We had to take a break after our three-week Olympic sprint, but we’re back to catch up on a couple of weeks of World Cup racing.
Devon and Nat take a quick run-through of events in Sweden, Finland and Norway. We’ll be back after the marathons at Holmenkollen.
Reach us at devon[at]fasterskier.com and nat[at]fasterskier.com.
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Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) paced the Tour de Ski 20 K Classic in Toblach (ITA) to perfection. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
By mid-morning in Toblach, the cold had settled into the valley in that particular Dolomite way—dry, bright, and unforgiving. The stadium clock read 10:30 a.m., the tracks were hard-packed, and the Tour de Ski—never gentle, always exacting—had reached a moment where patience mattered as much as power. Stage 4’s men’s 20-kilometer classic pursuit would not be decided by theatrics. It would be decided by discipline.
From the first push out of the starting line, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo made that clear.
The Norwegian leader skied as if tethered to an internal metronome, clicking off splits that barely wavered across five laps of the 4-kilometer loop. Behind him, the race congealed into a dense, minute-long chase—ambitious but realistic, orderly but never comfortable. Inside that group, Gus Schumacher did what pursuit racing rewards: work when it mattered, wait when it didn’t, and finish inside the race rather than on its margins.
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) on his way to first place on the 20 K Classic Pursuit. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Klæbo’s Quiet Authority
Klæbo entered the day with the yellow bib and skied as though intent on keeping it uncontested. At 4 kilometers, he led in 9:11.8; at 8 kilometers, 18:23.4; at 12, 27:34.6; and at 16, 36:53.3—the first three splits almost exact to the tenth. He crossed the line in 46:01.7, never once letting the chase compress to a threatening distance.
Second place belonged to Mattis Stenshagen (+51.1), who skied the most assertive race of those behind Klæbo and briefly tested the cohesion of the chase on the fourth lap’s long climb. Third went to Edvin Anger (+59.8), tied on time with Italy’s Federico Pellegrino, whose classic form looked as efficient as it did economical. Emil Iversen finished fifth (+1:00.2), matching Schumacher stride for stride to the line.
That minute—barely more than a breath in Tour de Ski terms—defined the race.
Gus Schumacher (USA) did much of the work early to bring the chase into one pack behind Klaebo. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Schumacher in the Middle of It
Schumacher finished sixth, also +1:00.2, part of the decisive chase that refused to fracture even as the course repeatedly asked for answers. The result came less than 24 hours after his 5 k freestyle win in Toblach, and the transition—emotionally and physically—was not trivial.
“It was a little bit tough, honestly,” Schumacher said. “This pursuit started at 10:30 a.m., and I haven’t woken up before eight in probably a month because all our races have been so late. … I definitely enjoyed the win, but the focus was to refocus right away. It’s another new day, and this race was really important for the Tour.”
Inside the race, Schumacher was not hiding. He described closing the gap to Iversen after the early climbs and doing much of the work that consolidated the group—an effort he acknowledged with pride. “I did most of that work, which I’m actually pretty proud of,” he said. What he didn’t do was overreach. “I wasn’t trying to catch Klæbo or anything,” Schumacher added. “Even though some of the guys might have been thinking that.”
The fourth lap told the story. Stenshagen pressed hard on the long climb out of the stadium, stretching the elastic just enough to test resolve. Schumacher bent but didn’t break. Over the top, the group exhaled. The fifth lap came fast—but not frantic—and Schumacher found himself boxed in late, a tactical note he filed away rather than lamented.
“With the overall standings so tight, I don’t think it’s worth thinking about it too much,” he said. “I’m sitting in third right now, and top ten is definitely still the goal. … Everyone from second through ninth is so close that it really comes down to focusing day by day.”
That may be the most Tour de Ski answer of all.
Gus Schumacher (USA), Emil Iversen (NOR), Edvin Anger (SWE), and Lars Heggen (NOR) worked together to prevent Klaebo from extending his lead. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
A Chase by Committee
Behind Schumacher, the chase’s cohesion owed as much to restraint as to strength. Lars Heggen (seventh, +1:00.3) and Benjamin Moser (eighth, +1:00.8) rounded out a group that included Harald Østberg Amundsen (ninth, +1:03.1). No one bridged to Klæbo; no one detonated the pack behind. The race’s geometry stayed intact.
That stability mattered in a Norwegian context. With Olympic selection pressure already humming and only a few men’s spots still unsettled, Toblach functioned as both race and audition. Stenshagen’s second place was emphatic. The Tour does not reward one-off brilliance. It rewards survivability.
Ben Ogden (USA) finding his classic distance form. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
The Americans: Process Over Panic
Further back, the pursuit revealed its less visible truths. Ben Ogden finished 29th (+3:03.3), a result that reads well on paper and even better when you hear how he raced it.
“The biggest challenge is always the start,” Ogden said. “For me, it was about trying to pace the race properly, even when people were moving ahead of me early. … I started with a pack, then a bunch of them dropped me, and I just kind of let that happen, knowing I’d be able to catch some of them later—which I did.”
That in-and-out rhythm—sometimes lonely, sometimes crowded—is pursuit racing in the middle of the field. Ogden framed it honestly. “Racing in a tight group is obviously more fun,” he said, “but you really have to pace yourself and try not to lose unnecessary time in a Tour, especially when you’re already a little tired.”
For Zak Ketterson, who started deep in the order, the early kilometers were chaos by design. He finished 42nd (+3:55.1), but the route there mattered.
“The wave is really challenging, especially starting in bib 70,” Ketterson said. “Five or six seconds have already passed before I even reach the start line. The first two laps were chaos, and I was just trying to stay relaxed and avoid trouble.”
He did move forward—damage control after a Stage 2 crash that had already cost him minutes. “It was nice to move up a lot today,” Ketterson said, “but the classic sprint on Stage 5 is definitely the main focus now.”
Ketterson also addressed the jury’s written reprimand for use of a banned technique in a marked stride zone—a penalty that did not disqualify him but appears in the official record. “The technique violation came from double poling in a stride zone,” he explained. “I changed tracks to pass someone, and the motion of doing that ended up being a double pole.”
For Zak Ketterson (USA), the Tour de Ski hasn’t exactly gone as he had hoped, but today in the pursuit, he showed his form from earlier in the season. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
When the Day Turns on a Ski
Kevin Bolger finished 51st (+4:18.6), a result shaped by circumstance rather than strategy. Bolger had been patient by design, content to let early red-lining pass him by before advancing after lap two. Then a ski broke.
“I like to settle in, and then after lap two start working my way up the field,” Bolger said. “I was just about to do that today when someone merged into my track and broke my ski, which cost me close to a minute. That was pretty disappointing.”
Before that moment, his choices had been sound. Toblach’s two main climbs invite early commitment to kick wax, and Bolger leaned into it. “It was an easy choice to really feel the kick wax early,” he said. “The skis were feeling great, and I was really excited about how I was going to start moving up the field.”
Bolger’s broader view was measured, almost cheerful in its realism. “This Tour isn’t quite as massive as some of the past ones,” he said. “It’s about gaining confidence and fitness, as long as you’re able to absorb it after the Tour.” Olympic energy is present, he acknowledged, but not consuming. “At the end of the day, I’m just trying to race fast.”
J.C. Schoonmaker placed 56th (+4:42.7), while Jack Young finished 80th (+8:07.2), both navigating a day where patience was mandatory, and opportunities were earned in inches rather than meters.
Andrew Musgrave (GBR) and Antoine Cyr (CAN), (l-r) moving up through the field together. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Canada: Trials Done, Work Ongoing
Canada’s men arrived in Toblach with their Olympic trials already behind them and the Tour serving a different purpose. Antoine Cyr led the way in 13th (+1:54.5), with Thomas Stephen 28th (+3:02.6) and Xavier McKeever 30th (+3:08.1). The emphasis now is accumulation—fitness, familiarity, resilience—rather than immediate results.
Context at the Margins
The Tour de Ski has a way of narrowing options without warning. On Thursday morning, one Norwegian men’s Olympic hopeful, Oskar Opstad Vike, withdrew close to start time, a reminder that the margins between readiness and retreat are thin, especially in an Olympic year. Toblach did not create that pressure; it merely revealed it.
Mattis Stenshagen (NOR) was excited when he crossed the finish line as if he knew he had shown the Norwegian Olympic selectors enough to make the team. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
What the Splits Say
A look at the time checks explains why the race felt so controlled. Klæbo’s advantage barely fluctuated. The chase group’s gaps among themselves were measured in seconds—Schumacher, Iversen, Anger, and Pellegrino trading fractional advantages without a decisive rupture. Further back, time losses accrued not in dramatic collapses but in quiet inefficiencies: a missed pack, a broken ski, a moment of over-enthusiasm.
The course profile—five laps, 137 meters of total climb—rewards restraint. Toblach does not forgive impatience.
A broken ski for Kevin Bolger (USA) didn’t prevent him from showing his form in Toblach (ITA). (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Looking Ahead
Stage 4 did not reshuffle the Tour so much as clarify it. Klæbo remains the reference. The men chasing him know exactly how much ground they have—and how little room there is to gamble it away. Schumacher’s position near the top of the standings is real, earned through effort and discretion. Behind him, athletes like Ogden, Ketterson, and Bolger are racing a Tour that asks for perspective as much as speed.
Val di Fiemme awaits with its own demands and, this year, Olympic resonance. But Toblach offered a simpler lesson. In a pursuit, the clock is visible; the choices are not. The best skiers make the hard ones look easy—and the easy ones count.
Fastest Skiers on the Day – Men (Top 15, Net Time Only)
This ranking removes pursuit start gaps and shows who skied the fastest 20 km classic on Stage 4.
Day Rank
Athlete
Nation
Net Time
1
Edvin Anger
SWE
45:39.5
2
Simen Hegstad Krüger
NOR
45:44.0
3
Federico Pellegrino
ITA
45:45.5
4
Mattis Stenshagen
NOR
45:51.8
5
Emil Iversen
NOR
45:51.9
6
Gus Schumacher
USA
45:52.9
7
Truls Gisselman
SWE
45:58.5
8
Antoine Cyr
CAN
45:59.2
9
Hugo Lapalus
FRA
46:00.5
10
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo
NOR
46:01.7
11
Benjamin Moser
AUT
46:03.5
12
Savelii Korostelev
AIN
46:04.5
13
Harald Østberg Amundsen
NOR
46:07.8
14
Andrew Musgrave
GBR
46:13.6
15
Lars Heggen
NOR
46:17.0
Net time calculated as finish time minus individual pursuit start offset.
Places 3-7 where this close for Federico Pellegrino (ITA), Edvin Anger (SWE), Gus Schumacher (USA), Emil Iversen (NOR), (l-r) after 20 K in Toblach (ITA). (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
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Chandra Crawford (left) and Dasha Gaiazova after their 1-2 finish in the classic sprint in Rovaniemi, Finland.
Chandra Crawford and Dasha Gaiazova are currently the only women on the Canadian World Cup squad. But their lack of teammates hasn’t held them back so far: Crawford, a 2006 Olympic gold medalist, won the FIS sprint in Rovaniemi that weekend, and Gaiazova skied to 24th place in the World Cup sprint in Kuusamo, en route to 48th place overall in the mini-tour.
Crawford didn’t have an excellent start to the World Cup season, but Head Coach Justin Wadsworth told FasterSkier that he wasn’t worried.
“Where Chandra is right now, it actually hasn’t been that bad,” he said. “We knew going into this year that our focus was her training for January and February. We’ve done a lot of threshold work and working on different parts of her physiology. She knew she was going to sacrifice some of these results in the early races to be there later, because we just didn’t want to skip over some part of her physiology.”
A couple of weeks ago, FasterSkier caught up with Crawford and Gaiazova at a coffeeshop in Rovaniemi, Finland, with a decorating style that Crawford called “garage sale chic.”
FasterSkier: So there’s only two of you, huh?
Crawford in Rovaniemi.
Chandra Crawford: This is 200 percent better than some of my trips last year! [Dasha and I] have been kind of offset the last couple of years. The last time we had a good solid troupe together was a while ago. I had a big off year for injury and she had a stellar rocking year, so now we have the band back together.
FS: Hopefully you both have a stellar rocking year this year…
CC: Yeah, we finally synchronized!
FS: So you just get to travel with the boys all the time – how is that?
Dasha Gaiazova: It’s good! Everyone’s so friendly and supportive of each other. And when we have a chance to hang out with American girls we certainly do, so that’s always fun. On the World Cup, Kikkan’s great, we know where she is and when we’re in the same place we’ll get together. I think we’ll have more girls joining us later in the season for World Championships. It’s been going really well and I think it will get even better with the girls.
CC: It puts a lot of different pressures on having such a small crew. If one of us gets sick or something happens back home, and one of us can’t come on a trip, then it’s like, boom, you’re on your own. So that’s different, the energy and the consequences.
DG: Don’t break a leg.
CC: No.
FS: Do you have a separate women’s team?
CC: We’re all one team. We have a World Cup team and a Development team, but this past year we’ve done everything together with only very microscopic differences between those two. Everyone lives in Canmore. Part of the national ski team deal is that everyone has to move to Canmore.
Gaiazova in Rovaniemi.
DG: The way it says it in the contract is that you commit to spending six months a year in Canmore, which basically translates to moving [if you’re in Europe in the winter]. So we’ve all been in Canmore for many years. Chandra was born there, and those who weren’t have moved there a long time ago, since their junior days. So we all train together all summer.
CC: It’s a super centralized system. Right now we have a really strong center in Quebec, too…
DG: They join us for camps and stuff.
CC: …at least with the guys, which is really cool this year because it’s such an important thing in such a far-flung country like ours, that we can all work together and use each other has been amazing. I’ve been really enjoying getting to work with those guys and their coach. Everyone from Quebec is doing a great job and there are some Westerners who are living at that center, going back and forth. And that’s the way to become a successful nation – sharing the love and good people. It’s a sport that’s not big on our continent so we’ve got to do something to work together.
FS: I know you’ve trained with Kikkan some – do you think that’s something we could be doing more, getting the two countries together?
CC: We made a huge step this year. In the past it wasn’t really possible. Our past coach was not interested in working with the Americans. But now our coach is an American! It’s totally different. Right from the first camp he was lining us up, lining our camps up as much as possible with the American crew, which is totally amazing for us. It’s really great for the women’s side in particular.
DG: They’re just such good girls, too.
CC: And then we went to Park City and Kikkan decided to come to our camp! It was initially going to be a U.S. camp but then they changed it to Sun Valley, but she came with us. And then she attracted all these Alaskans.
DG: Liz [Stephen] came…
CC: Liz lives there, but Katie Ronsse, and Morgan Smyth showed up, all these people who were training in Alaska. So that was really cool to see all these people come to this big amazing camp.
FS: Are you guys over here fort the rest of the winter, or will you be racing domestically at all?
CC: Noooooooo.
DG: We’re focusing on the sprints, so we’ll do the next three World Cups after Gaellivare, and then we’re going to go home, do some training, skip the Tour de Ski, and come back for some more sprints.
FS: Are you ever going to do the Tour?
DG: I’ve done the Tour once, the very first edition of the Tour, I was actually in it. I didn’t finish. But Chandra here did. She crossed the finish line.
CC: 42nd.
FS: Hey, finishing is pretty impressive.
CC: It’s cool that we got to do it.
DG: It’s definitely not in the short-term plans.
FS: Maybe the long-term plans?
DG: Possibly, one day, maybe.
CC: Maybe when we’re in our thirties.
DG: Thirties, that’s coming up pretty soon!
CC: This right now is a good tour for me, though. Five weeks, three World Cup sprints, and having these two tune-up races [in Beitostoelen and Rovaniemi] is for me essential, because I haven’t gotten to race much in the last couple years, so it’s good to get some stepping stones on the way to the World Cup.
DG: Forget the last couple years, even just after the summer! After taking six months off, it’s like, I forget how to do this!
FS: How do you feel about the upcoming World Cups?
DG: We hope to do really, really, really well. That’s the plan.
CC: We need to get a top-20 to qualify for World Championships, to be prequalified. So that might not seem like a real impressive goal, but it’s nice to have something realistic to focus on, and if we both get it by Davos, we’re going to go alpine skiing for half a day and treat ourselves.
DG: We’ll celebrate!
CC: Similarly our team has a really hilarious little bet going with Justin where if we get some criteria, like we have five podiums this winter, or if we get a medal at World Championships, and a couple of podiums, there’s a couple different combinations, if we do that, then we can have a training camp in Hawaii in the spring.
FS: Wow, that sounds nice! Good luck!
CC: We have our incentives and that’s what we’re working towards.
FS: Was that your idea or his idea?
CC: I think he threw it out there in one of our team meetings.
DG: I think there was some talk going about having a training camp in Hawaii. And one talk led to another, to the goals, and it was like, hey, well, if you achieve certain standards, then we’ll reward you with a Hawaii camp.
FS: Would you bring your skis?
DG: No.
CC: We’d bring rollerskis. We’d rollerski the volcano.
DG: It would be fun to rollerski.
FS: You don’t want to do any sand skiing?
DG: I’ve done it before. It’s so hard! You can’t even last for half an hour. So rollerskiing up the volcano road will be great.
FS: It seems like you guys are psyched to have Justin working with you this year. How does his approach differ from what you had before?
CC: Well, we’ve had a new coach every year for four years.
DG: Five!
CC: So it’s been an amazing time to learn about different coaching styles. That’s the positive, I guess. But we’ve got something really solid in place now, he’s really committed. He’s got a place in Canmore and his kids are going to school in Canmore, so I think he’s going to last. It’s amazing to have that chance, to start a new year and go “well, how did last year work?” instead of just a whole new can of worms. That alone is going to be useful, building something up. It’s great having a coach with that much experience as a racer himself, and being married to Beckie [Scott] and having all that success to draw on.
FS: Does Beckie hang out with you guys?
DG: She comes…. it’s really cool to see her. You know, she just had a daughter. Once in a while she’d come for the workouts with us. Just having here there is like, wow, this is awesome. So for sure she makes appearances. She appears at the right moment. It’s been really cool to have her, and Justin also, share some bits and pieces from Beckie’s training and how she approached things.
CC: I feel like he has this ace in his back pocket, which he can play at any time. If you start a sentence with Beckie did, dot dot dot… instantly, we’re so calm. Oh, Beckie did this, and then she won. Oh, Beckie did this and then this happened. Oh, Beckie had a hard time with this and it’s like “yessss!” It’s such a strong, powerful anecdote to zing out at us.
DG: It’s kind of ironic, I feel, that we had to get Justin lured away from the American team to have Beckie back. She’s been racing for, I don’t know, a decade, probably more, for the Canadian team, and I’ve never had a ski trip with her, ever. I’ve never had a race trip with Beckie in my life. And now that Justin’s coaching us, I can hang out with her!
CC: We were just on that edge, being nine years younger than her.
FS: It seems like there were so many Canadian women, and now it’s just the two of you. Is it just a generational thing? It seems like Beckie would have inspired more women to ski.
CC: We noticed that, in about 2005. Like, we love Beckie and Sara Renner and Milaine Theriault, but who are we going to pass the torch to when we’re older and faster? Just kidding girls, forever young.
That’s how Fast and Female started, we were like, where are the juniors? And there’s a good group now, and amazing group I’d say at the World Cup Academy, a group of ten girls. I think one of the most important things is to have minimum team sizes because that gives hope to the next crew. If you send two women or no women on a trip, or you name a training center with 15 guys and one girl, the young girls looking up and aspiring to try to make that team are immediately going to shut down, because it’s not realistic, so I think that’s important. I know it’s painful for people to take the third girl instead of the twelfth guy, if that guy is really fast, but I think that’s important.
DG: And there are girls, like you said, at the Academy that are really really bright. I think it is a bit of a generational thing. There’s us and then there’s lots of developing girls, and nobody just knocking on our door. But there will be more girls. Chandra is working really really hard on that one. That’s her other job.
CC: Aw, thanks. I do really care about it.
Coming up later on FasterSkier: Part Two, or, How Fast and Female is moving into a brave post-Olympic World.
