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.
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.
Jessie Diggins during the quarterfinals of the Freestyle Sprint on Saturday in Lake Placid, New York, USA. (Photo: Voisin / FasterSkier)
Lake Placid, N.Y. — The French coaches had questions. Two days before racing began at Mount Van Hoevenberg, they were standing in Saranac Lake — 55 degrees, windy, woods in every direction — wondering who exactly was going to show up to watch cross-country skiing in the middle of the Adirondacks.
By Saturday, an estimated — rumored to be fair — 14,000 people had answered.
Today, as Jessie Diggins lines up for the 20-kilometer mass start freestyle, the final race of her career, this corner of upstate New York will try to top itself one more time.
Screaming fans, chainsaws, flags, signs, and glitter all over the course in Lake Placid, New York, USA. (Photo: Voisin / FasterSkier)
A Weekend That Kept Building
The first sign that Lake Placid was going to be different came Friday, and it wasn’t entirely smooth. With an initial estimate of 10,000 fans on Friday, the transportation system to and from Van Hoevenberg buckled under the demand. Some fans waited over two hours to get to the venue.
US Head Coach, Matt Whitcomb, after the races yesterday in Lake Placid was really happy because the standout performance was not one of his athletes, but instead the North American ski community that showed up in droves and created an electric atmosphere. (Photo: Voisin / FasterSkier)
“Only Holmenkollen and Minneapolis”
U.S. Ski Team head coach Matt Whitcomb has been on the World Cup circuit for years. He said the only events throughout his career that have ever rivaled the atmosphere here this weekend in Lake Placid are the Holmenkollen in Oslo — the sport’s grand prix if you will — and Minneapolis two years ago.
That’s the company Lake Placid is keeping. And for those who were in Minneapolis, the comparison lands. Diggins said earlier this week that Minneapolis was the most special day of her career.
“It was the most I’ve ever cried,” she said at Wednesday’s press conference. “I got to race in front of some of my grandparents who haven’t been able to travel overseas. They got to see me race for the very first time in a World Cup. And having so many friends and family and getting to share the thing that I love doing with them — that is the most incredible thing ever.”
She paused, then added: “I think this weekend’s probably going to join that.”
College skiers from all over the Northeast came in force to the trailside in Lake Placid, New York, for the races this weekend. (Photo: Voisin / FasterSkier)
The Scene on the Ground
What the numbers don’t capture is the texture. Young kids running around the venue in their NNF fan bibs — the ones with athletes’ faces printed on them — clutching Sharpies, hoping to meet their heroes. Fans who drove and flew from Vermont, from Alaska, from Minnesota, who planned vacations around this weekend months ago. The school buses that became part of the story, ferrying the faithful up the mountain road when the original plan couldn’t hold.
This is what U.S. cross-country skiing looks like when it gets the stage. Not a packed NFL stadium or a sellout basketball arena — but thousands of people standing in the woods, screaming themselves hoarse for athletes from every country, because they love this sport and they know how rare these weekends are.
The fans — especial the college skiers — made it sound like the race was happening in Davos, Switzerland with the chainsaws out on course. (Photo: Voisin / FasterSkier)
One More Race
Diggins has spent this weekend doing exactly what she said she would — being present, soaking it in, putting on a show. She clinched the Crystal Globe on Friday. She raced the sprint on Saturday. And now there’s one more.
At Wednesday’s press conference, she talked about the way her mindset around suffering has evolved — how she’s learned to see the pain cave not as something to dread but as confirmation that she’s doing what she came to do.
“This is what 100 percent feels like,” she said. “And sometimes this is what it looks like, and it’s some ugly scene, but that’s okay. It just has to be all heart and all effort, and that’s what I have to give in that moment.”
She also made one thing clear about the team she’s leaving behind: “The team is going to be just fine without me. And I feel like that’s how I know I did my job.”
Then, with a smile: “I’m excited to be a fan on the other side of the fence and get to cheer for them.”
Today, in just ten minutes, Jessie Diggins will clip into her bindings for the last time as a World Cup racer. The 20-kilometer Mass Start Freestyle.
And based on everything this weekend has shown us, “no one” will be watching.
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Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) back in action and lifted by the roar of American ski fans during the World Cup 10 k Classic in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo: Dils / FasterSkier)
LAKE PLACID, NEW YORK — Ten kilometers into the second World Cup on American soil in as many decades, and the verdict is already clear: We need more racing in the United States.
That’s the message panted into my microphone by every athlete in the Mix Zone; shouted over the undulating din by every supporter I spoke with on the ice-lacquered walkways lacing Mt. Van Hoevenberg. And it’s the irresistible outcome of the turnout this afternoon in Lake Placid — with a crowd that came out in droves for Diggins, the Schumacher-Ogden’s Silver Medal Squad, and a host of homegrown heroes; that braved five inches of wet, driving snow; and that stayed to see Jessie clinch the Overall Crystal Globe, a reconstituted Klæbo overtake Amundsen in the Distance standings, and to welcome the world’s best to the conclusion of the 2025-26 season.
The reaction to racing in the United States in 2023 was overwhelmingly positive – and, it had seemed, sui generis. With four snowmaking venues spread across the Twin Cities, along with the (purportedly) highest concentration of cross-country skiers outside of Oslo, the energy that embraced Jessie Diggins in her home state and buried a generation of “almosts” for the U.S. Men’s Team in the snow and mud at Theodore Wirth could have been lightning in a bottle.
Jessie Diggins (USA) racing on home soil in Minneapolis and did so again in Lake Placid as she concludes her storied World Cup career. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
I will admit my own skepticism that Lake Placid could field the fans, or the volume, of spectators to match Minneapolis. Perhaps my flight into Saranac Lake Regional Airport on Wednesday morning was my first evidence of error. Of seven passengers bobbing our way through the cloud-laden Adirondacks, four were here for the World Cup: Charlie, from Seattle; Billy (as in, Demong, the Nordic Combined gold medalist) and his son, from Salt Lake City; and myself, from D.C. Bussing to the venue the next day, I’m seated with a dozen of University of Minnesota alumni – they’ve taken off of work, graduate school, and medical school to spectate. “I’m excited just to see the number of people out cheering,” Alex Gude, who organized the trip, tells me. “I think one of the best parts about Minneapolis is just seeing the community come together, and now, away from home, we’re seeing another whole ski community come out and cheer.”
And, indeed, they are – from across the United States, from across New England, from across the Canadian border, and from right here in Lake Placid. Once we disembark, I wade through the corn snow and the first of many falling flakes to Mt. Van Hoevenberg’s sprawling Nordic Center, where the racecourse coils around the podium and snakes below the pedestrian bridge. Patricia Damp is herding thirteen might-be-members of the local ski community across the bridge; she’s a third-grade teacher here in Lake Placid, chaperoning a class field trip to the World Cup Finals.
Are the kids already Diggins die-hards, Ogden acolytes, Gus bus-riders? Not really, Patricia tells me. The class “was out here a couple months ago, cross-country skiing. We get to do the Olympic venues. We were at the museum a month ago. We have a friend who we watched ski jump. So, we’re very Olympic-oriented, and today we’re just out here to support the athletes and get some autographs.” Her students back her up. “We’re excited to get the players’ signatures,” Riley tells me. And while Declan is “excited to see the racers,” there’s no-one in particular he’s cheering for.
Gus Schumacher (USA) during the Men’s 10 k Classic in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo: Dils / FasterSkier)
From the mouths of children, our first – and perhaps strongest – argument for future American World Cups. The glitter-dusted kids in fan club bibs, wielding cardboard-cutout faces as large as they are, make for compelling pictures and undeniable evidence of Team USA’s impact on its next generation. But racing in the United States creates opportunities to draw an entirely new cohort of young people into the cross-country skiing community – kids who may have never tried skiing before; who may not have heard of Kikkan or Klæbo ; and whose parents certainly are not waking up before sunrise to livestream Ruka, Falun or Holmenkollen. They will not see themselves in this sport until they see this sport. What better way to do so than on a Friday field trip with Mrs. Damp?
After bidding them good luck with the signature-hunting, it’s not an easy task to wade against the current of the rest of the Lake Placid Class of 2035. Also threading his way through the third-graders is Niklas Dyrhaug, immediately recognizable even five years into retirement from World Cup racing. He’s on the other side of the v-boards this weekend, broadcasting for Norwegian television. In his first sentence, he tells me: “We are enjoying being back in the U.S. In my opinion, we should be here every year.” He’s not surprised by the number of spectators, either. “Everybody who knows the U.S. crowd knows they are really enthusiastic . . . We know the tradition, the culture, and Lake Placid’s place in that history. So, personally, I’m not that surprised. It’s really cool that we’re back here.”
That’s the sentiment just after Coaster Hill, some four kilometers into the racecourse, where Norwegian national team coach Eirik Myhr Nossum prowls the striding zone. Being back in the United States is “awesome, it’s amazing. I think we should be here every year, because you guys show up; you guys cheer for everyone, and it’s always fun to be in the U.S. and to be overseas to compete.”
And it’s the sentiment at the finish line.
Harald Oestberg Amundsen (NOR) after the 10 k Classic in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)
Harald Amundsen (NOR) tells me, “In the outer part of the track, there were so many people I couldn’t hear my own thinking. That’s a really good thing.” Even before he arrived at the venue, “We had a run this morning in the city. Everyone was screaming at us, ‘Good luck!’ It’s a really nice atmosphere.”
For Elia Barp (ITA), conditions were “very tough because it was really slow with this new snow, but it was fun racing for me. So I enjoyed it – at least I tried to enjoy it – it was a pack of people screaming my name so that gave me even more motivation, and was fun . . . I loved racing two years ago in Minneapolis, and here it’s packed with people, even with the snowfall, so thank you to everyone for coming. It’s really good to race here.”
Mika Vermeulen (AUT) admits, “Honestly, this is probably the worst race I’ve done in a long time. But I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun out on the track . . . on top there, out in the forest, I just heard, ‘MI-KA, MI-KA,’ the whole time. It was insane. I had a bad race and a lot of fun.”
As for how he feels about returning to the United States: “Great, great, actually—and feeling a bit frustrated, because it just gets me pissed that we race these [bad] courses in Europe all the time, over and over and over again, and we have these freaking jewels out here which we never use. It’s crazy. I want to go to the U.S. every year for at least a whole period. It’s called the World Cup. It’s not called the European Cup, right?”
Fans all over the course with custom gear showing their fandom. (Photo: Dils / FasterSkier)
Klæbo’s opinion is a bit more measured – perhaps because he has more microphones hovering around his face. “I heard some rumors that it was supposed to be quite well [attended], and when I searched up Lake Placid and read a little bit about the place, I understood there’s not that many people living [here], but when you see how many people are here, I was pretty shocked.”
A second argument, then, in favor of World Cup racing in this country: the athletes love it. They embrace not just the energy, but the venues that push the World Cup beyond the geographic and cultural confines of Transalpine Europe.
Benjamin Dohlby (USA) at the finish of the Men’s 10 k Classic in Lake Placid. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)
For the closing statement, Ben Dohlby is among the last athletes I interview. This is Ben’s first World Cup start; a junior at University of Alaska-Fairbanks, he was 3rd in the American Birkebeiner in February. How does it feel to be making his first professional start in the United States?
“It was crazy. I went out so hard. The fans were so loud that I didn’t feel anything, and then I felt it all and got so tired – but it was awesome; a great atmosphere.” It wasn’t too long ago that Ben was skiing laps around the glazed kilometer of manmade snow at Lapham Peak State Park in Delafied, Wisconsin; now he’s here. To his former teammates, to other up and coming skiers, and to novices across similar ribbons of snow in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, his message is simple: “Follow your dreams and you can make it happen.”
Most of the fans hiked up on the course, but the stadium filled up as the day went on. (Photo: Dils / FasterSkier)
That, then, is our concluding point: More World Cup starts on American soil means more starting berths for American skiers, and more chances for our most talented young skiers to make it to the starting line. We should savor the privilege of, as a host nation, pitting our athletes against the most accomplished figures in the sport, dreaming that a World Cup podium, an Olympic medal, could be in their future. When a lifetime of discipline and preparation meets the opportunity of a lifetime, the promise of Lake Placid – that miracles can happen – becomes deliverable.
I will leave the invariable complex problems of bidding, organizing, and logistically managing future events to far wiser pundits. But, in the meantime, the verdict is clear: FIS, U.S. Ski & Snowboard, and the American Nordic community should be eager, and determined, to have them here.
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Jessie Diggins answering questions at the press conference before the World Cup in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo: Voisin/FasterSkier)
Lake Placid, N.Y. — The eve of the World Cup finals at Mount Van Hoevenberg brought press conferences, sound checks that went sideways, and three American skiers who couldn’t stop making each other smile.
Jessie Diggins, Ben Ogden, and Gus Schumacher sat side by side Wednesday afternoon — the same trio that has turned the 2025-26 season into something U.S. cross-country skiing has never seen before. Between them: Olympic medals, historic podiums, a 50-year drought shattered, and one very good birthday cake.
But with three races left and Diggins’s retirement looming, the mood wasn’t heavy. It was loose, funny, and deeply human — exactly the way this team tends to do things.
“Probably Glitter”
Asked to define her legacy heading into her final World Cup weekend, Diggins did what Diggins does: she went somewhere unexpected.
“I think I define my legacy honestly, completely outside race results,” she said. “I am more proud of the things I have done off the course. I think my legacy is going to be in my advocacy and the way that I have spoken about mental health and eating disorders specifically, and the way I’ve tried to make really hard conversations less hard for people to have.”
She pointed to her work with Protect Our Winters and Share Winter, to the energy she’s poured into the team’s culture over the years. And then she landed the dismount.
“And probably glitter. I think there’s a lot more glitter in ski races now, and that’s always a great thing — as long as it’s biodegradable.”
Diggins has spent the season saying goodbye in pieces — a little cry leaving training camp in Bend, quiet moments at each World Cup stop. She knows what’s probably coming Sunday.
“I suspect it’s probably going to hit like a dump truck on Sunday, and there’s probably going to be a lot of tears.”
But she’s ready. And what she’s ready for is maybe the most Jessie Diggins thing of all: she sees ski racing as performance art, and she wants her final show to leave people wanting to go run up a mountain or sign their family up for ski lessons.
“I realized that I can do that moving forward, but just with my story and with my words, and I don’t have to push my body so hard, but I can still leave people inspired and motivated.”
In the meantime, she’s looking forward to being able to wash her clothes when they’re dirty, cook whatever she wants, and bake cookies on the weekend instead of training and racing all day.
Ben Ogden answering questions at the press conference before the World Cup in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo: Voisin/FasterSkier)
“Your Life Is Not Going to Be the Same”
Ben Ogden grew up in Landgrove, Vermont. American skiing legend Bill Koch lived close by in Peru, Vermont. Same zip code, as Ogden puts it — “not so different.”
Fifty years separated Koch’s 1976 Olympic medal from Ogden’s silver this season, and when Ogden finally got on the phone with his neighbor and mentor after breaking the drought, Koch didn’t mince words.
“Bill just sort of said, ‘Hey, congratulations, and your life is not going to be the same from this point forward.’ And that was kind of crazy to hear.”
Ogden hopes to see Koch at the races this weekend. And racing at Van Hoevenberg carries its own weight for him — not just because of Koch, but because of his father, who was deeply embedded in the New England ski racing community.
“I think it’s really hard for me to come race in the U.S. and look around and not just, like, constantly think about him, because this was his scene,” Ogden said, his voice softening. “He would have been in such paradise on the side of the trail here in Lake Placid. And I’ll be thinking about him a lot this weekend, for sure.”
This is technically Ogden’s first home World Cup — he was sick for Minneapolis — and it’s hitting him right. He grew up racing the NYSEF Festival series at Lake Placid, bringing crews of Vermont kids over for slushy late-season races.
“It’s not my home, but it feels like it.”
Gus Schumacher answering questions at the press conference before the World Cup in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo: Voisin/FasterSkier)
Aspirations, Not Goals
Gus Schumacher has been doing some linguistic rebranding.
“I’ve been calling them aspirations for a few years now,” he said of his season targets, “because I feel like the pressure of goals was kind of weird for me.”
The distinction matters to Schumacher. He sets plenty of small goals — the daily, tactical kind — but the big ones, like winning an Olympic medal or finishing in the top 10 of the overall World Cup standings, he holds more loosely. They’re aspirations: things he wants, things he’ll chase, but things he won’t let crush him if they don’t happen.
“Those are things I want to do, but if they don’t happen, it won’t be because I didn’t try.”
He accomplished the Olympic medal. He entered this final weekend ranked sixth in the world, with a top-10 finish still in play. And he’s approaching Lake Placid the same way he approached Minneapolis, where he won his first World Cup in front of a hometown crowd: just be happy to be racing, and feed off the energy.
“Already today, it was really cool to have people cheering us on in the race prep, which doesn’t really happen much on the World Cup ever.”
Schumacher also dropped maybe the best origin story of the press conference: the formative moment that lit a fire under his career was Luke Jaeger beating him at an Anchorage cup race.
“That kind of put a fire under my belly to really start training, because I didn’t want him beating me anymore.”
The Knitting Club, the Water Pump, and the Greenhouse
The press conference’s best stretch might have been when someone asked the athletes how they decompress.
Schumacher keeps it clean: headphones, 10 to 20 deep breaths — four seconds in, eight seconds out. Standard operating procedure.
Ogden? He knits. And he’s not shy about it.
“After races, I’ve been doing a lot of knitting and stuff like that. Helps me just relax really quick.” After the season, it’s bigger projects: car work. “You can feel like you’re the king of the world after a couple medals, but go and try and replace a water pump on a Forerunner, and that’ll make you feel completely incompetent.”
Diggins revealed there was a full-on knitting club on the team this winter. Her own reset button is simpler: she calls her husband.
“He’s my absolute center of my world. The race could have been amazing, and it could have been also completely horrible. And we’re just talking about what I want to do with the garden, and how I want to start a greenhouse. And he’s like, ‘Uh huh, yeah, sure, I’ll support you in that.’”
One More Thing
Almost as a throwaway, Ogden mentioned that Andy Newell — “the original Nordic ski backflip guy” — is in Lake Placid this weekend. And Ogden himself has had a backflip dialed since he was 17.
“I’m hoping on Sunday we can kick up a little ski jump. I’m looking to take another one Sunday afternoon. So stay tuned.”
Three races to go. A retirement to honor. A culture to celebrate. And maybe a backflip.
It’s going to be a weekend.
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The first time I saw Colin Rodgers, he was climbing onto a podium in the basement of a hotel in Biwabik, Minnesota. I honestly can’t remember the name of the hotel, but I can remember the rooms, the enormous lobby complete with an indoor minigolf course, and the basement where the awards were taking place. It was Junior Nationals, 1997, and he’d just won the opening U16 race. We were there with the New England contingent. They held the awards in this low-ceilinged basement room, and although he wasn’t the tallest of boys, his blonde hair almost touched the ceiling tiles. Colin went to Holderness School in New Hampshire, and as I looked up at his smiling face, it was obvious that he was the kind of kid who was going somewhere.
A few years later, I was watching him again, but this time from behind as he skied away from me up one of the small climbs on Woodpecker during the 3 x 5 k Classic Relay at the Williams College Carnival. Colin raced for Middlebury, and I raced for UNH, and at carnivals, he’d ski away from me. That was the deal. He was always a step, or a lot more, ahead.
We caught up over Zoom last week. Colin was in a hotel room in Falun, Sweden, traveling with the U.S. Ski Team on the World Cup circuit. I was sitting on a rocking chair in the foyer of our local dentist’s office while my boys were inside getting their teeth cleaned. That’s how FasterSkier interviews happen sometimes.
Colin Rodgers (SVSEF) – 4th Place
Since his competitive career ended, Colin has given himself fully to coaching. First with the SVSEF Gold Team, who he had raced for at the end of his career, and later junior skiers at Green Mountain Valley School, where he spent nine years. And now, as head coach of the SMS T2 Team at Stratton Mountain School in Vermont, he works with some of the best cross-country skiers in the world.
The team this year included Jessie Diggins, Ben Ogden, Julia Kern, and Canadian skier Remi Drolet, as well as collegiate skiers Fin Bailey and Jack Lange. Of the professional skiers, three of them finished in the top six at the Olympics. All four were in the top 20. Ben Ogden came home with two silver medals and ended a 50-year Olympic medal drought for American men in cross-country skiing. And Jessie Diggins, who is currently wrapping up a career that is the best of any American skier ever, added a bronze medal to her collection.
Colin still seemed a little stunned by it all when we spoke.
“We were so far beyond wherever I thought we were going to be,” he said. “I had a good feeling about this year. But for Ben to take home two silvers, and Jesse a bronze, and Remi to be in the top 20 and really help Canada with a historic relay finish, and Julia in the top six. It’s stuff that I could never believe was truly going to happen. And here we are talking about it.”
SMS T2’s Rémi Drolet, Ben Ogden, Julia Kern, Jessie Diggins, and coach Colin Rodgers. (Photo: courtesy photo)
Colin grew up in Westford, Vermont. His father was the program director for the U.S. Biathlon team from 1984 to 1988, which brought the family to northern Vermont. His parents built a house in Westford that year and never left.
He went to Holderness, then Middlebury, and after college, he headed to the Maine Winter Sports Center, where coaches like Jens Johansson, Eli Brown and Will Sweetser were building something in the northern reaches of the state. From there, he moved to Sun Valley, Idaho, where he joined the SVSEF Gold Team and kept racing.
Colin was good. He raced on the World Cup. But the jump he’d always hoped to make didn’t quite happen.
“I think as a nation now, we’re so much more educated,” he said. “I had amazing coaches. But we were just kind of, maybe sometimes trying too hard.”
He talked about spending time in Scandinavia and being around athletes who were significantly better than him. What he noticed wasn’t that they worked harder. It was that they were smarter about the work.
“I probably trained at level two way too much of the time,” he said. “Especially being a little more anaerobic and linked to the sprint side. I really needed to be doing the easy training even easier.”
He paused.
“When it’s time to go, you’ve got to let the dog run,” he said, quoting his old Middlebury coach Terry Aldrich. “And that was the exact opposite. Like, now it’s time to really peak, and you let it loose.”
I told him I’d heard a version of that from the other direction. When I was coaching, I used to tell my kids about Matt Whitcomb, who had been a teammate of Rodgers at Middlebury, previewing a course at Junior Nationals and telling the athletes they had to “walk the f-ing dog.” Every time they got to a climb, they were pulling back on the leash. Walking the dog.
Two coaches. Related metaphor. Opposite leash relationships. That’s about as clean a summary of training philosophy as you’ll find in this sport. Keep the dog relaxed in training often, until it is time to let it run when it matters.
Matt Gelso on the finishing stretch with coach Colin Rodgers encouraging in West Yellowstone (Photo: Toko)
Before Stratton, the coaching experience that shaped Colin most was the time he spent around Rick Kapala at Sun Valley.
Kapala ran the Sun Valley Education Foundation for nearly 30 years and built a program Colin still talks about with real admiration.
“It was serious training, but it was also really creative,” Colin said. “You’d go out for long mountain adventures, do different kinds of workouts. It kept people engaged.”
That stuck with him. When he moved to GMVS to coach high school athletes, he kept coming back to a simple question.
“What would make me really want to go to practice today?”
He laughed when he said it.
“It sounds basic. But it actually matters a lot. If people don’t want to be there, something’s probably off.”
He talked about his coaching years at GMVS and how, for him, the job was about getting kids to believe in what they could do.
“When kids are in high school, they’re questioning everything. How they look, how they’re growing. And you’re just like, no, dude, this is fun. This can be a real blast. And believe. Like, damn, I can do a good job at this. If I’m doing this every day, I might as well be good at it, right?”
He spent nine years doing that work. And then the SMS T2 job came along.
“It was an opportunity there’s no way I was going to pass up,” he said. “It’s changed my life. Literally.”
The program at Stratton operates under a mission statement crafted by Colin’s predecessor, Sverre Caldwell: international excellence and local inspiration.
Colin said that phrase was part of what sold him on the job.
“It’s everything I believe in. We’re trying to be the best we can be, win races, kick ass internationally. But then also, along the way, inspire the next generation of skiers coming up.”
At Stratton, those two things aren’t separate. The T2 athletes train on the same roads and trails as the younger skiers in the school’s Nordic program. When Stratton kids show up for a summer or fall practice, and the older athletes are there, everyone just funnels in together and heads out.
“It doesn’t even need to be talked about, really,” Colin said. “It’s just showing up, doing the work. This is how it’s done. And if you keep working really hard for a long time, you’re probably going to get really good too.”
He brought up the chain of inspiration that runs through American skiing. Jessie Diggins was inspired by Kikkan Randall, by Andy Newell, by Simi Hamilton. Kern was inspired by Diggins.
“When you get motivated by somebody who’s special and inspiring to you, if you have some talent and the fire to go for it, you realize you can chase that person. And then it’s like, oh, I can maybe be them. And then it’s like, oh, maybe I can be better than them.”
One of the more interesting aspects of Colin’s role at SMS T2 is that he’s not the only coach in the picture. Not even close.
Kristen Bourne and Colin Rodgers out for a run during the OD run at Park City camp, 2025. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)
Diggins works primarily with Jason Cork on the U.S. Ski Team staff. Ogden’s training has long been guided by Patrick Weaver, his college coach at UVM. Kern has a deep relationship with Kristen Bourne, who is also a national team coach. Drolet works with Dave Wood, a former coach of the Canadian national team. And Bailey goes to UVM and skis for Weaver, while Lange goes to Dartmouth and is coached by Brayton Osgood.
Colin sees his job as connecting the dots.
“Each athlete comes in with their own support network,” he said. “Jason has been working with Jesse forever. Ben has a really close connection with Weave. And I’ve been able to learn a lot from Patrick about how Ben ticks.”
He was honest about what that requires.
“When you step into a role like this, you have to check your ego,” he said. “It’s not about being the only voice in the room. It’s about helping the athlete succeed.”
What he brings is proximity. He sees the athletes more frequently than some of their other coaches, especially during training blocks in Vermont. He can offer technique advice, fill gaps when someone else isn’t available, and keep everyone communicating.
“I think one of my strengths is the ability to connect people,” he said. “And to connect with people.”
Colin has watched American skiing grow up. When he was racing, relatively few American men were competitive at the highest levels. The development pathways weren’t as clear. The coaching wasn’t as sophisticated.
“We’re closer as a nation now to what it means to go to that next level,” he said. “We know what to do. As coaches, we’re totally clued in on this systematic, long-term idea of how to periodize correctly, and also how to make it fun.”
Colin Rodgers, Jessie Diggins and Julia Kern. (Photo: courtesy photo)
He pointed to results at every level. At the time we spoke, American athletes were fighting with the best in the world at the World Junior Championships. On the World Cup, Diggins, Kern, and Ogden, along with the APU-based skiers, are proving it can happen at the very top.
“A lot of people have helped build this,” he said. “It’s not just one program or one coach.”
But the jump from junior skiing to the World Cup is still enormous. And programs like SMS T2 exist to help athletes survive that transition.
“Having environments where athletes can develop during that stage is really important,” he said. “The gap is huge.”
Before we wrapped up, I asked Colin what success looks like for him five years from now.
He went big picture with a slightly longer lens. The 2034 Olympics will be in Salt Lake City. There’s a generation of young American skiers who have already raced at Soldier Hollow, the Nordic venue, during their youth careers. Now they’re looking ahead to competing on home soil.
“We’re working towards 2034,” he said. “And we want to be successful there. If we stay on this trajectory, we can have medals. That’s our ultimate goal.”
Within Stratton, he wants to grow the team thoughtfully. This year was lean, focused on supporting the Olympic athletes. Going forward, he wants to build back toward four or five athletes on each side, men and women, plus NCAA skiers.
“We have to do it the right way,” he said. “We don’t want to take on too many people too fast.”
Jessie Diggins (USA), whose World Cup career will conclude in a week and a half, celebrates her bronze medal in the Olympic 10 k Freestyle in Tesero, Italy. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
He’s also thinking about the athletes who won’t be there. Jessie Diggins is retiring. That will leave a void at SMS T2 and on the World Cup, where Colin noted she currently sits at 380 career starts, more than any other skier.
“Jesse’s going to go on and do a lot of really cool things and still inspire the next generation in new ways,” he said. “And then there’s going to be up-and-comers who are going to step up and be inspired by everything she’s done, and by everything Ben and Julia and Remy are already doing.”
International excellence. Local inspiration. It’s a simple mission. But Colin Rodgers has spent a career learning that the simple things are usually the ones that matter most.
He’s been chasing the highest levels of this sport since he was 15 years old, standing on a podium in a hotel basement in Minnesota. The path just looks different now.
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If you are a parent or coach and have been responsible for waxing skis for an important race — a state championship, a Junior National Qualifier — you know how stressful that can be. Now imagine it’s the morning of the Team Sprint at the Olympics, and you are responsible for Gus Schumacher’s skis. Feel your blood pressure rising yet?
Welcome to the life of Chris Hecker, the US Cross-Country Ski Team service tech who leads the glide program and is Schumacher’s personal tech. Hecker, at this point, knows Schumacher well and that he has logged nearly 1,000 hours of training annually for years, and that he has dreamed of this specific day since the end of last season.
“One of the most stressful moments actually came [on race day], about 45 minutes before the Men’s Team Sprint. I had selected the race skis for Gus and felt confident in the decision. At the time, it was clearly the best pair for the conditions.”
Everything seemed to be playing out as Hecker had hoped, but then everything changed.
“Then, about five minutes later, the sun came out. The course started to break down and got noticeably wetter. I still had a few minutes before beginning to wax, so I decided to run one more quick test. In the ten minutes between tests, the two top pairs kept getting closer and closer in performance.”
These are the moments when experience, confidence, and a little tech magic can make or break a race. “In the end, I chose what was technically Gus’s second-best pair at that moment,” Hecker recalled. “As more athletes skied and the temperature continued to rise, there’s a good chance those skis actually became the faster option anyway.”
Hecker was quick to point out that “Gus and Ben were on another level. Regardless of which skis Gus raced on, I’m confident the result would have been the same. They were [racing] on another level.”
We may never really know, but maybe that decision did have something to do with Schumacher and Ben Ogden winning silver in the Team Sprint? For Hecker, it was a choice that was actually years in the making.
Guided by family and noted mentors
Hecker grew up in a family of skiers; his father, Mike, was a Pelton ski and Exel pole rep in the Midwest and had Chris on skis when he was just nine months old, “shuffling around and falling down.” Mike and his wife would pack the entire family, including Chris and his older brother Jeremy, and spend weekends traveling to different ski shows and venues. The parents told Chris and Jeremy it was their ‘vacation’, but in reality, it was just a family deeply invested in both the industry and the lifestyle.
“So we were skiing from a really, really early age, and then we got into racing,” said Chris. When Chris was in middle school and high school, he raced for Anoka High School, in Minnesota, a northern suburb of Minneapolis. After graduating in 2013, he headed to St. Scholastica in Duluth, where he raced for three years under Chad Salmela and, in his senior year, under Maria Stuber.
After graduating from St. Scholastica in 2017, Hecker took a job with Rex Ski Wax for the 2018 / 2019 season.
“I worked with them for a year, spent a year on the World Cup being their racing service manager and research and development, kind of lead testing for all the new products, testing all the old products, and then walking around and working with the teams and saying, What do you need from us?”
Hecker made himself available to World Cup teams, asking which products he could help with and which they thought were working well and which needed improvement. He continued this work for three full seasons before starting with the US Ski Team in 2020; this is now his sixth full season with the team.
Two brothers… “Give me something weird.”
Chris’s older brother, Jeremy, has kept the family tradition alive too, serving as a full-time employee of Pioneer Midwest and, in addition, as the domestic rep and race service lead for Rex ski wax.
“We talk multiple times a week, and we get really deep into the weeds,” says Chris, who gives his brother lots of respect and praise. “He’s a really good wax tech, and sometimes you just need an idea from an outside source.”
So when waxing domestically, Jeremy will ask his brother at the World Cup, “Give me something weird, give me something random to go out and test,” because he has all the normal, routine choices down.
“He’ll always ask me for one random suggestion to try out for some of those race weekends. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
For the most part, the two brothers talk about local races and how Jeremy can better support local skiers, since the products Chris is working on for the World Cup aren’t available to domestic skiers.
“But it is also fun to talk about, when we have a really good day, like in Goms, or a really good day, like in the Val de Fiemme, on the final hill climb.”
When that happens, Jeremy can spot it on the livestream and will call up Chris and ask, “Oh, what’d you guys do differently!”
A lot more than two pairs of skis… like over 100
In addition to being Schumacher’s personal tech, Chris Hecker is also responsible for Novie McCabe when she is on the World Cup and when she raced at the Olympics.
In addition, Hecker is responsible for managing both athletes’ ski fleets. For McCabe, that means 38 pairs of skis and another 65 pairs for Schumacher, but even that can be variable, “like, Gus gets a ski [from Rossignol] maybe every other weekend or every third weekend because they’re always coming out with new prototypes and new skis.”
McCabe is a Fischer-sponsored athlete, and they are admittedly a bit more controlled on allocating skis, but if Hecker and McCabe decide to “knock out a bad ski,” they can give it back to them and get another for her quiver.
The new Rossignol skis arriving can introduce many more variables for Schumacher and Hecker to consider. As Hecker says, “ it can be new base material, new grinds, new core materials… the construction of the ski can be different.”
Every little tweak has a purpose, “maybe it’s an easier kicking classic ski, maybe it’s a faster base material on a state ski.” As Hecker continues… “Maybe it’s a different laminate on a zero ski,” and what becomes quickly obvious is that all of these subtle variations make for endless possibilities.
Building a rapport
Hecker and Schumacher have been working together for two years now. Last season, Hecker was not responsible for another athlete, so he could focus on Schumacher, and the two quickly bonded.
From the beginning, “working with him was really fun,” said Hecker . “We were trying to build a rapport as a new athlete and tech combination between the two of us.”
Schumacher’s previous tech had left for the Swiss Biathlon Team, but Hecker and Schumacher found a lot of success last season with several top 10s and a podium in Falun, Sweden. As they started this season, they got right back to work.
“Then starting this year, it was like jumping right back into it.” The two had a full year of experience to build on, and the dialogue and descriptions began to get more dialed, which is critical in the relationship between a tech and an athlete.
Hecker began to know what Schumacher “likes for kick in skis, what feeling and stability he likes on skate skis,” and the two have been able to build that “innate rapport” which leads to a trusting relationship.
As Hecker puts it, “[Schumacher] is one of the most astute athletes that I’ve worked with. He always comes with a question or two on race day. ‘Do you think we should try testing over on this side of the course instead of that side of the course, because I’m really trying to execute a plan here. Can we try focusing on glide for this half of the course, and maybe do a couple of glide outs here?”
Hecker continues to describe how impressed he is with Schumacher as an athlete:
“And so he’s always equally thinking as a wax tech and as an athlete when we’re out skiing together, and he’s really trying to dissect where the best places to test are. And it’s not just my job to revive the skis for him, but it’s also his job to pick the correct skis for him. And so he needs to know almost as much as I do about his skis and what is working and why it’s working, because ultimately we have to come to the decision together. He is racing, not me, and so we have a really cool relationship together to kind of pick and choose what we want to race on as a team.”
Learning what he likes instead of what you like
At this level, picking the right ski for an athlete is not just about what is fastest. It is also about picking a ski that responds the way the athlete prefers, and that matches the way a skier races.
For Schumacher, that means a ski that is “extremely stable and forward tracking.” Hecker knows the way Schumacher skis, and how “when he pushes off to the left or to the right, and he goes fully onto one ski, he wants it to go straight.”
“He doesn’t want the tip to move at all. He just wants it to point and shoot straight.”
That isn’t a characteristic Hecker is personally always looking for in a ski, but he knows that’s what Schumacher wants. “So when I’m looking and testing without him some days, I say, ‘Okay, this ski is for sure going to be moving on because this feels better for him.’ And so we kind of have differing opinions sometimes on feeling, because I like a slightly different ski.”
For Hecker, though, what is most important is that he understands not just what will ski fast, but also what will work best for Schumacher in different conditions, based on how he will race.
“On a really firm course, he’ll look for this ski that just goes straight. And I think the reason why he likes that is that he will free skate a lot and likes being able to just push with his legs. And he’s so strong at that, and so relaxed when he does it, and so he can conserve a lot of energy.
So it’s a really cool technique change from him, because I don’t think a lot of people utilize that on the men’s field. You see a lot of people always V2ing, and you’ll see him kind of free skating in the middle of the pack, just relaxing his upper body and giving half of his body a rest.”
Inside the wax truck: how race morning actually works
On a stable day, glide testing is fairly methodical.
“We usually have four fleets of skis that go out,” Hecker explained. “Eight structure skis, eight paraffin skis, eight topping skis, and four to six application skis.”
Before any athlete even gets to the venue, there is what the service team calls a “thinking period.” Jason [Cork], Tim [Baucom], Hecker, and anyone else in the truck who wants to join in, gather around a table with wax options.
“We’ll put maybe 10 to 12 waxes in,” Hecker said. “Eli [Brown] might give us a wax. Oleg [Ragilo], our head of service, might give us a wax. Bernie [Nelson] might give us a wax. Then at the end of the table, it’s on me to narrow it down.”
Ten or twelve become eight after the team removes the overlapping options. Some are eliminated because something similar tested better earlier in the week. Predictability and durability matter as much as outright speed.
Structure follows a similar pattern. Baucom pulls 10 or 12 patterns before narrowing to eight that fit the day’s snow. The brainstorming narrows the options, then the skis go outside for testing.
When results come back, they’re measured in inches and sometimes just two or three separate first from third.
“If there are three that are really close,” Hecker said, “we might race on third place. Even if it’s two inches behind.”
Because two inches in early testing might not matter if the wax is more durable, safer, or better, as temperatures rise and the track grows glazy under the skis of a throng of World Cup skiers.
“It’s up to us to make a call,” Hecker said. “This is the wax we’re going to run today, even though it may not have won.”
Once the athletes start warming up and testing skis, the techs have to add that feedback to the equation as well. Often, Hecker has one ear tuned to Gus’s feedback and the other to the incoming results.
“When Gus is racing, a lot of these tests are going on,” he said. “I have to have my head on both testing skis with Gus, but also on the results that are coming in.”
A call might come mid-session: pair 47 instead of pair 45. At this level, it’s small changes, constant recalibration, and decisions layered on decisions.
For spectators, the race begins at the gun. For the glide team, it began hours earlier — likely in the dark — and never really stops until the racers reach the first checkpoint in the race and the team knows whether their choices put them in the race or not.
“It’s definitely the hardest part of this job.”
For Hecker, this will be his last season as part of the US World Cup service team.
“It’s been a thing that I decided at the end of the year last year,” Hecker said. “I gave a fairly big heads up to the team in Bend in April.”
This season marks the end of a third Olympic cycle for Hecker, but it is not that moments like the Olympic Team Sprint are wearing him down. That is not the hardest part of the job. The hardest part of the job is being away from his wife, Katie, family, and his dog.
“It’s time to be at home with my wife and be more with my family and be back at home with my dog. And, yeah, right now it is time to retire after this year, and we’ll see what happens after that.”
Like other staff and coaches on the US Ski Team, Hecker was able to sneak home twice so far this season, but those opportunities are few and far between.
“Yeah, it’s, it’s definitely the hardest part of this job, not that waxing isn’t hard, but being away from your family, being away from loved ones for so long. It’s really hard.”
This decision wasn’t made lightly because there are many things about being on the World Cup that Hecker will miss. Most significantly, the US Ski Team has done an amazing job creating a unified family.
“It’s hard because this team is like a second family. Being away from these guys for long stretches is tough. I love working with them. When you like the person you’re rooming with every weekend, that means something. So leaving the team feels like leaving family.
But I know it’s the right decision for me. I’m getting tired. There was a time when traveling to Europe was exciting, going to new venues, seeing new places. That was fun.
Now it’s, ‘Okay, we’re going back to Val di Fiemme. We’re going back to Oberhof. We’re driving the wax truck to Oslo again.’ Last year, I realized I wasn’t looking forward to the travel anymore. I’d be excited once I got there, but the constant moving was wearing on me. That’s when I knew it might be time.”
Gus Schumacher and Ben Ogden (USA), (l-r) celebrate their Olympic silver medal in the Team Sprint in Tesero, Italy. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
On another level
When the sun came out in Italy last Wednesday morning, it forced a decision. A choice was made to go with a slower pair of skis, but that decision was not a whim; it was not a swing for a bases-loaded grand slam to win the World Series. It was choosing an option that presented itself through a trusted process, through seasons of tested routines, and having the experience to trust instinct.
By the time Gus Schumacher and Ben Ogden pushed off the line in the Team Sprint, the work had already been done, in the dark, in the truck, in inches measured on a test lane. Structures narrowed from twelve to eight, waxes debated and eliminated.
The silver medal will always belong to the athletes. They were, as Hecker put it, “on another level.”
But long before Schumacher chased down Johannes Høsflot Klæbo on the anchor leg, before the crowd roared in excitement, before the final sprint up the Zorzi Climb, there was a moment when the sun came out, and a technician had to make a decision.
And one detail to remember when the story of the 2026 Olympic Team Sprint is retold for years to come is that the United States service team, on that day, was also ‘on another level.’
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The highs were high and the lows were low in the Olympic team sprint in Italy, with the Ogden-Schumacher men’s team claiming silver and the Diggins-Kern women’s pair finishing out of the medals. Devon and Nat break the whole thing down.
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Jonna Sundling (SWE) follows Jessie Diggins (USA) during the Olympic Women’s Team Sprint in Tesero, Italy. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
PREDAZZO, ITALY — Eight years ago, on a different continent, the words “Here Comes Diggins!” by Chad Salmela vaulted American cross-country skiing into a new era. On Wednesday in Val di Fiemme, the event that changed everything for the United States returned to the Olympic stage.
The Women’s Freestyle Team Sprint has long been one of the Americans’ signature races. In the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics, Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins delivered the nation’s first Olympic gold medal in cross-country skiing. Last March in Trondheim, Diggins and Julia Kern claimed World Championship silver.
On Wednesday, Diggins started the race in the first leg, handing off to Kern for the anchor leg, as they had in their previous medal run. They hoped for one more shared championship moment.
It was not to be. The Americans finished fifth, in a race that required not just fitness but flawless execution. Sweden’s Jonna Sundling and Maja Dahlqvist took gold. Switzerland’s Nadja Kaelin and Nadine Faehndrich secured silver. Germany’s Laura Gimmler and Coletta Rydzek won bronze after a late-race crash by Finland opened the door in the final turn.
For the Americans, the margin was not dramatic. But close, at this level, does not bring home a medal.
Jessie Diggins (USA) and Jonna Sundling (SWE), (l-r) come through the stadium during the Olympic Women’s Team Sprint. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
“Honestly, left it all out there.”
The Team Sprint is one of the sport’s most punishing formats. Two skiers qualify individually; their times are combined to determine which 15 nations reach the final. In that final, the athletes alternate laps — three each — on a course that offers no reprieve.
Often, one skier brings distance strength, and the other sprint speed. For the United States, Diggins and Kern blur those categories. Both are capable of driving pace. Both can finish.
From the gun, Diggins did what she has done throughout her career: she went to the front.
She and Sundling stretched the field immediately, driving into the Zorzi Climb, the race’s defining ascent. The early order — Sweden, the United States, Norway, Canada — hinted at the nations prepared to dictate terms.
Jonna Sundling (SWE) stretches her lead. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
When Sundling surged later in the race, Diggins expected it.
“I knew she was probably going to do that,” Diggins said afterward. “And I was like, just do the best that you can do. You know, like, you can’t control anything except your effort and your heart. And I was like, skiing out of my body, and I just did everything that I could, and I’m proud of that.”
That theme — control what you can — carried through her reflections.
“Honestly, I almost passed out like four different times,” she said. Then, clarifying: “No, from going that hard, no regrets. Honestly, left it all out there. I feel like we did everything we could, and that is the only thing you can control at the end of the day.”
Julia Kern (USA) and Jessie Diggins (USA), (l-r) gather in the finish area after the race, Diggins racing in the US team’s relay socks for the final time. (Photo: Barbieri/NordicFocus)
One final lap with ‘Relay Socks’
By the last exchange, Sweden had carved out daylight. Switzerland began clawing into Finland’s hold on silver. Behind them, Germany, Norway, the United States, and Finland battled for bronze.
On the final descent, Finland’s anchor, Jasmin Kahara, lost her balance in the sweeping right-hand turn and fell, sliding out on her stomach. Germany and Norway slipped past in their tucks. Kern, just meters behind, fought to the line, but the podium had narrowed to two.
Coletta Rydzek (GER) brings home the bronze medal for Germany with Norway’s Julie Bjervig Drivenes just off camera. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
As they drove for the line side by side, aerodynamically no-pole skating with everything they had, it was clear this was going to be close. Germany claimed bronze while Norway left empty-handed in fourth. Just behind, Kern brought the United States to the finish in fifth.
For Diggins, the moment carried a different weight. It was, by her admission, her last Olympic relay leg.
“I love racing with this girl. I’m so, so proud of her,” she said of Kern. “And, yeah, it’s emotional to feel like I’m never gonna pull on those relay socks again.”
When asked whether there was a sense of handing the event forward, she reflected on the arc of her career — from her first team sprint world title in 2013 to the growth of youth programs back home.
“It’s just really cool to be part of the evolution of American skiing,” she said.
Julia Kern (USA) and Nadine Faehndrich (SUI), (l-r) find their lines around a tricky corner. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Whitcomb knows they can win
For Head Coach Matt Whitcomb, the analysis was candid and clear-eyed.
“Yeah, it was a good race,” Whitcomb said. “Of course, this is an event that we know we can win, and we didn’t today.”
In a format this tight, small imperfections are decisive.
“For even a bronze medal to happen, both legs have to be firing exquisitely,” he said. “We swung as hard as we could. We did our best. We were prepared to win today, and we just didn’t.”
Of Kern’s anchor leg, Whitcomb offered both empathy and affirmation.
“Julia is an incredible performer, and one thing you can always trust from her is that you’re gonna get her absolute best,” he said. “We saw it on the final climb. I was happy with how she climbed. Just didn’t quite have the entire thing today, and that’s okay.”
Jessie Diggins tags Julia Kern (USA), while Jonna Sundling tags Maja Dahlqvist (SWE), (l-r) in the exchange zone between laps. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Diggins in the best fitness of her life
Diggins has raced these Games managing injury concerns, including rib pain after a fall in the opening Skiathlon. But when asked whether her fitness was lacking, she pushed back.
“I feel like I’ve come into this with the best fitness in my life,” she said. “And that’s one of the only things I could control.”
There is comfort, perhaps, in that certainty — in knowing preparation was not the missing piece.
“I was skiing out of my body,” she said. “And I just did everything that I could.”
In Olympic-level team sprinting, that is sometimes enough. On Wednesday, it was not quite.
But the American women did what Diggins described as the only thing you can in cross-country skiing: you have to leave it all on the course without regret.
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U.S. Ski & Snowboard has announced its Olympic cross-country ski team for the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games, naming eight women and eight men to represent the United States in Val di Fiemme, Italy, from Feb. 6–22, 2026.
While the women were allocated eight Olympic starting positions outright, the men’s team was originally allotted seven. That number increased to eight after another nation declined to use one of its quota spots, allowing the United States to fill the vacancy and send a full men’s roster.
The announcement is part of a broader U.S. Ski & Snowboard nomination of 97 athletes across all disciplines. The athletes will be formally named to Team USA on Jan. 26.
Gus Schumacher races the third leg of the men’s 4 x 10 k relay during the 2022 Olympics. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Veteran Core, First-Time Olympians
The women’s team is led by Jessie Diggins, who will compete in her fourth and final Olympic Games as the most decorated American cross-country skier in history. She is joined by returning Olympians Rosie Brennan, Julia Kern, Novie McCabe, and Hailey Swirbul, alongside first-time Olympians Lauren Jortberg, Kendall Kramer, and Samantha “Sammy” Smith.
On the men’s side, Olympic veterans Ben Ogden, JC Schoonmaker, and Gus Schumacher return after competing in Beijing in 2022. They are joined by first-time Olympians John Steel Hagenbuch, Zak Ketterson, Zanden McMullen, Hunter Wonders, and Jack Young.
Grover: “We’ll Be Medal Threats”
Chris Grover, Program Director of the Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team, emphasized the team’s late-season momentum and growing confidence heading into the Games.
“Our season started slowly, but we’ve built some important momentum in the last few weeks,” Grover said. “We have some athletes who are at the pinnacle of their craft, winning World Cups and showing everyone what is possible for USA cross country. We’ll be medal threats in some key Olympic events.”
Grover also highlighted the size and scope of the U.S. support operation, calling it the largest and most experienced staff the program has ever brought to an Olympic Games, with major advances in ski service and equipment preparation.
Olympic cross-country skiing will take place in Val di Fiemme, a long-established championship venue that last hosted Olympic events in 2006 and is a frequent stop on the World Cup circuit.
Rosie Brennan leaves the exchange zone halfway through the women’s 15k skiathlon, the opening race of the 2022 Winter Olympics. (Nat Herz/FasterSkier-ADN)
2026 U.S. Olympic Cross-Country Ski Team
Women
Rosie Brennan (Anchorage, AK)
Jessie Diggins (Afton, MN)
Lauren Jortberg (Boulder, CO)
Kendall Kramer (Fairbanks, AK)
Julia Kern (Waltham, MA)
Novie McCabe (Winthrop, WA)
Samantha “Sammy” Smith (Boise, ID)
Hailey Swirbul (El Jebel, CO)
Men
John Steel Hagenbuch (Ketchum, ID)
Zak Ketterson (Minneapolis, MN)
Zanden McMullen (Anchorage, AK)
Ben Ogden (Burlington, VT)
JC Schoonmaker (Lake Tahoe, CA)
Gus Schumacher (Anchorage, AK)
Hunter Wonders (Anchorage, AK)
Jack Young (Jay, VT)
Ben Ogden races his first distance event of the 2022 Olympics, the 15 k individual start classic. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Thursday, February 12
• Women’s 10 km Free – 13:00
Friday, February 13
• Men’s 10 km Free – 11:45
Saturday, February 14
• Women’s 4 × 7.5 km Relay – 12:00
Sunday, February 15
• Men’s 4 × 7.5 km Relay – 12:00
Wednesday, February 18
• Team Sprint Free (Women & Men) – Qualification & Finals – from 09:45 / 11:45
Saturday, February 21
• Men’s 50 km Mass Start Classic – 11:00
Sunday, February 22
• Women’s 50 km Mass Start Classic – 10:00
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Jessie Diggins Objective 25-26 Overall World Cup Leader
Julia Kern Objective 20th 25-26 Sprint World Cup
Rosie Brennan Discretion 15th Ruka Sprint C
Sammy Smith Discretion 1st US Nationals Sprint C qualifier
Ava Thurston Discretion 3rd US Nationals Sprint C qualifier
Erin Bianco Discretion 4th US Nationals Sprint C qualifier
Lauren Jortberg Discretion 5th US Nationals Sprint C qualifier
Alayna Sonnesyn Alternate 27th Davos Sprint F
Jessie Diggins (USA) and Frida Karlsson (SWE), (l-r) coming to the line in Goms (SUI) in 2024. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
The above discretionary selections were nominated by a 15-person working group that included:
James Southam Athlete Rep
Ida Sargent Athlete Rep
Perry Thomas Mansfield Pro Nordic Team
Chad Salmela Team Birkie
Andy Newell Bridger Ski Foundation
Erik Flora Alaska Pacific University
Pepa Miloucheva Craftsbury GRP
Colin Rodgers SMS T2
Peter Holmes SVSEF Gold Team
Sophie Caldwell Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club
Eliška Albrigtsen Denver University
Chris Grover USST
Matt Whitcomb USST
Jason Cork USST
Kristen Bourne USST
The nominations were then approved by a discretionary selection review group comprised of:
Tyler Kornfield U.S. Ski & Snowboard Athlete Rep
Anouk Patty U.S. Ski & Snowboard Chief of Sport
Bryan Fish U.S. Ski & Snowboard Development Director
The above discretionary selection process will be repeated for each period of World Cup this coming season. As always, if you have questions or concerns about this process, feel free to contact me directly.
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)
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Gus Schumacher (USA) and the rest of his heat work their way up and over Toblach’s signature feature during the 5 k Mass Start last week. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
There are days in this sport when the numbers feel like the whole story: a time, a place, a gap. But every so often, cross-country skiing produces a day that can’t be explained by the clock alone — a day that feels bigger than the course, bigger than the snow, bigger than the athlete who happens to win it.
December 31, 2025, was one of those days.
In the space of a few hours at the Tour de Ski in Toblach, Gus Schumacher and Jessie Diggins both climbed onto the top step of the World Cup podium — Schumacher winning the men’s 5 km freestyle heat mass start in 9:35.4, Diggins winning the women’s in 10:51.2.
It’s worth pausing on what that sentence contains.
Not merely that two Americans had strong races on the same day. Not merely that the U.S. team put two athletes in contention. But that the United States — a nation that has spent decades carving out its place in a sport long dominated by Europe — produced two winners, one men’s and one women’s, on the same World Cup day, in the same venue, in a brand-new format that demanded equal parts speed, tactics, and social intelligence.
The official results pages will always show the same clean fact pattern: Schumacher over Austria’s Benjamin Moser by two-tenths, Norway’s Lars Heggen third; Diggins comfortably ahead of Sweden’s Emma Ribom and Moa Ilar.
But inside the U.S. wax room and the mixed zone, the day’s atmosphere was not clinical. It was almost disorienting — a moment that drew a line through American skiing’s past and then, for a beat, let everyone see how far the line had traveled.
“It’s probably going to take us all a little bit to really kind of wrap our heads around it,” U.S. Ski Team Nordic Director Chris Grover said afterward, still sounding like someone trying to describe a thing while standing inside it.
And then he admitted the quiet truth that every program director carries: days like this don’t happen on demand.
“It’s a special moment to see both those athletes on top at the same time,” he said. “It’s going to be hard to replicate. We’ll take it where we can get it for sure.”
U.S. head coach Matt Whitcomb saw it less as lightning and more as follow-through.
“It truly was a great day,” Whitcomb said. “And it was actually better than the results show. Every heat — with the exception of Kevin [Bolger’s] experience — our athletes moved up, finished competitively, and executed the plans they intended to execute.”
What stood out most to him wasn’t just the double victory. “Honestly,” Whitcomb said, “better than the double win is the feeling that we came up with a plan individually and as a team — and executed. It was a big win for everybody.”
Jessie Diggins (USA) wasn’t just the leader of the race and the Tour, but also of the athletes she teamed with in her heat of the 5 k Mass Start. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
A day that didn’t have to happen this way
If you want to understand why Toblach felt like more than an athletic coincidence, it helps to begin with the format, because the format did not reward the simplest kind of superiority.
Stage 3 was a 5-kilometer freestyle race in four separate mass-start heats with staggered start times and a final classification determined by combined times, not by who crossed the line first in any single heat. It was new enough that even veterans were still learning what the race “wanted.”
Whitcomb described the format as genuine unknown territory — not because the course was unfamiliar, but because the distance itself had been largely absent from the World Cup.
“The 5 k hasn’t been part of the World Cup for a while,” he said. “We know historically that we skate well, sprint well, skate 10 k’s well — and we focus a lot on the 5 k as a building block in training. But nobody really knew what to expect.”
The approach, he said, was deliberately simple: stay organized, enjoy the process, and trust the system. “We just operated the way we always do,” Whitcomb said. “Be organized, enjoy each other’s company, and look at the results at the end of the day.”
In a normal interval start, you win by suffering well. In a normal mass start, you win by positioning, conserving, and timing. In this hybrid, the incentives were stranger: the best strategy could be to help your competitors go faster — to create a heat so fast that it swallowed the rest of the field on arithmetic.
That sounds like something coaches dream up in theory and athletes abandon under the first real surge.
And yet, both Diggins and Schumacher described essentially the same decision: race the clock, and don’t be precious about the heat win.
Schumacher put it in his own blunt, funny way when asked about winning on the same day as Diggins: “I think it’s super cool! Jessie had to be a huge favorite today, so it was up to us to hold up our end, haha.”
Diggins, in the mixed zone after her race, was still riding the strange energy of having watched the men first — watched the experiment play out once — and then stepping into the women’s version with a clearer sense of the rules of engagement.
“What’s nice is it was just 5 k,” she said. “After watching the men, you were like, okay, you’re going to gain or lose 10 seconds on the Tour overall. But the big thing was to just have a really fast heat.”
Then she said the thing that makes this day so revealing: she described her heat as a temporary team—a coalition formed not by flags but by incentives.
“I thought it was so cool and fun to feel the camaraderie,” Diggins said. “I was talking to all the girls beforehand, like, okay, team number three, we’re going to do this… we’re going to change leads, and everyone’s like, yeah… We had really great teamwork out there… It was an unexpected delight of the format.”
Gus Schumacher (USA) charges to the finish line to win heat two and post the fastest time of the day. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Schumacher told a version of the same story — not as delight, but as commitment.
“I think my heat-mates and I realized that having a fast heat was the biggest picture,” he said. “I was prepared to be 10th in the heat if it meant we were fast.”
From the outside, Whitcomb saw something even more deliberate.
“Gus spent time reaching out to Lars Heggen and Ben Moser and came up with a plan,” Whitcomb said. “You saw some really well-orchestrated trading off of the lead in that heat. That led to a fast heat — and it led to those three guys on the podium.”
For Whitcomb, that was the defining trait of the race. “Gus is an incredibly savvy racer,” he said. “He’s a great physical specimen — this distance suits him. But what really made the difference was his willingness to control everything he could. And that meant teaming up with athletes from Austria and Norway.”
He explained how that philosophy became practical: trading leads early, staying disciplined, then continuing to work together deeper into the race than he expected — a heat built like a rotating paceline, but on snow, at World Cup speed.
And then, of course, the part no coalition can hand you: the finish.
Schumacher still had to have enough left to win the stage outright. Diggins still had to be strong enough to make the tactics matter.
The format offered an opening. The athletes still had to ski through it.
Benjamin Moser (AUT), Gus Schumacher (USA), and Lars Heggen (NOR), (l-r) share the Tour de Ski stage podium in Toblach (ITA). (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
The numbers, briefly, before the meaning
It’s important in a historical story to keep the results clean and factual.
On the men’s side, Gus Schumacher (USA) won in 9:35.4, with Benjamin Moser (AUT) second at +0.2, and Lars Heggen (NOR) third at +0.6.
On the women’s side, Jessie Diggins (USA) won in 10:51.2, with Emma Ribom (SWE) second at +5.5, and Moa Ilar (SWE) third at +6.9.
Those are the hard edges of the day — the parts that will remain true no matter what story gets written around them.
But what made Toblach feel different was not just that two Americans won; it was who they were, where they were in their respective arcs, and what it implied about the American program’s shape heading into an Olympic season.
Diggins is the established cornerstone — a skier who has spent years normalizing things that once felt improbable for the U.S. program. Schumacher is the next wave, still building the evidence that Minneapolis wasn’t a one-off, that his skillset is durable, that he can win in more than one kind of race.
In the mixed zone, Diggins made it feel personal and immediate. She had the post-win glow, yes, but the first emotion she reached for was pride in Schumacher.
“It was really cool,” she said. “It was super inspiring seeing Gus with his win. I’m so proud of him. So excited for him.”
That’s the moment: the most decorated active American skier on the women’s side, standing in Toblach, still buzzing, describing the men’s win as fuel — not as separate news.
Emma Ribom (SWE), Jessie Diggins (USA), and Moa Ilar (SWE), (l-r) on the Tour de Ski podium for the 5 k Freestyle Mass Start. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Toblach, of all places
Grover, thinking like a director who has watched years of World Cup logistics and outcomes, pointed to something that has been true long enough to become lore: Toblach has often been a good venue for the U.S. team.
“It’s funny — over the years, I’ve got to say Toblach has probably been the best venue for us of any place on the World Cup,” he said. He cited previous successes there — podiums and performances from different eras and athletes — and he also offered the pragmatic layer: Toblach’s dry, manmade Italian snow can be “easier to wax for,” which matters more than casual fans appreciate.
The location matters for another reason, too: Toblach sits inside the Tour de Ski, a crucible that encourages narratives. Athletes arrive tired. They leave tired. Every result is filtered through what it means for the overall standings and what it costs to achieve it.
This year’s Stage 3 came after a rest day and arrived as a kind of reset: short enough to be explosive, structured enough to be strange, meaningful enough to be remembered.
It was also the kind of stage where the U.S. program’s long-running strengths could express themselves.
Grover offered one of the more interesting explanations for why the U.S. has historically punched above its weight in short freestyle formats: structural adoption.
When sprint racing emerged and became formalized on the World Cup, the U.S. embraced it aggressively, he said — building it into domestic racing pathways early, so the program effectively selected and developed athletes with high anaerobic capacity, then built the aerobic engine on top.
The result, over time, has been athletes who can tolerate the speed of short formats without losing the distance competence required to survive something like the Tour.
Diggins and Schumacher are not identical athletes, but the day in Toblach suggested they share a kind of hybrid competence: fast skating with depth.
And that’s exactly what the new format asked for.
The historical thread: what came before, and why this is still rare
Toblach’s double win is easier to appreciate when you place it alongside earlier American “two-at-once” moments — because it clarifies what is new here and what is part of a longer progression.
Fellow U.S. Ski Team members Kikkan Randall (l) and Sophie Caldwell after finishing an unprecedented first and third, respectively, in the World Cup freestyle sprint in Lahti, Finland in 2014. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
Two Americans on the same World Cup podium: the women’s thread
Over the last 15 years, the most frequent American double podiums in individual races have come on the women’s side — and FasterSkier’s archive captures that evolution in chapters.
At the 2015 World Championships in Falun, Jessie Diggins and Caitlin Gregg won silver and bronze in the 10 km freestyle — an all-timer, not only for the medals but for what it did to the American imagination about what was possible in championship distance racing.
If you track those milestones as a line, you can see how the U.S. women’s program went from “breakthrough” to “repeatable.” It also helps explain why Diggins winning in Toblach — while still special — did not feel like a shock.
It felt like the continuation of a normal she helped invent.
Simi Hamilton (l) hugs fellow U.S. Ski Team member Jessie Diggins after both placed third in their respective freestyle sprint finals at the World Cup stage in Gatineau, Quebec. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Men + women on the podium the same day: the precedent
Now add the second thread: men and women both reaching the podium on the same day.
That day is an important historical anchor because it shows how rare cross-gender podium alignment was, even during periods of strong U.S. women’s success.
That alignment has echoed in the recent past, too — most memorably on February 18, 2024, in Minneapolis. Schumacher’s first World Cup victory, a 10-kilometer freestyle individual start on home snow, came on a day when Diggins also climbed onto the podium, finishing third in the women’s race. It was the kind of split-screen moment that hinted at what might be coming: a U.S. program no longer living on isolated miracles, but beginning to stack elite performances across genders on the same afternoon. Toblach sharpened that earlier echo into something rarer still — not a shared podium, but shared victories, on foreign snow, inside the Tour de Ski.
Toblach 2025 goes a step further than Gatineau 2016 — not “podium together,” but win together.
And that is why Grover’s comment — “hard to replicate” — matters. Because even a strong program doesn’t get to schedule these moments. It can only position itself to recognize them when they arrive.
Gus Schumacher (USA) celebrates the victory in Toblach (ITA) with his US Ski Team teammates, coaches, and staff. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Why the double win felt like a team story
One reason Toblach resonated within the team is that both Diggins and Schumacher narrated their wins with a vocabulary that sounded less like a solitary triumph and more like collective execution.
Diggins led with skis.
“Fast snow, had really fast skis,” she said. “So thank you to our team…”
She emphasized tactics not as personal cleverness but as mutual agreement: “Everyone did their part… Okay, I can pull now, and you can pull now.”
And she framed the day’s broader meaning not as a press-release milestone but as a human reaction: “I’m so proud of Gus and everyone on the team.”
Schumacher, asked to reflect on the same-day symmetry, responded with humor and a little humility — the kind that still acknowledges responsibility.
Jessie Diggins (USA) also celebrates the victory in Toblach (ITA) with her US Ski Team teammates, coaches, and staff. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Jessie “had to be a huge favorite,” he said. So “it was up to us to hold up our end.”
That sentence contains something important about Schumacher’s emergence: he speaks like someone who believes he belongs in the job.
Not in a boastful way — in a functional way. Like a skier who believes the U.S. men’s team is allowed to contribute to a “historic day” not as an anomaly but as a duty.
Grover, who has watched the U.S. program move through phases in which the women carried the torch while the men tried to catch up, seemed to feel that shift, too.
He described the day as something that bridges eras: there were times when a strong men’s day came without a matching women’s result; times when the women’s team was deep, and the men’s team was still searching for its consistent breakthrough.
Toblach wasn’t just both genders on the podium. It was both on top.
Whitcomb saw the same pattern across the roster.
“Every one of our athletes — men and women — finished competitively in their heats,” he said. “And they executed the plans they came in with.”
That included results beyond the podium: Diggins winning, Schumacher winning, Julia Kern in 10th, Ben Ogden in 20th, and J.C. Schoonmaker in 29th. “It really was an all-around great day,” Whitcomb said. “The execution was better than the results show.”
A program doesn’t change overnight, but it does reveal itself in moments like this — when two separate pipelines deliver winners on the same day, under the same strange rules, in the same high-pressure context.
Jessie Diggins (USA) embracing the excitement in the finish corral. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
The strange beauty of the format: teamwork as the unintended point
FIS likely designed the four-heat format for spectacle: shorter races, more winners crossing lines, more “events” within a day. But Diggins described a different kind of spectacle — not for the cameras, but for the athletes.
The format made cross-country skiing briefly feel like a sport of temporary alliances.
“Maybe that wasn’t the goal,” Diggins said, acknowledging that she was projecting her own values onto a structural experiment. “Maybe that wasn’t the goal to get teamwork across countries. But for me, that was the goal.”
Whitcomb was candid about why formats like this matter beyond athlete preference.
“What’s most important isn’t actually what the athletes think,” he said. “It’s what the fans think. What the fans think dictates whether or not the sport survives in some regards.”
Traditional 10 and 15-kilometer individual starts, he added, can be hard for casual viewers to engage with. “We need some change,” Whitcomb said. “And I think today provided a little bit of life to the sport. Frankly, it needs that.”
Schumacher’s description of his heat was less philosophical but equally revealing: a group of men deciding, in advance, that the only way to win was to make the whole heat fast — even if it meant giving up individual control.
This is an unusual kind of honesty in ski racing, where athletes are trained to reveal as little as possible about tactics.
And it helps explain why the double win felt like a “team day” even though cross-country skiing is, most of the time, one of the most solitary endurance sports in the world.
Both winners described the same phenomenon: speed created by cooperation.
And both wins required the same final act: individual excellence layered atop shared work.
Gus Schumacher (USA) thanks his ‘lucky’ fan club in Toblach (ITA). (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
The human detail that made it feel like a story, not a statistic
Near the course, as the day unfolded, there was also the kind of detail that doesn’t appear in official documents but sticks to memory — the four “good luck Alaskans” who have now become part of Schumacher’s mythology.
They were present at his World Juniors victory. They were present in Minneapolis. They were in Toblach again.
They will be at the Olympics, too.
It’s an affectionate superstition, but it also points toward something real: American skiing used to feel like a sport of isolated miracles — one athlete, one day, one surprise.
Now, it is starting to feel like a sport that can sustain its own community momentum — people traveling for it, following it, building rituals around it.
A program becomes a culture not when it wins once, but when it wins often enough that people start to behave like it’s a thing worth following.
Jessie Diggins (USA) and Rosie Brennan (USA), (l-r) skied to second and third place in Davos in 2024. (Photo: NordicFocus)
What to do with a day like this
There is always a temptation, after a historic result, to treat it like a prophecy.
To declare that the U.S. has “arrived,” that the future is guaranteed, that Toblach is the beginning of the next era.
Neither Diggins nor Schumacher offered that kind of certainty. Diggins, even in the glow, stayed practical; Schumacher talked about holding up his end and taking the Tour day by day.
Grover, too, resisted prophecy. He chose something quieter: recognition, gratitude, and the realism that moments like this can’t be manufactured.
But history has its own rules. Even if athletes move on quickly, even if the World Cup continues, even if the next races erases some of last week’s glow, the record will still show: the United States won both races on the same World Cup day in Toblach.
And when future athletes look back through FasterSkier’s archive — through Lahti 2014, Falun 2015, Gällivare 2015, Toblach 2017, the Tour days with Diggins and Brennan, the first men-and-women same-day podium in Gatineau — they will see Toblach 2025 not as a random spike, but as a point that makes the line look continuous.
A story isn’t just an outcome. It’s the shape that outcomes make when you stack them over time.
On December 31, 2025, American cross-country skiing’s shape changed again — not by accident, but by two winners choosing to race the same strange day with the same clear idea of what mattered.
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It is fitting that Brennan and Diggins were there in Minneapolis to celebrate and lift Schumacher when he won his first World Cup race; it’s easy to imagine Randall, Gregg, Maubet Bjornsen, Caldwell Hamilton, and Hamilton also there lifting all of them because they are all building blocks for what comes next. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
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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Finals week has a way of compressing time. Days shrink into problem sets and exams; nights stretch just long enough to make sleep negotiable. When Jack Lange logged onto Zoom from Hanover in late November, he was finishing his senior fall at Dartmouth, a mechanical engineering major balancing equations while packing for a training block at Silver Star. The snow out west wasn’t cooperating. Races were being reformatted. Nothing felt settled.
That uncertainty didn’t seem to bother him much.
“We’re wrapping up school right now and then heading to Silver Star next Tuesday,” Lange said. “Hopefully, the snow conditions there improve a little bit.”
It was a measured answer—calm, almost deliberately so. Over the next hour, that calm would reveal itself not as indifference, but as something learned the hard way.
Young Jack Lange skiing in a New England BKL race. (Photo: Heidi Lange)
A kid who wasn’t supposed to be good at this
Lange grew up in Vermont’s Upper Valley, skiing out of Green Woodlands and the Ford Sayre Bill Koch League. It was the kind of childhood that feels almost mythic now: full-moon skis to a cabin, hot chocolate on a frozen pond, friends everywhere.
“I’ve always just made sure that that’s the thing that comes first,” he said. “Getting outside and enjoying being outside and enjoying pushing myself and having fun.”
He played everything. Soccer, where he was very aware he wasn’t the best. Swimming, where he gravitated toward breaststroke. Cross-country running. Mountain biking. For a while, he did both alpine and Nordic skiing, until a choice had to be made.
“My sister was doing more Nordic and more of my friends were on the Nordic,” he said. “So I just went with Nordic.”
Lange and friends meeting Jessie Diggins and Sophie Caldwell Hamilton at the Quebec World Cup. (Photo: Heidi Lange)
It wasn’t a natural fit at first. Lange remembers being the odd kid out on relay day—the one paired with a skier from another team because the numbers didn’t work.
“I wasn’t good at it,” he said simply.
What hooked him wasn’t speed. It was curiosity.
“I really like the amount that you can learn from being out in training,” he said. “Not even structured training—just being outside and having fun. I really enjoy the process of figuring out how hard I can push myself.”
By freshman year of high school, something shifted. He trained more. He paid attention. And suddenly the results were better than expected.
“That was kind of the confidence boost that launched me into, like, ‘Oh, this is something I can do.’”
2019 Junior National Championships in Alaska. Lange finished in fifth place with Dartmouth teammate Wally Magill in first. (Photo: Heidi Lange)
The pressure builds—and breaks
Lange’s junior years were uneven. Seasons were disrupted. Races were canceled. One winter meant nine consecutive weekends racing at Craftsbury, all interval starts—an exercise in patience for someone who loved head-to-head competition.
“I love mass starts,” he said. “I love racing next to people. Mind games and competitiveness.”
By his senior year, he had narrowed his focus to Junior Nationals. The goal was simple: qualify. Nothing more.
When he arrived at the 2019 Junior National Championships in Alaska, he was the last skier to qualify from New England. He started near the back in the 5-kilometer skate race at Kincaid Park.
“My goal for the entire season was to make JN’s,” he said. “And I was there, and I was like, I’m in Alaska. This is kind of crazy.”
Mid-race, a coach called out a split.
“One of the New England coaches is like, ‘You’re like three seconds out of top ten,’” Lange recalled. “And I was like, that’s pretty funny.”
He kept skiing. He finished fifth.
“That was way, way beyond where I ever could have expected to be.”
There’s a photo from that day—Lange among a group of skiers who would later become familiar names on the U.S. Ski Team. At the time, it felt surreal. In hindsight, it was clear it wasn’t the performance itself that mattered most, but the conditions under which it happened: no expectations, no fear.
That lesson wouldn’t fully sink in until later.
Lange with his parents, Heidi and Greg. (Photo: courtesy photo)
Dartmouth, and the weight of wanting it too much
Lange chose Dartmouth largely because it felt right. He wanted engineering. He liked the people. He trusted the coach.
“Brayton [Osgood] is such an amazing coach to work with,” Lange said. “He’s never the guy to show up and be like, ‘This is what you’re doing.’ He’s super approachable. He really wants us to find our spot in the sport.”
At Dartmouth, skiing wasn’t isolated from the rest of life—it was embedded within it. That integration became most visible during the most stressful week of the year: NCAAs, which overlap directly with finals.
“My freshman year, that finals week with NCAAs was kind of a dark time,” Lange said. “I was close to tears on the start line of the 20k race. Just so much pressure, so overwhelmed.”
He remembers warming up briefly, then stopping.
“I skied like fifteen minutes in the warm-up and just put my skis down,” he said. “I was completely broken.”
A kilometer into the race, he was in dead last.
And then something shifted.
“I saw Brayton on the side of the trail,” Lange said. “And I was like, you know—I don’t need to take this so seriously. I can show up, do my best at everything, and give 100 percent effort. If I do that, it’s gonna come through.”
It did. That race became one of his best of the season.
Dartmouth Ski Team (Photo: courtesy photo)
The things that make it lighter
The story of Dartmouth skiing is often told through tradition—green suits, first-years with mohawks, time trials. Lange points to different details.
There’s a sauna in the locker room.
“That’s a prime spot to get to know the team,” he said. “We rip this on all the time.”
There’s also life beyond skiing. Every non-freshman on the men’s team is in a fraternity. Lange lives in the Zeta Psi house with teammates and classmates—engineers, computer scientists, people whose lives orbit entirely different centers.
“I’m surrounded by a ton of people who have no clue what skiing means to me,” he said. “And that’s been a really huge part of being at Dartmouth.”
His best season, he said, came immediately after pledging.
“It taught me how to not put as much pressure on myself,” Lange said. “How to make this a sustainable thing that I could really enjoy.”
That balance—academic, athletic, social—isn’t accidental.
“None of the three would be as good without the others,” he said.
Lange’s favorite race: Prospect relay with Cam Wolfe and Cooper Camp. (Photo: Heidi Lange)
“You can’t live nervous”
Lange keeps a training log. He trains consistently. He admits he’s overcooked himself before. What he doesn’t do is chase numbers obsessively.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had an hour’s target that I’m trying to hit,” he said. “I’ve just trained for the enjoyment of it.”
There was a time, early on, when outside voices crept in.
“I was getting a lot of people saying, ‘You’re training too much. You’re doing this wrong,’” he said. “I got a little worked up about it and a little nervous.”
He paused.
“You can’t live nervous.”
It’s the line that keeps resurfacing, whether he’s talking about high school racing, college pressure, or the future beyond Dartmouth.
“I think anyone who’s in high school, middle school—just go out there because you enjoy it,” he said. “You’re gonna have crappy days. But if you go out there every day and just have a good time, and surround yourself with people you like to be around, things will work out.”
That philosophy shapes how he defines success now. Lange talks about team first. About racing in a green suit. About showing up energized.
“The guys here are here for the right reasons,” he said. “They’re skiing because they really enjoy skiing. That’s super energizing.”
Lange with his long time coach and mentor, Dennis Donahue. (Photo: Heidi Lange)
A quiet kind of confidence
Ask Lange where he sees himself years down the road, and he doesn’t reach for outcomes. He talks about process.
“The process of showing up every day,” he said. “How can I be the best athlete I can be today? That’s the most rewarding thing.”
Skiing, he believes, has taught him how to live—how to work, how to recover, how to stay curious.
“Wherever I am fifteen years from now,” he said, “all of the lessons that I’ve learned are still going to be extremely relevant and important.”
For now, there are finals to finish and skis to pack. The snow will either come or it won’t. The races will sort themselves out.
Lange will keep doing what he’s learned to do best: show up, stay loose, and ski without fear.
Because speed, he’s learned, is hard to find when you’re holding your breath.
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The lights come on early in Davos, not because they are needed, but because Davos wants them on. By mid-afternoon, the valley is already sliding toward dusk, the alpine light thinning and flattening, and the sprint venue leans into the moment the way it always has: music turned up, cowbells ringing with a little extra insistence, flames licking the edges of the course like stage cues. The effect is deliberate. This is not cross-country skiing as a quiet endurance ritual in the woods; this is cross-country skiing as spectacle.
“Davos deliberately designs this event to feel like a rock concert,” U.S. head coach Matt Whitcomb said afterward. “They race at night, they bring in fire and lighting and music, and because it’s a two-lap course, you see the athletes twice as much. They invest in the experience, and it pays off.”
Jack Young (USA) on his way to a fast qualification in Davos (SUI). (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
On Saturday night, it paid off in a men’s freestyle sprint that delivered one of the most compelling American performances in years. Jack Young finished fourth, Ben Ogden fifth — the first time two American men had made a World Cup sprint final together in Davos — on a night when the script cracked open early and never fully resealed. Johannes Høsflot Klæbo was gone before the semifinals. A notoriously slick downhill corner became the day’s silent antagonist. And by the time Lucas Chanavat lunged across the line to win by three hundredths of a second, the story had already shifted: the U.S. men were no longer visitors to the sprint final. They were participants, with opinions about how it might have ended differently.
For Young, the fourth-place finish marked his first World Cup sprint final — a breakthrough that felt less like a surprise than a confirmation. “This result means so, so much,” he said. “It really feels like proof that I can make it to the top in this sport. If I’d told myself three years ago that I’d finish fourth in a World Cup sprint, I would have thought I was insane.”
Ben Ogden (USA) during qualification in Davos (SUI). (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
A course that punishes impatience
Davos is not a long sprint, but it is not a forgiving one. Two laps of just under 600 meters pack in a decisive climb, sustained skating tempo, and — this year especially — a downhill corner that demanded respect. The snow was entirely man-made, hard and fast, and as the temperature dropped through the evening, it glazed into ice. Athletes began to talk about the corner not as a feature, but as a test.
“That bottom corner was particularly dicey this year,” Whitcomb said. “Man-made snow turns to ice quickly, and that corner claimed a lot of people over the last couple of days.”
Ben Ogden felt it more than once. “That last corner was really the focus,” he said. “I fell there yesterday, JC fell there in practice, and I stumbled twice in the final and ended up against the boards. It was unfortunate, but every year you learn a little more about how the ice forms there.”
The corner changed the race’s outcome. The first time through, athletes skied it conservatively, prioritizing stability over speed. The second time, with fatigue setting in and the finish looming, choices became riskier — and more consequential.
Janik Riebli (SUI), Jack Young (USA), and Lars Heggen (NOR), (l-r) during the heats in Davos (SUI). (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Qualifying hints, early shocks
The qualifying round suggested a familiar hierarchy, but with enough irregularities to hint that Davos might misbehave. Lucas Chanavat of France was fastest, Ben Ogden second, Klæbo third. Jack Young qualified sixth — an excellent position that put him squarely in control of his bracket.
“That’s one of the best qualifying results we’ve ever had on the U.S. team,” Whitcomb said. “Qualifying in the top ten gives you options. It lets you race offensively instead of defensively.”
Klæbo’s day began to unravel in the quarterfinals. Boxed in and forced wide through the downhill, he finished fourth in his heat and failed to advance. His 16-race sprint win streak ended not with drama, but with traffic — a reminder that sprinting, for all its stars, is still governed by physics and positioning.
Ogden and Young both advanced cleanly. Ogden won his quarterfinal with authority. Young skied his with the composure of someone who knew exactly what he needed to do — no more, no less.
Ben Ogden (USA) and the US Ski Team had a lot to celebrate in Davos (SUI). (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Semifinals: the Americans arrive together
By the semifinals, the noise in Davos had sharpened. Chanavat advanced. Ogden advanced. And then Young did, stepping into his first World Cup sprint final with the kind of quiet efficiency that suggested the moment had not surprised him.
“To be honest, the first thing that went through my mind standing on the start line was how tired I was,” Young said. “But I reminded myself that anything can happen in a sprint final. I don’t train just for qualifiers and quarters — I train for the full day. It was time to execute.”
For Ogden, the significance of sharing the moment wasn’t lost. “Racing with Jack today was awesome,” he said. “He has this infectious confidence, especially here in Davos. Last year we were in the semifinals together, and this year we were in the final together. That’s a big step.”
Whitcomb saw it as more than a statistical milestone. “To put two guys into the men’s final is a dream,” he said. “When athletes finish a race seeing the podium and knowing they can be on it, that’s when things start to get dangerous — in a good way.”
Jack Young (USA) had every right to be celebrated after his breakout race today in Davos (SUI). (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
The final: margins measured in inches
The men’s final unfolded at full speed. Chanavat and Federico Pellegrino established themselves early, both reading the race the way veterans do — not forcing it, but shaping it. Oskar Opstad Vike of Norway positioned himself patiently, waiting for the moment when commitment would matter.
Ogden and Young stayed connected. Coming into the final corner, Ogden had position. Young had momentum.
“I was really gunning for that podium,” Ogden said. “I felt like I was pretty close. With fewer stumbles and maybe a little better positioning, I think I could have made it happen.”
The corner had other plans. Ogden’s line took him over the ice and was forced wide, momentarily pinned against the boards. Young exited cleaner, carrying speed into the finishing straight.
Chanavat and Pellegrino lunged together at the line, Chanavat winning by three hundredths of a second. Vike took third. Young crossed fourth, Ogden fifth — separated from the podium by seconds, but not by belief.
“I finally feel like I can truly compete at the top,” Young said. “That’s a special feeling.”
Results — Men’s Sprint Freestyle, Davos
Lucas Chanavat (France)
Federico Pellegrino (Italy)
Oskar Opstad Vike (Norway)
Jack Young (USA)
Ben Ogden (USA)
Edvin Anger (Sweden)
Notables: Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (Norway), 17th, and JC Schoonmaker (USA), 27th.
It has been a tough trail back to the top step on the podium for Lucas Chanavat (FRA) so he was extremely excited to be standing on it today in Davos (SUI). (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
What Davos leaves behind
Davos has always been good at revealing things. It reveals how athletes handle altitude, manage nerves, and respond when a race refuses to go according to plan. On Saturday night, it revealed something else: American depth at the sharp end of a sprint final.
Young talked about the atmosphere as something that lifts him. “With all the energy, it’s easy to trick yourself into thinking you’re walking into a big arena,” he said. Ogden talked about validation — not just from results, but from proximity. “My target in these races is the podium,” he said. “It feels good to know I’m getting closer.”
Whitcomb, standing back from it all, saw the longer arc. “We’re in a really good place with these guys,” he said. “There’s a lot more to come.”
The flames went out eventually. The music faded. Davos returned to being a quiet alpine town under an early winter night. But for the American men — and for two Vermonters who now know exactly what a World Cup sprint final feels like in tandem — something lingered.
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This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.
There are winter mornings when a World Cup feels like a World Cup, and there are winter mornings when the sport seems to slip into its future tense. Today, in Trondheim, was the second kind. The light came late and cold over the stadium, washing the course in the flat silver of early December, but everything else carried the charge of February. Coaches shouted splits with a little more strain in their voices; athletes tightened their warmups with a little more intent. You could feel the nerves of a nation in the Norwegian start pen. You could feel the confidence of another in the Swedish one.
For the women on the line, the distance was familiar—ten kilometers of freestyle skiing, two laps, clean snow, no drafting, no negotiations—but the meaning was not. This is the race that will award an Olympic gold medal in Val di Fiemme in eight weeks. The stopwatch in Trondheim wasn’t just measuring form in early December; it was auditioning futures, exposing weaknesses, and hinting at hierarchies that might matter when the medals are real.
What followed was not a rehearsal so much as a warning: Sweden already looks like a finished script; the United States has a veteran in her final season, refusing to yield the stage; and Norway—despite the home crowd—spent the afternoon hunting answers they did not entirely find.
Jonna Sundling (SWE) and Swedish teammates set the early standard at the 2 k split in the 10km Individual Start Freestyle in Trondheim (NOR). (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
The Swedish Wave: Sundling Lights It, Andersson, and Ilar Finish It
The Swedish takeover announced itself at the 2 k timing banner. Jonna Sundling, better known as a sprint specialist, hammered through in 5:52, the fastest split of the day at that point. Within minutes, the entire top of the board was yellow and blue: Sundling, Ilar, Emma Ribom, Frida Karlsson, and Ebba Andersson stacked one through five in the early going.
By 5 k, they had turned that into a proper blockade. Sundling led; Ilar, Andersson, and Ribom were essentially layered behind her on the clock; Karlsson hovered close. The question wasn’t whether Sweden would win but which Swede would be allowed to keep the flowers.
At the same time, Italy made a serious bid to interrupt the pattern. Maria Gismondi, just 21, moved into the virtual lead near 5.9 k and held it through the stadium. Her final time of 26:31.4 ultimately held up against every challenge except the Swedish trio and Diggins, good for sixth and the best World Cup result of her career. It was exactly the kind of performance the Italian federation will want to see ahead of the home Olympics.
The race for the win, though, narrowed to two names: Andersson and Ilar.
Ebba Andersson (SWE) takes the win in the Women’s 10 k Individual Start Freestyle in Trondheim (NOR). (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Andersson, starting in bib 44, did what she has built a career on. She let Sundling shoulder the riskiest early pace, then began to grind everyone else down. By 6.9 k, she had moved to the top of the virtual standings. At 9.2 k—the final intermediate with 800 meters remaining—she led Ilar by just 1.6 seconds, with Sundling and Diggins already on the defensive.
Ilar, celebrating her 100th World Cup start, skied the kind of race that confirms her status as more than a supporting player in the Swedish machine. She built steadily through the middle sections, using her high-tempo, slightly more elastic style to put serious time into Sundling and much of the field on the second lap. At that same 9.2 k split, she was 12.4 seconds ahead of Sundling and still closing on Andersson—setting up a finish that felt less like a December World Cup and more like a championship climax.
With bib 40 pulled over her race suit, Ilar came across the line with the fastest time thus far (26:07.3), but down the last climb and into the final V2, Andersson did just enough. Her final 500 meters looked like a long, controlled sprint—less explosiveness than total commitment. She hit the line in 26:05.3, then folded over her poles as the result rang in—two seconds quicker than the time of her teammate Ilar.
“I also felt that we had good skis,” Andersson said afterward—an understated summary of a day when Sweden appeared to have both the fastest boards and the strongest legs.
After yesterday’s Skiathlon victory, Jessie Diggins (USA) went to the well again today in the 10km Freestyle. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Diggins in the Pain Cave, Again
If Saturday was Jessie Diggins’ day—her first-ever skiathlon World Cup win on this same Trondheim course—Sunday was about how much she had left. The 10 k freestyle is one of her signature events and will be her target distance at the Olympics in February. Still, it came after 20 punishing kilometers and a night filled with commitments that follow a World Cup win.
From the first split, the American was chasing the Swedes rather than matching them. At 2 k, she was 1.3 seconds back; at 6.9 k, she trailed Andersson by 2.2 seconds and Ilar by six, sitting in a tight cluster with Sundling and Norway’s Astrid Øyre Slind in what quickly became a four-way fight for third. By 9.2 k, Diggins had slipped to 13.3 seconds off Andersson and roughly 11–12 seconds behind Ilar, but she still held a tenuous 0.7-second advantage over Sundling and a slightly larger buffer on Slind.
That’s where the familiar part of the story began.
Diggins came out of the final tuck, hammered into V2, and turned that 0.7-second margin on Sundling into 3.0 seconds by the finish. Slind, charging from behind, closed much of the gap but ran out of course, ending up 0.5 seconds short of Diggins and three-tenths ahead of Sundling.
Afterward, Diggins said she felt encouraged by what the weekend revealed about her trajectory:
“I’m really happy with how I’m racing right now—where I’m at, how the training’s been going, how my body’s been adapting to the training load, and how racing has played into the overall plan. That’s been really cool. I’m super grateful.”
She also reflected on the advantage of experience in the late stages of her career:
“It’s really fun to be an older athlete because you get to know your body and you get to know the courses and the flow of things, and you just get to enjoy it. I’m taking it week by week, but I’m not taking it for granted.”
Jessie Diggins (USA) on her way to her second podium in as many days in Trondheim (NOR). (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
And in her race execution today, she emphasized the fight:
“I was definitely fighting for every single second out there… In an individual start, you never know when you’re going to need that hundredth of a second. My goal is always to ski as hard and as smart as I can and make sure I get to the finish line with nothing left.”
What she was most proud of, she said, wasn’t only the podium:
“I’m super proud of the process with the wax techs—how the team is driving and working together. The puzzle pieces are coming together, and that’s been really special.”
In her final World Cup season, with retirement announced and Milano–Cortina confirmed as her last Olympics, third place in this exact format—on a day when Sweden finished 1–2, and Norway threw 12 athletes at the problem—counts for more than just another podium. It’s proof that Diggins is still firmly inside the medal conversation for the 10 k free next February.
Astrid Oeyre Slind (NOR) led Norway in fourth place. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Norway’s Almost-Answers
For a team treating Trondheim as an Olympic trial, Sunday’s box score landed somewhere between reassuring and uncomfortable.
Astrid Øyre Slind, at 37, produced the kind of race that will look excellent on any selection document. A marathon specialist with much of her career spent on the Ski Classics circuit, she paced the 10 k like someone who knows exactly how deep she can go. Slind wasn’t heavily featured in the early splits, but she climbed relentlessly through the second lap, arriving at 9.2 k close enough to threaten Diggins’ podium. Her final climb was ferocious; the line, unfortunately, came half a second too soon. She finished fourth (+17.0), the top Norwegian on the day.
Behind her, Nora Sanness delivered a quietly excellent seventh-place finish, moving from roughly 8–9 seconds down at 2 k into the top 10 by the end. Heidi Weng, second in Saturday’s skiathlon, sat as close as 1.7 seconds off the lead at one intermediate but faded to 10th (+35.5) after a second lap that looked like someone running low on core stability and patience. Karoline Simpson-Larsen (11th) and Kristin Austgulen Fosnæs (12th) rounded out the Norwegian block just outside the top 10.
As always with Norway, the question isn’t whether they have enough good skiers—but which ones they trust when medals are on the line. On Sunday, the answer was Slind and Sanness, with Weng still firmly in the conversation. For the rest of the red suits, Trondheim may end up filed under “evidence, but not enough.”
Maria Gismondi (ITA) proved she will be one to watch when the women race this race again at her home Olympics in February. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Breakthroughs and Quiet Statements
Behind the podium and the selection drama, the Trondheim 10 k produced a handful of performances that will matter later:
Maria Gismondi (ITA), 6th (+26.1) — The young Italian’s surge into the leader’s seat midway through the race and her eventual sixth place were arguably as important as any podium. With Italy hosting the Games, the federation will be delighted to see an athlete in blue who can stand up to Swedes and Norwegians for 10 kilometers in skate.
Helen Hoffmann (GER), 9th (+33.5) — A former world junior champion in the 15 k freestyle, Hoffmann climbed from relative anonymity in the early splits into the top 10 by the finish—a statement performance for a German women’s distance squad trying to rebuild.
The Finns’ fade — At the first split, Finland briefly went 1–2–3 through Vilma Nissinen, Jasmi Joensuu, and Jasmin Kähärä. By the end, Joensuu and Pia Fink would share 14th (+48.8), Nissinen would slide to 20th, and Kähärä to the low 20s—valuable data for a nation balancing sprint prowess with distance ambitions.
For the rest of the American squad, it was a hard, unsentimental day. Julia Kern finished 40th (+1:30.2), Alayna Sonnesyn 55th (+2:03.9), and Kate Oldham 63rd (+3:01.4). Rosie Brennan, coming off a heavy workload in Saturday’s skiathlon and still working her way back, finished 51st (+1:59.7)—a result that likely reflects fatigue more than long-term form.
Kendall Kramer (USA) had a solid day in 46th place. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
A December Race That Felt Like February
On paper, Sunday in Trondheim will live forever as just another line in the FIS database: “Women’s 10 km Interval Start Free, December 07, 2025.” But everything around it felt bigger.
The event is an exact match for one of the six women’s cross-country races on the Olympic program: the same distance, the same technique, the same individual-start format. The Olympic women’s 10 k free is scheduled for February 12, 2026, at the Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium in Val di Fiemme. The names at the top of Sunday’s results—Andersson, Ilar, Diggins, Slind, Sundling, Gismondi—are almost certainly the names we will be circling when that start list goes up.
In that context, Trondheim wasn’t just an early-season test. It was an audition, a rehearsal, and a warning shot.
For Sweden, it confirmed what the rest of the world already suspected: the women’s distance team is so deep that a sprinter can lead a 10 k at 2 k, a rising star like Ilar can nearly steal the win, and a seasoned champion like Andersson can still slam the door in the final 500 meters.
For Norway, it sharpened the selection dilemma: the best individual performance came from a 37-year-old marathon specialist, and the home crowd saw their women beaten soundly in an event they will desperately want to win in Italy.
For Jessie Diggins and the U.S. team, the weekend now reads as a statement: a skiathlon win and a 10 k free podium on consecutive days, in her final World Cup season, in Scandinavia, in an Olympic-format race. With each race, she’s reminding everyone that the most decorated career in American skiing isn’t easing toward the exit—it’s still trying to slam through one more door.
If Sunday in Trondheim is any indication, the women’s 10 k free in Milano–Cortina will not be decided by large margins. It will be decided by seconds—and maybe, once again, by whatever is left in the tank over the last kilometer.
Feature stories like this one take time, access, and care to produce. If you value thoughtful storytelling and independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a Voluntary Subscriber. Your support directly fuels the work we do to cover the people, places, and moments that make our sport special.
Moa Ilar (SWE), Ebba Andersson (SWE), and Jessie Diggins (USA) (l-r) take the podium in the Women’s 10 k Freestyle Individual Start in Trondheim (NOR). (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.
