there was a need to try and double-pole the race.”
When the decisive climb arrived, McMullen did not hesitate. He strung together clean transitions, trusted his kick, and separated decisively. “I felt really fresh still at the start of the final,” he said. “I knew I would be able to run away with it.”
Behind him, the chase unfolded exactly as predicted. Koch’s glide carried him, but the cost of four rounds of double-poling showed. Kluck’s restraint paid dividends, his saved arms helping him close strongly. Jayne fought valiantly through fatigue, his earlier work for teammates already done.
McMullen crossed the line alone — a national champion not because he had chased novelty, but because he had waited for the moment that mattered.
Zanden McMullen (APU) comes to the finish of the Classic Sprint with his second national title in as many days at the US Nationals Cross-Country Ski Championship at Mt Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, NY. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)
What the result actually means
The men’s classic sprint did not reshape Olympic selection overnight. Sprint specialists were unlikely to be named from Nationals alone. But the race clarified something subtler and perhaps more important.
It showed who can adapt under stress. Who can make decisions when plans unravel? Who understands that qualification speed opens doors long before medals do?
For Koch, the day was a revelation. “The classic sprint was a really pleasant surprise to end the week,” he said, even as he acknowledged that broader goals remained unmet.
For Jayne, consistency mattered more than headlines. “I don’t race to prove people right or wrong,” he said. “I know what I’m capable of.”
For Kluck, the outcome was tangible. “Securing my U23 spot was the biggest goal of my season,” he said. “Locking it down here feels incredible.”
And for McMullen, the victory was both affirmation and invitation. “I hope people know now that I’m an all-around skier,” he said. “And I hope the Olympic selection committee knows I have a lot of potential to succeed at the Olympics.”
Zanden McMullen (APU) first place, Will Koch (SVSEF) second place, and Max Kluck (UU) third place at the US Nationals Cross-Country Ski Championship Classic Sprint at Mt Vanhoevenberg in Lake Placid NY. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)
A quiet ending, honestly earned
As the course emptied and the equipment was packed away, Mt. Van Hoevenberg returned to stillness. Another Nationals was complete. Another set of arguments had been made — not loudly, not always cleanly, but honestly.
Sprint racing, especially in January of an Olympic year, has a way of revealing truths athletes might prefer to delay. Qualification does not negotiate. Fatigue does not compromise. Decisions, once made, echo through every climb and corner that follows.
On this final day in Lake Placid, the men who listened closely to their bodies, their skis, and the snow underfoot, were the ones who left with something lasting.
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What was truly on display this week at the US Nationals Cross-Country Ski Championship at Mt Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, NY was not only that cross-country skiing is an awesome sport, but the community that embodies it is something worth celebrating. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)
Sofia Pedersen (UU) and Samantha Smith (SVSEF) lead the first quarterfinal out onto the course at the start of the heats. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
On the morning of the women’s classic sprint at the U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships, the quiet around Mt. Van Hoevenberg felt deliberate.
Not calm — no one was calm by Friday — but restrained. The week had already taken its toll. Distance races had piled fatigue into legs and minds alike, and no one arrived at the sprint believing freshness would be part of the equation. What remained, instead, was clarity: the understanding that in an Olympic winter, the most important racing of the day would happen before the heats ever began.
“It definitely started the day tired,” Ava Thurston said. “But I was trying to just remind myself that everyone was feeling that way. Most people had raced two, if not three, of the races, and we’re all coming in in a similar place.”
That recognition — that fatigue was universal — became the baseline. The differentiator would be execution.
For the women with Olympic aspirations, the classic sprint qualifier was no formality or warm-up. It was the argument itself. The U.S. selection process, quietly but decisively, has elevated qualification speed to the top of the sprint hierarchy. Heats matter, but only if you earn the right to be in them. On Friday in Lake Placid, no one confused the order of importance.
Sofia Pedersen (UU) and Samantha Smith (SVSEF) get the action started in the quarterfinals. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Carrying the Week
By the time the women clipped in for qualification, the week was already present in their legs.
After Thursday’s 20-kilometer race, Sammantha Smith felt that accumulation acutely — and honestly. “After the 20 k, I was definitely feeling the fatigue and accumulation of all the racing throughout the week,” she said. “I know I’m more of a sprinter, but obviously, I was still hoping to perform well in the 20k, so I was not thrilled with the race.”
Rather than letting that disappointment linger, Smith pivoted quickly. “I tried to quickly put it behind me and get ready for some classic sprinting,” she said. “My goal for the day was to focus on skiing a clean qualifier and ski to my strengths.”
Hailey Swirbul arrived at the start line with similar fatigue — and a similar refusal to let it define the day. “Today, I definitely felt a little tired this morning warming up compared to the other races after a hard 20 k effort,” she said. “But so was everybody else dealing with that same.”
For Swirbul, there was anticipation as well. “I was really excited to get to finish this week off with a classic race,” she said. “I just love classic skiing. I think it’s such an art, and I really appreciate the finesse that is needed to be able to make skis kick well.”
Thurston framed the day with a different emphasis — joy rather than pressure. “It had been a great week so far,” she said, “so I was excited to get to go fast and run up that big hill.”
Different approaches, same reality: the sprint would reveal who could still make good decisions under fatigue.
Samantha Smith (SVSEF) commanded the Classic Sprint day from start to finish just like she had done in the Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Qualification: Where the Day Was Decided
When the women dropped into the qualifier, the course made its judgment quickly and without theatrics.
Smith’s run stood apart immediately. She won the qualification by more than six seconds — not by forcing the issue, but by skiing exactly the race she had planned. “It was my first classic sprint of the year, so I didn’t really have too many expectations,” she said. “But I was hoping for a strong result.”
What made the result significant wasn’t just the margin — it was the trajectory behind it. “Up until last season, I think there was a noticeable gap between my skate and classic sprinting,” Smith explained. “But the last few years I’ve really prioritized working on getting my classic sprint to a place I’m happy with.”
That work showed. In an Olympic winter, qualification speed isn’t just about advancing — it’s about relevance. Smith’s time didn’t merely put her safely through; it reframed the sprint conversation.
Behind her, two performances raised equally important questions.
Swirbul and Thurston — both known primarily for their distance strength — delivered qualification runs that demanded attention. In a format that strips away drafting, tactics, and protection, they showed they belonged in the sprint conversation on pure speed.
“I didn’t set out to make a statement this week,” Swirbul said. “I just wanted to show up and try to race my best and see where that landed me.”
For selectors, where it landed mattered.
Quarterfinal 4 trying to find their space and line around the U-turn on the sprint course in Lake Placid. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
A Day That Wouldn’t Sit Still
As the day progressed, conditions refused to settle. Snow softened. Moisture crept in. Wind shifted. Ski choices that worked in the morning became liabilities by afternoon.
“The waxing team today was absolute heroes,” Swirbul said. “They were out until the wee hours of the morning, waxing late last night and woke up for a super early morning today for a classic day with really gnarly conditions.”
Adaptability became a skill equal to speed. “I raced on totally different skis from the qualifier to the heats,” Swirbul said. “And even in the heats, I had a couple of changes to my kick in between the rounds because our conditions were continuing to change.”
Smith faced the same puzzle. “In my quarter and semi-final I was actually icing up a bit and too grabby on kick as the snow got wetter,” she said. “My coaches ended up stripping a lot of the kick to bring back some of the glide for the final.”
The goal, she explained, was precision rather than excess. “The main thing was to try to have just enough kick to get up the hills but not so much that it was draggy for the double pole or downhills.”
Thurston made a strategic choice early — prioritizing glide over grip. “I ended up going with the pair that had a little more glide for the downhill finish,” she said, “just because I wanted to be able to hang with people rather than having that extra kick on the hill.”
Three athletes, three solutions, same underlying demand: bend, don’t break.
Lauren Jortberg (CNEPH)leads semi-final 1 out of the starting stretch. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Heats: Confirmation, Not Reinvention
By the time the heats began, the hierarchy established in qualification largely held — and that, too, carried meaning.
Smith moved through the rounds with patience and control, never forcing a moment unnecessarily. Swirbul sharpened as the day progressed, her adjustments paying dividends. Thurston continued to ski within herself, staying connected and opportunistic.
For Thurston, the day reinforced something larger than a single result. “What it kind of said to me was that I can be really consistent,” she said, “and I’m also a strong all-around skier.”
That consistency — across multiple races, formats, and conditions — is currency in an Olympic year.
The women’s final gets started on the last day of racing at the 2026 US National Cross-Country Ski Championships at Mt Van Hoevenberg. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
The Final: Execution, Not Emotion
The women’s final unfolded cleanly and decisively.
Smith took control early, extending her advantage where momentum mattered most. The ski changes made before the final were immediately evident. She crossed the line as U.S. National Champion in the classic sprint, completing a sweep of the week’s sprint events.
Behind her, Swirbul claimed second, a reward for adaptability and composure. Thurston rounded out the podium, another affirmation of her ability to race fast across disciplines.
For Smith, the result was about more than placement. “I hope people see that I love to race,” she said. “I love to compete and push myself, and I always leave everything I have out on the course.”
Everyone was deserving of a helping hand up after a full week of racing at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships at Mt Van Hoevenberg. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
What the Race Clarified
Nationals does not select Olympic teams outright, but it argues persuasively — and the women’s classic sprint in Lake Placid made its case clearly.
Smith’s qualification speed, combined with her technical development in the classic sprint, strengthened her position at precisely the right moment. Swirbul’s performance underscored versatility and poise under changing conditions. Thurston’s podium reinforced consistency and all-around strength.
“I’m really happy with how this week went,” Swirbul said. “And looking forward to figuring out where the rest of the season goes.”
Thurston echoed that momentum. “This week was so, so awesome,” she said. “I’m excited to keep racing.”
The arguments weren’t loud. They didn’t need to be. On a tired Friday at Mt. Van Hoevenberg, they were made the way Olympic cases often are — quietly, cleanly, and against the clock.
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The women’s Classic Sprint podium, including Samantha Smith (SVSEF) in first, Hailey Swirbul (APU) in third, and Ava Thurston (Dartmouth) in third at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships at Mt Van Hoevenberg. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
The start of the US National Cross-Country Ski Championship Men’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
There are moments in endurance sport when the noise falls away—not because the stakes are small, but because they are too large to announce themselves loudly. The men who gathered on the start line at Mount Van Hoevenberg on Thursday afternoon understood that kind of quiet. The banners said US National Championships. The calendar said 20 k Freestyle Mass Start. The course—four laps of five kilometers, stitched together by long climbs and fast descents—said this will be honest. But the silence said Olympics!
For much of the week in Lake Placid, honesty had come quickly. The 10 k classic individual start exposed margins. The sprint laid bare specialization. By the time the men lined up for the 20 k Freestyle Mass Start, the argument had narrowed. There were medals to be won, yes, but more importantly, there were questions still unresolved about who might fit through the narrowing door of Olympic selection.
For Zanden McMullen, the stakes were explicit. “Today’s race was a ‘one shot, one opportunity’ type of race for me,” he said later. He knew that anything short of a win would leave his Olympic case incomplete. That knowledge sat heavily over the first kilometers—not as panic, but as pressure carefully managed.
What followed was not a race that fractured early or declared itself with theatrics. Instead, it unfolded as a study in restraint.
A large, shifting group stayed at the front early on in the race. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
A Race That Refused to Break
From the opening lap, the field behaved in a way that confounded expectations. In contrast to the women’s race earlier in the day, no decisive break formed. Attacks surfaced briefly—on climbs, into transitions—but were quickly absorbed by the physics of the course. Downhills regrouped the field. Drafting mattered. The snow was fast, the air cold enough to preserve glide, and separation proved expensive.
John Steel Hagenbuch allowed himself to drift deep into the pack early—sometimes close to twentieth—an approach that looked counterintuitive given both his fitness and his history on the course. It was neither indecision nor passivity. “I was just staying relaxed and letting people work out some energy that I knew wasn’t going to result in any meaningful gain,” he explained. “Racing in the U.S. is very different than racing on the World Cup, and being able to relax at the start of a mass start race is perhaps the best example of that.”
Zanden McMullen (APU) and his APU teammates Hunter Wonders (#208) and Luke Jager (#204). (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
The early splits reflected this tension. Leaders rotated through the front, but gaps rarely exceeded a handful of seconds. By the midpoint of the race, the field had thinned not through violence but through attrition—skiers falling off the back as the pace remained relentlessly honest.
McMullen, meanwhile, adhered to a plan that demanded patience. “My race strategy was to conserve as much energy as possible,” he said. “Every time a move was made, I made sure to match it calmly but decisively.” By the second lap, he sensed the race’s texture changing. The pack stretched. Breathing deepened. The small inefficiencies of earlier surges began to show.
Zach Jayne, consistently present near the front group, felt that tension acutely. “Holding position is always difficult,” he said. “So being aware while racing is important.” In a race defined by proximity rather than separation, awareness became a skill as valuable as strength.
Olivier Leveille (CNEPH), John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth), Zanden McMullen (APU), Jakob Elias Moch (CU), and Brian Bushey (Craftsbury) (l -r). (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Decisions Not Taken
If the race hinged on a single moment, it may have been defined instead by two moments when nothing happened.
Hagenbuch identified them clearly. The first came at the start of the third lap, at the base of the long climb—a place where he has both won and lost races before. “Looking back at it now,” he said, “the one that makes me wonder the most is the decision to not attack on the third lap.” His reasoning was sound. The conditions were fast. The field regrouped quickly on descents. “In order to get away, you would have to be very fit and have the best skis in the race,” he said. Unsure that any gap would hold, he chose restraint.
Mons Melbye (UU) leads Zanden McMullen (APU) and John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth), and Jakob Elias Moch (CU) (r – l) down the final downhill into the stadium. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
The second moment arrived on the final sprint climb before the descent into the stadium. Again, Hagenbuch assessed the cost-benefit. He believed he could crest first—but likely only to be swallowed by the draft. “As such, I decided to follow Zanden over the top,” he said. “I think this was the correct thing to do tactically.”
That calculus—when to go, when to wait—defined the race for several athletes. McMullen made the same choice from the opposite perspective. “There was no need to do anything rash,” he said. “Just go out and race hard and smart.”
The result was a front group of four that arrived at the final kilometer together, legs full but not shattered, tension compressed into seconds.
Zanden McMullen (APU) and John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth) follow Jakob Elias Moch (CU) near the end of the race. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
The Finish
As the leaders dropped off the final descent and into the stadium, the race became what everyone suspected it would be: a matter of position, timing, and nerve.
McMullen entered the final stretch calm by design. “During the final lap, I knew it would come down to the final meters,” he said, “and I just made sure to relax as much as I could.”
Hagenbuch, attempting to execute his finishing move, found the narrow margins of mass-start racing unforgiving. “Getting around Jakob was the crux move of the finishing maneuver I was trying to execute,” he said. “And there just wasn’t enough room for me to come around.” Pushed slightly wide through the final sweeping corner, he lost the speed he needed. “That’s racing,” he added. “It didn’t pan out, but it doesn’t always.”
McMullen surged cleanly to the line, stopping the clock at 47:37.0. The University of Utah’s Mons Melby was 7-tenths of a second behind, with Hagenbuch a second from the win for third. Behind them, the rest of the field streamed in—gaps small, order consequential.
Zanden McMullen (APU), John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth), and Jakob Elias Moch (CU) — with Mons Melbye (UU) off camera — come down the finish stretch. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
What the Race Revealed
On paper, the result was simple: a national champion crowned. In context, it was anything but.
For McMullen, the victory represented survival as much as success. “The Olympic selection has definitely been looming over my head all week,” he admitted. The stress was real. So was the clarity. He did what he could do.
For Hagenbuch, the outcome carried both frustration and resolve. “I still have faith that there is a path for me to the Olympics,” he said, while acknowledging that the decision now sits elsewhere. He stood by his choice to skip the Tour de Ski, citing health and long-term belief. It was not a plea, but a statement of readiness.
Zach Jayne, who again placed himself among the front contenders, viewed the week through a longer lens. “If you look at my results a year ago or two, I was barely a name in the competitive field,” he said. Improvement, for him, is cumulative. “Overall development is just as important to me as any given race.”
The national podium for the US National Cross-Country Ski Championship Men’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start with Zanden McMullen (APU) first, John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth) second, and Zach Jayne (UU) third. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
A Door, Not Yet Closed
National championships often promise clarity. This one offered something subtler: differentiation without finality. The men’s 20 k freestyle did not decide everything, but it sharpened the picture. It showed who could manage pressure, who could read a race, who could wait—and who could finish.
In an Olympic winter, those qualities matter as much as any single result.
As the stadium emptied and the snow settled back into quiet, the door to Milan–Cortina did not swing wide. But for one, and hopefully two skiers, it remained open, narrow, demanding, and earned.
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Traffic was thick at the beginning of the US National Cross-Country Ski Championship Women’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start in Lake Placid, NY. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
There is a particular moment in a long mass start when the race quietly declares what it will be. It does not arrive with a surge, a crash, or even a decisive move. It arrives when the pack thins just enough that the edges of the course begin to matter—when skis no longer overlap cleanly, when passing requires intention, and when each athlete realizes—often simultaneously—that this is no longer a collective undertaking.
At Mt. Van Hoevenberg, that moment came early.
The women’s 20-kilometer freestyle mass start at the 2026 U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships unfolded under conditions that rewarded clarity and punished hesitation. The course was wide in places, narrow in consequence. Fresh snow lined the edges, slower and heavier than the main track, turning every attempt to move forward into a calculation of cost. The pace at the front was honest from the gun—fast enough to string the field out, fast enough to strip away the illusion that patience alone would bring opportunity.
In an Olympic winter, Nationals rarely exist in isolation. They are arguments as much as races, each result carrying the quiet weight of future conversations. But on this morning, before selection scenarios and season arcs could intrude, the race itself demanded attention. Four laps. Twenty kilometers. A course that climbs insistently and asks athletes to be precise even when tired.
What followed was not one story, but several—layered, intersecting, and revealing.
Colorado’s Tilde Bångman did much of the work at the front of the Women’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start in Lake Placid, NY. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
The Fast Start That Changed Everything
From near the front, the race immediately took on the shape many expected. Kendall Kramer, eager to avoid the kind of chaos that can derail a mass start before it has truly begun, made her intentions clear.
“I wanted to go out fast because I didn’t want any funny business—colliding or breaking equipment,” Kramer said later. “I was super looking forward to being in the front of a mass start after being caught in the back on World Cups.”
For Kramer, the early pace felt familiar rather than reckless. World Cups, she noted, often begin faster than domestic races, and the instinct to establish position early has become second nature. The speed was assertive but manageable. She felt fit, capable, present.
Behind her, the effect was immediate. The field stretched, then fractured, then reorganized into smaller, more intentional units. For athletes starting deeper in the field, this stringing-out created both opportunity and pressure.
Novie McCabe, starting from bib 26, felt the opening kilometers open rather than close.
“My plan for the start was just to stay relaxed and try to work my way up,” she said. “It honestly ended up being easier than expected because the front girls took it out so fast. It was very strung out, and there was lots of room to move around.”
Within minutes, McCabe had navigated cleanly into the front group. What followed was less about advancing and more about survival.
“I got to the front pack about three minutes into the race,” she said. “So I spent most of it there just trying to hang on for as long as I could—and ended up having it in me to hang till the end.”
That phrase—hang on—would recur in different forms throughout the day, taking on slightly different meanings depending on where each skier found herself in the race.
Ava Thurston (#8 – Dartmouth) couldn’t quite hang on to the lead group of three, but eventually skied with Hailey Swirbul (#67 – APU) and Haley Brewster (#46 – UVM) before finishing fourth overall and third-place American. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
When the Front Pulls Away
Not everyone who tested the front pace could stay there.
Late in the first lap, Ava Thurston made her own attempt to bridge. She came close enough to feel the rhythm of the leaders, close enough to understand the cost.
“I tried to get back onto the front group, and I got pretty close,” Thurston said. “But I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to match their pace.”
The realization came with consequences. For a brief stretch, she found herself skiing alone—a dangerous place in a mass start, especially early, when gaps can grow quietly and decisively.
“That was where I did have a little bit of that panic,” she admitted.
The panic did not last. Company arrived in the form of Hailey Swirbul and Haley Brewster, and with it, perspective.
“Once I was skiing with them, I was kind of just thinking, ‘This is a good group. I can stay with these guys,’” Thurston said.
From there, her race became less about chasing what was ahead and more about managing what was happening around her. She tucked in, matched surges, and responded quickly to small separations before they became something larger.
“There were a couple of times where I would fall off the pack just a little bit,” she said. “Each time, I worked hard to get right back on before letting it be a big gap. I was really stoked on that.”
On a course like Van Hoevenberg—four laps of sustained uphill skating—those moments add up. Fitness is exposed repeatedly, not all at once. For Thurston, the race offered reassurance.
“This was the first race longer than 10k I’d done this year, and the first mass start that wasn’t a sprint,” she said. “It was a really good indicator that my fitness is there. It’s hard to fake anything on this course.”
She would finish fourth, clearly separated from the podium trio but equally clear of the deeper chase—an honest result in a demanding field.
With higher FIS points from not racing the past two seasons, Hailey Swirbul (#67 – APU) needed to ski through a lot of traffic during the early kilometers, but eventually found herself in the chase pack. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Racing From the Back Without Racing Small
While the front and mid-pack sorted themselves, Hailey Swirbul was running an entirely different race.
Starting from bib 67, she entered the day knowing she would need to be deliberate.
“I didn’t even realize I would be seated so far back until the start list came out,” she said. “Obviously, I would be, because my FIS points aren’t low at this point—but it was an experience.”
The challenge was not simply moving forward. It was how to do so without paying too steep a price.
“The edges of the course had fresh snow on them,” Swirbul explained. “It was much slower, and a much higher energy expenditure to get around people that way.”
Instead of forcing passes, she waited. Instead of locking into the pace of whatever group surrounded her at a given moment, she kept her attention forward.
“I almost approached the first couple laps like an individual start,” she said. “It’s really easy to lock into the group you’re around and forget about the people ahead of you.”
Women’s racing, she noted, often begins with a fast, destabilizing surge—a period where the goal is simply to hang on long enough for things to settle.
“That’s exactly what happened today,” she said. “The leaders go fast, string it out, and then the real race starts again.”
For Swirbul, the balance was constant: advancing through traffic while respecting the race’s length.
“A 20k is a long race,” she said. “You can’t really pay for it.”
Though she never bridged to the front trio, Swirbul finished fifth—solidly clear of the next wave behind her—and left the course satisfied with her execution and proud of the broader team effort.
“Our coach absolutely crushed it with skis and feeds,” she said. “It was a good day to be APU.”
Novie McCabe (APU) maintained contact on the uphills and used the downhills to close the small gaps to Tilde Bångman (CU) at the front of the race. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
The Margins at the Front
At the sharp end, the race narrowed to a familiar dynamic: strength, speed, and patience under pressure.
As the kilometers mounted, Tilde Bångman began to apply pressure on the climbs, testing the group’s elasticity. By mid-race, the front had distilled to three: Bångman, McCabe, and Kramer. The chase group behind them was no longer within striking distance, and the podium places would be decided among those three alone.
McCabe felt the pressure immediately.
“In the last few kilometers, Tilde was skiing super strong and still really pushing the pace,” she said. “She would gap me a little bit on some of the hills.”
Each gap mattered. Each closure required confidence—in skis, in timing, and in restraint.
“I had some super good skis, so I was able to glide back up to her,” McCabe said.
The plan crystallized: stay attached through the final hill, try once to make a move, and if that failed, save everything for the finish.
“I tried to get a gap on the last hill, which didn’t quite work,” she said. “So I tried one last time at the finish.”
It was enough.
McCabe crossed the line first, securing the national title after a race built not on constant aggression, but on measured commitment. The emotion that surfaced surprised even her.
“I think when I crossed the line, I mostly just felt super happy to be back racing and feeling like myself,” she said.
The win mattered. So did what it represented.
“Going into this week, I wasn’t sure it was the best idea for me to race frequently this season,” she said. “Now I have a lot more confidence that I can race—and maybe more importantly, recover from racing.”
In an Olympic year, that distinction is not trivial.
The lead pack and eventual overall podium with Kendall Kramer (APU), Tilde Bångman (CU), and Novie McCabe (APU) (l – r). (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Kramer’s Race: Control Without Regret
For Kendall Kramer, the separation late in the race came not through fitness, but friction.
“My skis slowed down as they went,” she said. “They started to feel sticky—like I skied through too much Gatorade or something.”
The effect was most pronounced on the downhills, where speed should have come freely.
“The girls had to push my poles to speed me up to keep together,” she said. “Eventually, they could just gap on all the downhills.”
Once the gap formed, Kramer shifted her focus from contesting the win to finishing the race well.
“I’m happy to maintain my place and feel good,” she said. “I can’t complain.”
What she wanted from the race, she explained, was not chaos or last-minute risk, but sustained pressure in a small group.
“I wanted a small pack where we could test at every little bit,” she said, “as opposed to leaving it to a sprint or taking risks at a time like this.”
She finished third, completing the podium, and left Lake Placid without repeating her national title—but with confirmation that mattered just as much.
“I felt fit and totally capable today,” she said. “I didn’t feel bad feelings.”
Novie McCabe (APU) managed to put a small gap on teammate Kendall Kramer to get away with Tilde Bångman (CU) and eventually ski to the national title in the finish stretch. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
What the Race Revealed
By the time the women completed their fourth lap, the story of the day was no longer about who surged when, but about how each athlete managed the same course differently—and honestly.
McCabe raced with restraint until she no longer needed to. Kramer raced with intent and accepted the margins. Thurston learned, adjusted, and confirmed her distance fitness. Swirbul navigated from deep in the field with patience and clarity.
None of those narratives exists in isolation. Together, they form a portrait of a championship race that did what the best distance races always do: expose truth without exaggeration.
At U.S. Nationals, the women did not simply ski 20 kilometers. They negotiated space, managed doubt, trusted preparation, and tested belief.
In an Olympic winter, those are not side effects.
They are the point.
The national podium for the US National Cross-Country Ski Championship Women’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start with Novie McCabe (APU) first, Kendall Kramer (APU) second, and Ava Thurston (Dartmouth) third. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
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The overall podium for the US National Cross-Country Ski Championship Women’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start with Novie McCabe (APU) first, Tilde Bångman (CU) second, and Kendall Kramer (APU) third. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Samantha Smith (#1 – SVSEF) was the fastest qualifier and advanced through all her rounds in first on her way to the national championship at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
There is a particular kind of pressure that lives in a sprint qualification. It isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce itself with theatrics. It sits in the quiet places: the moment you realize the warm-up loop is over and you’re headed back toward the start; the thin stretch of time when your poles feel too long and your gloves feel too tight and the only thing you can hear is the scrape of skis and the soft, practiced urgency of coaches repeating the same cues they’ve repeated for years.
In the heats, there is cover. There is a draft. There is a corner to hide behind, a decision to delay, a shoulder to lean into, a mistake you can sometimes survive. Qualification has none of that. Qualification is a solitary negotiation with speed, oxygen, and the course itself. And in an Olympic winter, it also becomes something else: a sorting mechanism. A gate. A reminder that at the Games, you don’t get to be “good in the heats” if you don’t first earn your way into them.
At the 2026 U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships in Lake Placid, Tuesday’s freestyle sprint at Mt. Van Hoevenberg offered that truth clearly. On the women’s side, Samantha Smith (Sun Valley SEF) was the fastest qualifier. On the men’s side, Zanden McMullen (APU Nordic Ski Center) topped the morning results.
By the end of the afternoon, the national titles belonged to Smith — who converted qualifier speed into clean, controlled racing through every round — and Mons Melbye (University of Utah), who did something deceptively difficult: he kept winning as the format stopped forgiving mistakes.
Dartmouth College’s Ava Thurston was impressive all day on her way to third overall. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Qualification as the Real Story — and the Olympic-Year Subtext
The sprint format always tempts us to focus on finish-line photos, final turns, and last lunges. But if you’re trying to understand what this race meant in the broader context of the week — and in the longer context of an Olympic winter — you start with the qualifier.
Smith’s win in qualification wasn’t just fast; it was decisive in a way that matters in a discipline where tenths often separate confidence from chaos. She led Alayna Sonnesyn (Team Birkie) by nearly two seconds, with Lauren Jortberg (CNEPH) third and Ava Thurston (Dartmouth) fourth.
On the men’s side, the top end was deep and tightly packed. McMullen led Owen Young (University of Vermont) by just over a second, with Michael Earnhart (APU Nordic Ski Center) essentially on Young’s shoulder. Melbye qualified fourth, with Cole Flowers (University of Alaska Fairbanks) and Max Kluck (University of Utah) close behind.
This matters because international sprinting — the kind that happens at the Olympics — is not a format where you can count on “finding your way through the rounds” if you start your day in the wrong place. Qualification is where your sprint begins or ends.
The subtext, however, differs by gender. On the men’s side, the Olympic pathway through domestic sprinting appears closed this winter. On the women’s side, the picture has felt more open, with multiple domestic spots likely in play and sprint specialists carrying meaningful leverage. The sprint, then, does not “mean” the same thing for every athlete — but it still demands the same thing from all of them.
Eventual winner, Samantha Smith (#1 – SVSEF) controls the start of the women’s final at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Women: Samantha Smith’s Control, Sonnesyn’s Speed, and a Final that Rewarded Discipline
Smith won the qualifier. Then she won her quarterfinal. Then she won her semifinal. Then she won the final.
Behind her in the final were Sonnesyn in second and Thurston in third, followed by Nina Schamberger (University of Colorado), Jortberg, and Katherine Weaver (Alberta World Cup Academy).
Sonnesyn’s day began where the pressure was heaviest.
“I am really proud of my sprint qualifier,” Sonnesyn said. “There was a lot of pressure on it, and I was feeling that, so I really leaned into the energy of those around me. I left everything I had out there on that course. Not perfect, but really good.”
In the final, she was clear-eyed about what limited her chances to fight for the win.
“I always need to keep working on my starts,” she said. “It’s really hard for me to get going that fast, and I ended up getting a bit boxed during the final because I didn’t have a great start. That being said, I think that final hill and the super fast downhill at the end worked in my favor.”
Alayna Sonnesyn (#2 – Team Birkie) pushes over the top of the sprint course’s main climb. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Smith described a day defined by managing nerves and executing details.
“I was quite nervous going into today’s race,” Smith said. “I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to perform well, so I tried to channel the nerves into adrenaline. I focused on skiing smoothly, working the transitions, and finding the most efficient line out there.”
The final climb played directly to her strengths.
“The final hill was definitely my favorite part of the course,” she said. “I really love to hop skate, and the gradient of that hill is perfect for it. On this course, transitions are critical, so I tried to be really disciplined about skiing hard over the tops and pushing into the downhills.”
Thurston, who qualified fourth and finished third overall, described a sprint day built around process rather than pressure.
“My approach to nerves was to focus on having fun and getting to the start line ready and excited to race,” she said. “Having my whole team here helped a lot. Chatting and joking with teammates and competitors really eases my nerves.”
She found her biggest opportunities during the heats.
“During the heats, I gained the most time on the final big hill,” Thurston said. “The wide trail made it an ideal place to pass. I’m still working on my double pole at the start, so that’s an area where I think there’s more speed to unlock.”
Lauren Jortberg (CNEPH) leads her semifinal at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Jortberg’s fifth-place finish, after qualifying third, served as a reminder of sprinting’s second demand: doing the work repeatedly under imperfect conditions.
Jortberg said the qualifier remained her primary focus, especially in an Olympic winter where advancing matters as much as how fast you ski.
“Sprint qualification is something I’ve been working on a ton,” she said. “That’s the most important part of the day, especially when it comes to World Cup skiing — just moving on. I was happy with my qualifier. It wasn’t my best skiing, but it was solid.”
She said lingering fatigue from the previous classic race played a role, particularly after spending much of that race running due to skis that wouldn’t kick.
“I definitely felt like I was carrying some fatigue from the classic,” Jortberg said. “So I’d say the qualifier was okay, but not my best work. I know I can ski better than that.”
Jortberg said the Van Hoevenberg sprint course suits her strengths, but emphasized that the margins — especially on the downhills — leave no room for lapses.
“I really like this course. It plays to a lot of my strengths — strong V2, a long climb, and hop skating,” she said. “But you have to be diligent everywhere, especially on the downhills. You can’t be lazy for even half a second.”
In the semifinals, she said the tight schedule and downhill dynamics ultimately limited her ability to move forward.
“My semifinal was only about eight minutes before the final,” Jortberg said. “I couldn’t really clear the lactic acid, and I didn’t have much time. I got passed on the downhill and then couldn’t really move in the final.”
Despite the broader Olympic context, Jortberg said she is deliberately keeping her focus narrow.
“I try not to stress about spreadsheets or criteria,” she said. “I just want to race, have fun, and ski the best way I know how. That’s really all you can do.”
Smith added one more note at the end of the day, confirming she plans to continue racing later in the week.
“As of now, yes, I am planning to race the 20-kilometer on Thursday.”
Eventual winner, Mons Melbye (#4 – UU) in his quarterfinal at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Men: Melbye’s Title, Jayne’s Podium, and Endestad’s Deep Run from 16th
On the men’s side, the qualifier winner did not win the title.
McMullen was fastest in the morning, but the championship ultimately went to Melbye, who qualified fourth and then won his quarterfinal, semifinal, and final.
Behind Melbye, Sasha Masson (CNEPH) finished second, Zachary Jayne (University of Utah) third, and Ari Endestad (Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center) fourth. Michael Earnhart finished fifth, with Owen Young sixth.
The University of Utah was central to the men’s story throughout the day, with Melbye winning the title and Jayne joining him on the podium.
Zach Jayne (UU) during qualification. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Jayne described a qualifier that didn’t match his expectations — and a deliberate reset once the rounds began.
“Coming off a skate qualifier win in Alaska, I was disappointed after my qualifying performance,” Jayne said. “I thought I was capable of much more. Knowing that, I went into the heats with a better plan focused on composure and power. I was more relaxed and less nervous once I committed to that.”
His view of sprint racing was blunt.
“The rounds were incredibly close, but it only matters where people are at the finish — nowhere else,” he said.
Young (University of Vermont), who finished sixth overall, described a day shaped largely by the pressure of the qualifier and the need to earn his way into the rounds.
“Heading into the race today, my internal goals were a bit of a mixed bag,” Young said. “The main focus was result-based, but I really approached the day thinking about the qualifier. I’ve only raced one sprint this season, and the result was pretty mediocre, so I was pretty dead set on just trying to qualify.”
Once through the qualifier, Young said his focus narrowed to managing the rounds one at a time.
“After the qualifier, I tried to just take each heat one at a time and give it my best shot to move on,” he said. “I don’t really try to preserve energy in the qualifier — I usually give it everything I’ve got. That might not be the smartest choice for later in the day, but the confidence boost from a fast qualifier can really help mentally in the heats.”
Miachael Earnhart (APU) on his way to posting the third fastest qualification time. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Endestad’s fourth-place finish told a different story: one of survival, adaptation, and opportunity.
He qualified 16th in what he described as one of the tightest sprint qualifiers he had ever seen at Nationals, then raced his way through the rounds into the final.
“Ideally, I would’ve liked to qualify a little higher,” Endestad said. “But with how close it was, I felt lucky just to be in the heats at all.”
The physical cost of the day was obvious.
“This course is so hard,” he said. “I threw up after the qualifier and had to fight to stay composed through the quarter and semi. There were only about 12 minutes between the semi and the final, so it was about breathing, keeping it down, and making good decisions.”
Tactically, he was clear about where he needed to attack.
“It might have looked like patience early, but honestly, I was barely hanging on from the start,” Endestad said. “The goal was to be in position for the main hill, because that’s where I felt I could really put the hammer down.”
Ari Endestad (APU) leads teammate Michael Earnhart (APU) during the heats of the Freestyle Sprint at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Michael Earnhart said his goals at U.S. Nationals were shaped as much by the SuperTour standings as by the result of any single race.
“One of my goals coming into Nationals was to try to take back the SuperTour lead heading into Period 3,” Earnhart said. “Today helped me with points against Hunter Wonders, but not against Zach Jayne. It’s still very close, and both of them are really good athletes.”
He admitted he arrived with higher expectations after last season’s skate sprint performances.
“After last year, I really wanted to try to win today,” he said. “So I was a little disappointed to come in fifth. But with how close the qualifier was and how strong the competition is getting in the U.S., I’m not overly disappointed. It’s a reasonable result.”
Earnhart said experience helped him stay composed through the rounds.
“I’ve done a lot of heats on the SuperTour, so I feel confident in this field,” he said. “I try to ski to my strengths, stay relaxed, and ski with the confidence that I deserve to win the heat. Normally, that gets me through, but sprinting is unpredictable.”
He added that Van Hoevenberg offered rare opportunities to move in a skate sprint.
“The main sprint hill is wide enough to move, and jump skating is my strongest technique,” Earnhart said. “When the qualifier is six seconds from first to 30th, it’s fine margins. Sometimes you need a little luck — but you also have to make your own.”
Mons Melbye (#4 – UU), Sasha Masson (#11 – CNEPH), and Zach Jayne (#12 – UU) on their way to first, second, and third places, respectively, with Ari Endestad (APU) trailing in fourth place during the men’s Final at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
What It Means — and What It Doesn’t
It’s tempting in an Olympic year to treat every Nationals result like a verdict. But Nationals is not the Olympics, and a domestic sprint is not a World Cup sprint field.
What it can be is a stress test.
For the women, the sprint reinforced that athletes who can combine elite qualifier speed with repeatable execution are building strong cases. Smith won both the qualifier and the final. Sonnesyn backed up top-end speed with a runner-up finish while clearly identifying where she can improve.
For the men, the sprint may not be about Olympic selection, but it was revealing and also adds to the season-long narrative. Melbye showed an ability to win under repeated pressure. Jayne demonstrated resilience after a disappointing qualifier. Endestad showed how quickly sprinting can reward those who survive long enough to find their moment.
Young’s comments also underscored the tradeoffs athletes are navigating as the week continues.
“I don’t have a definite answer, looking forward to the rest of Nationals,” he said. “I’d like to throw down top results in the 20k and the classic sprint, but I need to talk with my coach and assess the best plan to give me the best shot at scoring enough points. That could mean skipping the 20k and focusing on the sprint, or maybe doing both — it’s tricky with no rest day and the body starting to feel the last couple days of racing.”
Katey Houser (MSU) leads Ruby Serrouya (DU) and Marit Flora (UAA) in their quarterfinal at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
A Closing Note from Lake Placid
By late afternoon, the sprint course felt smaller than it had in the morning. Not only because it changed slightly for the juniors, but because sprint days compress experience. The same hill feels steeper the fourth time. The same turn feels tighter. The same finishing straight feels shorter.
That is the quiet lesson of a National sprint in an Olympic winter. It doesn’t allow vagueness. It demands specificity. It asks for one fast lap — and then asks you to do it again, and again, and again, under less forgiving conditions.
Samantha Smith and Mons Melbye won because they answered those questions most consistently.
For everyone else, Lake Placid delivered the same message sprinting always does: if you want to be part of the story later, you still have to earn your way into the next round now.
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Mons Melbye (#4 – UU), Sasha Masson (#11 – CNEPH), and Zach Jayne (#12 – UU) on their way to first, second, and third places, respectively, with Owen Young (UVM – far left), Ari Endestad (#16 – APU), and Michael Earnhart (#3 – APU) trailing to start the men’s final at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
The US National Championships got started yesterday with the 10 k Classic Individual Start in Lake Placid, NY. Hunter Wonders (#369 – APU) took top honors in the men’s race. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
On a January afternoon in Lake Placid, Mt. Van Hoevenberg did what it has always done best: it asked skiers to be honest.
The 10-kilometer classic individual start is not a format that rewards theater. It doesn’t care how good you looked in warm-up, how confident you sounded the night before, or how convincing your season-long narrative might be. It rewards pacing that’s brave but not reckless, technique that doesn’t unravel under strain, and the ability to keep making good decisions when your legs are trying to renegotiate the terms of the day.
This year, the U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships opened with that race—two laps on the 5-kilometer loop—and the timing was no accident. In an Olympic winter, Nationals is never just Nationals. It’s an argument. It’s a week where results don’t merely “count,” they accumulate, and the accumulation becomes the story that follows athletes into selection meetings, petitions, and—if all goes right—onto a plane headed for Italy.
Will Koch (SVSEF) on his way to 8th place on the day. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
The Course: Where You Can’t Afford to “Blow Up”
The Van Hoevenberg course is famous for being “fair,” but fairness in skiing is rarely gentle. The climbs arrive in layered sequences—sections where you can press, sections where you can survive, sections where you can lose seconds simply by being a fraction late to a gear change. There are places to win time, and places where you simply try not to hemorrhage it.
Hunter Wonders described the central problem precisely after the finish:
“It has some big hills. And I really think that in this course you can’t afford to blow up. If you blow up, you’re just going to bleed so much time.”
That idea—bleeding time—was the hidden refrain of the day. Not because athletes were exploding spectacularly, but because this loop punishes any lapse in restraint. It is a course that rewards a mind that stays intact.
Corbin Carpenter (UAA) on his way to 10th place in the 10 k Classic at US Nationals. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Men’s Race: Seconds as a Selection Language
At the front of the men’s race, the margins compressed into something almost absurd: a national title decided in a space so small it could be measured in one imperfect corner, one extra step of herringbone, one pole that slips just slightly at the wrong moment.
Hunter Wonders won the men’s 10 k Classic National Championship. Behind him, the podium fight came down to an almost unnerving closeness. The story wasn’t simply that the race was fast; it was that it was tight—tight enough to turn pacing into the defining skill.
Wonders’ post-race reflection didn’t sound like someone who had “controlled” the race so much as someone who had managed it correctly, which is often the same thing in interval start racing:
“Yeah. So going through it never really felt like it was my day. I knew it was going to be a competitive one, and I knew that it would just come to good skis, good feelings in the body, good pacing, and I’m just really happy that I was able to pull it off.”
He returned to pacing again, emphasizing that his strategy wasn’t about heroics, but about avoiding the one mistake that the Van Hoevenberg loop will magnify:
“I think pacing was the biggest challenge for me today… So I was trying to take it out hot to where I could be competitive but not blow myself up.”
What made Wonders’ win especially convincing was how he described staying committed to his plan and then finishing with intent when the splits told him the race was available:
“I never really changed my race plan mid-race. But I did get some good splits, especially near the end, so I just tried to finish as hard as I could.”
And then, because it’s 2026 and everyone knows what this week represents, he said the part that matters most:
“And then, of course, U.S. Nationals does carry some heavy weight in an Olympic year. And I’ve been thinking about this race since the races in Anchorage ended, so I’m just really happy to have it behind me.”
He wasn’t pretending the pressure isn’t real:
“I definitely felt the pressure, and I’m going to continue to feel the pressure throughout the rest of this Nationals. But I think I have good momentum going, and I have good confidence. I know that I’m in shape, and everything else just kind of hopefully falls into place over the next week.”
The finish-line truth of the men’s race is that it created a kind of selection tension that will hang over the rest of the week: the top contenders weren’t separated by a narrative gap. They were separated by seconds.
Luke Jager, who finished second, captured what that tightness means on this course and in this moment:
“Yeah, crazy how close the times were! The course is cool because there are so many different gears in the climb that people can all have different focus spots and still end up so close together at the finish line. It is really cool, fair racing like that.”
That line—different focus spots, same finish—explains why the top of the results can look like a near-tie without being random. You can ski this course well in different ways. But you still have to ski it well.
Jager also spoke directly to the Olympic subtext without overplaying it:
“I’m not naive enough to say that the Olympics aren’t on all of our minds, but I’m also really having fun just trying to do my best and working to solve the puzzle of how to perform on any given day. Italy would be sweet, but I’m super thankful for this opportunity to even be feeling that pressure at all. It’s been fun to have such a big challenge.”
And then the warning embedded in the closeness:
“The close times just show me that you can’t take anything for granted, and each race could be someone else’s day. Fun to have to try and be as dialed and prepared as you can every day when the stakes are high.”
In other words, this wasn’t a day that “settled” anything. It made the next races more consequential.
Hailey Swirbul (APU) on her way to a national title in the 10 k Classic at US Nationals in Lake Placid. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Women’s Race: Swirbul’s Return, and a Course That Doesn’t Flatter Anyone
If the men’s race was defined by a razor-thin margin, the women’s race had a different feel: not less intense, but shaped by a performance at the front that felt like a statement. And the words that followed from the winner did not sound like someone who had stumbled into a good day; they sounded like someone who had been building toward a day like this for a long time.
Hailey Swirbul framed her win as the visible outcome of a longer experiment:
“Winning this race felt like finally getting to watch the outcome of a long experiment unfold! I’ve wanted to approach this season from a place of curiosity to see if I can get fitness and strength back after a 2.5-year hiatus. It has felt so rewarding to get stronger and remember how it feels to race and go hard again.”
She described the way racing itself can re-teach an athlete what “hard” feels like:
“Each race or hard interval session reminds me what it feels like a little bit more.”
And then she said what almost everyone in the finish area seemed to be thinking, whether they admitted it or not:
“This course is legit. I didn’t hear the words ‘I felt good out there!’ come out of a single person’s mouth! It was a battle of self against hill.”
That sentence carries the whole day inside it: not a battle against other people, exactly, but against the course’s capacity to strip away pretense.
Hailey Swirbul (APU) charges up one of the many climbs on that Lake Placid course behind Virginia Cobb (#120 – DAR) and Marit Flora (#76 – UAA). (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Swirbul’s race plan—at least as she described it—was deeply personal in its logic. Not a copy of someone else’s pacing, not a response to what she imagined others were doing, but an attempt to ski in a way that matched her strengths:
“I tried to ski true to myself. I wanted to use momentum and my own body weight the most effectively I could to get around that course as fast as I could- regardless of how the pacing looked for others.”
And because it’s an Olympic year, she made the subtext explicit:
“I have my eyes on an Olympic Team spot, and I’m going to continue to fight for it until the team is officially named. I’m not thinking beyond this week of racing here at Nationals. One step at a time, staying present…”
Then the line that reminds you why athletes keep doing this:
“…and enjoying getting to live this life and see so many people from old racing days— it’s a good life.”
Novie McCabe’s post-race comments carried a tone that felt especially relevant to this week: gratitude, yes—but also a clear-eyed description of how fragile a season can feel, and how an athlete can build stability by focusing on what can be controlled.
“It meant a lot to be starting today for sure! I think that being a bit unsure of whether I’d be starting these races made me feel pretty grateful for the opportunity to go out there and give it my best today.”
She described the emotional mix honestly:
“There were, of course, lots of doubts and some nerves going in as well, but I really tried to just enjoy the skiing and made that my main goal going into it.”
And she emphasized that conditions and course feel matter—not as excuses, but as context:
“The conditions were insanely nice today, which helped, and this course is one of my favorites!”
On pacing, McCabe described a strategy rooted in self-knowledge:
“Honestly, I kinda just went out as hard as I could within reason, and tried to relax and hold onto it. I know the splits don’t really make it look that way, haha, but I am not the fastest starter, so it is usually best for me to go out at what feels like a pretty hard pace.”
Then she explained the architecture of her day: not results goals, but process goals. She made a point that’s easy to dismiss until you remember what an Olympic week does to people:
“Being focused on process goals going into a race really helps me develop a framework for success.”
She listed those goals with specificity—how she wanted to feel, what she wanted to focus on, what she wanted her mind to do when discomfort arrived:
“…going out hard but comfortable and trying to hold it, skiing well (not skiing hard), be the focus of the day, keeping up the positive self-talk, and finding the good and noticing what is going well throughout the race.”
And on Olympic pressure, she offered a perspective that will sound familiar to anyone who has ever had a season disrupted by health or inconsistency:
“I think it has honestly helped me out in terms of handling self-imposed Olympic qualification pressure to not have had the best lead up and be pretty unsure of what I would be doing as far as racing goes this year…”
She described her focus as narrower—day by day—because it has to be:
“…it has taken some of my focus off of results… It has just kind of led to an approach where I take it day by day, and don’t really think much further into the future than that.”
That isn’t resignation. It’s an operating system. And it’s one that often works, especially on a course where you can lose time in the exact moment you start racing the future instead of the hill in front of you.
Rosie Fordham (UAF) leaving it all on the course on her way to 7th place overall. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Samantha Smith: A Double Life and a Very Real Result
Samantha Smith’s presence near the top of the women’s results came with a storyline that’s unusual even in American ski racing: balancing elite cross-country skiing with Division I soccer at Stanford, and arriving at the heart of ski season off a long NCAA tournament run.
She spoke about the short transition plainly:
“Yes, that’s correct, that our soccer team’s long run into the NCAA tournament has made for a much shorter transition to the season. I’ve only been on snow for a few weeks, so I know my ski fitness is improving every day.”
She described the emotional carryover of playing for a national title—how it can become fuel rather than a distraction:
“Playing in the National Championship was an amazing experience—we were so close to winning it all. It was a tough way to end such a great season. I’m taking that fire from our final game and pouring it into my skiing.”
And she framed her path as something she’s embracing, not defending:
“I know my path is different from others, but I’m doing what I love, and I think there’s a lot to be said for staying true to that. I’m trying to take everything step by step, live in the moment, and focus on what I can control!”
On the scrutiny that comes with missing ski events earlier in the season, she emphasized the lessons she’s drawn from doing two sports seriously:
“…for me, I feel like there’s actually a lot I can pull from the two sports and use it to my advantage.”
She described last year as a “trial year” and explained how she’s adjusted:
“I needed that test phase to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. I made some adjustments this year in training, switching things up a bit, and I feel like that’s helped me a lot going into this season.”
She credited Braden Becker for helping with training and coaching through the fall:
“I owe a huge thank you to Braden Becker, a retired skier, who’s now a grad student at Stanford. He helped me a lot with training this fall, and it honestly made a world of difference…”
And then she returned to the mental challenge of this week—high stakes, lots of uncontrollables—and the philosophy that keeps an athlete from spiraling:
“…I’m just trying to focus on what I can control—my attitude and effort.”
Finally, she addressed the question of what a distance result might “say” about her:
“I was happy with today’s result… I think today’s race was a good indication of my trajectory for the rest of the week and the rest of the season.”
And she framed versatility—distance and sprint—as part of the argument she wants to make this winter:
“…hopefully showcase some of my versatility in different distances and disciplines, which I think can be important for big competitions like the Olympics.”
Alayna Sonnesyn (Team Birkie) on her way to 10th place overall. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Why This Week Matters So Much
For the men, the arithmetic of Olympic selection is already partly written—and partly unresolved. At present, the United States is allotted seven men’s quota spots for the Olympic team, with the possibility that an eighth could roll down following this weekend’s World Cup races in Oberhof, Germany. That uncertainty is where much of the tension at U.S. Nationals resides.
It is also where most of the speculation comes from—so take it for what it is, informed but unofficial. The six American men who recently raced the Tour de Ski appear, by any reasonable reading of the criteria, to be on solid ground. Each currently ranks in the top 45 on the FIS World Cup sprint and distance overall lists, the threshold set by the US Ski Team that meets the objective requirements for Olympic selection.
Within that group of six, there is also ample sprint depth to cover the four available starts in the individual classic sprint and to form a competitive two-man sprint relay. As a result, Tuesday’s Freestyle Sprint at Nationals is likely to carry less weight for those athletes racing in Lake Placid with dreams of making the Olympic roster. Instead, the races most likely to function as closing arguments—particularly if an additional quota spot materializes—were Sunday’s 10 k Classic and Thursday’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start. For at least one man, and potentially two, those performances may determine whether this week in Lake Placid becomes a footnote or a turning point.
On the women’s side, the picture is far less settled—and far more fluid. The United States has eight Olympic quota spots available, but only a portion of them is considered secure. Jessie Diggins—if it were ever in doubt—has already satisfied the objective criteria by finishing in the top eight in World Cup races that are part of the Olympic schedule. Julia Kern and Rosie Brennan also appear well-positioned, based on their respective rankings on the sprint and distance overall lists.
That still leaves as many as five remaining spots to be determined, drawing from a complicated blend of results across Period One on the World Cup, the SuperTour events in Alaska, and, critically, U.S. Nationals this week in Lake Placid. For those athletes, Nationals is not simply a domestic championship. It is an audition, a data point, and—in some cases—the clearest remaining path onto the Olympic team.
John Steel Hagenbuch (DAR) on his way to 5th place overall on the day. (Photo: Phillip Belena/EISA)
Grover: “There’s Going to be Space”… and then the Paperwork
US Cross-Country Ski Team Director Chris Grover offered perhaps the clearest explanation for why the opening races at Nationals feel unusually charged—not because they deliver final answers, but because they create space. Space in which athletes can move themselves from the margins of the conversation toward its center.
The story, as Grover framed it, is not simply who wins. It is what a result permits: what doors it opens, what arguments it strengthens, and how it positions an athlete within the broader, inevitably imperfect machinery of Olympic selection.
As Grover put it in an interview with FasterSkier, U.S. Nationals does exactly that—it creates room:
“…it’s going to be a great story because there’s space. There’s going to be space on both the men’s squad and the women’s squad, by the looks of it, for athletes to qualify from Nationals, to have great U.S. Nationals and come over, especially on the women’s side…”
That space, however, is not filled automatically. In an Olympic year, it is accompanied by paperwork, petitions, and deliberation—an acknowledgment that performance, while central, is rarely the entire story.
Grover outlined the petition process that follows Nationals, a step that often receives less public attention but carries significant weight:
“…all athletes who want to be considered for discretionary selection… We’ll put in an application. Or a petition rather, where they will kind of write out what their case is, why they should be considered…”
Those petitions, Grover explained, are then evaluated by a selection committee—six people tasked with translating results, trends, and context into final decisions:
“…we have the six-person selection committee that will pick the team. So as a committee, we’ll read everybody’s application, and then we, as a committee, will decide whether we want to elevate somebody using Coach’s discretion to be selected.”
Even the arithmetic of quota spots, Grover noted, is subject to forces beyond any one athlete’s control. On the men’s side, the possibility of an additional spot remains unresolved:
“…it’s after Oberhof… qualification for nations also closes on January 18… and at that point a spot [might be] available…”
Which is to say: timing matters. So does patience.
Taken together, Grover’s explanation underscores a truth that every athlete racing this week understands intuitively. Lake Placid does not merely crown national champions. It produces evidence—sometimes decisive, sometimes ambiguous—for a selection process that will soon harden from theory into reality. And once it does, the margins that feel abstract today will become permanent.
Ava Thurston (#45 – DAR) on her way to 6th place overall on the day. (Photo: Phillip Belena/EISA)
What Sunday Actually Did
The first day of Nationals did not select the Olympic team. It did something subtler and, in some ways, more powerful: it established the tone of the week.
On the men’s side, it proved that the domestic field is not going to give anyone breathing room. Wonders’ win was decisive in the only way that matters in interval start racing: he was fastest when everyone had to ski alone. But the closeness behind him reinforced Jager’s point—each race could be someone else’s day. In a week like this, that’s not a platitude. It’s a forecast.
On the women’s side, Swirbul’s victory felt like a day where preparation and belief finally aligned. But even she framed the week properly: one step at a time, staying present, not thinking beyond Lake Placid. McCabe and Smith offered two different versions of the same survival skill: build a framework, focus on process, control what you can, and let results become the output rather than the obsession.
If there was a single emotional throughline, it was this: the athletes weren’t pretending the Olympics weren’t there. They were trying, in different ways, to keep that fact from hijacking the work.
A Conclusion in the Shape of an Interval Start
There’s a particular quiet that follows an interval start classic race—not silence, exactly, but the hush of athletes doing their internal accounting. A national championship can feel like a celebration. In an Olympic year, it can also feel like a deposit: something placed into the larger selection ledger, something that will matter later, in rooms the athletes won’t be in, in conversations they can’t control.
What makes Lake Placid different—what makes Mt. Van Hoevenberg feel so permanent—is that it refuses to dramatize any of this. It simply asks the same thing of everyone: ski two laps honestly, manage the climbs, keep your head when your legs get loud, and finish without bargaining.
Wonders said he felt the pressure—and expects to keep feeling it. Jager said the closeness means nothing can be taken for granted. Swirbul described a long experiment that finally yielded its outcome. McCabe described building success from process, not prediction. Smith described a life lived between two sports, and a focus narrowed to attitude and effort.
Taken together, those aren’t just post-race quotes. They’re the first chapter of the week.
And in an Olympic winter, first chapters matter—because the next race arrives quickly, and the story keeps writing itself, one start at a time.
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Norway’s Andreas Kirkeng, racing for the University of Denver, skied away from the men’s pack at U.S. Nationals on Sunday. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
ANCHORAGE — The winner of two of three U.S. National Championships races in Alaska this week is just 24 years old, and poised for what could be a long career in cross-country skiing.
But instead, Andreas Kirkeng is considering retirement.
The explanation is simple: The star University of Denver athlete is not American. He’s Norwegian.
And in Norway, aspiring to be a top cross-country skier is like trying to become an astronaut: Many, many try, and nearly all of them fail, because the field is so deep and talented.
“I genuinely believe he could be one of the best World Cup skiers in the world. It’s a bummer that it’s just so hard to be Norwegian — any other country on Earth and they’d greenlight you for the Olympics for the next 10 years,” said Luke Jager, one of the Americans edged out by Kirkeng at nationals this week. “I’ve been telling everyone in the world: Everybody who knows that guy needs to tell him to not quit skiing next year.”
Kirkeng won his second race at U.S. Nationals on Sunday in dominating fashion, dropping the top Americans in the field on the last of four five-kilometer laps in the classical technique.
Because Kirkeng was ineligible for the U.S. championship, Dartmouth College’s John Steel Hagenbuch claimed the title by finishing second, narrowly edging Jager, who skis for Alaska Pacific University. Will Koch, skiing for the University of Colorado, was third.
John Steel Hagenbuch points to the Dartmouth College snowflake on his arm to celebrate winning a national title at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park on Sunday. He finished behind Kirkeng but ahead of all the other Americans in the race, with Luke Jager just behind him. (Nathaniel Herz)
But Kirkeng has been the undisputed star of the week at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park, where he also won Saturday’s classical technique sprint race by beating Jager on the homestretch.
In Thursday’s 10-kilometer skate-technique distance race, he finished second, less than a second behind Hagenbuch.
After Sunday’s event, Kirkeng conceded that he hasn’t made up his mind about his future — and noted that his girlfriend told him the day before that it would be “sad” if he retired.
But, he added: “I’ve been ski racing for 13, 14 years. At some point you have to do something else.”
Observers offered mixed opinions about the significance of Kirkeng’s results in Anchorage, with U.S. Olympian Scott Patterson saying that they might not have translated into a top-30 finish on the World Cup, the top international circuit.
But Jostein Vinjerui, who coaches an elite professional team based in Norway, Aker Daehlie, said he thinks Kirkeng’s results show some promise.
“It would be very sad if he gives up now,” Vinjerui said in a phone interview Sunday. “He should at least test one year in Norway, what he can do there. Because the U.S. level now is pretty good.”
Kirkeng grew up in Lier, a community not far from Oslo and just a few miles from Drammen — the city that long hosted an iconic World Cup sprint race every year, with loads of snow trucked in and smoothed over its streets.
Athletes race at the Drammen World Cup sprint in 2018. (Fischer/Nordic Focus)
“When I was in elementary school, I would walk straight out of class to Drammen to watch,” Kirkeng said.
There were numerous areas with snowmaking to cross-country ski near his home, and Kirkeng’s family also had a cabin in the mountains.
He joined a club program in elementary school and made junior national and regional ski teams. But Kirkeng lost some of his motivation after a tough first year as an adult competitor, when a high-intensity block training program “sort of killed” him, he said.
It was time for Kirkeng to try something new and different, he said, and he decided to follow his brother to the University of Denver. Kirkeng is now a senior studying finance on a full scholarship — and has broadened his horizons.
“It’s actually crazy — I’m telling all my friends in Norway it’s the best thing you can do,” he said. “You get everything covered, you have chances to train, and you get an education and ski at the highest level.”
The dilemma confronting him at the end of the season is stark.
To make a career of ski racing back in his home country, he’d have to fight his way into the elite Norwegian men’s field — the strongest in the world.
Organizers cap the number of skiers from each country who can start each race on the World Cup. But even so, Norway’s male athletes regularly take five of the top six places in distance events — beating the best competitors from all other nations, including the U.S.
Dozens of other Norwegians toil in relative obscurity on the country’s domestic race circuit, fighting to earn a single chance to prove themselves on the World Cup. Kirkeng has never gotten a World Cup start, even as some of the U.S. athletes he’s beaten have been racing on the circuit for years.
Kirkeng his win in Saturday’s sprint race at Kincaid Park, where he narrowly beat Luke Jager. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
Just last week, the Norwegian team had an athlete drop out before the start of one of the season’s marquee World Cup events, the Tour de Ski. The first alternate declined his spot because he got sick, and the second alternate, Haavard Moseby, finished on the podium in one of the stages.
“For Andreas, it’s almost impossible, as a Norwegian,” said Florian Knopf, a German athlete who races with Kirkeng in Denver. “He’s super strong. But the Norwegians have 10 other guys like that, even better.”
Knopf is in a similar position in his home country, where, if he returns to full-time ski racing, he’ll be on the bubble to qualify for international events.
“You have to be brutally honest with yourself, and also ask yourself what you want in life. Being 25 years old and still being able to ski among the best is making me really happy,” Knopf said. But, he added: “I know many Germans who are Olympians who are not happy.”
Knopf and Kirkeng will also leave Denver with college degrees — meaning that continuing as ski racers would require them to forsake other professional opportunities. Both have applied for jobs on Wall Street.
“The only struggle is his brain is almost as good as his ski talent,” said Selma Anderson, Kirkeng’s girlfriend and a teammate at Denver.
Kirkeng said he’s been contemplating his options to continue ski racing. There’s a marathon circuit in Europe; he could also try to work part-time and ski part-time. But he’s not sure he wants to ski race if he can’t fully dedicate himself to training.
Kirkeng skied in the men’s lead pack for most of Sunday’s race at U.S. Nationals before breaking away for the win. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
“It would be really cool to give it a shot and see where it brings me,” Kirkeng said. “And I’m definitely open to it. But at the same time, I feel I’ve been doing it for so many years now.”
Jager, the American skier, is still making his pitch. He said he thinks that Kirkeng’s intellect and education serve as a fallback that can allow the Norwegian to keep ski racing for longer without risking his future.
“I know he’s got the whole finance thing going on. But for me, that’s all the more reason to postpone that as long as possible,” Jager said. “He can go be the Wolf of Wall Street when he’s in his 30s.”
Kendall Kramer, racing Sunday at U.S. Nationals at Kincaid Park, is a multi-sport athlete at University of Alaska Fairbanks. She competes in both cross-country running and skiing. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
ANCHORAGE — Alaskans like to think of their home state as the center of American cross-country skiing.
Minnesotans might quibble. But consider the more than 200 volunteers who turned out to help host the U.S. National Championships in Anchorage this week, and the dozens of local athletes who signed up to race.
There was just one problem: Through five of six of the championship events, athletes from Norway, Sweden, Colorado and Idaho had denied the Alaska crowd the pleasure of seeing one of their own cross the finish line first. (An Alaska man, Luke Jager, had technically claimed a U.S. championship Saturday, but crossed the finish line second to a Norwegian, who was ineligible to claim the title.)
Sunday’s 20-kilometer, classic-technique women’s race was the Alaskans’ last chance.
And Kendall Kramer came to the rescue.
The 22-year-old Fairbanks native won her first-ever national championship fashion in stirring fashion, breaking away from the pack early in the race with one other athlete and slipping away in the final meters before the finish.
The crowd on one of the major hills cheers on U.S. Nationals competitors in Sunday’s men’s race. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
“You can feel it in the energy,” said Kikkan Randall, the Olympic gold medalist who heads the Nordic Ski Association of Anchorage, which is co-hosting the event. “We have so many great volunteers out here, we really push to get spectators out here. And so when you see an Alaskan deliver, it’s just that sense of pride.”
Kramer’s final margin of victory was 2.4 seconds over Erica Laven, a Swedish skier competing for the University of Utah. The rest of the women’s pack crossed the finish line a minute-and-a-half later, led by Lauren Jortberg, who races for a Quebec club team.
The women’s chase pack crests a hill in Sunday’s distance race. From left, Alaska Pacific University’s Renae Anderson, Bridger Ski Foundation Pro Team’s Erin Bianco, Montana State University’s Kate Oldham and CNEPH’s Lauren Jortberg. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
Montana State University’s Kate Oldham was just behind Jortberg and rounded out the U.S. championship podium; Laven was ineligible due to her Swedish citizenship.
Kramer has been a standout since her years at West Valley High School in Fairbanks, where she won more than a dozen state titles between skiing, cross-country running and track and field. She was first named to the U.S. Ski Team while a junior in high school, then decided to stay in her home city for college, where she’s competed in both cross-country skiing and running.
She won a medal at the Youth Olympic Games in Switzerland in 2020, and has an array of junior national championships to her name. But two second places — including one Thursday to Oldham — were as close as Kramer had come to winning a U.S. title.
From the start of Sunday’s event, Kramer left little doubt about who would stand on the top of the American podium when she and Laven broke away from the pack on the first of four five-kilometer laps. The two skied the rest of the race together, with Kramer — who trains with Anchorage’s Alaska Pacific University club team during the summer — boosted by an energetic home crowd.
Kendall Kramer leads Erica Laven through the tunnel into the stadium at Kincaid Park. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
“I really felt that — I was like, ‘This must be someone from here,’” Laven said, referring to Kramer. “Because it was a lot of people cheering for her.”
Among the fans at Kincaid were Kramer’s mother, Susan Schwartz, along with her grandmother, an aunt and innumerable teammates. Schwartz, who was working as a volunteer at the start line, described the race between Laven and her daughter as a “nail-biter.”
“They just kept on getting faster and faster and faster,” Schwartz said. “It was amazing to watch.”
Early on, Kramer said she realized that even if she lost the race to Laven, she’d still claim the U.S. title. But, she added, she didn’t necessarily want to settle for that. Laven was skiing stronger on uphills, but if Kramer could keep up in those segments, she said, she could “totally relax in the double pole.”
“She was expending a lot of energy on those. And I knew I had energy by the end,” Kramer said.
The closer Kramer got to the finish line, she said, the more confident she felt about her shot at winning the race outright. And on the home stretch, she pulled away.
Kramer elevates in her double pole to lead Laven toward the finish. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
“She was really strong in the double pole today,” Laven said. “I really had to push hard.”
Kramer crossed the line without celebrating. But her mother, Schwartz, “could tell she was just thrilled” — particularly after Kramer finished a close second in Thursday’s race.
“I could tell she wanted it bad,” Schwartz said. “She was not going to let it get away from her today — that’s kind of the feeling I got watching her race.”
Kramer is in her last year competing for University of Alaska Fairbanks and expects to race professionally next season.
She said she doesn’t want to miss this spring’s collegiate championships. But she grimaced when a reporter pointed out that the event conflicts with the World Ski Championships in Norway, where finishes at the past week’s races in Anchorage are likely to inform which U.S. athletes are chosen for the team.
“I’m super grateful if I do get the spot, because I know how hard people work for it and how bad people want it,” she said. “But we’ll see.”
Luke Jager leads a sprint heat at the U.S. National Championships at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park on Saturday, January 4, 2025. Jager won a national title in his hometown in front of a crowd that included his dad, his girlfriend and a childhood friend revving a chainsaw. “He’s just become a lot more confident in doing his own thing,” said Jager’s girlfriend, fellow ski racer Novie McCabe. “I think he has a much easier time rebounding from non-satisfactory races this year — he can kind of learn from it and go on to the next.” (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
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.
Andreas Kirkeng celebrates being the first across the finish line at the U.S. National Championships at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park on Saturday, January 4, 2025. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
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.
Dartmouth College’s Nina Seemann leads a downhill at the U.S. National Championships at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park on Saturday, January 4, 2025. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
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.
Michael Earnhart, left, keeps warm along with other participants in his men’s semifinal heat at the U.S. National Championships at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park on Saturday, January 4, 2025. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
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.
Erling Bjoernstad, in bib 102, is a Norwegian racing for the University of Alaska Anchorage, and he was the second-fastest athlete in Saturday’s qualifying round behind Luke Jager. Organizers disqualified Bjoernstad, however, from his semifinal heat, after he was the second athlete in that heat to false start. “I was fired up after a good quarterfinal, and I felt really good,” said Bjoernstad, who acknowledged an accidental twitch. “It was a shame.”
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.”
The American gold-medal winning relay team at the 2019 World Junior Ski Championships in Finland. From left, John Steel Hagenbuch, Ben Ogden, Luke Jager and Gus Schumacher. (Photo: JWSC2019 / Mikaela Takala)
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.
Alaska Pacific University coach Erik Flora finishes waxing a ski at the U.S. National Championships at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park on Saturday, January 4, 2025. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
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.
Samantha Smith racing at last year’s Tour de Ski in Europe. She comes from a family of athletes, with a sister who also plays soccer at Stanford, a mother who rowed at Stanford and a father who played soccer at Duke University. In junior high, Smith played football; she also has been a competitive freestyle moguls skier. “She has always been phenomenal,” Kristin Smith, her mother, told FasterSkier last year. “She used to crawl up my body when she was less than two and sit on my shoulder.” (Barbieri/NordicFocus)
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.
Sammy Smith, center, starts one of her heats at the U.S. National Championships at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park on Saturday, January 4, 2025. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
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.”
Volunteers keep a pair of moose off the race trail as athletes slide by during Thursday’s national championship cross-country ski race at Kincaid Park in Anchorage. (Tobias Albrigtsen)
Racing was tight on the first day of the U.S. National Championships at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park, with winners in both the men’s and women’s events decided by less than 15 seconds.
The real drama, however, was in a quintessential Anchorage wildlife standoff — one that may have even altered the women’s podium.
Along a willowy downhill stretch toward the end of the five-kilometer race loop, volunteers and coaches engaged in a tense showdown with a moose and calf — trying, and ultimately failing, to keep them from crossing the trail as lycra-clad athletes zoomed by.
“If it had been a high school race, I think we probably would have said, ‘You know what? We need to send no more new people out on course for a bit — we’ll figure it out later,’” said Jeremy Littell, a volunteer who brandished a blaring megaphone in an unsuccessful effort to ward off the large ungulates. “But it is senior national championships, and that’s a little bit of a different story. People have a lot on the line.”
In the end, no moose, nor athletes, were harmed. But at least two women in the 10-kilometer race had hair-raisingly close shaves — one of which was captured on video, alongside Littell’s hazing efforts.
Coaches and athletes were all in agreement, however: Don’t blame the moose.
“They live there. And we get to race in their habitat,” said Tilde Bångman, a Swedish athlete competing for the University of Colorado Boulder’s ski team who narrowly dodged the moose — costing her precious seconds in a tightly fought competition. She added: “You can’t control a wild animal.”
Moose encounters are a long, venerable tradition of Anchorage athletics, and especially of cross-country ski races. The willows and alders that line many of the city’s trails double as moose feed, and almost any resident who trains in the woods can tell a story of a workout being disrupted or diverted.
“Every week, and sometimes more than once, we have to change our interval plan because of a moose,” said Trond Flagstad, the coach of the University of Alaska Anchorage’s cross-country ski team. He recounted an incident earlier this winter in which a moose charged one of his athletes in the middle of a ski workout.
“He goes down on the ground, covering his head, and the moose is just standing over him — and then it just moves off,” he said. (Flagstad’s team spotted the moose in the area for a couple of weeks afterward, and named it after the shaken but unharmed athlete.)
Numerouseditions of the Tour of Anchorage — a 30-mile race from the city’s hillside to the coast — have seen top athletes delayed by moose in the middle of the trail. A police officer once shot an aggressive moose during a cross-country running race at Kincaid Park.
Trond Flagstad, left, and Jeremy Littell employ “moose intimidation tactics” near the five-kilometer race loop. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
“I was standing between the moose and the girls,” the shotgun-toting officer — the father to one of the competitors — later told the Anchorage Daily News. “I was standing there the whole race. I planned on him not getting to the girls.”
Matt Pauli, the chief of competition for this week’s national championship ski races at Kincaid, said he included a slide of an “amorous cow and bull” moose in his pre-race presentation, to warn team captains about what to expect.
“I show that and say, ‘Hey, we’ll do what we can do mitigate,’” he said. “But we’re not stopping the race.”
Volunteers and coaches made a textbook execution of the Pauli method during the women’s race Thursday — throwing an array of deterrents at the cow and calf to allow athletes to pass by.
Littell, the megaphone-wielding volunteer, said the moose were also present during the men’s race earlier in the day, though peacefully bedded down. After lunch, he said, the animals got up and started moving.
Unfortunately for organizers, the race format did not lend itself to easy moose management: Rather than one big pack of athletes racing around the course together, the event was a time-trial style individual-start race, where skiers left the gate one at a time every 30 seconds.
No athletes nor moose were harmed in Thursday’s ski race. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
For a while, Littell said, the moose seemed content to browse on the side of the trail, and with a little help from Flagstad, who was passing by, they kept the animals clear of the athletes.
But then, Littell said, the moose “got it in their heads that they wanted to cross the course, and it got more and more difficult to keep them in place.”
“A couple other course people came along, and we kind of got in close with them — used the megaphone, used a lot of voice, used a lot of raised arms, sort of general moose intimidation tactics. And for a while, that worked,” he said. “And then they weren’t having it any more. And we lost.”
The first time the moose crossed the trail, they moved quickly and didn’t cause problems. But then, they returned, pushed back down toward the course by other volunteers who were trying to keep them off of a different segment of trail.
“That’s when they got in the trail and didn’t want to leave,” Littell said.
Enter Bångman, the Swedish skier.
“You know, when you’re in a race, I was pretty locked in — I don’t see a lot of things going on outside the course,” she said. “I just come down this fast downhill and I see a volunteer in the middle of the course. And I get so confused. And then I see this huge moose starting to walk towards me.”
Bångman pumped the brakes, sliding her skis a bit.
“But then I realized, if I stop-slide, I will come to a stop right by the moose, which would probably be worse,” she said. “So, I was like, ‘Well, I’ll try to just send it and hope it doesn’t chase me.’”
Bångman said she saw a volunteer jump out in front of the moose; she was worried he was about to get stomped. But she snuck past, with no harm done — except, perhaps, to Bångman’s finish time.
She ended up in sixth place, less than five seconds from the podium, and guessed she’d lost perhaps a few seconds when she slowed for the moose.
“But, you know, that’s a part of racing at Kincaid, isn’t it?” she said. “Some extra excitement.”
A real Alaskan experience for the racers visiting for the 2025 US National Championship. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
Littell, reached by phone a day later, said he was a little nervous about publicizing his moose intimidation efforts, stressing that he’s typically “pretty cautious about the animals.”
The volunteers, he said, were “trying to balance skier safety first, volunteer safety second, and moose safety as a close third.”
Littell works for a federal agency, he said, and he’s frequently instructed that “no altercation is worth the effort.” But, he added: “I wasn’t on the clock.”
ANCHORAGE — The 2025 US National Championship started yesterday at Kincaid Park in Anchorage, Alaska, with the 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. Photographer and coach Tobias Albrigtsen (@untraceableg) gives us a look through his lens.
(click on the first photo and then click on ‘start’ just above the image to play the slideshow)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
A real Alaskan experience for the racers visiting for the 2025 US National Championship. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
No athletes nor moose were harmed in Thursday’s ski race. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
Trond Flagstad, left, and Jeremy Littell employ “moose intimidation tactics” near the five-kilometer race loop. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
2025 US National Championship, 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
Erling Bjoernstad, a Norwegian freshman racing for University of Alaska Anchorage, climbs a hill toward the stadium at U.S. Nationals Thursday. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
ANCHORAGE — Kate Oldham wasn’t expecting to win Thursday’s opening race of the U.S. National Championships.
It was her first competition of the season, after focusing on training in December, and she’d never placed better seventh at previous national championships.
Her coach at Montana State University, Adam St. Pierre, had other ideas about the 22-year-old senior — though he was keeping them to himself.
“I have been predicting Kate as a dark horse national champion for a couple of weeks now,” St. Pierre said. “But not talking about it with her, because she races best when expectations are low.”
Kate Oldham racing at the U.S. National Championships in Anchorage on Thursday, January 2, 2025. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
Oldham, St. Pierre said, is a superb glider on her skis, with a “killer instinct” — which apparently served her well Thursday on the rolling, blazing fast, 10-kilometer course at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park.
Oldham won her first-ever national championship, edging local favorite Kendall Kramer of University of Alaska Fairbanks to win the individual-start, time trial-style skate event by 11 seconds.
University of Utah’s Erica Laven was third, 28 seconds behind.
“I did not wake up thinking that was going to happen today,” Oldham said afterward, as she fended off bear hugs from teammates and rivals. “It’s surprising. But it’s also awesome, and makes me cry happy tears.”
Erica Laven on her way to third place. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
If Oldham’s win fell somewhere between a surprise and a shock, John Steel Hagenbuch’s victory in the men’s race was hardly unexpected — though that event was much tighter.
Hagenbuch, a 23-year-old senior at Dartmouth College, already has several national titles to his name, along with solid results last season on the international World Cup circuit.
Hagenbuch held off Andreas Kirkeng, a Norwegian racing for the University of Denver, by a fraction of a second. Walker Hall, who races for the University of Utah, was third, 15 seconds behind.
Thursday’s races were the first of three national championship events at Kincaid Park, with two more to follow over the weekend — plus a non-championship race next week.
While temperatures in Anchorage have dipped recently, to single digits Thursday morning, a rainy, low-snow December required extra work from organizers to pull the races off. Kramer, in fact, was part of a battalion of volunteers, including numerous racers, who spent some of last weekend shoveling clean snow onto dirty patches along the course.
Kramer said she planned a long ski workout that day and kept her watch going while she pitched in on a little shoveling.
“It was kind of like playing in the snow,” she said. “I don’t want to take too much credit, because I wasn’t out there for the whole four hours people were doing it. But I am very grateful, and I was inspired by all of the people who were there.”
Kramer, 22, was in the hunt for the win Thursday, with coaches telling her at one point during the race that she was in the lead.
Kendall Kramer crests a hill in Thursday’s race. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
But Oldham had the fastest times for each of her two five-kilometer laps, according to official splits. Laven was just one-tenth of a second behind her at the halfway point, though she faded on her second lap.
Oldham grew up in Colorado and spent her holiday break from school training at home, taking advantage of “incredible skiing” in Aspen instead of entering season-opening races, she said.
That plan is geared toward not peaking too soon, so she can notch her best results at the collegiate national championships toward the end of the season, in March. That plan made Thursday’s win even more of a “pleasant surprise,” Oldham said.
“I didn’t really sharpen for it,” she said. “It’s an intimidating way to start the season, because you kind of have no idea (what level) you are coming in. But it’s also really nice to go home and enjoy the holiday and just focus on training.”
Hagenbuch’s approach to the season has been sharply different: He began racing more than a month ago, on the World Cup circuit.
But after a breakout season last year — one in which he won a bronze medal at the World Under-23 Championships and also recorded a top-15 finish in a World Cup race — this year’s efforts have been uneven.
Hagenbuch started the season at World Cups in Finland and Norway, but failed to crack the top 30. Then, he returned to the U.S. and notched four straight podiums on the domestic circuit.
One challenge he faced in Europe, Hagenbuch said Thursday, was that he was having a breathing problem that appears to be a condition called exercise-induced laryngeal obstruction — where, he said, his larynx and vocal cords “seize up and close” during races.
John Steel Hagenbuch works his way up Elliott’s climb at the U.S. National Championships in Anchorage on Thursday, January 2, 2025. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
The first time it happened, in Finland, was “definitely pretty scary — I couldn’t breath really at all, and I couldn’t speak for 15 minutes after the race. Couldn’t say a word.”
“It’s kind of multifaceted in what causes it, but I’ve been working through it and trying to figure it out and keep all those muscles relaxed, because it isn’t something you can really address by taking medication,” he said. “It’s something that has to do with controlling your muscles and reducing your stress.”
Hagenbuch said he had a little bit of breathing trouble Thursday, but managed to keep it under control.
He had the fastest first lap of the five-kilometer course, giving him a slight edge over Kirkeng.
But on the second lap, the Norwegian started creeping back.
A 24-year-old senior studying finance at the University of Denver, it’s unlikely Kirkeng would be in contention for a national championship in his home nation, the global cradle of cross-country skiing.
But in the U.S., it’s hardly unusual for European athletes to dethrone their American competitors at marquee races: In fact, Kirkeng won the 10-kilometer distance race at the U.S. National Championships in each of the past two years.
John Steel Hagenbuch on his way to winning the national title. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
As Hagenbuch neared the finish line, coaches along the course were giving him split times that showed Kirkeng closing the gap — even though Hagenbuch had started the race conservatively.
“I underestimated how hard it was going to get,” Hagenbuch said. “I thought I was going to lose it — I was hearing the splits go from eight seconds up on Andreas, to six seconds to three seconds to even.”
Kirkeng skied his last lap four-and-a-half seconds faster than Hagenbuch. But in the end, that wasn’t quite enough: Hagenbuch’s first lap was five-and-a-half seconds faster than Kirkeng’s, and he held on to win by eight-tenths of a second.
“The margins were not on my side today. But that’s how racing is,” Kirkeng said afterward. “And it’s been the other way around a couple of times.”
Andreas Kirkeng on his way to second place on the day. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
Kirkeng is likely in the twilight of his career — he said he expects to retire after this season and, hopefully, find a finance job on Wall Street or in Boston. If not, he’ll probably return to Norway and enjoy more time with his family.
Hagenbuch’s career, meanwhile, is still taking off.
He said he’s looking forward to the rest of the races in Anchorage, which he expects to follow with more competitions in the U.S. — domestic SuperTour events and the college circuit, culminating in the NCAA championships.
Going back to the international World Cup circuit, he added, probably doesn’t make sense this year, especially after he missed substantial stretches of school while he traveled to races last season.
But even if this year’s European campaign didn’t pan out, Hagenbuch said, he’s not disheartened.
“I know I’m in good shape, and I had a good season of training — the hay is in the barn, if you will,” Hagenbuch said. “It’s just going to take some time for that to show itself.”
John Steel Hagenbuch started off his season with a World Cup career first top 15 in result Ostersund. Tuesday, he finished it off in style with a win in the 40 k skate mass start in Duluth. (Photo: Nordic Focus)
Out like a Lion: the old adage seems to apply to March in Duluth, Minntesota. At the end of March—during the only true snowstorm that season has delivered to Duluth—the last race of the 2024 SuperTour season and Spring Nationals was set to be a ten lap, 40 kilometer mass start skate race. It was a big race, marking a big end to a big season for a pair of America’s best young skiers.
In the Men’s race, John Steel Hagenbuch skied to an emphatic end on a season that reads like a dream. Back in the frosty days of early December, the Dartmouth Ski Team junior went to the World Cup held in Ostersund, Sweden and skied to his first career top 15. From there, he became US National Champion, World U23 Championship medalist, and an NCAA champion too. In the closing moments of Tuesday’s 40 k skate, he marked a move made by Craftsbury Ski Club’s Jake Brown, came out of the final downhill at Spirit Mountain, and came across one final line with another National Championship to his name.
On the Women’s side of the field, the one to watch as of late has been Alaska Pacific University’s Novie McCabe. She’s established herself as a consistent presence in the World Cup’s top 30, a trajectory that’s charted towards the front of the field with each passing week. A U23 World Championship highlighted by a fourth place in the 20 k skate mass start in February translated to form that led to an 11th place in the final 20 k skate race on the World Cup in Falun this season. Then, in Duluth, she has been nothing short of amazing. A win in the 10 k classic Thursday, a win in the classic sprint, a runners-up podium finish with teammate Renae Anderson on Sunday, and a long-range, solo victory through the wind and snow that left her two minutes ahead of second-place finisher Sydney Palmer-Leger.
Men’s 40 k Skate Mass Start
Ahead of Sunday’s Team Sprint at Spring Nationals, a round of wet snow started to fall onto the race course at Spirit Mountain, and by the 9am start of Tuesday’s 40 k skate, it hadn’t stopped. It only added to the challenge of a four kilometer loop that traversed the base of Spirit Mountain, featuring two distinct climbs over the course of ten laps.
The set-up of the course had a clear-cut impact on how the Men’s field approached it. Through each lap, the opportunity opened up for an attack on the climb that wound its way out of the stadium for nearly a kilometer. A distinct group of leading skiers emerged including University of Utah’s Joe Davies, US Biathlete and Craftsbury Ski Club skier Jake Brown, Canadian Antoine Cyr, APU’s Scott Patterson, and John Steel Hagenbuch.
The quintet remained in tight contact through the last half of the race, with Davies and Patterson picking up the pace through the later laps. Notably, Cyr and Hagenbuch rarely went to the front of the group to lead, alluding to both skiers’ dynamism as sprinters. With a winding downhill running into a clear-cut sprint finish, both seemed determined to make sure the group remained together into the final kilometers of the race.
At the base of the climb, Davies ticked up the pace, before Brown blew it wide open. The Minnesota native got a clear break from the group, but found one skier who was with him as they crested the first of two climbs on course: Hagenbuch.
Scott Patterson earlier this year on the World Cup. The longtime APU skier rounded out a World Cup farewell season with a third place at Spring Nationals in Duluth Tuesday. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Another break saw Patterson and Cyr behind the Brown/Hagenbuch group. Suddenly, a four-way race for three podium spots was on. Brown led through the second climb on course, and into the long, winding downhill that led back to the stadium. Hagenbuch waited until the base of the hill, and then put in his own move, gaining a second gap over Brown that would remain to the finish-line. Hagenbuch crossed in first with Brown in second. Behind the two leaders, Cyr opened a sprint at the base of the Spirit Mountain stadium crossing in third overall, with Patterson fourth. The race for the podium left everyone happy, however, as Cyr’s result did not factor into the US Nationals standings. Patterson’s place behind Cyr still netted him a third place; a great send off for the Alaskan veteran following his recently announced retirement from World Cup skiing.
Novie McCabe started off consistent in the cold this season, and has finished it with three wins in four races at Spring Nationals in Duluth. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Women’s 40 k Skate Mass Start
McCabe sensed the same course dynamics as the Men’s field had earlier in the day at Spirit Mountain: lots of laps, and lots of hills to attack. She picked the sixth time up the first climb to pull away from a front pack of three containing the University of Utah’s Sydney Palmer-Leger and Sun Valley’s Mariah Bredal, came through the next split five seconds ahead, and then proceeded to grow the gap to over two minutes in the last 15 kilometers of racing to take first place.
Sydney Palmer-Leger gained her own advantage over Bredal in following McCabe’s move, and kept a firm grip on second place. Bredal rounded out the podium in third place, with her own gap over Alayna Sonneysn (SMS T2) in fourth, and Ava Thurston (Dartmouth Ski Team) in fifth.
Tyler Kornfield (APU) wins the men’s freestyle sprint in a bootslide ahead of Noel Keefe (Univ. of Utah) at the 2021 SuperTour opener weekend in Duluth, MN. (Photo: Jordan Woods/Woods Creek Productions)
It’s the most welcome irony of the 2023-24 North American ski season so far: As “Spring” Nationals started Thursday at the Spirit Mountain Nordic Center in Duluth, Minnesota, the newly coined “lost winter” of 2023-24 in the Midwest looked to have at-last been found. Snow, from the sky, and not from the end of the snow gun, floated onto that pretty little hillside city near the shores of Lake Superior following the 10 k Classic that opened four days of racing Thursday night. And while racers gathered from across the United States and Canada woke up to a pleasant dusting of white Friday morning, it is looking as if that was simply a opening blip on the story that winter weather will play in the week’s racing, as another storm system looks primed to bring 12-18in of snow, along with some pretty nasty Lake Superior gales (as they say in Duluth, “it’s colder by the Lake!”) right as US Spring Nationals turns towards its finale 40 k on Tuesday.
What exactly are top North American World Cup performers this season, and skiers last seen winning at NCAA Championships, or Junior Nationals doing headed into March conditions that sound eerily reminiscent of the opening verses of the “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?” They’re all there for the odd, fun, fixture of the US Skiing calendar presently known as SuperTour Finals and Spring Nationals. This is the point where the tensions, travails, and triumphs of the current season start to meet implications for what will happen the next time snow falls on the Midwest (it will fall next year, we can all start to hope!) ahead of the 2024-25 ski season.
Racing started with a 10 k classic on Thursday, with wins from Antoine Cyr (Canadian National Ski Team) in the Men’s race and Novie McCabe (Alaska Pacific University, APU) in the Women’s race, and continued on Saturday with a Classic Sprint won again by McCabe in the Women’s race, and by JC Schoonmaker (APU) in the Men’s race. The program continues on Sunday with a skate Team Sprint, and finishes with a 40 k skate race on Tuesday.
How Did We Get Here? SuperTour Finals and “US Spring Nationals.”
The program being raced in Duluth this weekend is an amalgamation of a lot of ideas that spring from one idea; give the best ski racers in the United States a chance to ski race deeper into the winter.
The traditional bounds of the competitive race season in the United States at all levels have tended to place their ends somewhere in the beginning to middle of March. Athletes who have spent the majority of the winter on the World Cup are back in North America for the first time in months (with this year, and the North American World Cups, a notable exception). NCAA Championships are settled in the first week of March. Junior Nationals takes place around the second week of March.
Yet, most American circuits ending mid-March is an oddity in the scheme of international skiing. The Norwegian National Ski Championships, for example, just kicked off in Lillehammer, and now are held a late-March spot on the calendar to allow and encourage their World Cup athletes to take part (though, it’s worth noting, there is a complicated history on the date of their Nationals as well). A quick survey of the results from Norway on Day 1 of their Championships Friday shows that indeed, their top skiers do take part, as Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo won the Men’s 10 k classic the Men, and Heidi Weng won the Women’s 5 k classic;
Jessie Diggins anchoring the Stratton Mountain School T2 Team’s mixed relay to the win for her third-straight win of 2018 SuperTour Finals/Spring Series in Craftsbury, Vt. (Screenshot: SuperTour live stream)
Over the years, the US ski community toyed and tested the idea of placing the entirety of US Nationals in late March the same way Norway does it—a particularly brutal run-in with Alaskan winter in January 2009 at US Nationals nearly made it a reality —but the idea has continuously run into the pre-existing idiosyncrasies of the US ski system. For one, holding US Nationals mid-season, as it’s now done every New Year’s week in January, is a weird historical oddity that runs back to when the US Nordic Ski Championships were mainly a ski jumping meet during the formative years of the sport in the 1920s-1930s. As time progressed, the ability to use the mid-season National Championships as a fair method to select everything from World Cup starts to Olympic bids and Junior World Championship Teams became a critical component of US Nationals, and so the idea to move the whole Championships to the Spring was met with muted compromise.
The idea of an end-of-season Nationals persisted in some form, however. Holding a “Spring Series” to allow skiers to continue racing well into March when the other domestic circuits of US Skiing had ceased was a a format tested successfully in the West through the late 1990s and early 2000s (and one set to be revived in Sun Valley and Jackson Hole next weekend), and March, when skiers have raced and trained a whole season, seemed like the best time to gain an accurate measure of abilities at distances that might not make sense in early January. Hence, through much of the last decade, Spring Series marked both the finale of the US SuperTour circuit, and as “Distance Nationals,” capped by a 50 k Men’s race and 30 k Women’s race. Some years, Distance Nationals literally took skiers to the end of the season’s snow, like when Craftsbury, Vermont hosted races amid mid-80 degree temperatures in 2012.
A variety of changes to the program have amalgamated since then. A 4×5 Team Relay was added in 2014. In lieu of a “Distance Nationals,” the US combined with Canadian Nationals, traditionally run at the end of the season, in 2022. All of which is to point out that the format and the importance of the races in Duluth this week are active variables, and that comes as part and parcel of what Spring Series is, a burst of boundary-pushing fun at the end of the season for some of America’s most competitive skiers.
In Duluth, the race program includes four races. The 10 k Classic and Classic Sprint (see below for results and recaps), before a Team Sprint contested by club membership Sunday, and the traditional Distance Championship, now a 40 k skate for both genders, on Tuesday. The final three are considered part of “Spring Nationals.”
What’s at Stake? Settling the Season and Looking Ahead.
Becca Rorabaugh (Bib 102) races through the heats to win the 2021 opening SuperTour sprint in Duluth. (Photo: Jordan Woods/Woods Creek Productions)
Much of the fun in Duluth comes from the perch Spring Nationals holds at the end of the season.
There is a certainty of conclusion. The SuperTour’s Overall winner will be decided by the end of Tuesday. Likewise, the SuperTour’s club competition, the NNF Cup, will be settled, and this year comes with a particularly close race between Alaska Pacific University and the University of Utah to boot. New National Champions will be crowned too.
All those conclusions will necessarily have implications on a winter that’s six months away from now (and will hopefully be snowier in more places!). The winner of the SuperTour Overall has for years been granted start rights for Period I of the next World Cup season (note, at time of writing, this is not confirmed for this season). Current standings show that in the Women’s Overall race, the competition is very close between current leader Margie Freed (Craftsbury Ski Club) and Alayna Sonneysn (Stratton Mountain School T2), separated by just four points. Meanwhile, the final standings are sure to have implications on the discretionary nominations for the US Ski Team to be announced later this spring.
Beyond that, the National Championship status of the final three races of the Duluth weekend, the Classic Sprint, Team Sprint Sunday, and 40 k skate race Tuesday, comes with doubled-prize money over the usual SuperTour totals. The club awarded the NNF Cup also wins a cash prize of $3000 dollars, adding some financial incentive to the proceedings for all club team members.
Who’s Racing and Where to Watch?
The other necessary aspect worth mentioning in the evolution of Spring Series/Spring Nationals is the continued attention to who does, and does not, end up racing it.
Through two days of racing in Duluth, there has been plenty of names that have earned impressive accolades through the course of the season on the start-line in Duluth.
Novie McCabe won both Thursday’s 10 k Classic and Saturday’s Classic Sprint at Duluth SuperTour Finals/Spring Nationals, coming off of an 11th place at the final World Cup race in Falun last weekend. (Photo: Nordic Focus)
Under sunny skies in Thursday’s 10 k Classic, Canadian National Ski Team’s Antoine Cyr, who’s last World Cup Period included a Sprint Final in Drammen and 11th in the Falun 10 k Classic, won over recent NCAA Champion John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth) in second place, with Zanden McMullen rounding out the podium in third. In the Women’s race, Novie McCabe (APU) followed up her 11th place in the Falun World Cup 20 k with a win ahead of her former UU teammate Sydney Palmer-Leger, with Erin Bianco skiing well back on her home-turf in Northern Minnesota to a third place.
The Saturday classic sprint saw more success for McCabe, who took the win over Bianco, with Alayna Sonneysn (SMS T2) in third place. The Men’s classic sprint was won by JC Schoonmaker (APU) over his teammate Zanden McMullen, with Antoine Cyr rounding out the Overall podium in third, and Zak Ketterson (Team Birkie) in fourth in the final taking the third spot on the US Nationals podium.
The competition then, is there, and there in volumes. The absence of Jessie Diggins, Rosie Brennan, and Ben Ogden, among others, is sure to spark debates about the “National Championship” status of spring series, but it’s also worth noting that the mixed field at the end of a long, grinding season that continues to be more long and grinding at the World Cup level is one ongoing debate that doesn’t look to be settled anytime soon at Spring Series. The Series has always had a distinctly local flare, and a quick glance down the results sheet shows that indeed, the Duluth field leans heavy on Midwesterners.
Absences won’t detract from what is otherwise sure to be on display through the rest of the time in Duluth. As winter blows into the Midwest for the first time this year, some of the best skiers in the country will be tempted to stay with it just a little longer, for American skiing fans to enjoy one last time, as the 2023-24 ski season sends-off by the Big Lake.
Kendall Kramer (University of Alaska-Fairbanks) leads the Women’s pack during Friday’s 20 k Skate Mass Start at US Nationals. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/@UntraceableG)
We all work better when we work together—that would seem to be the credo being employed by American skiers these days. At the conclusion of US Nationals at Utah’s Soldier Hollow, American skiing has rarely looked better, whether internationally or domestically.
The warm temps and blue skies of early week at the US Cross Country Ski National Championships gave way to, of all things, snow. Morning light came up on Soldier Hollow; snow drifted in rather than stormed, but flakes falling from the sky rather than blasting from trailside snow guns was a good late-week reminder for the ski community: despite all this season’s continental snow troubles (Alaskan excepted!), this is indeed a winter sport.
On that new snow—over six laps of a hill-heavy, rarely flat, 3.3 k course—skiers tackled the 20 k Skate Mass Start. A recurrent observation heard by coaches, ski administrators, and athletes was “You can’t quite believe how big this event has gotten.” Momentum was another word heard frequently throughout the week, as some of the biggest fields to ever race at US Nationals combined with daily reports of that day’s Tour de Ski, where American skiers enjoyed a banner day. Until Friday, though, the evidence was merely in the number of skiers on the start sheets, and the number of clubs from a greater number of places milling around Soldier Hollow’s makeshift race village. Seeing fields of 100 skiers wind up Soldier Hollow was a whole different type of confirmation of that momentum. Crowded fields of the fittest athletes in the country brought their own journeys in the sport, their numbered affiliations, and their collective abilities to ski together. The ground rumbled, shouts from the sidelines roared, and the field—at least in early stages of the races—seemed to become a singular thing. US skiing, moving together in concert, became something sublime that could be readily seen and felt.
Haley Brewster made a decisive move late in Friday’s 20 k race to claim her first career national championship. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/@UntraceableG)
Women’s 20 k Skate Mass Start
Of course, it was a ski race. After that roaring start up the hollow’s steady incline, the Women’s 20 k Mass Start field started to jockey for where and when to make a decisive move towards the National Championship.
When the race started at 10am, natural snow was falling, but hadn’t yet accumulated enough on the glazed deck of artificial snow. The course displayed one defining principle that dictated how the mass start would be raced: for every long climb on the Soldier Hollow course there was an equal or greater downhill that followed. If a skier was going to make a tactical move on an uphill, they had to be sure they could hold off their rivals on the subsequent downhill. For nearly six laps, a nine-skier lead pack waited for that move.
For much of the race, University of Alaska-Fairbanks’ Kendall Kramer was the leading presence at the front of the pack, hinting at the importance of pushing the transition between uphill and downhill in the fast snow by pushing over and well into each downhill. She was joined mid-race by Craftsbury Ski Club’s Margie Freed who—between apparent good skis and smart drafting—was able to join Kramer in the lowlands of the course and at times, push to form minor separation ahead of the field.
The lead pack in Friday’s 20 k Skate winds into Soldier Hollow stadium. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/@UntraceableG)
As Kramer and Freed headed into the final lap, they were joined by University of Vermont’s (UVM) Haley Brewster. Brewster and Kramer rounded the top with Freed in tow. In the final climb, Brewster made her decisive up-tick in pace, gaining separation over Kramer in an attempt to ward off a sprint finish after the final downhill. Likewise, Kramer gained separation over Freed, and Freed likewise from the rest of the field. The final stretch featured momentary celebrations, as each crossed with space between: Brewster in first, Kramer second, and Freed in third.
The win gave Brewster—a UVM Junior and former Ski and Snowboard Club Vail skier— her first national championship. The result also marked Kramer’s second national podium, after she finished third American in the skate sprint last year in Houghton, Michigan. It was also the first US Nationals podium for Freed. The Minnesota native is in the midst of her first season competing in Biathlon, having just completed her first stint on the IBU World Cup, making the 20 k skate result an auspicious one.
John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth Ski Team) leads the Men’s pack during Friday’s 20 k Skate. Hagenbuch would make a decisive move to win his second career national championship. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/@UntraceableG)
Men’s 20 k Skate Mass Start
By the time the Men’s field started at 12:15pm, the fresh flakes of the morning had accumulated significantly on top of the course’s artificial snow. In the Women’s morning races, the course (and the new snow) had been worked in. In the Men’s race, a new layer of natural snow now clashed with the fast-running, transformed artificial snow underneath. Reports of skis “catching” when they hit a particularly heavy patch of natural snow were heard throughout the finishing pen after the race, which reiterated premonitions many observers had of how the Men’s field would race the course.
With ski speeds diminished on downhills, there was a little more to be gained by an earlier attack in the Men’s race than in the Women’s race. For the right skier—with the right strategy—a race that was likely to become a mass start slog could be broken apart by an aggressive attack.
That skier turned out to be Dartmouth’s John Steel Hagenbuch. Hagenbuch waited near the front of the fifteen-skier lead pack until the start of the fourth lap. Then, he accelerated over the top of the fifth lap’s initial climb and pressed on, alone, through the last five kilometers of the race. Hagenbuch’s move was followed by other skiers testing their own long-range attacks as University of Utah’s (UU) Frenchman, Tom Mancini, and UU teammate and British-Canadian skier, Joe Davies, were able to make subsequent breaks in the field. Hagenbuch’s final gap was a commanding 40 seconds on second place Mancini. Davies rounded out the podium in third place, 54 seconds off the lead. The pair of Peter Wolter (Sun Valley), and Elijah Weenig (University of Denver) came next in fourth and fifth to round out the American podium.
The win was the second national championship for Hagenbuch after his victory in the 10 k Individual Start Skate at US Nationals last year. Mancini scored his first podium at US Nationals with his runner-up finish. Davies finished a strong week in which he also podiumed in Tuesday’s 10 k classic. Davies will represent Great Britain at Junior World Ski Championships later this month in Planica, Slovenia.
The University of Alaska-Fairbanks team out to cheer the Men’s race in Soldier Hollow, Utah Friday. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/@UntraceableG)
US Nationals Bids Farewell to Soldier Hollow
US Nationals concluded with Friday’s races. As they did, the snow started to gather again in the sky over Utah heralding the start of this ski season in earnest. Some Nationals competitors now know where they’ll be racing later this season: qualifying for trips, securing spots on national teams for World Junior/U23 Ski Championships, or possibly earning starts on the World Cup. For US Skiing, in general, the conclusion of Nationals revealed another world of possibilities as many in Soldier Hollow this week dared to dream bigger. The United States ski community now goes out into the world as one, demonstrating the credo that’s transformed the sport during this generation: we all work better when we work together.
The Women’s podium in Friday’s 20 k Mass Start, Haley Brewster (UVM) first, Kendall Kramer (UAF) second, and Margie Freed (Craftsbury Ski Club) third.
Tobias Albrigsten contributed photos to this coverage of US Nationals. A full gallery from Friday’s Skate Race is available on his website here, and you can follow him on Instagram @UntraceableG.
Will Koch leads the Men’s Final over the top—and finished on top—of the US National Championship Skate Sprint on Thursday in Soldier Hollow. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/@UntraceableG)
Though temperatures hadn’t dropped much at Soldier Hollow on Thursday, things felt different. The pure blue skies that had been a reliable fact of life at this year’s US Cross Country Ski National Championships (US Nationals) were clouded over as skiers took to the course for Skate Sprint qualifying. Temperatures hovered just below freezing creating fast, abrasive, consistent snow. The result was consistent wax conditions between morning qualifying and afternoon heats.
Logan Diekmann (BSF Pro Team), John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth Ski Team), and Micahel Earnhart (APU) (L-R) during the Men’s Skate Sprint Final. (Photo: (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/@UntraceableG)
Men’s Skate Sprint
Two years ago, when US Nationals was last held at Soldier Hollow, University of Colorado Sophomore, Will Koch, qualified first in that year’s Classic Sprint. Things on Thursday were the same: again Koch qualified in the top position. Two years ago, Koch had skied out in the quarterfinals. On Thursday, things felt different . . .
Skiing from the first quarterfinal heat, Koch held the pack together from the front, glancing side-to-side as he marked any surges from his competitors. Time and time again—through quarterfinals, semifinals, and Finals Koch had a response. Though things would wax and wane in a Men’s final that featured 2021 Classic Sprint runner-up Logan Diekmann (BSF Pro Team), last year’s Sprint Champion Kristoffer Alm Karsrud (Northern Michigan University), John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth Ski Team), Michel Earnhart (Alaska Pacific University), and Florian Knopf (University of Denver), Koch would hold off all-comers, putting in a final burst to put bib #1 into position #1. Just behind Koch was Logan Diekmann, edging out John Steel Hagenbuch to complete the Men’s Overall podium.
The Men’s field had winnowed down over the course of heats that tended to be raced faster and faster throughout the day. The Soldier Hollow course, with its downhill finish and steep climbs, should theoretically be a very tactical one, but its length—and its location 6,000ft above sea level—seemed to lead to a more outright version of sprint racing, where maneuvering gave way to pure stamina on the day. Koch’s first quarterfinal had been a relatively lax affair early on, but subsequent heats would start the heated action earlier and earlier within the course. The third quarterfinal featuring Tom Mancini (University of Utah), Graham Houtsma (BSF Pro Team), Florian Knopf (DU), and Kristoffer Alm Karsrud (NMU) would push from wire to wire to pull two lucky losers into the semifinals. Mancini and Houtsma advanced 1-2 in the heat, while Knopf and Karsrud would contest a chaotic final sprint that saw them both claim semifinal spots. Both semifinals also featured more aggressive tactics, with the second semifinal seeing the top junior performance of the day, as Trey Jones (CU) sprinted to fourth place in the heat. Jones was joined on the junior podium by quarterfinalists Fin Bailey (Stratton Mountain School) and Murphy Kimball (Alaska Winter Stars).
The Women’s Sprint Final pushes over the top of the ultimate Soldier Hollow climb. Karianne Olsvik Dengerud (UU), at the front, would take the win in the Skate Sprint. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/@UntraceableG)
Women’s Skate Sprint
Tactical nuances were evident in the Women’s Skate Sprint field throughout the day, but they tended to be more subtle than definitive, fast-surging, field-breaking pushes. The Sprint Final, which featured top qualifier Haley Brewster (University of Vermont), Karianne Olsvik Denegrud (UU), Alayna Sonnesyn (SMS), Alex Lawson (Craftsbury Ski Club), Tuesday’s classic champion Tilde Baangman (Montana State), and Mariel Merlii Pulles (University of Alaska-Fairbanks) did show that those nuanced tactics had an effect. Sonnesyn led from the front of the field, with UU’s Dengerud marking her through the first set of hills. The pair had, at points, appeared to open a gap, but the rest of the field surged as the race went into the final climb to make for a closely contested race in the finishing straightaway. Emerging from that pack was University of Vermont’s Haley Brewster, who would work the long downhill into the finishing stretch to put herself within a group that featured Dengerud and Sonnesyn, and then use the final stretch to challenge their place at the front. That led to an exciting final sprint between four skiers in which Dengerud narrowly came out on top. Sonnesyn would follow in second, and Brewster would round out the Overall podium in third place. Behind them, Alex Lawson had created space to take fourth place on the day, and to step onto the American podium in third place behind Brewster and Sonnesyn.
Alayna Sonnesyn (SMS) skied to her first US National Championship in Thursday’s Skate Sprint. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/@UntraceableG)
Sonnesyn’s second place Overall delivered her first American National Championship (she had finished runner-up in the 2020 Skate Sprint at US Nationals in Houghton, Michigan). It also marked the first time that UU’s Dengerud, a native Norwegian, stepped onto the top spot of the podium at US Nationals.
Earlier in in the day, Dartmouth Ski Team’s Ava Thurston was the only junior to advance to the semifinal before finishing 12th on the day. Thurston was joined on the junior podium by quarter finalists Nina Schamberger (UU) 19th on the day and in second, and Sofia Scirica (Middlebury College) 29th on the day and in third.
Spectators on the move during a sprint heat Thursday. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/@UntraceableG)
Snow Likely for Friday’s 20 k Mass Start Skate
A front developing over the Wasatch is headed towards Soldier Hollow ahead of the 20 k mass start skate race that will mark the finale of US Nationals on Friday. That left for an anticipatory mood around wax cabins, the Heber Valley, and the US ski community. When Soldier Hollow first hosted a National Championship in 2006, 36 skiers completed that year’s mass start skate race, then a 30 k. On Friday, the field is likely to be four times that size. With an American ski community that has been largely starved of snow, the scene is set for a race that will be a reminder of the joys and the revelry that this winter sport of skiing can bring.
The Men’s Skate Sprint podium: 1st) Will Koch (CU) first, Logan Diekmann (BSF Pro Team) second, and John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth) third. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/@UntraceableG)
Tobias Albrigsten contributed photos to this coverage of US Nationals. A full gallery from Thursdays Skate Sprint is available on his website here, and you can follow him on Instagram @UntraceableG.
Blue skies and warm conditions greeted racers on the first day of US Nationals at Soldier Hollow, Utah. Rolling terrain and long sustained climbs featured in the 3×3.3 k course skiers completed as they raced a 10 k Classic Individual Start. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/UnTraceableGlobal.com)
Race day at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah offers a microcosm for the role the venue has played in US skiing. The once, and possibly future, Olympic venue is consistent, stark, and starkly consistent in its conditions, its terrain, and in the quality of the events the crew at the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center put on. The typical SoHo day starts dark, dry and frigid, before the sun crests the Wasatch Mountains and gives way to blue skies, t-shirts on course, and klister on wax benches. The course is undulating, pitched, and constantly rolling. And the venue, which just twenty years ago was cut into a long, open gully, on the Eastern Slope of the Wasatch ahead of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, has become the US ski racing communities perennial favorite place to meet up to push themselves, each other, and sport of nordic skiing, forward.
The first day of the 2024 US Cross Country Ski National Championships (colloquially “US Nationals,” or “Senior Nationals”) were classic SoHo. A field of over 400 athletes split between the Men’s and Women’s fields opened the week with a 10 k classic individual start. The three lap, 3.3 km course was a total challenge as a classic race, requiring skiers to be strong within all the nuances of striding, double-pole, and kick-double-pole. Each lap began with a climb “up the hollow,” a consistent pitch that in turn rewarded skiers who could apply consistent power across a double-pole at the bottom of the hill, and a long stride near the top. Then, the course horseshoed into a fast rolling section of the venue’s sprint loop (to be raced Thursday), before finishing with another climb up “cabin hill,” another, steeper consistent pitch that rewarded quick-tempoed striding, and, on increasingly warm artificial snow throughout the day, a well-selected klister from the wax cabin. It was a day that leaned into all the variables that make ski racing unique, underlying results that stand as a testament to the complex nature of putting together a single, great performance.
When the Women’s field began, the sun had just peeked over the Hollow, which led to fairly rapidly changing kick conditions over the course of the start order as the course warmed. Early pace-setters included Nina Schamberger (University of Utah) along with her teammates Karianne Olsvik Dengerud and Sydney Palmer-Leger. Schamberger would prove the top junior (U20) on the day, finishing seventh Overall, while Palmer-Leger and Dengerud would finish second and third, respectively.
Swedish skier—and Montana State University sophmore—Tilda Baangman started fast and kept a steady pace as she posted the best time of the day in the Women’s 10 k Classic. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/UnTraceableGlobal.com)
As the busy field of racers continued to wind its way up the hollow though, a blue and gold suit with bib 46 flashed by. Over the radio of Montana State Bobcats Assistant Coach Lizzie Larkins, a voice reported that Bobcats sophomore, Tilde Baangman, had the fastest split through lap 1. Baangman didn’t relent through the rest of the race, and ended up topping the field by nearly 20 seconds over Palmer-Leger. That made things official, with Baangman taking home her first win at Senior Nationals, and Palmer-Leger (second Overall) the American national champion. For Palmer-Leger, the result marked her first national championship, one-upping a second place in last year’s 20 k classic mass start in Houghton, Michigan.
University of Denver Junior, Andreas Kirkeng, posted the fastest time of the day in the Men’s 10 k Classic. The Norwegian took his second straight victory in the US Nationals distance classic race, after wining last year’s 20 k mass start in Houghton, Michigan. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/UnTraceableGlobal.com)
By the time the Men’s field began, Soldier Hollow had warmed up and the snow had started to transform. Whereas in the morning, there were klisters and hard wax covers and hybrids in between, the conditions had definitively crossed above freezing and into klister territory. APU skier Joe Davies set the lead pace. His 23:53.1 10 k would stand as the benchmark as the top contenders continued to push through the course before University of Denver’s Andreas Kirkeng started to trade splits with Davies. Through the entirety of Kirkeng’s race, times swung back and forth between the pair, before Kirkeng burst across the finish line to post the day’s best time of 23:50.8, just 2.3 seconds ahead of Davies. For Kirkeng, the Classic result improved upon a ninth overall in last year’s 20 k classic mass start at Senior Nationals in Houghton, Michigan, and gave him his second win at US Senior Nationals. Kirkeng, who hails from Norway, was followed in the Overall by Joe Davies, who skis under the flag of Great Britain as a British-Canadian skier, which made Luke Jager (third overall) the American national champion. For Jager, the result marked his second national championship in a distance classic race in as many years, and his third national championship Overall after also winning last year’s Classic Sprint. Jager was joined on the American podium by second place (fourth Overall) Peter Wolter (Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation), and third place (seventh Overall) David Norris (Team Birkie). The top junior skier was Dartmouth Ski Team’s Jack Lange, in 17th Overall.
Luke Jager won his third career national title during Tuesday’s 10 k classic. The APU Nordic Center skier was third Overall in the race, behind Norway’s Andreas Kirkeng (first) and Great Britain’s Joe Davies (second). (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/UnTraceableGlobal.com)
Action continues at US Nationals tomorrow, with the country’s best Para-skiers highlighted in a Sit Ski Sprint. That same sprint course will then play host to a Skate Sprint on Thursday. SoHo looks to be keeping to its trademark weather pattern ahead of the sprint racing action, with low lows and high highs in the forecast. Then though, there’s the possibility of snow. That might not just add to the excitement of the racing come Friday’s Skate Mass Start, but also serve to lift the spirits of the US ski community gathered from all corners of a continent that’s struggled with natural snowfall this year.
A classic Soldier Hollow day: sunny skies, warm snow, and a large field made for a bright start to US Nationals in Soldier Hollow, Utah Tuesday. Action resumes with a Sit Ski Sprint on Wednesday, before a Skate Sprint on Thursday. (Photo: Tobias Albrigsten/UnTraceableGlobal.com)
Tobias Albrigsten contributed photos to this coverage of US Nationals. A full gallery from Tuesday’s 10 k Classic is available on his website here, and you can follow him on Instagram @UntraceableG.
