Adam Coaching at US Nationals in Alaska. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen)
Adam St. Pierre finished second to last in the first cross-country ski race of his life. The one skier he beat had crashed into a tree.
He was a sophomore at Fall Mountain Regional High School, a rural school in Charlestown, New Hampshire, and he tells the story with the flat delivery of a man who has told it before and enjoys it every time. “Charlestown doesn’t really have a claim to fame,” he said. Forty-five minutes due south of Hanover, close enough to know Dartmouth was up the road, far enough that the world of club skiing might as well have been on another continent. He had never heard of it. What he knew was soccer, basketball, and track, in roughly that order, and he had no intention of adding a fourth sport that involved falling down in the cold.
Then his freshman year fell apart. He hurt his knee playing soccer. He slogged through a basketball season he had come to hate. And in the spring, his track coach, who happened to also coach the ski team, made him an offer that sounded reasonable at the time. Come out for skiing next winter, the coach said. It will get you in better shape for soccer and track.
So he showed up. That first race was a classic race, and he had only ever skated. He survived it, barely, ahead of the kid who met the tree, and somewhere in the weeks after, the thing that has kept a lot of people in this sport quietly got its hooks into him.
Fall Mountain was not a fancy place, and that turns out to be central to the story. It was a working rural school with a barn, animal husbandry classes, agricultural mechanics, a metal shop, and forestry classes that maintained the trails and tapped the maple trees where the team ran and skied. The ski coach was the metal shop teacher. When the program needed grooming, the metal shop and ag-mechanics kids bought an old PistonBully and kept it running themselves. St. Pierre came up through a program held together by shop-class ingenuity and a snowbank at the edge of the football field, and he has never once been snobbish about it.
“I have a high respect for high school skiing, because it is an entry point,” he said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have found the sport.”
A team that needed a fifth man
He nearly didn’t find the next part either. Right before he graduated, his coach, Larry Sayers, told him that Colby College’s ski team wasn’t very good and that St. Pierre could probably walk on. He filed it away and didn’t think much of it. He had his sights on soccer and track. But once he got to Colby and started running into the skiers at various events around campus, something clicked, and it had nothing to do with the skiing.
“These are the kind of people I like,” he remembered thinking.
The timing was almost comically good. The coach, then Tracey Theyerl, now Tracey Cote, was 29 and in her second year running the team. She had just cut most of the upperclassmen, which left her with four men and an opening. St. Pierre walked on as the fifth. His introduction to roller skiing came shortly after, when Cote put him on a pair of classic roller skis and sent him out for a time trial. “I survived,” he said. From that point on, he was in, and again, the pull was the people as much as the training.
Adam St. Pierre (left) and former Bowdoin skier and BNJRT coach Sam Shaheen at the start of the 2019 American Birke. (Photo: courtesy Adam St. Pierre)
From the lab to the wax room
He majored in physics at Colby and minored in biochemistry, and when he graduated, he had no clear idea what came next. He looked at teaching jobs. Nothing landed. Then a skier friend from high school told him about a graduate program at the University of New Hampshire where, as St. Pierre understood it, they paid you to study exercise. That sounded like a good deal. He enrolled in a master’s program in kinesiology and exercise science, working under a UNH physiologist whose research centered on hydration and thirst. His thesis was, in his words, pretty brutal to run: sensations of thirst in dehydrated subjects in cold versus ambient environments. “A little bit of everything when it comes to making people uncomfortable,” he said.
It was during those UNH years that the sport handed him his first coaching job, and it did so in the roundabout, relational way that his whole career seems to follow. He had started dating a Bowdoin College skier while he was at Colby. She was a year behind him, still racing, and he was driving up to Brunswick most weekends to see her. Her coach was Marty Hall.
Anyone who knows North American skiing knows the name, yet St. Pierre’s version of a Marty Hall story is smaller and more human, and it starts with the legend sizing up the kid who kept turning up in his wax room.
“I need an assistant coach,” St. Pierre remembers Hall telling him, and he does a passable Marty voice when he gets there. “And you’re up here every weekend anyway. You want the job?”
He took it. He thinks he was paid around 1,500 dollars total, which covered the gas. He coached under Hall for two years, and it confirmed something he had already begun to suspect: he wanted to spend his life doing this.
Adam and his family out for a ski.
Building from the bottom in Boulder
When his wife got into law school at the University of Colorado, the two of them moved to Boulder, and St. Pierre walked into the next accident of his career. He had been hired to be the head coach of the Boulder Nordic Junior Racing Team, replacing Eric Pepper. Then Pepper decided to stay. Rather than lose St. Pierre, the club invented a role for him and made him its first development coach, responsible for the youngest kids, the u14s and u12s, or as they were then called, the j3s and j4s. Many of them were the little siblings of the older racers. His whole job was to grow the program from the bottom.
Boulder Nordic Junior Racing Team athletes prepare for the start of a 3,000 kilometer running time trial on the track in 2013. (Photo: Adam St. Pierre)
He did. When Pepper eventually moved on and St. Pierre took over as head coach and program director, he watched the club climb from 15 or 20 kids to nearly 70 at its peak, in a place he is quick to say is a genuinely hard town to be a skier. There is no snow in Boulder itself. You drive for it, and it is expensive, and the parents who commit anyway earn their real respect.
One of those little kids was Lauren Jortberg. St. Pierre started working with her when she was six or seven, and he coached her through high school. She was, by his telling, agonizingly consistent at exactly the wrong number: four straight Junior National Championships and 11th place in what felt like every race. “All she wanted was that top 10,” he said. She had setbacks. She stuck it out.
Years earlier, in his first season of coaching in Boulder, St. Pierre had said out loud that one of his goals was to someday coach a kid who would reach the Olympics. This past February, Jortberg made the U.S. team for the Milano-Cortina Games and qualified for the quarterfinals of the Olympic sprint, the culmination of a long and interrupted road that ran through back surgery, ankle surgery, and a lost senior season at Dartmouth. St. Pierre is careful not to claim more than his share.
“I can’t take responsibility for much,” he said, and then, a beat later, “Goosebumps. Proud of her.”
Boulder was where the rest of his professional life took shape, too. He worked at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine as a clinical physiologist, running lactate thresholds and VO2 max tests and metabolic evaluations, and working alongside physical therapists on running biomechanics, teaching and reteaching people how to run without breaking. He got into ultrarunning and knocked off a number of 100-mile races, mostly for the pleasure of being out in the mountains all day. Around 2016 or 2017, he left the Boulder Nordic team and hung out his own shingle as an online coach. The flexibility made sense with two young kids and a wife commuting to Denver. But he missed the in-person part, the standing-in-the-snow part, more than he expected to.
Adam repping the MSU team flag in Houghton, Michigan. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen)
The job he had been aiming at
He had known for a long time where he wanted to end up. College coaching had been the goal since around 2009. The appeal was simple: at the junior level, a coach spends a lot of energy convincing kids they might want to be ski racers, keeping every other door open in case they choose running or mountain biking instead. At the college level, the athletes have already decided. “They’ve decided they are cross-country ski racers,” he said. “I wanted to coach ski racers.”
The Montana State job had come open once before, in 2015, and he had applied and been the runner-up. When it opened again during the strange fall of 2020, he jumped. He was hired that November and moved to Bozeman alone that winter while his wife and kids finished out the year in Boulder, riding out the online-school chaos he credits her with surviving. The family joined him the following June. Bozeman had been near the top of the short list of places they wanted to live anyway, a real ski town with snow in town, Crosscut 20 minutes up the road, and Bridger Bowl close enough to grab powder runs before cross-country skiing in the afternoon.
Which is to say, the kid who finished second to last, who backed into the sport to get in shape for soccer, who took a coaching job largely because he was already driving to Brunswick every weekend, ended up exactly where he had been quietly aiming for a decade. The path was accidental in its particulars and not accidental at all in its direction. He kept following the people, and the people kept turning out to be skiers.
What he does with those skiers once he has them, and why he thinks so much of American training gets the easy days wrong, is its own story. That is part two.
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Jessie Diggins (USA) on her way to third place in the 10 k Classic Individual Start in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
As Jessie Diggins climbed the final hills in Lahti on Sunday, she could hear something unusual rising above the crowd noise. Scattered along the course were hand-made signs held by Finnish fans and young skiers. Many carried the same simple message: “Thank you, Jessie.”
For Diggins, racing through what has increasingly become a farewell tour of World Cup venues that have defined her career, the moment carried emotional weight. Lahti has not always been a place where the American felt the course played to her strengths, particularly in classic technique. But on Sunday, she delivered one of her most meaningful performances there, skiing to third place in the women’s 10-kilometer classic interval start.
“There were so many people out on the course with signs saying ‘Thank you, Jessie,’ and it was really emotional in the best way,” Diggins said afterward. “It was incredibly touching. Seeing all the little kids in glitter after the race was just really special.”
Frida Karlsson (SWE) on her way to the 10 k Classic win in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Sweden’s Frida Karlsson powered to the victory in 25:57.6, edging teammate Linn Svahn by just over four seconds. Diggins followed in third, 6.2 seconds behind the winner, securing the 90th World Cup podium of her career — a milestone that came in her 375th World Cup start.
The podium also represented a breakthrough for Diggins in a discipline she has spent years working on. Despite her long list of accomplishments, Sunday marked her first World Cup podium in a standalone 10-kilometer classic interval start.
“The Lahti course hasn’t always suited my strengths in classic skiing,” Diggins said. “So it felt really cool to pull it together a bit more today.”
The result allowed Diggins to maintain control of both major season-long competitions. With only three World Cup stops remaining this winter, she continues to lead Sweden’s Moa Ilar by 264 points in the Overall World Cup standings and by 188 points in the Distance standings, positioning herself strongly in the race for the sport’s coveted crystal globes.
Moa Ilar (SWE) and Linn Svahn (SWE), (l-r) reflecting at the finish. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Svahn Sets the Early Benchmark, Karlsson Finishes the Job
With the interval format — one athlete starting every 30 seconds — stretching the field across the Lahti course, the first major time to chase appeared almost immediately.
Sweden’s Linn Svahn, starting with bib 5, was among the earliest contenders onto the course and quickly posted the fastest times through the early checkpoints. Known primarily as one of the World Cup’s dominant sprinters, Svahn skied aggressively over the opening kilometers and established the benchmark that much of the field would spend the next hour chasing.
Her time held atop the standings as racer after racer attempted to match it.
Later in the race, however, another Swede began to close the gap. Frida Karlsson, wearing bib 40, remained within seconds of Svahn through the intermediate checkpoints before edging ahead in the final kilometers.
“I was just trying to stay in my own skiing,” Karlsson said afterward. “I heard it was between me and Linn, and I was super excited to get that fight.”
Karlsson ultimately crossed the line in 25:57.6, securing the victory by 4.1 seconds over her teammate.
The win came after a brief illness, which prevented her from competing in the Olympic 50 k, but Karlsson said she was eager to keep racing despite the setback.
“I was sick after the Olympics, but I was really excited to keep racing and just do what I know best,” she said. “So I’m super glad to be here.”
Diggins, starting shortly after Karlsson, kept herself in contention throughout the race, skiing within striking distance of the Swedish pair at each checkpoint before finishing 6.2 seconds back in third place.
Linn Svahn (SWE) on her way to second place. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Three Different Approaches to the Same Race
The split times revealed three distinct pacing strategies among the podium finishers.
Svahn, starting fifth, set the tone early. She posted the fastest time through the opening 1.1 kilometers and maintained the lead at the 3.4-kilometer checkpoint, immediately putting pressure on the rest of the field as they left the start gate.
Karlsson, starting later in bib 40, remained just seconds behind through the early checkpoints, skiing a controlled opening before gradually closing the gap. By the middle of the race, she had moved into contention, and over the final kilometers, she proved strongest of all, ultimately pulling ahead to secure the victory.
Diggins, meanwhile, delivered perhaps the most evenly paced effort of the three. She remained within striking distance of the leaders at every checkpoint — fifth at 1.1 kilometers, third by 3.4 kilometers, and still in podium position through the final lap.
That steadiness proved decisive in the final standings. While the two Swedes battled for the win, Diggins’ consistent pace allowed her to secure third place and another important podium in the fight for the season-long crystal globes.
Jessie Diggins (USA) sprints for the finish line. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Diggins’ Classic Progress
Diggins’ podium also reinforced one of the season’s quieter developments: the continued evolution of her classic technique.
For much of her career, the American’s greatest moments have come in skating events, where her aggressive pacing and powerful finishing speed often prove decisive. But this season she has shown remarkable consistency in classic distance races, finishing in the top ten in every classic distance event on the World Cup calendar.
Conditions in Lahti — warming temperatures and increasingly soft tracks — placed an additional premium on ski preparation, something Diggins was quick to acknowledge after the race.
“I had great skis, which is a huge part of the equation, especially when the conditions get slushy,” Diggins said. “This podium really belongs to the team. I’m so grateful for all the hard work they put in.”
Rosie Brennan (USA) on her way to 12th place. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Brennan Continues Return to Form
A bit further down the results list, fellow American Rosie Brennan continued a gradual return toward form after a long battle with illness that has affected much of her season.
Brennan finished 12th (+38.6) in Lahti, a result that reflected both solid skiing and a cautious approach early in the race.
“This whole process has really been a game of time,” Brennan said. “There have been many moments when I’ve wondered if I’ll ever feel normal again in my life. But the last three days are the most normal I’ve felt racing since December 2024.”
The Lahti course, known for its steep climbs and technical demands, offered a test of efficiency in classic technique — a challenge Brennan felt she handled well.
“Lahti requires really good technical skiing,” she said. “I felt like if I could relax and focus on my classic technique, that would give me the best chance.”
Kendall Kramer (USA) working her way up one of the many Lahti climbs. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Kramer Finds Lessons in the Lahti Hills
For American Kendall Kramer — 42nd in 27:40.8 (+1:43.2) — the Lahti race presented a different kind of challenge: starting first.
Wearing bib 1, Kramer had the advantage of pristine tracks before the course began to break down as temperatures warmed. But the early start also meant racing without reference splits from the rest of the field.
“I was actually okay starting with bib 1 today, given the state of the tracks,” Kramer said. “They tend to break down as the race goes on, and the corners can get icy, so it was nice to have cleaner conditions early.”
Without other athletes on course to gauge pacing against, Kramer said the race became more about skiing freely and trusting her own effort.
“Racing without reference splits definitely makes pacing tougher, but at the same time it lets you ski freely and focus on your own race.”
The steep Lahti climbs also highlighted the technical demands of classic skiing at the World Cup level.
“The punchy hills were fun because I could really bound up them, which is something I haven’t done much in World Cup racing so far,” Kramer said. “But the sections where it turns into pure power striding showed me I still have a lot to work on.”
Despite the challenges, Kramer described the experience as valuable for understanding the technical standards required to compete consistently at the highest level.
“I’ve learned so much from racing here this season,” she said. “At the World Cup, every strength and every weakness gets highlighted, and that really helps show what to work on heading into the summer.”
Julia Kern (USA) catches a rest from both the climbs and the sunlight. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Kern Heading Home Early to Recover
Julia Kern, who finished 51st — 28:11.4 (+2:13.8) — today, said she will return home early from the World Cup circuit as she continues working through health issues that have lingered since the Olympic races.
“I’ve been battling my body on various fronts since the Olympics,” Kern said in a team media statement. “One of my strengths is showing up and continuing to try and believe despite the challenges, while also being patient and smart.”
Kern added that she will take additional time to recover while seeking answers about her condition, with hopes of returning to competition at the Stifel World Cup Finals in Lake Placid later this month.
“Right now, my body needs more time to recover and is in search of answers, so I’m headed home early with the hopes of being in a place to race in Lake Placid.”
Lauren Jortberg (USA) and Katherine Weaver (CAN), (l-r) charge for the line. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Jortberg Gets a Front-Row Look at Karlsson’s Pace
For American Lauren Jortberg — 55th in 28:32.7 (+2:35.1) — the Lahti race offered a unique opportunity to measure herself against one of the sport’s best.
Early in the race, Jortberg found herself skiing behind Sweden’s Frida Karlsson for several kilometers as the eventual winner was completing her second lap while Jortberg was still on her first.
“I skied with Frida for about three kilometers, which was really cool,” Jortberg said. “She’s obviously a beast, and it was cool to hang with her and get a taste of what that pace actually feels like.”
Jortberg said the experience offered valuable insight into the demands of racing a 10-kilometer interval start at the World Cup level, where pacing often means pushing near maximum effort from the start.
“Ten-k pacing on the World Cup is basically as hard as you can go the whole way,” she said. “It’s about learning how to navigate that kind of effort and still ski your own race.”
She added that the race reinforced both the progress she has made in classic technique and the areas she hopes to continue developing as she gains more experience at the international level.
“I’m really proud of how my classic skiing is coming along,” Jortberg said. “There’s still a lot to work on, but it was definitely a good first start in a distance race.”
Jortberg said she hopes to carry the fitness and lessons from Lahti into the next stop on the World Cup circuit in Drammen, Norway.
Emma Albrecht (USA) giving it everything she can all the way to the finish. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Albrecht Sees the Margins Up Close
Further back in the start order, fellow American Emma Albrecht — 58th in 28:50.7 (+2:53.1) — experienced firsthand just how tight the margins can be in World Cup distance racing.
“The tight margins were shown by skiers finishing at similar times,” Albrcht said after the race. “For me, I was not passed, and I did not pass anyone. Which meant the skiers in front and behind me were skiing at a similar pace to me.”
Like Kramer, Albrecht said the steep Lahti climbs emphasized the technical demands of classic technique, particularly the efficiency required to stride uphill without losing grip.
“The uphill sections are the most technical and demanding here,” she said. “The climbs in Lahti are steep, and striding up efficiently requires really good technique to avoid slipping.”
For Albrecht, the race served as a clear reminder of the areas she hopes to refine moving forward.
“One of my biggest takeaways is that I want to keep working on my striding technique and get better at adjusting my tempo based on the terrain.”
Dariya Nepryaeva (AIN) and Novie Mccabe (USA), (l-r) come to the line. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Other North Americans in the Field
Novie McCabe raced her way to 43rd in 27:45.0 (+1:47.4) in the 64-skier field.
For Canada, Jasmine Drolet led the team in 41st place with a time of 27:39.8 (+1:42.2). Liliane Gagnon finished 46th in 27:56.4 (+1:58.8), and Katherine Weaver placed 59th in 29:00.9 (+3:03.3). Teammate Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt, who had been listed on the start sheet, did not start the race.
Take a bow, Jessie Diggins (USA) . (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
The Season’s Final Push
Sunday’s race in Lahti brought us even closer to the end of the season, now with only two sprint races and three distance races remaining until the sport’s biggest prizes will ultimately be decided.
For Diggins, the third-place finish represented more than another podium in an already historic career. It also reinforced the remarkable consistency that has defined her season. With top-10 finishes in every classic distance race this winter, she has transformed what was once considered a relative weakness into one of the foundations of her bid for both the Overall and Distance crystal globes.
Three stops remain on the calendar: the classic city sprint in Drammen, Norway, the iconic 50-kilometer race at Holmenkollen in Oslo, and the Stifel World Cup Finals in Lake Placid, New York.
For Diggins, those races now carry both competitive stakes and emotional significance. As the American continues what has increasingly felt like a farewell tour across the World Cup circuit, the crowds that gathered along the Lahti course on Sunday offered a glimpse of how much her career has meant to fans of the sport, not just in the United States, but all around the world.
And as Diggins pushed across the final climbs toward the stadium — signs waving, glitter-clad children cheering from the side of the course — she did what she has done so often over the past decade: she kept fighting for every second and left everything she had, once again, on the course.
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Linn Svahn (SWE), Frida Karlsson (SWE), and Jessie Diggins (USA), (l-r) share the 10 k Classic podium in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Authamayou/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.
Jonna Sundling (SWE) during qualification in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
The World Cup season returned to Finland this weekend, closing a circle that began more than three months ago in Ruka. In the time since Olympic teams were selected, dreams realized or deferred, experience forged, and farewells offered week after week as the long winter wears on. If the stakes in Lahti feel slightly lower than they did earlier in the season, they are tightening in another way — especially in the races for the Crystal Globes.
With only a handful of races remaining in the season, the women’s Freestyle Sprint offered more than just another podium. The fight for both the Sprint Crystal Globe and the Overall Crystal Globe continues to tighten.
In tricky conditions, Sweden’s Jonna Sundling emerged as the day’s winner, navigating the heats with authority before closing out the final to claim victory.
“I think all day it’s been difficult with the conditions because it seems so nice, but when you ski it’s like icing underneath,” Sundling said in a post-race interview with FIS on the broadcast. “There were some challenges with the skiing, but I’m glad that I could ski as I did today and go all the way.”
The victory marked a strong return for Sundling, who said she had recently been dealing with a cold and missed racing in Falun before arriving in Lahti.
One of the most interesting moments of the women’s race came when Kristine Stavaas Skistad (NOR) was disqualified during the semifinals for what appeared to be a very minor incident. She received a yellow card for the incident, and because she was already carrying one from a previous violation, she was disqualified. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
A Tactical Sprint Course
The Lahti freestyle sprint course rewarded patience as much as power. After the individual qualification round, the top 30 athletes advanced into the head-to-head heats — five quarterfinals of six athletes each, with the top two finishers and the two fastest “lucky losers” advancing to the semifinals.
From there, the field narrowed again: two semifinal heats would determine the six skiers racing for the win.
While the course appeared straightforward on paper, athletes quickly discovered the conditions made positioning critical. The climb before the final hairpin offered one of the few reliable passing opportunities before the long run to the finish, which saw the race often gather back together around the final corner before the finishing stretch. And throughout the heats, several favorites discovered how narrow the margin for error could be.
Maja Dahlqvist (SWE) got out well, but was unable to advance from the quarterfinals. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Globe Leaders Falter
Two of the athletes who have dominated the sprint standings this season — Maja Dahlqvist (Sweden) and Nadine Fähndrich (Switzerland) — both saw their days end earlier than expected, failing to advance beyond the quarterfinals.
Their early exits added intrigue to the sprint globe race as the season heads toward its final stretch.
Meanwhile, Sundling continued to build momentum, advancing smoothly through her heats despite the difficult snow conditions.
“I’m super motivated,” Sundling said of the final weeks of the season in the broadcast interview. “It’s my favorite time of the year.”
Hilla Niemela (FIN), Johanna Hagstroem (SWE), and Jessie Diggins (USA) (l-r) charge up the opening climb of the Freestyle Sprint in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Diggins Attacks, But Falls Short
For the United States, Jessie Diggins came closest to advancing deep into the rounds.
In her quarterfinal, Diggins launched a decisive move on the final climb, surging to the front of the group in an effort to create separation before the tight hairpin turn at the top of the hill. Over the crest, she continued the attack, aggressively no-pole skating the downhill in an attempt to open a gap.
For a moment, the tactic appeared to work.
But the chasing group quickly organized behind her, the draft pulling them back together on the descent into the stadium. Sweden’s Johanna Hagström surged in the final meters, lunging at the line to edge Diggins and end the American’s day in the quarterfinal.
Diggins said the Lahti crowd helped make the experience memorable.
“It was so cool to hear the crowd roaring. There were so many people out, really filling the stadium and along the course. It’s just a very cool environment. It was sunny and beautiful, which made it really fun.
“I was really happy with my energy today. I feel like I skied a pretty good race and did everything I could. But again this year, I feel like I just don’t quite have that ultimate power, especially in the finishing stretch.
“I’m excited for tomorrow and just excited to be finishing out my last stretch here in Europe. That feels really special. It’s kind of cool to take a moment to reflect on my many years spent on the road in Europe. That chapter is coming to a close now, which is really cool and really special. I’m just grateful thinking back on all the memories over all the different years.”
Rosie Brennan (USA) fighting to maintain contact with the group as Gina Del Rio (AND) takes the opening climb out fast during their quarterfinal. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Brennan Knocked Out in Quarterfinal*
Veteran American Rosie Brennan also reached the quarterfinals but was unable to advance.
Lauren Jortberg (USA) on her way to 37th place in qualification in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Jortberg Reflects on Qualification Miss
For Lauren Jortberg, the Lahti sprint was a reminder of how thin the margins can be in World Cup qualification.
Jortberg finished 37th in the qualification, just outside the top-30 cutoff needed to advance to the heats. After the race, she said the conditions on the Lahti course made it difficult to find the right balance between glide and stability.
“There was kind of an ice sheet underneath with some sugar on top,” Jortberg told FasterSkier after the race. “So it was hard to find skis that were running really well while also being able to push off and plant well. It made the skiing a little tricky, but that’s pretty typical for what we’ve seen in Lahti the last few years.”
Jortberg also felt she left something on the course in terms of pacing.
“I think I just didn’t pace it very well,” she said. “I probably paced it too much. I didn’t really finish feeling that tired, so that was a bit of a bummer.”
Part of that caution, she explained, stemmed from having dealt with illness in the days leading into the race.
“I had been sick the last week, so I think I held back a little bit,” Jortberg said. “That’s frustrating because I felt really good and I think I could have been competitive today.”
Even so, Jortberg said the past months of racing have helped build confidence as she continues gaining experience on the World Cup circuit.
“One of the big takeaways from these World Cup weekends is that when I can put down a really solid qualifier, I’m very much in the mix,” she said. “Even though today wasn’t a great qualifier, I wasn’t that far out of the heats, so I think that’s something I can take confidence from going into the next few weekends.”
Julia Kern (USA) during qualification. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Julia Kern Trying to Get Back to Form*
Julia Kern, returning to racing after illness following the Olympic Games, placed 44th in the qualification round.
Albrecht Gaining World Cup Experience
Emma Albrecht, competing in her fourth World Cup weekend, finished 48th in the qualification round in Lahti as she continues gaining experience at the highest level of the sport.
Albrecht said one of the biggest adjustments to racing on the World Cup has been the razor-thin margins in sprint qualification.
Emma Albrecht (USA) gaining experience during the qualification in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
“The biggest adjustment to racing at this level is how tight the race margins are,” Albrecht told FasterSkier after the race via email. “The U.S. SuperTour field is obviously not as competitive, and it has been a shift — especially in sprinting — to have to have a fast qualifier. You are no longer guaranteed to make heats.”
The Lahti sprint course also served as a reminder of the confidence and technical skills required to compete in crowded sprint fields.
“Today’s qualification reminded me to take up space on the course and not be afraid of a little hop skate,” she said.
Even with the challenges, Albrecht said the experience is fueling motivation heading into the offseason.
“This weekend is making me very excited for summer training,” she said. “A field as deep as this really highlights weaknesses on course. I would love to become a more efficient jump skater and be more confident in my high-speed V2. I’m definitely walking away with a lot of motivation to improve.”
Liliane Gagnon (CAN) charges up the first climb during her quarterfinal, where she narrowly missed advancing to the semifinals. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Canadian Results
Canada’s top performance came from Liliane Gagnon, who finished third in her quarterfinal — just short of advancing to the semifinals.
Teammates Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt and Katherine Weaver placed 43rd and 46th, respectively, in qualification.
Jonna Sundling (SWE) celebrates the win while Coletta Rydzek (GER) and Johanna Hagstroem (SWE) lunge for third behind her. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
The Season’s Final Push
With only a handful of races remaining on the World Cup calendar, the results in Lahti could prove important in shaping the final standings.
For Sundling, the victory served as both a return to form and a statement heading into the closing weeks of the season.
“I’m looking forward to the rest of the season,” she said.
For others — particularly those chasing the Crystal Globes — the margin for error continues to shrink.
And with more racing still ahead in Lahti this weekend, the battle for the season-long trophies is far from settled.
*We hope to add more quotes above from athletes if we hear back from them, but wanted to get this race report posted in a timely fashion.
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By the time Lauren Jortberg made the U.S. Olympic Cross-Country Ski Team, the achievement arrived not as a burst of disbelief or relief, but as something quieter and stranger: a moment that required processing.
“It is a lot to take in,” she said, speaking from Seefeld, Austria in the middle of a pre-Olympic training block. “It’s been a big goal. But it’s one of those big goals that I’ve tried not to think about too much and just really focus on being my best self.”
The phrasing matters. Jortberg did not describe the Olympics as a finish line or a culmination. She spoke about it as something she had to learn how to hold — something earned, yes, but also something that could overwhelm if mishandled. “Now,” she said, “I’m trying to put aside the completion of the goal and really focus on performing. And performing really well.”
That distinction — between achievement and performance, between arrival and presence — has come to define her career. It is also the reason her story resists easy telling. Jortberg was not a prodigy. She was not a junior star. She did not dominate early or move cleanly through the system. She took the long way around.
The Long Way Around
Jortberg grew up in Boulder, Colorado, a town dense with endurance athletes and outdoor ambition. “I’m super fortunate to have been born and raised in Boulder,” she said. “It has one of the highest percentages of Olympians for cycling and running.”
Her parents were athletic — her mother was a professional runner, her father competed in multiple sports — and movement was woven into daily life. There was mountain biking, trail running, hiking, time spent at a family place in Winter Park. But skiing, she noted, was not central to Boulder’s identity. “If you’re familiar with Boulder, it’s not really a winter place. We had to work hard to get to snow.”
Her earliest athletic identity was split. She loved soccer deeply and still wonders what might have happened had she stayed with it. “I do kind of wonder what I could have done if I had pursued soccer,” she said. Her father spent hours training with her, and she took pride in improvement more than outcome.
The turn toward skiing came, in part, through her older sister — six years ahead, a steady presence, someone to chase. When her sister tore her ACL playing soccer and pivoted fully to skiing, Jortberg followed. “I really looked up to my sister,” she said. “She went to U18 Scandinavian Cup, Junior Nationals, skied at the University of Denver. Seeing her do all these cool things with skiing really felt like, well, I can do that.”
But progression was slow. In high school, Jortberg struggled. She did not make Junior Nationals her first year — a moment she still remembers clearly. “I was devastated,” she said. “It was one of the first big adversities in my career.”
She never cracked the top ten at Junior Nationals until she was a U20. “I had a lot of 11th places,” she said. “I could never crack that top ten.”
It is difficult, in hindsight, to overstate how thoroughly unremarkable her junior results were by Olympic standards. This is not revisionism; it is the point. There was no obvious through-line, no early validation to cling to.
After high school, she took a gap year at Stratton Mountain School. It did not go smoothly. She fractured her arm in a parking lot crash. The season was disrupted. Progress stalled again.
What she had, instead, was a willingness to stay.
Dartmouth and the Work of Becoming
At Dartmouth, something shifted. Not overnight, and not magically — but structurally.
“I think it was a big surprise starting at Dartmouth,” Jortberg said, “the level I was at and the level the team was at.” She majored in environmental science and found herself inside a women’s program that emphasized individual growth within collective intensity.
Under coach Cami Thompson Graves, the team culture was demanding but non-coercive. “She’s really amazing at coaching athletes to really know what is good for them,” Jortberg said. “She’s incredibly good at getting athletes to become very independent with an amazing team culture.”
The women’s team was deep, competitive, and internally driven. “We were going one through five, or one to four, five, eight, ten,” she said. “It was insane.” NCAA spots were scarce; no one could coast.
Crucially, Dartmouth supported international racing alongside collegiate commitments. Jortberg went to World Juniors, U23s, OPA Cups — sometimes twice in a season. “Having that support was super helpful,” she said. “Not just to perform in a green suit, but to perform later on.”
For the first time, development felt cumulative.
The women’s final of the 2021 Keys to the Castle rollerski sprint in Lake Placid, NY. From left to right, Lauren Jortberg (BSF Pro), Julia Kern (SMS T2/USST), Jessie Diggins (SMS T2/USST), Alayna Sonnesyn (SMS T2). (Photo: Reese Brown RDB Marketing)
The Bubble Years
Post-collegiately, Jortberg entered what many American skiers know intimately: the bubble.
She moved through programs, spent time with Bridger Ski Foundation Pro and later SMS T2, and began working with coach Perry Thomas. She earned World Cup starts, lost them, re-earned them. Progress was intermittent. Confidence, fragile.
“It was a lot of back and forth,” Thomas said. “Getting starts and not getting starts. Proving herself again in the U.S. and then getting those World Cup starts again.”
Thomas had recruited Jortberg as one of his first athletes when he began coaching at the professional level. Their early years together were not seamless. “Our first year together, there was a lot of figuring things out,” he said. “There were ups and downs.”
What mattered was not immediate success but shared patience. “We were both willing to make it work,” Thomas said. “And work through difficulty together.”
During this period, Jortberg made a deliberate choice that would shape the rest of her career: she doubled down.
Lauren Jortberg (USA) training in Tignes, France, last June. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Choosing One Thing
Sprinting had always been her strength — particularly skate sprinting. Classic sprinting lagged behind. Rather than attempting to become broadly better at everything, Jortberg and Thomas made a narrower decision.
“Let’s spend one day a week, every week, for an entire summer and fall, working on classic skiing,” Thomas said. “Double pole. Thirty to sixty minutes. Just consistently.”
It was not glamorous work. It was not optimized for social media or immediate payoff. But Jortberg committed fully. “She was like, ‘Hell yeah, let’s do this,’” Thomas said.
Even when they were no longer formally affiliated with the same team, she continued the work remotely. “She continued that work on her own,” he said. “From afar.”
At the same time, something else was happening — something less visible.
Lauren Jortberg (USA) during the qualification of the World Cup Individual Skate Sprint in Oberhof, Germany, two weeks ago. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
The Mental Turn
Jortberg began working seriously with a sports psychologist. She and Thomas independently immersed themselves in books, podcasts, and writing about mental performance. They traded recommendations. They talked openly about processing failure.
“I don’t care how pretty your technique is,” Thomas said. “If you don’t have control over the on-off switch in your brain, you’re not going to get to the line fastest.”
What Thomas noticed later, during Period 1 Super Tour in Alaska, was a change. “That was a different Lauren than even a year ago,” he said. “In such a good way.”
Jortberg describes it less as a breakthrough than a reframing. “Everyone is going to have setbacks,” she said. “It’s about how you respond. Chipping away little by little. Not letting setbacks impact how you see yourself.”
She learned to loosen her grip on outcomes. “Often when we think things have to happen a certain way,” she said, “that’s when they don’t.”
Lauren Jortberg with boyfriend Antoine Cyr (CAN). (Photo: Courtesy Photo)
Two Places at Once
In the fall, Jortberg moved to the Mount Sainte-Anne area of Quebec. The decision was partly personal — she is dating Canadian skier Antoine Cyr — but also practical.
She began training at the Pierre Harvey Training Centre, known for its demanding terrain and extensive roller-ski infrastructure. “The terrain is really hard,” she said. “I think it’s been awesome for intensity. Especially my classic skiing.”
Her coaching arrangement became hybrid: remote communication with Thomas, daily training in Quebec. “We text pretty much every day,” Thomas said. “Or we’re on the phone.”
Jortberg chose not to maintain two residences. “That’s just not something that financially would be feasible,” she said. More importantly, she valued stability. “I really prioritize my personal life. That’s what allows me to perform at the highest level.”
It is an unromantic truth of elite skiing: stability is performance.
Alaska and Leadership
When Jortberg declined early World Cup starts to focus on Super Tour and U.S. Nationals, she rejoined Coach Thomas and the rest of the Mansfield Nordic Pro team in Alaska. What stood out was not just her skiing.
“I was so impressed with her as a leader,” Thomas said. “We used her a ton in team meetings. Tactics. Pacing. Course preview.”
After Alaska, the decision to formally add her back to the team was unanimous. “It was an easy decision,” Thomas said. “She just wanted to be part of the team and demonstrated awesome leadership.”
Kendall Kramer, Samantha Smith, Lauren Jortberg, and Julia Kern (l-r) will join Jessie Diggins, Rosie Brennan, Novie McCabe, and Hailey Swirbul to represent the United States in Val di Fiemme, Italy, from Feb. 6–22, 2026. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Not Jaded
Jortberg will arrive at her first Olympics as one of three women on the U.S. team making their Olympic debut. She sees that as an asset.
“I want to bring non-jaded energy,” she said. “Just that first-time excitement.”
She wants to be present — not consumed by outcome. “I want to look back and be grateful that I was even there,” she said. “And really appreciate the experience.”
It is not a rejection of ambition. It is a different relationship to it.
Forward
Jortberg plans to continue racing. She hopes for 2030, in the French Alps — a place she loves, a skate sprint on a stage that suits her. She is considering an online master’s program in sustainability and renewable energy, thinking carefully about how to prepare for the life that will follow skiing without rushing herself toward it. For the first time in her career, she feels no urgency to escape the present.
“I feel the most stable I’ve ever felt in my career,” she said. “And it’s showing.”
Stability, for Jortberg, has never been accidental. It is something she built deliberately, after years of motion without certainty — years of chasing snow from a town where Olympians ran past her on bike paths and reservoir loops, where excellence was ambient and ordinary at the same time. In Boulder, she grew up watching greatness move casually through public space, learning early that world-class athletes were not mythical figures but people who showed up every day and kept going.
She was not the fastest junior in that environment. She was not the one with the early results or the easy narrative. She lingered on the edges, finished just outside the frame, learned patience in a place that celebrated inevitability. And still, she stayed.
Lauren Jortberg (USA) anchors the relay for the United States in Toblach, Italy, in 2023. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
Now she is an Olympian — not because she followed the shortest line between promise and performance, but because she learned how to endure the long arcs in between. She learned when to narrow her focus, when to loosen her grip, when to trust work that did not announce itself right away. She learned how to live inside uncertainty without mistaking it for failure.
There is something quietly astonishing about that return: a young woman who grew up surrounded by Olympians, never quite believing she was one of them, becoming one anyway — not by force or speed, but by accumulation. By choosing stability when chaos was easier. By learning how to stay.
For an athlete who never arrived early, this moment is not a surprise step so much as a natural one. The long way around, it turns out, still leads somewhere.
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Maja Dahlqvist (SWE) and Laura Gimmler (GER), (l-r) with Jessie Diggins (USA) just behind during the Classic Sprint heats in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
By the time the women clicked into their classic skis in the upper Rhône Valley on Saturday morning, the sprint course in Goms had already made its argument. This would not be a day for pure glide, or pure kick. It would be a day for the awkward in-between—the calculus of wax, confidence, and courage. The kind of skiing that rewards athletes who keep their heads when the track changes mid-lap, when the fastest line is also the most exposed. Here, “relaxed” and “hard” have to mean the same thing.
The official report called the surface “hard packed.” Air was just above freezing (0.4°C). Snow was far colder (-8.0°C). This split-temperature setup can turn one polished corner into a skating rink, and one kick zone into a question you must answer at speed.
With Milano Cortina looming—the last World Cup weekend before Olympic racing in Val di Fiemme—every answer carried extra weight. Sweden, in particular, arrived with a familiar burden: racing to win and also to clarify which few women might fill the nation’s four Olympic start spots in the classic sprint. The day’s story was not just about who won. It was about the ones who looked ready to be chosen.
At the center of it all was Linn Svahn—back on top of a World Cup sprint after what she described, in a post-race on-air interview with FIS, as a challenging year.
“So nice to be back and compete again,” Svahn said. “It’s been like a roller coaster year… It’s one of my favorite courses of the whole World Cup. But it was tough.”
She looked more than “back.” She looked inevitable.
Lauren Jortberg (USA) during qualification. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Qualification: fast snow, sharp edges, and a fraction too much ice
Svahn set the tone immediately, winning the qualification in 3:46.07, with Switzerland’s Nadine Fähndrich second (+1.84) and Finland’s Jasmi Joensuu third (+4.35).
For the Americans, the qualification round was both encouraging and cruel, as sprint prologues often are: three into the top 30, one out by a place.
Jessie Diggins qualified 6th in 3:54.81 (+8.74).
Julia Kern qualified 15th in 3:58.58 (+12.51).
Samantha Smith qualified 26th in 4:00.71 (+14.64).
Lauren Jortberg—was so close—finishing 31st, 4:01.74 (+15.67), one spot out of the heats.
Jortberg’s own description of the qualification captured the emotional violence of that single place. Her plan, she said, was to ski “as relaxed and smoothly as I can,” then push the fast pieces—downhills and turns—hard. She believed she executed that plan almost everywhere.
Except, crucially, at the top of the major climb.
“It was way icier… than when we were warming up on it, and I wasn’t anticipating that at all,” Jortberg said. “I lost a ton of time. I nearly fell because I slipped so much—so that’s really brutal, especially being 31st.”
Her immediate feeling, she admitted, was a strange split: “both devastation and almost like tears of joy,” because of how much she had struggled in classic sprinting in the past—and because, on this day, she could finally feel the gap closing. “There’s more to come,” she said. “I’m really excited to keep working on my classic skiing and showing that I’m a threat in both classic and skate.”
On paper, it reads like a line item: 31st, not qualified. In the body, it feels like something very positive is brewing from many years of hard work.
Julia Kern (USA) and Samantha Smith (USA), (l-r) during the Classic Sprint quarterfinals in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
The heats: Sweden’s depth, Switzerland’s home-course fire, and the shape of the final
The women’s sprint in Goms unfolded in the standard format: five quarterfinal heats of six, two automatic qualifiers from each, plus two “lucky losers” on time; then two semifinals with the same rule; then a final of six.
What made Saturday distinct was how quickly the day shifted from “times” to “tactics.” Goms is not a flat drag race. It’s a course that asks athletes to make decisions—when to risk the inside line, when to conserve, when to surge. Kern noted afterward that those decisions are hard to replicate outside racing.
“For me, nothing beats the effort of racing head-to-head to practice digging really deep,” Kern said. “Those surges and tactics are hard to emulate in training.”
That mattered because Kern arrived at this World Cup period still chasing a particular feeling—what she has described as race sharpness—after time back home training.
On Saturday, she said, she finally felt it.
“Today I felt sharper than I have in any sprint so far this season,” Kern said. Even in a moment when she was sixth over the top of the first climb, she believed she could re-enter the race: “I knew I could charge the second climb and that I wasn’t out of it.”
Kern also described the way she is trying to reprogram the smallest pieces of sprint execution—especially the opening of the qualifier, where she has struggled.
“One of my goals was to start faster in the qualifier… and I did today,” she said. In the heats, the goals shifted: “continue to believe and never count myself out,” keep technique cues in mind, “send the downhill,” and practice cornering. And the most important sign, to her, was the feeling on the second climb: “I felt my second hill surge… and that’s encouraging for the last bit of training before the games.”
Kern ultimately exited in the quarterfinals, finishing 15th overall on the day. But the quote that lingered was not about the placing—it was about learning to believe, again and again, in the middle of the heat, when the race tries to convince you you’re done.
Smith also advanced out of qualification and into the quarters—another solid marker in a season where her trajectory has been trending upward. She finished 23rd overall.
Her takeaway was precise and practical, the kind of detail you can only identify when you’re close enough to feel time leak out of the run.
“Looking ahead, the next few weeks, I’m really going to prioritize transition moments because I felt like I lost a lot of time there on the course,” Smith said. “But I know it’s something I can practice and sharpen with some intentionality.”
She also pointed to tactics: “I think there’s a lot I can improve tactically, and definitely walking away from today’s race with some stuff to focus on for the next few weeks.”
Her plan between now and the Games is a familiar championship build: “I’m going to use the next two weeks as an opportunity to build volume before sharpening with some faster and higher-intensity workouts,” she said, adding that she’ll keep her preparation similar to what has worked for her before major championships.
Maja Dahlqvist (SWE), Jessie Diggins (USA), Nicole Monsorno (ITA), and Magdalena Scherz (AUT), (l-r) stride up one of the two long climbs on the sprint course in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
For Diggins, the day held a different kind of meaning. She arrived in Goms wearing the World Cup leader’s yellow bib, but approached the classic sprint less as a referendum on form and more as a laboratory — a chance to learn, adapt, and sharpen instincts under pressure.
In the quarterfinals, Diggins said her skis felt “a little bit slick,” prompting an adjustment before the semifinals as conditions continued to glaze over. “We added more for the semi, which I was super, super happy about,” she said, noting how quickly the track changed as the day wore on. “I was really impressed with the team’s ability to shift mid-round when it turns out, like, oh, it’s getting a little more glazy.”
Rather than fight the conditions, Diggins leaned into them. She said she made a conscious decision to seek out firmer, faster snow and to corner aggressively, skiing where the surface had stayed icy instead of getting churned into powder. “Downhills are my strength, so I was like, I’m going to play my strengths here,” she said. “I was really psyched about that — and also really impressed with my ski speed. I’m really, really grateful to our team.”
Diggins qualified sixth, advanced through the rounds, and finished 7th overall, exiting in the semifinals. In a day defined by razor edges, she looked close. The difference between “final” and “semis” felt less like fitness, and more like the thousand small interactions between ski feel, kick security, and how aggressively you can take space in traffic.
Diggins framed the race as part of a broader Olympic preparation, even with the acknowledgement that racing under training load makes the experience different than what awaits in Val di Fiemme. “I was really just seeing this as great practice for the Olympics,” she said. “You can still learn so much — learn where your strengths are, what you think you need, how you might want to pace.”
She described the day as “a learning mission,” an expedition of sorts to gather information she can use over the final weeks before the Games. While the classic sprint is not her primary Olympic focus, Diggins said that doesn’t change how she approaches it. “If I’m going to do it, I want to really go for it and give it the best that I can.”
Technically, Diggins said the Goms sprint offered a valuable reminder of what she is still actively refining in classic skiing. On a long sprint course with slow, natural snow early in the day, her focus was on what she called “relaxed power.”
“I was thinking a lot about not skiing frantically,” Diggins said, describing cues she used throughout the race — staying tall on the steep sections instead of folding forward at the waist, leading with her hands when fatigue set in, and prioritizing efficiency over force. “Lots of little cues,” she said, all aimed at skiing as economically as possible when the course demanded patience as much as aggression. I
Maja Dahlqvist (SWE), Johanna Matintalo (FIN), Laura Gimmler (GER), Linn Svahn (SWE), and Nadine Faehndrich (SUI), (l-r) come down the home stretch. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
The final: Svahn returns, and the podium reshapes itself
By the time the final arrived, the field had taken on an instructive shape: three Swedes (Svahn, Dahlqvist, Emma Ribom), a Swiss home favorite (Fähndrich), a German (Laura Gimmler), and a Finn (Johanna Matintalo).
If Sweden came to Goms needing clarity, this was the clearest possible argument: depth, multiplied.
Svahn won the final in 3:46.07. Behind her, Gimmler took second at +10.54, with Fähndrich third at +12.38 (listed as +1.84 behind Gimmler in the results display). Dahlqvist finished fourth, Matintalo fifth, and Ribom sixth.
For Svahn, the victory read like both a return and a resolution. In that FIS on-air interview, she framed the months since then as having reshaped her perspective.
“I think [the nerves are] quite all right,” she said of the Olympic approach. “It feels like the last year has given me a lot of challenges. So [it] feels like I’m just happy to be back racing.”
The subtext—the thing everyone in sprint skiing understands without saying—is that “happy” is not the same as “soft.” Sometimes it’s the opposite. Sometimes it’s what happens when fear gets replaced by appetite.
Jessie Diggins (USA) battled her way to 7th place in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
What the Americans take from Goms
For the U.S., Saturday offered a compact set of truths:
Diggins is still Diggins—top-six in qualification, semifinal caliber in classic sprinting, and moving through the day with the poise of someone who is not guessing anymore.
Kern’s sharpness is arriving at the right time, and she can feel it—not as a vague confidence, but as the ability to surge when the race says you can’t.
Smith is identifying controllable time, the kind that can realistically be found in the last weeks before a championship: transitions, tactical decisions, and intentional sharpening.
Jortberg is at the door, close enough that a single icy misread becomes the whole story—and also close enough that “devastation” can coexist with proof of progress.
That last point may be the most emotionally resonant, because sprinting is brutally literal: it doesn’t care how well you’ve been training, or how much you’ve improved, or what you deserve. It cares what happened on the one lap, on the one climb, when the track turned slicker than it was ten minutes earlier.
Still, if you listened carefully to Jortberg, you could hear the deeper shift: the sense that classic sprinting is no longer a weakness she is managing, but a skill she is building. “There’s more to come,” she said—and she didn’t sound like she was trying to convince herself.
It was a close battle to the line of the finals between Maja Dahlqvist (SWE), Laura Gimmler (GER), Linn Svahn (SWE), and Nadine Faehndrich (SUI) (l-r). (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
A last World Cup weekend, and the feeling of the calendar tightening
The phrase “before the Olympics” can make everything sound ceremonial. In reality, it makes everything feel compressed. It turns a ski change into an existential decision. It turns a quarterfinal exit into either a warning or a reassurance, depending on your mood, your coaches, and your confidence in the training you still need to do.
In Goms, the course didn’t let anyone hide from that compression. It asked for kick and glide, yes—but also for willingness: willingness to trust your skis when the track changes, willingness to believe you’re not out of it when you crest a climb in sixth, willingness to keep choosing speed through corners, through transitions, through the parts of the course where time disappears quietly.
Svahn won because she looked like someone who had already made peace with the hard months—and decided to race anyway. Diggins moved through the day like someone who understands exactly what she needs and what she doesn’t. Kern sounded like an athlete who could finally feel the race returning to her body. Smith sounded like an athlete who knows where the seconds are. Jortberg sounded like an athlete who knows how thin the line is between “in” and “out”—and how much it matters that she’s standing on it at all.
Diggins also spoke with pride about the broader U.S. team atmosphere in Goms, describing the rounds as collaborative as much as competitive. She said she and Julia Kern spent time discussing tactics and strategies between heats, and she pointed to Samantha Smith’s growing confidence as a highlight of the weekend.
“Seeing Sammy gain confidence and get into the rounds with a really great strike rate has been so cool for me to see,” Diggins said. “I’m just incredibly proud.” She added that the momentum extended across the team, noting breakthroughs on the men’s side as well — moments she described as “really beautiful to see.”
The Olympics, when they arrive, will not care about any of this context. They will simply happen. But if Goms offered any preview, it was this: the women who will matter most in Val di Fiemme are the ones who can treat uncertainty not as a threat, but as part of the job.
And on a hard-packed, split-temperature day in Switzerland—on a course Svahn calls her favorite, on a climb that turned to ice without warning—you could see who is learning to do exactly that.
Goms World Cup Women’s Freestyle Team Sprint RESULTS
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Laura Gimmler (GER), Linn Svahn (SWE), and Nadine Faehndrich (SUI), (l-r) share the Classic Sprint podium in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
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Leg one gets started in the Women’s Team Sprint in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
There are World Cup races that arrive like answers, and others that arrive like mirrors. The women’s freestyle Team Sprint in Goms belonged firmly to the second category — not because the results were unclear, but because nearly everyone on the start line arrived with something else already decided.
This was the last World Cup before the Winter Olympics in Milano–Cortina, and teams have been finalized. In Switzerland, the focus shifted from selection to tactical rehearsal, testing legs, patience, and restraint before Olympic stakes.
That context hung over the Team Sprint from the opening qualification prologue to the final exchange. For some, the day was about execution. For others, survival. And for the U.S. women, it was an afternoon shaped as much by what wasn’t raced as what was.
Jessie Diggins, focused on the Overall World Cup and conserving energy for February, sat out. Sweden, which has recently dominated sprinting, also left its top women on the bench. Their absences reshaped opportunity and increased ambiguity in a race where errors are costly.
Julia Kern (USA) during qualification. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
A Course That Punishes Early Optimism
Goms’ team sprint course was unforgiving. The moderate altitude, demanding climbs, and relentless rhythm tested the athletes in each of the individually timed qualification prologues. The top-16 teams advanced, then raced six alternating laps marked by tag zones, tempo shifts, and mounting fatigue.
“It was definitely a rude awakening,” said Julia Kern, who returned to racing after a short training block at home in Vermont. “I think a lot of people felt that way — the qualifier was brutal, especially with such a long climb at semi-altitude.”
Kern’s reset after the Tour de Ski was intentional. “The first week I focused on recovery, and the second week I finally got in a training week for the first time this season,” she said. “The snow conditions were awesome, which made it even better. But my body isn’t fully sharp yet, which is to be expected after some training and traveling back over to Europe.”
That combination — fitness returning, sharpness still arriving — defined much of the U.S. women’s day.
Kendall Kramer (USA) during the team sprint qualification in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Two U.S. Teams, Two Very Different Races
The United States entered two teams into the final.
Team One paired Kern with Sammy Smith, a first-time Olympian whose rise this season has been defined by composure as much as speed. Team Two brought together Lauren Jortberg and Kendall Kramer, both newly named to their first Olympic team — and both still absorbing what that meant.
For Jortberg, the Olympic nomination landed at the end of a season built on restraint.
“I made a really conscious decision this year not to focus too hard on Olympic qualification itself,” Jortberg said. “I didn’t really think the Olympics were on the cards for me. I made a lot of big changes — a new ski brand, a team change, moving to a new country — so I just focused on the process.”
That process had worked. She arrived in Goms feeling strong.
“Today, I was really happy with the sprint qualifier — probably my best World Cup qualifier so far,” she said. “Time-wise, it was strong, and I knew going into the race that I was feeling good physically.”
Then, just minutes later, it unraveled.
Lauren Jortberg (USA) gets aero in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
The Moment Team Sprints Turn Cruel
On Jortberg’s opening leg of the final, the pack compressed into one of the course’s tighter corners. The decision window was measured in fractions of a second.
“Coming into a corner, I got tangled up with another skier,” Jortberg explained. “In that split second, it was either ski into their gear or crash. That’s just part of team sprint racing — it’s really tight skiing.”
She went down. The gap opened immediately.
For Kendall Kramer, suddenly tasked with damage control, the calculation shifted from ambition to probability.
“I knew things happen in team sprints all the time — broken equipment, falls, tangles, people bonking,” Kramer said. “So I didn’t get discouraged or feel like we were completely out of it. You never know how a race can change.”
But races do not always cooperate.
“Not many crashes happened today,” Kramer said. “I think for both of us, being able to draft and roll with the group pace would have helped a lot.”
Jortberg knew the consequences instantly. “It creates a huge gap, and that’s really hard in a team event because it affects your teammate,” she said. “It makes it even sadder when you know you’ve put them in that position.”
Both athletes made the same strategic choice: do not burn the weekend to save a result that no longer exists.
“It didn’t make sense to burn all our matches trying to close such a big gap,” Jortberg said. “We both have more important races coming up.”
For Kramer, the day still mattered.
“Just qualifying and getting to experience my first World Cup sprint day was really cool,” she said. “I learned a lot from it.”
Julia Kern (USA) tags Samantha Smith (USA) during the Team Sprint in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Team One: Learning While It’s Still Allowed
Up front, Kern and Smith stayed clear of trouble, navigating a race whose pace was notably more controlled than many recent team sprints.
“The pace was more controlled, so it’s hard to say exactly how that will play out in the future,” Kern said. “But it was good practice finding places to relax — and also learning that you need to be near the front to avoid tangles. I had two close calls on the first lap where I lost positions, which wasn’t ideal.”
Smith, meanwhile, looked comfortable doing exactly what Olympic team sprints demand: staying patient until patience becomes aggression.
Samantha Smith (USA) the Team Sprint qualification in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
“Team sprints are my favorite event,” Smith said. “The format is so unique and challenging. It rewards consistency and composure balanced with speed and execution.”
This was her first time racing consistently at the front in a World Cup team sprint.
“I loved trying to match other racers’ moves, learning how the pacing changes lap to lap, and figuring out the best time to attack,” she said. “Every race is a learning opportunity, and I definitely took a lot away from today.”
The most important lesson, she said, was restraint.
“In a format like the team sprint, it’s so important to stay relaxed and patient,” Smith said. “You have to save enough so you can really push on that final lap.”
Julie Bjervig Drivenes (NOR), Coletta Rydzek (GER), Tiril Udnes Weng (NOR), (l-r) all come to the finish in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Germany Executes, Cleanly and Calmly
While much of the field experimented, Germany arrived with a plan — and executed it.
Speaking to the FIS broadcast after the race, Laura Gimmler explained the approach.
“It was a pretty hard race here,” Gimmler said. “The plan was to slow a little bit in the first loop, save energy, and then build up from round to round so I could work for Coletta and let her save energy for her strengths.”
Her teammate echoed the sentiment, crediting positioning and trust.
“I knew I had a strong Laura who could make positions,” she said. “We worked for it.”
The strategy paid off. Germany stayed composed as others faded, and when the final lap arrived, they were exactly where they needed to be.
“It’s always nice to be on top of the podium,” one of the pair said via the FIS broadcast. “Confidence before the Olympics? We’ll see — but winning always helps.”
Laura Gimmler (GER) and Coletta Rydzek (GER), (l-r) celebrate the Team Sprint victory in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Olympic Reality, Briefly Revealed
It would be easy to dismiss Goms as an incomplete picture. Sweden’s absence loomed large. Diggins’ absence larger still. The Olympic team sprint in Val di Fiemme will not be controlled. It will not be forgiving. And it will not wait for mistakes to resolve themselves.
But that is precisely why this race mattered.
“This course is very hilly, just like Val di Fiemme,” Kern said. “It was good practice to feel how the load accumulates through the rounds.”
For Smith, the day confirmed belief as much as readiness.
“It’s been a dream of mine to ski in the Olympics for as long as I can remember,” she said. “Now it’s real — and this weekend is about building momentum.”
For Kramer, the meaning is still arriving.
“It’s been really special to feel the pride from my hometown,” she said. “I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet.”
And for Jortberg, the crash did not undo the season that carried her here.
“I’m happy to feel like I’m getting back into the groove,” she said. “Reminding myself that I can compete with the best.”
Team USA with Kendall Kramer (USA), Samantha Smith (USA), Lauren Jortberg (USA), Julia Kern (USA), (l-r) at the finish of the Team Sprint in Goms, Switzerland. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
What Goms Did Answer
Team sprints are rarely remembered for who sat out. They are remembered for who navigated chaos best — and who learned quickly enough to let the rest go.
In Goms, the U.S. women did not leave with a podium. They left with something arguably more valuable at this stage: clarity. About tactics. About limits. About how quickly Olympic margins appear.
There will be no controlled pacing in Val di Fiemme. No absent favorites. No allowance for first-lap tangles.
But there will be familiarity — with fatigue, with pressure, and with each other.
In the final World Cup weekend before the Olympics, that may have been the most important result of all.
Goms World Cup Women’s Freestyle Team Sprint QUALIFYING
Goms World Cup Women’s Freestyle Team Sprint RESULTS
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Jonna Sundling (SWE) and Laura Gimmler (GER), (l-r) during the heats of the World Cup Freestyle Sprint in Oberhof (GER). (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
By the time the stadium lights fully took over in Oberhof, the snow had begun to change its mind.
What started as a pliable winter surface—the kind that both softens and creates mistakes—tightened as the temperature dropped, and each pass of a ski left a polished, glistening trail under the lit German night. The Thuringian Forest, quiet by geography but loud by reputation, had settled into one of those evenings that reward certainty. Edges held if you trusted them. Hesitation showed immediately. And in an Olympic season, there was very little room for either.
Saturday’s women’s Freestyle Sprint marked the World Cup’s return after the Tour de Ski, but the pause had not dulled the stakes. For several nations—and particularly for the United States—Oberhof represented the final sprint in the window that matters most for Olympic selection. That context did not announce itself loudly. It rarely does. Instead, it threaded through the day in subtler ways: in heat selection, in how aggressively athletes protected space, and in the quiet tension between racing for today and building the version of yourself you’ll need in February.
At the front, the results followed familiar lines. Jonna Sundling (SWE) qualified near the top and then won every round she entered, finishing the job decisively for her 15th individual World Cup victory. Coletta Rydzek (GER), fed by a home crowd that never stopped leaning forward, closed hard for second. Maja Dahlqvist (SWE) completed the podium in third, another entry in Sweden’s sprint abundance—a luxury that, paradoxically, can complicate Olympic selection rather than simplify it.
But Oberhof was not only about dominance. It was about positioning, intent, and the quieter victories that occur well outside the top three—where a season can tilt not with a trophy, but with a single, well-timed decision in a quarterfinal.
Hailey Swirbul (USA) take the first corner during her quarterfinal in Oberhof (GER). (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
A Course That Punishes Drift
Oberhof’s sprint course is deceptive in its simplicity: an out-and-back layout, one major climb, a technical descent, and a finishing stretch that arrives already under load. What separates it from more straightforward sprint venues is how early it demands decisions. The opening stretch funnels athletes into a tight corner almost immediately, compressing the field before it has a chance to stretch. The central climb—long, steep, and increasingly rutted and churned as the day progresses—forces skiers to declare themselves sooner than they might like.
There is little room to hide here. Miss the first corner, and you’re fighting for oxygen before the race has found its rhythm. Drift into the wrong line on the climb, and the surface punishes you. Get boxed entering the final turn, and momentum disappears instantly. Oberhof rewards skiers who are decisive without being reckless, aggressive without being impatient.
Those dynamics shaped the day for the Americans in distinctly different ways, producing four very different American stories inside the heats—plus one clarifying, unfortunate footnote that mattered for selection math and for morale: Alayna Sonnesyn (USA) did start, but crashed and did not finish.
Jessie Diggins (USA) during qualification in the World Cup Freestyle Sprint in Oberhof (GER). (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Before the Racing: Compassion, and a Reminder Not to “Try Harder”
On paper, the Olympic selection criteria reads like a legal document—because, in many ways, it is one. It is also, inevitably, a psychological environment: a room everyone lives in, even when no one speaks about it.
U.S. Head Coach Matt Whitcomb described the team’s internal emphasis heading into Oberhof in terms that had nothing to do with points or spreadsheets.
The first message, he said, was simple: have compassion—for yourself and for your teammates.
“This is a stressful job,” Whitcomb said. Some athletes may feel safely “inside” the team; others may feel perched on the edge; others may already feel disappointment. And the team, he stressed, needs to remember that everyone is absorbing the same pressure in different ways. “Read the room,” he said, especially if you have a great race—take care of each other through a stressful period.
His second point was the one that, in a sprint weekend like this, can save an athlete from the most common selection-week mistake: mistaking urgency for a new identity.
Because “this may be one’s last opportunity,” Whitcomb said, it’s tempting to believe you can manufacture something extra—try harder, ski differently, do something dramatic. But that instinct is usually the trap.
“You can’t try something dramatically different,” he said. “What you have to do… is you ski the way that got you here.”
In Oberhof, Whitcomb felt the athletes largely did that. The plans were executed; warm-ups and routines stayed intact. “We qualified a bunch of people,” he said. The day simply didn’t convert into the results they wanted.
That, too, is sprinting: sometimes you do many things right, and the course—plus the speed of the other nations—still asks for more.
Jessie Diggins (USA) during qualification in the World Cup Freestyle Sprint in Oberhof (GER). (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Racing as Training: Jessie Diggins
For Jessie Diggins (USA), Oberhof was never meant to stand alone.
Coming off the Tour de Ski, Diggins framed this weekend not as a test of peak form, but as a carefully placed piece of a longer arc: racing as a training stimulus, not a destination.
“Essentially, I’m using these races as training stimulus,” Diggins said. “It’s a chance to get more reps—working on the tactics, working on communication, just working on all the little things that you really can’t practice any other way unless you’re racing World Cup.”
That philosophy has long guided Diggins’ career. She has rarely spoken about “peaking” the way outsiders want athletes to: as a clean line on a calendar, a simple on/off switch. For her, form is something you keep building in public, in the only environment where it truly exists—under the clock, in contact, with consequence.
“So [I’m] keeping the training load really quite high,” she explained, “but just recovering enough that I can still punch some hard race efforts and have that be part of the training and the lead-up. And for me, that’s always been a really important thing.”
She added a line that sounds like personal preference until you watch her career and realize it’s closer to a blueprint: “I think I race well when I am racing pretty often. I might not do every single race, but just enough that I feel like I’m using them as a really helpful part of my lead-up.”
Diggins’ day ended in the quarterfinals—13th overall on the official results sheet. But that early exit doesn’t necessarily conflict with the way she described the weekend. In an Olympic season defined less by accumulation than timing, Diggins tends to measure progress in subtler signals than finish position: how quickly the body responds, how efficiently it recovers, whether the details are sharpening rather than dulling.
Oberhof, in that sense, fits neatly into the plan. Not every race has to be a verdict. Some are simply data—hard efforts taken at speed, recorded by the body, filed away for February.
Samantha Smith (USA) during qualification in the World Cup Freestyle Sprint in Oberhof (GER). (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
A Wild Arc, Embraced: Samantha Smith
If Diggins arrived in Oberhof as a veteran calibrating form, Samantha Smith (USA) arrived by a far less conventional route—one that still feels almost implausible when you say it out loud.
The last couple of months, Smith said, have been “wild.” She helped Stanford reach the NCAA soccer final. She put her skis on for the first time this season in December. She raced into shape at U.S. Nationals. And suddenly, she was back on a World Cup start line—aware of the stakes, but determined not to let the stakes steal the experience.
“I’m so grateful for the opportunities that I’ve had,” Smith said. “To have a chance to play for Stanford has been such an incredible journey… and now to be back skiing, it feels great to be out here and competing with everyone.”
Smith kept returning to the same theme: presence. She likes the work itself—the daily process—whether it’s skis or soccer.
“I really enjoy the process,” she said. “I love to train, I love to race, I love to play soccer games. So [I’ve] just been trying to focus on enjoying every moment… embracing the opportunities that I have and just trying to be very present.”
That presence mattered on a day when nerves were unavoidable.
“Coming in today, I was definitely nervous,” Smith said. “I feel like the first World Cup races of the year are a bit nerve-wracking, especially when you haven’t had a ton of time on snow or a ton of opportunities to really gauge fitness.”
So she narrowed her goals to what she could actually execute: ski clean; work transitions; be diligent in the “working sections” where Oberhof can hand you time or take it away quietly.
“I didn’t really have an outcome goal,” she said. “It was just to ski hard, do what I could, and if I got into heats, to really compete.”
And then, in her quarterfinal, came the moment that extended her day—and changed, materially, what this weekend could mean.
Smith described herself as not being in the position she wanted over the first big hill. She could see the risk: that the heat would compress into a pure sprint finish, where you either have the lane or you don’t. And then—briefly—she did.
“Into the last climb before the finish, I saw a window on the inside,” Smith said. “I saw the space open up, and I just tried to take it. To be honest, I wasn’t really expecting that it was going to open up.”
It did. She went. And she made the move that sprint racing requires: the one that looks obvious in replay and feels like a gamble in real time.
“I was worried it was going to come down to a complete sprint finish at the end,” she said, “but I think I got pretty lucky… There was a bit of open space, and I was able to make my way up.”
The reward was tangible: Smith advanced to the semifinals and finished 12th overall. Just as important—at least in the language of selection criteria—she also climbed to 42nd on the women’s Sprint World Cup standings after Oberhof.
In a season where criteria can hinge on ranking thresholds, that is not a small detail. It is the kind that turns a good day into a consequential one.
Whitcomb’s reaction captured the strange emotional geometry of selection weekends: elation, paired with an awareness that someone else is hurting.
“We’re absolutely ecstatic with Sammy,” he said—and then, almost immediately, he acknowledged the other side of it: “It’s always bittersweet because on literally every race I’ve ever been to, there have been people that have good races and then people that are really disappointed.”
In sprinting, the margins are often only a few meters. In Olympic selection, those meters can echo.
Hailey Swirbul (USA) during qualification in the World Cup Freestyle Sprint in Oberhof (GER). (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Joy Without Illusion: Hailey Swirbul
For Hailey Swirbul (USA), the day began with something rarer than confidence: uncomplicated joy.
“I was genuinely excited just to be back racing and to make the rounds today,” Swirbul said. “It felt like a treat. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting it. I was hopeful that I might have that opportunity, but getting to be in the heats was really fun.”
What stood out wasn’t that she smiled—it was why.
“My smiles were genuine out there,” she said, “and I felt an excitement and joy to get to be part of it, rather than a fear or pressure… to live up to some expectation that I might set for myself.”
Swirbul approached qualifying with a clear-eyed strategy built around her own technical history. She identified the steep jump-skating (V1) section that had dominated the day’s conversation and made a choice.
“There’s a lot of pressure, a lot of expectation around that steep V1 hill in the middle of the course,” she said, “and that’s just historically not my strength… I felt like I was able to do the working sections well.”
The plan worked. She advanced into the heats and finished 22nd overall.
In the quarterfinal, the course delivered its blunt lesson: once you lose contact, you often don’t get it back.
“I maybe tried to ski my own race a little too much,” Swirbul said. “Once you’re off the main pack, it’s really hard to get back on… I was excited to have a strong finish… but it’s just not enough at this level.”
The sentence contains both honesty and optimism—because Swirbul wasn’t treating Saturday as an endpoint. She was treating it as preparation for what, in her case, may be the weekend’s more natural opportunity: Sunday’s 10-kilometer classic interval start.
“I’m excited—really looking forward to the classic 10 k tomorrow,” she said. “I’ve had a couple of good ones this year, so [I] hope I can keep the momentum going.”
And then she said something that explains why so many distance skiers quietly enjoy sprinting before a 10 k: it’s a way to wake the system up.
“I do actually really like racing a sprint, especially a qualifier plus a quarter right before a 10 k,” she said. “I think that’s kind of ideal race prep for 10 k. So I’m hoping that can help power me through tomorrow’s race.”
Swirbul’s mindset for Sunday, she said, would be built on a simple distinction: what she can control, and what she can’t.
“Every course and every day has so many variables… out of my control,” she said. “So I just want to try to control what I can and do my best at those things.”
It’s a professional skier’s sentence. It’s also, in an Olympic season, a survival skill.
Lauren Jortberg (USA) during qualification in the World Cup Freestyle Sprint in Oberhof (GER). (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Boldness, Not Regret: Lauren Jortberg
Lauren Jortberg (USA) did not set out to lead her quarterfinal. It happened anyway, fast and almost accidentally—the kind of start that changes your entire heat because it changes your options.
“I took control early… wasn’t necessarily on purpose,” Jortberg said. “I just had a really fast start, and there’s a big corner right away, so I wanted to have good positioning there.”
She connected that early positioning to what she sees as a strength: the major climbs. In Oberhof, you don’t get to drift into those climbs. You arrive either with space or without it.
“I wanted… good positioning for the major climbs,” she said. “I feel like that’s one of my strengths.”
Late in the heat, the day turned on a familiar sprint mechanism: contact and congestion at exactly the wrong time.
“I got a bit of a tangle… into the final turn,” Jortberg said. “I lost all my speed there.”
Importantly, she rejected the clean narrative that would blame her early assertiveness for the late cost.
“I don’t necessarily think that leading… came at a cost,” she said. “I just think… I lost all my speed when we got tangled.”
And then she said what, in an Olympic-selection sprint, many athletes think, but not all athletes will say out loud: she did not come to Oberhof to hide.
“With the Olympic implications, I don’t really want to sit in the back and just chill,” Jortberg said. “That’s not really how I like to race heats.”
She described her approach as an attempt to avoid the passive sprint fate: getting boxed in, stuck behind, hoping someone else would make a mistake.
“I just really want to try to ski well,” she said. “At least [I] tried to move… and try to ski my best out there rather than just… getting boxed.”
Jortberg finished 29th overall. But what she took from the day was not despair—it was proof of belonging.
“A lot of my confidence is just knowing that I really can ski with these women who are really strong,” she said. “That’s important for confidence moving forward.”
Even in a heat that didn’t break her way, she will leave Oberhof with something World Cup weekends can either confirm or erase: the belief that she belongs on this stage.
Maja Dahlqvist (SWE), Jonna Sundling (SWE) and Iris De Martin Pinter (ITA), get set to start their semifinal in the Freestyle Sprint in Oberhof (GER). (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
The Final, and the Moment That Changed It
The women’s final unfolded at speed—and then, briefly, at the mercy of chance.
Sundling drove the pace as expected, forcing the field into single-file. Dahlqvist tracked smoothly. Rydzek hovered, patient and dangerous. Behind them, Iris De Martin Pinter (ITA) skied with poise well beyond her years, positioned to contend.
And then she wasn’t.
De Martin Pinter fell, fracturing the race at the worst possible moment—the kind of incident sprinting produces with brutal efficiency. Sundling’s growing gap became decisive. In a course that rewards momentum and punishes disruption, the fall functioned like a door closing: abruptly, unfairly, and permanently.
Sundling closed the remaining distance with authority. Rydzek surged for second. Dahlqvist held on for third.
Jessie Diggins (USA), Hilla Niemela (FIN), Nicole Monsorno (ITA), Milla Andreassen (NOR), Samantha Smith (USA), Alina Meier (SUI), (l-r) come around the first corner of their quarterfinal. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Skis, Speed, and the Truth You Can See on a Downhill
No sprint weekend exists in a vacuum. Equipment matters, and in Oberhof, that reality was visible in the most unforgiving place: the downhills where small gaps become facts.
Whitcomb, careful about specifics because he had not yet been fully able to review the race video, acknowledged what many observers sensed: the U.S. skis were close, but not quite at the level of the very best nations on the day.
“I think that’s a safe and fair assessment,” Whitcomb said. He emphasized that the team was competitive—but in sprinting, “competitive” is often not enough.
“You need the best skis to go up against other teams that have the best skis,” he said, citing nations that, on this day, appeared to have exceptional speed.
It’s the part of sprinting that can feel cruelest to athletes: you can execute your plan, hit your cues, make good tactical decisions—and still watch a gap open on a downhill you skied correctly. In Oberhof, where the course magnifies drift, ski speed is not a luxury. It is oxygen.
Samantha Smith (USA) for the first time advanced into the semifinals in the World Cup sprint in Oberhof (GER). (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
Selection Without Ceremony
For the United States, day one in Oberhof didn’t resolve Olympic selection questions. It narrowed them.
U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s selection language ties nomination, in part, to World Cup standings thresholds, with specific mention of Top 50 (or Top 45 under certain conditions) in the Sprint or Distance World Cup standings on January 18, 2026.
Inside that structure, Saturday’s most significant American movement belonged to Smith.
With her semifinal, she, in just one World Cup race, vaulted to 42nd in the Sprint World Cup standings. That is the kind of number that changes the texture of a season, because it moves her into the zone where the objective criteria has been met.
The other Americans’ days mattered in quieter ways. Diggins stayed on her February-focused arc, treating racing as stimulus and sharpening. Swirbul used the sprint as both a joyful return to the rounds and a deliberate set-up for Sunday’s classic 10k, a race she believes suits her. Jortberg confirmed her willingness to race with intent rather than hide from consequence, even when the margin for error is razor-thin.
And Sonnesyn’s crash—real, abrupt, and emotionally expensive—served as a reminder that selection seasons do not always give you clean data. Sometimes they give you a fall, a DNF, and the long work of resetting.
Jonna Sundling (SWE) comes to the line for the win in the finals. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
What Remains
By nightfall, the snow had hardened completely. The course no longer absorbed uncertainty. It reflected it.
Some athletes left with podiums. Others left with confirmation, calibration, or unfinished business. In an Olympic winter, not every race is meant to answer questions outright. Some exist to refine them—to strip them down to what actually matters.
Whitcomb’s framing, in that light, felt less like a coach’s speech and more like a survival manual for the next month: be compassionate; don’t weaponize the criteria against each other; and when the moment arrives, resist the temptation to become someone new out of panic.
You can’t “try harder” into an Olympic team. You can only ski the way that got you here—cleanly, boldly, and with enough self-trust to hold your line when the window opens.
In Oberhof, Samantha Smith did exactly that. And for one night in the German cold, that single choice—one inside lane, one late move—was the difference between a good day and a consequential one.
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Samantha Smith (#1 – SVSEF) was the fastest qualifier and advanced through all her rounds in first on her way to the national championship at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
There is a particular kind of pressure that lives in a sprint qualification. It isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce itself with theatrics. It sits in the quiet places: the moment you realize the warm-up loop is over and you’re headed back toward the start; the thin stretch of time when your poles feel too long and your gloves feel too tight and the only thing you can hear is the scrape of skis and the soft, practiced urgency of coaches repeating the same cues they’ve repeated for years.
In the heats, there is cover. There is a draft. There is a corner to hide behind, a decision to delay, a shoulder to lean into, a mistake you can sometimes survive. Qualification has none of that. Qualification is a solitary negotiation with speed, oxygen, and the course itself. And in an Olympic winter, it also becomes something else: a sorting mechanism. A gate. A reminder that at the Games, you don’t get to be “good in the heats” if you don’t first earn your way into them.
At the 2026 U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships in Lake Placid, Tuesday’s freestyle sprint at Mt. Van Hoevenberg offered that truth clearly. On the women’s side, Samantha Smith (Sun Valley SEF) was the fastest qualifier. On the men’s side, Zanden McMullen (APU Nordic Ski Center) topped the morning results.
By the end of the afternoon, the national titles belonged to Smith — who converted qualifier speed into clean, controlled racing through every round — and Mons Melbye (University of Utah), who did something deceptively difficult: he kept winning as the format stopped forgiving mistakes.
Dartmouth College’s Ava Thurston was impressive all day on her way to third overall. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Qualification as the Real Story — and the Olympic-Year Subtext
The sprint format always tempts us to focus on finish-line photos, final turns, and last lunges. But if you’re trying to understand what this race meant in the broader context of the week — and in the longer context of an Olympic winter — you start with the qualifier.
Smith’s win in qualification wasn’t just fast; it was decisive in a way that matters in a discipline where tenths often separate confidence from chaos. She led Alayna Sonnesyn (Team Birkie) by nearly two seconds, with Lauren Jortberg (CNEPH) third and Ava Thurston (Dartmouth) fourth.
On the men’s side, the top end was deep and tightly packed. McMullen led Owen Young (University of Vermont) by just over a second, with Michael Earnhart (APU Nordic Ski Center) essentially on Young’s shoulder. Melbye qualified fourth, with Cole Flowers (University of Alaska Fairbanks) and Max Kluck (University of Utah) close behind.
This matters because international sprinting — the kind that happens at the Olympics — is not a format where you can count on “finding your way through the rounds” if you start your day in the wrong place. Qualification is where your sprint begins or ends.
The subtext, however, differs by gender. On the men’s side, the Olympic pathway through domestic sprinting appears closed this winter. On the women’s side, the picture has felt more open, with multiple domestic spots likely in play and sprint specialists carrying meaningful leverage. The sprint, then, does not “mean” the same thing for every athlete — but it still demands the same thing from all of them.
Eventual winner, Samantha Smith (#1 – SVSEF) controls the start of the women’s final at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Women: Samantha Smith’s Control, Sonnesyn’s Speed, and a Final that Rewarded Discipline
Smith won the qualifier. Then she won her quarterfinal. Then she won her semifinal. Then she won the final.
Behind her in the final were Sonnesyn in second and Thurston in third, followed by Nina Schamberger (University of Colorado), Jortberg, and Katherine Weaver (Alberta World Cup Academy).
Sonnesyn’s day began where the pressure was heaviest.
“I am really proud of my sprint qualifier,” Sonnesyn said. “There was a lot of pressure on it, and I was feeling that, so I really leaned into the energy of those around me. I left everything I had out there on that course. Not perfect, but really good.”
In the final, she was clear-eyed about what limited her chances to fight for the win.
“I always need to keep working on my starts,” she said. “It’s really hard for me to get going that fast, and I ended up getting a bit boxed during the final because I didn’t have a great start. That being said, I think that final hill and the super fast downhill at the end worked in my favor.”
Alayna Sonnesyn (#2 – Team Birkie) pushes over the top of the sprint course’s main climb. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Smith described a day defined by managing nerves and executing details.
“I was quite nervous going into today’s race,” Smith said. “I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to perform well, so I tried to channel the nerves into adrenaline. I focused on skiing smoothly, working the transitions, and finding the most efficient line out there.”
The final climb played directly to her strengths.
“The final hill was definitely my favorite part of the course,” she said. “I really love to hop skate, and the gradient of that hill is perfect for it. On this course, transitions are critical, so I tried to be really disciplined about skiing hard over the tops and pushing into the downhills.”
Thurston, who qualified fourth and finished third overall, described a sprint day built around process rather than pressure.
“My approach to nerves was to focus on having fun and getting to the start line ready and excited to race,” she said. “Having my whole team here helped a lot. Chatting and joking with teammates and competitors really eases my nerves.”
She found her biggest opportunities during the heats.
“During the heats, I gained the most time on the final big hill,” Thurston said. “The wide trail made it an ideal place to pass. I’m still working on my double pole at the start, so that’s an area where I think there’s more speed to unlock.”
Lauren Jortberg (CNEPH) leads her semifinal at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Jortberg’s fifth-place finish, after qualifying third, served as a reminder of sprinting’s second demand: doing the work repeatedly under imperfect conditions.
Jortberg said the qualifier remained her primary focus, especially in an Olympic winter where advancing matters as much as how fast you ski.
“Sprint qualification is something I’ve been working on a ton,” she said. “That’s the most important part of the day, especially when it comes to World Cup skiing — just moving on. I was happy with my qualifier. It wasn’t my best skiing, but it was solid.”
She said lingering fatigue from the previous classic race played a role, particularly after spending much of that race running due to skis that wouldn’t kick.
“I definitely felt like I was carrying some fatigue from the classic,” Jortberg said. “So I’d say the qualifier was okay, but not my best work. I know I can ski better than that.”
Jortberg said the Van Hoevenberg sprint course suits her strengths, but emphasized that the margins — especially on the downhills — leave no room for lapses.
“I really like this course. It plays to a lot of my strengths — strong V2, a long climb, and hop skating,” she said. “But you have to be diligent everywhere, especially on the downhills. You can’t be lazy for even half a second.”
In the semifinals, she said the tight schedule and downhill dynamics ultimately limited her ability to move forward.
“My semifinal was only about eight minutes before the final,” Jortberg said. “I couldn’t really clear the lactic acid, and I didn’t have much time. I got passed on the downhill and then couldn’t really move in the final.”
Despite the broader Olympic context, Jortberg said she is deliberately keeping her focus narrow.
“I try not to stress about spreadsheets or criteria,” she said. “I just want to race, have fun, and ski the best way I know how. That’s really all you can do.”
Smith added one more note at the end of the day, confirming she plans to continue racing later in the week.
“As of now, yes, I am planning to race the 20-kilometer on Thursday.”
Eventual winner, Mons Melbye (#4 – UU) in his quarterfinal at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Men: Melbye’s Title, Jayne’s Podium, and Endestad’s Deep Run from 16th
On the men’s side, the qualifier winner did not win the title.
McMullen was fastest in the morning, but the championship ultimately went to Melbye, who qualified fourth and then won his quarterfinal, semifinal, and final.
Behind Melbye, Sasha Masson (CNEPH) finished second, Zachary Jayne (University of Utah) third, and Ari Endestad (Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center) fourth. Michael Earnhart finished fifth, with Owen Young sixth.
The University of Utah was central to the men’s story throughout the day, with Melbye winning the title and Jayne joining him on the podium.
Zach Jayne (UU) during qualification. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Jayne described a qualifier that didn’t match his expectations — and a deliberate reset once the rounds began.
“Coming off a skate qualifier win in Alaska, I was disappointed after my qualifying performance,” Jayne said. “I thought I was capable of much more. Knowing that, I went into the heats with a better plan focused on composure and power. I was more relaxed and less nervous once I committed to that.”
His view of sprint racing was blunt.
“The rounds were incredibly close, but it only matters where people are at the finish — nowhere else,” he said.
Young (University of Vermont), who finished sixth overall, described a day shaped largely by the pressure of the qualifier and the need to earn his way into the rounds.
“Heading into the race today, my internal goals were a bit of a mixed bag,” Young said. “The main focus was result-based, but I really approached the day thinking about the qualifier. I’ve only raced one sprint this season, and the result was pretty mediocre, so I was pretty dead set on just trying to qualify.”
Once through the qualifier, Young said his focus narrowed to managing the rounds one at a time.
“After the qualifier, I tried to just take each heat one at a time and give it my best shot to move on,” he said. “I don’t really try to preserve energy in the qualifier — I usually give it everything I’ve got. That might not be the smartest choice for later in the day, but the confidence boost from a fast qualifier can really help mentally in the heats.”
Miachael Earnhart (APU) on his way to posting the third fastest qualification time. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Endestad’s fourth-place finish told a different story: one of survival, adaptation, and opportunity.
He qualified 16th in what he described as one of the tightest sprint qualifiers he had ever seen at Nationals, then raced his way through the rounds into the final.
“Ideally, I would’ve liked to qualify a little higher,” Endestad said. “But with how close it was, I felt lucky just to be in the heats at all.”
The physical cost of the day was obvious.
“This course is so hard,” he said. “I threw up after the qualifier and had to fight to stay composed through the quarter and semi. There were only about 12 minutes between the semi and the final, so it was about breathing, keeping it down, and making good decisions.”
Tactically, he was clear about where he needed to attack.
“It might have looked like patience early, but honestly, I was barely hanging on from the start,” Endestad said. “The goal was to be in position for the main hill, because that’s where I felt I could really put the hammer down.”
Ari Endestad (APU) leads teammate Michael Earnhart (APU) during the heats of the Freestyle Sprint at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Michael Earnhart said his goals at U.S. Nationals were shaped as much by the SuperTour standings as by the result of any single race.
“One of my goals coming into Nationals was to try to take back the SuperTour lead heading into Period 3,” Earnhart said. “Today helped me with points against Hunter Wonders, but not against Zach Jayne. It’s still very close, and both of them are really good athletes.”
He admitted he arrived with higher expectations after last season’s skate sprint performances.
“After last year, I really wanted to try to win today,” he said. “So I was a little disappointed to come in fifth. But with how close the qualifier was and how strong the competition is getting in the U.S., I’m not overly disappointed. It’s a reasonable result.”
Earnhart said experience helped him stay composed through the rounds.
“I’ve done a lot of heats on the SuperTour, so I feel confident in this field,” he said. “I try to ski to my strengths, stay relaxed, and ski with the confidence that I deserve to win the heat. Normally, that gets me through, but sprinting is unpredictable.”
He added that Van Hoevenberg offered rare opportunities to move in a skate sprint.
“The main sprint hill is wide enough to move, and jump skating is my strongest technique,” Earnhart said. “When the qualifier is six seconds from first to 30th, it’s fine margins. Sometimes you need a little luck — but you also have to make your own.”
Mons Melbye (#4 – UU), Sasha Masson (#11 – CNEPH), and Zach Jayne (#12 – UU) on their way to first, second, and third places, respectively, with Ari Endestad (APU) trailing in fourth place during the men’s Final at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
What It Means — and What It Doesn’t
It’s tempting in an Olympic year to treat every Nationals result like a verdict. But Nationals is not the Olympics, and a domestic sprint is not a World Cup sprint field.
What it can be is a stress test.
For the women, the sprint reinforced that athletes who can combine elite qualifier speed with repeatable execution are building strong cases. Smith won both the qualifier and the final. Sonnesyn backed up top-end speed with a runner-up finish while clearly identifying where she can improve.
For the men, the sprint may not be about Olympic selection, but it was revealing and also adds to the season-long narrative. Melbye showed an ability to win under repeated pressure. Jayne demonstrated resilience after a disappointing qualifier. Endestad showed how quickly sprinting can reward those who survive long enough to find their moment.
Young’s comments also underscored the tradeoffs athletes are navigating as the week continues.
“I don’t have a definite answer, looking forward to the rest of Nationals,” he said. “I’d like to throw down top results in the 20k and the classic sprint, but I need to talk with my coach and assess the best plan to give me the best shot at scoring enough points. That could mean skipping the 20k and focusing on the sprint, or maybe doing both — it’s tricky with no rest day and the body starting to feel the last couple days of racing.”
Katey Houser (MSU) leads Ruby Serrouya (DU) and Marit Flora (UAA) in their quarterfinal at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
A Closing Note from Lake Placid
By late afternoon, the sprint course felt smaller than it had in the morning. Not only because it changed slightly for the juniors, but because sprint days compress experience. The same hill feels steeper the fourth time. The same turn feels tighter. The same finishing straight feels shorter.
That is the quiet lesson of a National sprint in an Olympic winter. It doesn’t allow vagueness. It demands specificity. It asks for one fast lap — and then asks you to do it again, and again, and again, under less forgiving conditions.
Samantha Smith and Mons Melbye won because they answered those questions most consistently.
For everyone else, Lake Placid delivered the same message sprinting always does: if you want to be part of the story later, you still have to earn your way into the next round now.
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Mons Melbye (#4 – UU), Sasha Masson (#11 – CNEPH), and Zach Jayne (#12 – UU) on their way to first, second, and third places, respectively, with Owen Young (UVM – far left), Ari Endestad (#16 – APU), and Michael Earnhart (#3 – APU) trailing to start the men’s final at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Kendall Kramer, racing Sunday at U.S. Nationals at Kincaid Park, is a multi-sport athlete at University of Alaska Fairbanks. She competes in both cross-country running and skiing. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
ANCHORAGE — Alaskans like to think of their home state as the center of American cross-country skiing.
Minnesotans might quibble. But consider the more than 200 volunteers who turned out to help host the U.S. National Championships in Anchorage this week, and the dozens of local athletes who signed up to race.
There was just one problem: Through five of six of the championship events, athletes from Norway, Sweden, Colorado and Idaho had denied the Alaska crowd the pleasure of seeing one of their own cross the finish line first. (An Alaska man, Luke Jager, had technically claimed a U.S. championship Saturday, but crossed the finish line second to a Norwegian, who was ineligible to claim the title.)
Sunday’s 20-kilometer, classic-technique women’s race was the Alaskans’ last chance.
And Kendall Kramer came to the rescue.
The 22-year-old Fairbanks native won her first-ever national championship fashion in stirring fashion, breaking away from the pack early in the race with one other athlete and slipping away in the final meters before the finish.
The crowd on one of the major hills cheers on U.S. Nationals competitors in Sunday’s men’s race. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
“You can feel it in the energy,” said Kikkan Randall, the Olympic gold medalist who heads the Nordic Ski Association of Anchorage, which is co-hosting the event. “We have so many great volunteers out here, we really push to get spectators out here. And so when you see an Alaskan deliver, it’s just that sense of pride.”
Kramer’s final margin of victory was 2.4 seconds over Erica Laven, a Swedish skier competing for the University of Utah. The rest of the women’s pack crossed the finish line a minute-and-a-half later, led by Lauren Jortberg, who races for a Quebec club team.
The women’s chase pack crests a hill in Sunday’s distance race. From left, Alaska Pacific University’s Renae Anderson, Bridger Ski Foundation Pro Team’s Erin Bianco, Montana State University’s Kate Oldham and CNEPH’s Lauren Jortberg. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
Montana State University’s Kate Oldham was just behind Jortberg and rounded out the U.S. championship podium; Laven was ineligible due to her Swedish citizenship.
Kramer has been a standout since her years at West Valley High School in Fairbanks, where she won more than a dozen state titles between skiing, cross-country running and track and field. She was first named to the U.S. Ski Team while a junior in high school, then decided to stay in her home city for college, where she’s competed in both cross-country skiing and running.
She won a medal at the Youth Olympic Games in Switzerland in 2020, and has an array of junior national championships to her name. But two second places — including one Thursday to Oldham — were as close as Kramer had come to winning a U.S. title.
From the start of Sunday’s event, Kramer left little doubt about who would stand on the top of the American podium when she and Laven broke away from the pack on the first of four five-kilometer laps. The two skied the rest of the race together, with Kramer — who trains with Anchorage’s Alaska Pacific University club team during the summer — boosted by an energetic home crowd.
Kendall Kramer leads Erica Laven through the tunnel into the stadium at Kincaid Park. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
“I really felt that — I was like, ‘This must be someone from here,’” Laven said, referring to Kramer. “Because it was a lot of people cheering for her.”
Among the fans at Kincaid were Kramer’s mother, Susan Schwartz, along with her grandmother, an aunt and innumerable teammates. Schwartz, who was working as a volunteer at the start line, described the race between Laven and her daughter as a “nail-biter.”
“They just kept on getting faster and faster and faster,” Schwartz said. “It was amazing to watch.”
Early on, Kramer said she realized that even if she lost the race to Laven, she’d still claim the U.S. title. But, she added, she didn’t necessarily want to settle for that. Laven was skiing stronger on uphills, but if Kramer could keep up in those segments, she said, she could “totally relax in the double pole.”
“She was expending a lot of energy on those. And I knew I had energy by the end,” Kramer said.
The closer Kramer got to the finish line, she said, the more confident she felt about her shot at winning the race outright. And on the home stretch, she pulled away.
Kramer elevates in her double pole to lead Laven toward the finish. (Nathaniel Herz/FasterSkier)
“She was really strong in the double pole today,” Laven said. “I really had to push hard.”
Kramer crossed the line without celebrating. But her mother, Schwartz, “could tell she was just thrilled” — particularly after Kramer finished a close second in Thursday’s race.
“I could tell she wanted it bad,” Schwartz said. “She was not going to let it get away from her today — that’s kind of the feeling I got watching her race.”
Kramer is in her last year competing for University of Alaska Fairbanks and expects to race professionally next season.
She said she doesn’t want to miss this spring’s collegiate championships. But she grimaced when a reporter pointed out that the event conflicts with the World Ski Championships in Norway, where finishes at the past week’s races in Anchorage are likely to inform which U.S. athletes are chosen for the team.
“I’m super grateful if I do get the spot, because I know how hard people work for it and how bad people want it,” she said. “But we’ll see.”
The three Norwegian podium finishers sport their new cowboy hats Sunday. From left: Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, Paal Golberg and Mattis Stenshagen. (Photo: NordicFocus)
CANMORE, Alberta: We’re three days into a six-race series of World Cup racing in North America and I’m just one guy, which means there hasn’t been time to share all the fun little stories and subplots that have been filling my notebook.
I’m summarizing a few of the better ones here. Stay tuned for more notes and some feature stories after Tuesday’s final race in Canmore. If you have ideas for stories, tips or feedback for us, drop us a line at info@fasterskier.com.
Canmore mayor says thanks but no thanks to nearly-naked Krüger
Canmore is situated in the spectacular Canadian Rockies, but Alberta’s prairies start just down the highway to the east, and the events here celebrate the province’s cowboy culture with branded 10-gallon hats awarded to the podium finishers.
Simen Hegstad Krüger of Norway won the first men’s race in Canmore in spectacular fashion Friday, and swiftly proceeded to defile the prize: In an Instagram post from the Norwegian team’s account later that day, he posed for a photo, naked, with only the cowboy hat preserving the image’s PG rating.
This post from the Norwegian team needs no explanation.
“Dear Mayor Sean Krausert,” the post said, tagging the mayor of Canmore. “There is no need for you to come to work on Monday. This guy rules your city until he leaves on Tuesday. Have a good and peaceful long weekend.”
The next day, the post had been deleted. But after Norway swept the podium in Sunday’s men’s race, they published a new photoshopped image with five team members all posing naked with tastefully-placed hats and another offer that Krausert and his staff could have “two more days off, if you want.”
Reached Sunday, Krausert said he was not aware of the posts, then, after I sent them to him, responded with a laugh-crying emoji.
“Really…what can I say!!” he said. I said that he could, in fact, say whatever he wanted, to which he responded: “While I appreciate the offer, I’ll be at work on Monday so these incredible athletes can focus on skiing and enjoying Canmore.”
Krüger said the idea for the original post came from his teammate Didrik Tønseth. “We had some fun about it, but then I figured in the morning that it is enough — maybe we can take it down,” he said, adding that no one instructed him to remove it.
Tønseth told me, cheekily, that the Norwegian men had been failed by their “back-up crew, back in Norway,” which includes their “oldest and wisest” teammate, Sjur Røthe. The crew, Tønseth explained, is supposed to review all posts from the team’s Instagram account but didn’t because of the eight-hour time difference between Alberta and Europe.
“It’s a lot of things we post that stop in the committee back in Norway,” Tønseth said. “Sjur is the athlete representative, but he was asleep, so it was his mistake, I think. Not ours.”
Unfortunately for Røthe, it was too late in Norway for me to reach him for comment.
A car crash derailed Jortberg last month. She’s back now.
U.S. skier Lauren Jortberg is racing in Canmore just two weeks after a crash that left her with “pretty bad” whiplash and totaled the car she was driving — and she nonetheless placed 19th in Saturday’s skate sprint.
“Honestly, I think it was for the better, looking back on it,” she said after the sprint. “I was having kind of a tough season and kind of just needed to have a little gratitude for life and everything — and have a scary situation that makes you appreciate everything more.”
Lauren Jortberg racing earlier this year. (Photo: Nordic Focus)
She added: “I wouldn’t recommend it, definitely. But it definitely gave me some perspective that skiing isn’t everything.”
Jortberg, who races with the SMS T2 team in Vermont, said she was leaving a race in Craftsbury late last month and was driving on a dirt road in freezing rain when she had a head-on collision. Her car had gotten caught in a rut while she was driving around a turn.
“It was pretty traumatic and scary,” she said.
An ambulance came to the scene, and while Jortberg didn’t go to the hospital, she said she was suffering some “pretty bad symptoms” that stopped her from training for the next week.
“But I feel a lot better now,” she said. “And we have a great staff here, and they’re really taking care of me.”
Skistad fans the flames of a feud that…may not actually be much of a feud
One of the fun ongoing subplots of the past year of racing on the World Cup has been the up-and-coming Norwegian sprinter, Kristine Stavås Skistad, poking at her Swedish rivals.
Skistad, 25, has been the only woman to consistently puncture the dominance of the Swedish sprinters, who often put as many as three or four women in the six-person final heats on the World Cup. And when she wins, she seems to relish rubbing it in — or trying to, anyway.
Skistad’s ski-related snark appears to date back several years: An informed observer pointed me toward this objectively hilarious Instagram photo she posted from the World Junior Ski Championships in Finland five years ago. In it, Skistad smiles as she wins a gold medal in the sprint, while a clearly enraged Frida Karlsson of Sweden, who’s now a superstar on the World Cup, appears poised to smash her ski pole into the snow. “No caption needed,” Skistad wrote.
No caption needed.
In Saturday’s skate sprint, Skistad delivered not just a win but also another provocative gesture—a kiss, blown in the direction of the three Swedes who finished directly behind her.
The Scandinavian media is delighting in what appears to be a budding rivalry: On Saturday, a Swedish television channel that was covering the Canmore races played a clip that analogized Skistad to a villainous character from the horror film “The Ring.”
The Swedes themselves, however, appear generally unperturbed.
“I feel like she sees us more like a rival than we really see her,” Maja Dahlqvist, one of the Swedish sprinters, told me. “We’re kind of friendly to her, and I think that maybe annoys her more. It doesn’t affect us at all—it’s not anger.”
Johanna Hagström, another Swedish sprinter, said it’s a “little bit annoying” that Skistad is such a strong finisher. But she said the team’s read on Skistad is that she’s actually “really shy.”
“She doesn’t speak that much—but on social media, she’s very cocky,” Hagström said. She added: “It’s really fun that she’s doing it. But I would never do that.”
Hagström said she also thinks it’s good for the Swedish women to have other strong sprinters to compete against, and to give them motivation for summer training.
Diggins works on saying ‘no’
Nearly 30,000 tickets have been distributed for next weekend’s World Cup races in Minneapolis, which is setting up to be something of a homecoming celebration for Jessie Diggins, the U.S. star who grew up in Minnesota.
Diggins is adored by fans, but the attention on her is making for an “exceedingly high” level of intensity and pressure, she told reporters after Friday’s race.
“There’s a lot going on in my life right now. That’s the magic of having races at home is, it’s something you wanted and something I have worked for and advocated for for six years,” she said. “But at the same time, it comes with a lot of pressure and a lot of expectations and a lot of obligations for my time.”
She added: “But that’s something I’m trying to role model well, for not just me but my teammates — like, it’s okay to be able to focus on your race, it’s okay to say no to things.”
Saying no to things, however, is not always easy, she said.
“It’s exceedingly difficult, and I struggle with it,” she said. “That’s something that I have to keep reminding myself is, I can’t do everything. Can’t possibly do it—it’s not possible. So we’re going to pick and choose, and kind of shoot for the happy medium.”
I ended the interview by cheerfully pointing out that the Devon Kershaw Show, the FasterSkier podcast, is “ready for a yes” any time.
Breakout Austrian star on doping doubts: “I get it.”
Austrian racer Mika Vermeulen has been having a breakout season, and earned his first podium finish in Friday’s distance race.
But Austrian cross-country racers have been implicated in doping scandals multiple times — most recently during the World Championships in Austria in 2019, where one of the country’s athletes was caught in the middle of a blood transfusion.
Mika Vermeulen races Friday. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Vermeulen was not implicated in that scandal and no evidence has ever emerged to cast doubt on his own performances. But I’d heard him bring up the subject on his own podcast previously, and also heard from one person in Canmore who had doubts about Vermeulen’s results.
So I asked him, gently, what he wants people to think when he performs well, in light of the Austrian team’s history.
“With all the shit that’s been happening on our team, and the last few years, yeah, I get it,” he said. “But the only thing I can do is keep on being good, being on my level. And I can tell you I’m not going to be caught, because I don’t do anything.”
He added: “That’s the only thing I can do: Be on the level not just once but many and many times. And I just keep telling people I believe in myself, and I invite everyone to believe me.”
This World Cup 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.
Julia Kern (USA) follows Jonna Sundling (SWE) on the anchor leg of Sunday’s Team Relay in Toblach. Sundling would edge out Kern in a sprint for second place. (Photo: NordicFocus)
As the World Cup entered its third day of racing in Toblach for a 4 x 7.5 km Team Relay, the tone was one of anticipation: what would happen in the race? Even more so, what was beyond this final day in the Italian Sud Tirol? This was the last race before a two week hiatus in the World Cup schedule, after which the best skiers in the world will gather in Planica, Slovenia for the World Championships.
Looking forward to those championships, fans and spectators may anticipate the familiar site of another Norwegian relay victory. Today in Toblach, Norway I (Heidi Weng, Anne Kjersti Kalvaa, Ingvild Flugstad Oestberg, Silje Theodorsen) won the 15th of its last 16 World Cup relays, setting the stage for a showdown with Team Sweden at the World Championships in Planica. Sweden I (Emma Ribom, Ebba Andersson, Moa Ilar, Jonna Sundling) was second on the day. USA I (Hailey Swirbul, Rosie Brennan, Jessie Diggins, Julia Kern) would finish the relay as the fourth team across the line, but would later be elevated to third place after the disqualification of the German team (more on the later). USA II finished seventh with the young team of Alayna Sonneysn, Alexandra Lawson, Sarah Goble, and Lauren Jortberg.
Hailey Swirbul (USA) scrambled for USA I during Sunday’s Team Relay, a position she previously held at the Beijing Olympics. Swirbul’s turn put USA I in a position to push for the podium in Toblach. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Team relays are the intersection where team tactics meet individual and collective will. The relays staged in Toblach would also hint at choices that national teams were likely to make in weeks to come as they prepare for World Championships. For the United States, Toblach was a chance to try out a new lineup in preparation for making a run at a World Championship medal. The most recent World Cup-level team relay happened at the Beijing Olympics, where the US Women took sixth place. In that race, Swirbul scrambled (first leg), Brennan took second leg, Novie McCabe took third leg, and Diggins anchored. In Toblach, Swirbul and Brennan still skied first and second classic legs for USA I, but Diggins moved to the third (and 1st skate) leg, as Julia Kern—following her strong sprint results this season—took the anchor leg.
The most notable team tactics on the field today concerned the Swedish Women’s team, which has been the dominant team at these World Cup races in Toblach, and throughout the season. Sweden fielded two teams in Toblach, but the lineup shuffle within those two was a clear deviation from their strongest possible lineup. Of the team that won a Bronze at the Beijing Olympic Team Relay—Maja Dahlqvist, Ebba Andersson, Frida Karlsson, and Jonna Sundling—Karlsson was absent from the lineup. Dahlqvist would lead Sweden II, while Sundling and Andersson joined Sweden I. Dahlqvist’s Sweden II team also included Linn Svahn, who decided to withdraw from the relay after start lists were made, meaning that Sweden II would start the race, but scratch after the third leg.
All of that decision-making still led to a familiar sight when the race started: Heidi Weng surging to the front in the first leg. Norway’s Women had won 14 of the last 15 relay events on the World Cup, and Heidi Weng has been in the line-up for the past 11 of those wins. Her first leg in Toblach was an early hint that the winning trend among Norwegian team relays would continue today. A pack formed as Weng was joined by Sweden, Germany, the United States, and Finland. All the main players present in World Cup relays of the past were back to challenge once again.
Heidi Weng (NOR) resumed her scrambling duties for the Norway I team on Sunday. Weng, in the 1st leg position, has been part of Norway’s last 12 wins in the event after Toblach. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Weng handed off to Anne Kjersti Kalvaa, who leveraged the advantage into a definitive split in the field. The only woman to follow the Norwegian was Katharina Hennig for Germany, who arrived as an unassuming, yet unsurprising, presence at the front of Team Relay field. Despite Hennig being the only German Women to have individually podiumed in the last three seasons of World Cup racing, the Germans have had a strong contingent of women present near the top 15 places of the World Cup. Germany won silver in the Beijing Olympic Team Relay (Hennig, Victoria Carl, Katerine Sauebrey, and Sofie Krehl) ahead of many of the notable individual names from other nations that populate podiums week-to-week on the World Cup.
Silje Theodorsen (NOR) pushes ahead of Sofie Krehl (GER) during the anchor leg of Sunday’s Team Relay. Theodorsen would secure Norway’s 15th win in 16 tries at the Women’s Team Relay event. (Photo: NordicFocus)
As the Norwegians looked to open a gap early in the race, the German’s strongest skier was right there to continue on the move from Gimmler in the first leg. Hennig skied confidently up with Kalvaa, and the pairing would form the lead pack alongside Ebba Andersson for Sweden I, who kept with her recent streak of strong skiing by pushing the lead group into a pack that held through the 3rd leg of the race. Pia Fink held the pace for the Germans through the 3rd leg as Oestberg pushed the pace for Norway, as Sweden I faded. Norway’s anchor, Theodorsen, conducted a masterclass closing leg, taking control a kilometer out from the finish-line and driving all the way through. Germany’s Sofie Krehl couldn’t keep up, and Theodorsen finished in the arms of her teammates. The Norwegians had won their 15th in 16 tries at the World Cup Team Relay.
Rosie Brennan (USA) and Moa Lundgren (SWE) on the second leg of Sunday’s Team Relay. Brennan began the USA I charge towards the lead pack during her leg, which landed the USA I team in third place in Toblach. (Photo: NordicFocus)
USA I
Clad in the striped relay socks of Team USA, Swirbul handed off to Brennan in fourth place. Brennan knew the hard task ahead of her, saying in post-race comments that “Leg 2 is a hard one that tends to be pretty stacked with strong distance skiers,” said Brennan. “So I knew I had my work cut out for me. I wanted to ski my own race in an effort to minimalize time lost, [which] I felt like I did well, but still managed to lose more time than I would have liked…I felt we all had some good battles out there and also know where we need to look to improve.”
Brennan’s hand-off to Jessie Diggins found the Americans 41 seconds off the lead group, and Diggins went straight into reducing that gap. Diggins didn’t let up, going into the unrelenting turn-over that has become her signature on the World Cup. When she caught Ilar (Sweden I) near the end of her leg, the full scope of Brennan and Diggins combined move had become clear. In a Team Relay, where the field can string out, paces can drop, and energy can falter, the Americans had attacked every meter of the course with jolting energy today.
Jessie Diggins (USA) during her leg of the Team Relay on Sunday. Diggins’ efforts during the team’s third leg reduced a gap that helped set up Julia Kern (USA) to sprint to third place in Toblach. (Photo: NordicFocus)
That energy was transferred to their anchor, Kern, whose rival in the race for third was none other than the weekend’s sprint champion, Sundling (Sweden I). As Sofie Krehl led the Germans across the line to claim second, Kern continued to do battle with Sundling. They swept into the stadium, Sundling went out from behind Kern and gained a slight advantage in the run-up. Kern pushed again, but ran out of room. The pair lunged across the line with Sundling .2 seconds ahead of Kern: Sweden I in third, USA I in fourth.
Julia Kern (USA) during her anchor leg on Sunday. Kern lost a close battle across the line to Jonna Sundling (SWE) for third place. USA I was eventually elevated in the standings after Germany’s disqualification for an illegal substitution. (Photo: NordicFocus)
German Disqualification
Across the line would prove a key phrase in the post-race melee. When final results were posted, it was revealed that the race jury disqualified the 2nd place German team for “participating under false pretenses.” The FIS International Competition Rule cited was “ICR 352.2.2.,” a vague piece of international competition law can be translated as “who was on the course was not who was on the start list.” In this case, Krehl had been substituted for Colleta Rydzek after official start lists had been made. The decision to disqualify Germany meant that the USA I was elevated to third place. It was a strange, but auspicious, sign for the Team USA as they look toward making the podium at World Championships in the same event in just a few weeks. In post-race comments, Rosie Brennan said “Germany’s disqualification [was] something I haven’t ever experienced before and was certainly unfortunate. That is not how I want to land on the podium. They all skied really strong legs. It’s unfortunate that the athletes have to take the hit there.”
The German team awaits a race jury decision after crossing the line in 2nd place on Sunday. The race jury reached a decision to disqualify Germany after a late substitution saw Sofie Krehl anchor the team instead of Coletta Rydzek, who was on the official start list. (Photo: NordicFocus)
USA II
Lauren Jortberg smiled into her teammates’ arms in seventh place. With her crossing the finish line, came a symbolic close on the sequence of the World Cup that has served as a broad introduction for the young skiers that made up USA II today. For Jortberg and Sonnesyn, that has meant an introduction to the demands of racing the World Cup calendar with all challenges that commitment brings. For Goble and Lawson, Toblach marks the end of the beginning of their World Cup careers. In comments to FasterSkier, Alex Lawson said, “The biggest thing I took into and out of Toblach is to be confident in myself! [The World Cup] is a different scene, field, and venue but it is still a ski race and something that I have spent years training for.”
The USA II Team on Sunday, which finished 7th place. (L-R) Alex Lawson, Lauren Jortberg, Alayna Sonnesyn, and Sarah Goble. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Lawson’s reflections on her first World Cup will serve as wisdom for all the Team USA as they look ahead in the season’s calendar. Next up for the American women is the event that the season has been building towards: World Championships begin in Planica, Slovenia on Tuesday, February 21st with a 5 k Freestyle Individual Start. The Americans are sure to come into Planica the way they left Toblach today, with a persistent drive and energy, fighting for every second.
The Official Women’s Podium featuring USA I in third place. Norway won its 15th of the last 16 Team Relays, while Sweden took second. (Photo: NordicFocus)
HOUGHTON, MICHIGAN: Welcome to FasterSkier’s on-location coverage of the United States National Cross-Country Ski Championships from Houghton, Michigan.
This week, Houghton hosts the U.S. National Cross-Country Championships on the Michigan Technological University’s trails system. Today’s event was the freestyle sprint. Even though the race was held under the organizing umbrella of the national championships, today’s event was not a national championship race; as it is part of the US. SuperTour. U.S. Ski and Snowboard has decided to hold the freestyle sprint national championships at the spring finals in Craftsbury, Vermont, March 24th.
Many of the entrants who competed throughout the week were also at the top of the ranking lists for the U.S. SuperTour; so, even though the national title was not in the mix, a lot was on the line. Among those at top of the SuperTour leaderboard for the men were John Steel Hagenbuch, Zanden McMullen, Andreas Kirkeng, and David Norris; all of whom had already podiumed in Houghton.
Hailey Swirbul powering through a corner in the qualifying round. (Photo: FasterSkier).
The women’s SuperTour leaderboard also included the names of Houghton podium finishers; with Hailey Swirbul, Sydney Palmer-Leger, and Novie McCabe being on the list.
Luke Jager generating enough power to get airborne in a high g-force corner in Houghton. (Photo: Dr. Amy Kostrzewa)
So, despite the lack of a national championship designation, the stakes were still very high. An explanation of the SuperTour designation was provided by U.S. Ski and Snowboard’s Brian Fish. Fish told FasterSkier that several years ago the decision was made to split the U.S. National championships. He said, “The decision was made to take the last competition here, being the second sprint, and be moved as a national championship to the spring. The intent is to have an equal distribution of national championships, and it allows some of our World Cup athletes to be able to do a sprint race as a national championship.” Fish added that, “The intent is to provide a good amount of distance and sprint racing throughout the year.” Fish explained the point system designation of national championship points and SuperTour points: “The U.S. national championship races are double points to the SuperTour, so all of our national championship races are also SuperTour points.” Fish also pointed out that normally this race would be held on a Sunday but was moved to Saturday to try and get more Juniors to race. The back-to-back race days turned out to be a significant factor with today’s sprints following yesterday’s 20 kilometer race.
Regardless of what the race was designated, the competition was stiff. On the women’s side, Hailey Swirbul (APU Nordic Ski Center) made it a clean sweep of Houghton winning the sprint by six-tenths of a second over Novie McCabe (University of Utah), who came in second. Lauren Jortberg (SMS T2) came in third.
The men’s race was won by Norwegian Kristoffer Alm Karsrud (Northern Michigan University). He beat out Luke Jager (University of Utah), by seven-tenths of a second. Tom Mancini of France (University of Utah) finished third.
Novie McCabe qualifying for the heats. She would ultimately finish second. (Photo: FasterSkier).
The Race
The week’s racing and back-to-back race days took its toll on racers. Energy reserves were low for everyone, and pacing during qualifiers and heats was critical. Women’s winner Swirbul finished seventh in the qualifiers and didn’t win any of her heats until it mattered most in the finals. She told FasterSkier that, “I was pretty tired today. I didn’t really have it in me to go as hard as I possibly could in every heat. I knew I wouldn’t have any in the end. I tried to move on using as little energy as I could instead of a fitness contest from the first get go. I’m learning a lot about how to conserve energy in the whole sprint day, something I don’t get to practice on the World Cup.” But Swirbul acknowledged that the strategy came with risk. She said,
“The semi-final was a stacked group. That cut it pretty close for me. I wasn’t planning on having a four-way lunge with everyone.” Hailey Swirbul
Hailey Swirbul’s first time crossing the finish line in the in the lead was in the finals. (Photo: FasterSkier)
Men’s podium finisher Jager also noted the strain of back-to-back racing. He told FasterSkier, “I was feeling some fatigue from yesterday. Especially since yesterday was a long one. I got better throughout the day. I knew that…today I needed to hold back everywhere I can and stay in the group as much as I can, just wait to the finish. I got a little more dialed every heat.”
In addition to fatigue, the women’s race faced some controversy. In the semifinals, Mariel Merlii Pulles (University of Alaska Fairbanks), who finished second in Wednesday’s classic sprints, was relegated (moved to last) in her heat due to interference. The infraction occurred in the final few yards of the race. Pulles was boxed out at the finish and tried to pass Karianne Dengerud (University of Utah). As Pulles pulled up to Dengerud their skis tangled and Dengerud tumbled to the ground. At the finish line it was Tilde Baangman first, followed by Pulles, with Dengerud sixth. However, the jury ruled that Pulles interfered with Dengerud and Pulles was penalized by relegation. Racing was held up for about five minutes while the jury deliberated. Race technical delegates told FasterSkier that there was some discussion about whether there could be any compensation awarded to Dengerud due to her position near the finish when the violation occurred, and ultimately, they determined that there was nothing within the rules that could be done to compensate her. With Pulles’ relegation, Dengerud’s day would end with her in fifth place in the heat.
As women’s racing continued into the finals, all eyes were expectantly focused on Swirbul to see if she could sweep the week’s events. Jortberg went out fast, and Swirbul latched on to the back of the pack. Going into the course’s steepest hill for the first time, Swirbul swung wide to pass several skiers and pulled into second. The second time around on the hill Swirbul asserted herself and pressed into the lead. Swirbul put the accelerator pedal all the way down into the stadium and ended up beating out McCabe and Jortberg.
The clean sweep for Swirbul was satisfying. She said that she had held out hope for the possibility of sweeping the week. Swirbul had taken inspiration from her teammate, Rosie Brennan, who had previously accomplished the same feat. She said, “Our coach had talked about that quite a lot, and I wanted to follow in her footsteps, and she’s been a huge inspiration for me.” She continued that, “What means more to me is that I get to be here at nationals. I’m so stoked that I chose to have that be part of my plan this year, instead of going to Europe at the start of the season. So, win, lose, or draw, that’s what I’m really excited for…I love this community.” Swirbul said that this felt like the high point of her career because,
“I am the most happy where I am right now, and I don’t feel like I’m wishing I was home or wishing I was somewhere else. I’m just happy to be where I’m at and happy to be racing well at the same time.” Hailey Swirbul
In the men’s final race, Thomas O’Harra (APU Nordic Ski Center) took the early lead. But most of the field passed O’Harra the second time up the course’s steep hill with Jager and Karsrud surging to the front. Jager had built a very slim lead at the top of the hill. Into the stadium it was Karsrud and Jager in the lead, with Jager holding a slight advantage. But Karsrud had a gear that no one could match and pulled away from the field. Jager acknowledged Karsrud’s finishing prowess:
“Karsrud in that final 100 meters is the stuff of nightmares. He’s just so strong.” Luke Jager
Jager said that he wanted to be in front coming into the stadium. He told FasterSkier that, “I really didn’t like my odds against him in a head-to-head because of how its been panning out for me every other time. He’s an absurdly strong finisher. I feel like the World Cup heats I’ve skied have had finishes that weren’t that fast.”
Men’s sprint podium (l-r Luke Jager, Kristoffer Alm Karsrud, Tom Mancini). (Photo: Dr. Amy Kostrzewa).
For Karsrud, who skis for NMU, the course at Houghton has a bit of a home field advantage feel for him. He said, “This is the third time for a skate sprint here this year, so I know the course really well.” The Wildcat junior said his strategy was, “To pretty much just take it easy in the start, stay far back, and then take it the last 100 meters.” The strategy panned out perfectly for Karsrud, who’s afterburners were unmatchable, and led to a perfectly executed race.
Men’s winner Kristoffer Alm Karsrud with a monster finish had time to celebrate. (Photo: FasterSkier).
The exciting racing was a fitting way to conclude the competition in Houghton. The venue was well organized, and the conditions were excellent. It was all one could hope for in a national championships.
Ruka covered in a fresh layer of frost ahead of the first World Cup race of the season Friday. (Photo: NordicFocus).
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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.
The temperature was a balmy -11℃ (12℉). A glow hung in the sky and new snow decorated the trees; a welcoming winter scene in Ruka, Finland. With the FIS Cross-Country World Cup making its start there on Friday, the crisp, clear, sub-arctic conditions seemed to be an indicator of good things ahead.
Ruka’s 1.4 k classic sprint course remains unchanged from previous years. (To see a breakdown on this course, check out our video from 2018 with Andy Newell here). The straightforward read on the Ruka loop is that for all the jockeying and positioning possible in the first 1 k of rolling terrain, the last hill—the big one—plays an outsized role in deciding who wins. Yet, the critical read on why it has produced such awesome racing over the years is that the place in the racing calendar is just as important. The jitters and nerves of an entire offseason bear down on skiers in a way where the decisive moments in a day come not on the hill meant to test their mettle, but in the moments before where they know that test is coming. Don’t miss the forest for trees. Don’t miss the whole race because of the big hill.
Alayna Sonnesyn on the 1.4 k Ruka classic sprint course during qualifying on Friday. (Photo: NordicFocus).
The women’s field came into that course today anticipating an extra degree of variability. For all the variety of the World Cup last season, its classic sprints were surprisingly predictable. Only four skiers notched wins: overall sprint champion Maja Dahlqvist (SWE), Natalia Nepryaeva (RUS), Maiken Caspersen Falla (NOR) and Jona Sundling (SWE). This season, Falla has retired, and Nepryaeva is out due to the FIS’ Russian suspension. With no skier showing a firm hold on the sprint events, today looked to be anyone’s race.
The Americans started a full lineup of six skiers, with Jessie Diggins qualifying for heats in 11th place, +4.68 seconds off winner Ane Appelkvist Stenseth (2:48.85). Julia Kern also qualified for the heats, placing 23rd (+5.39 sec). Kern ended up in the first quarterfinal along with the winner Stenseth, while Diggins took to the 3rd quarterfinal in a match up with 2nd place qualifier Tiril Udnes Weng (NOR) (+0.56).
The first quarterfinal also featured Sweden’s Emma Ribom, who was coming off an FIS sprint victory over most of the Swedish national team last week. For the 24 year old, that result follows an offseason in which she had top results in rollerski races of all types, from sprints to a 42 k classic marathon win in Trollhaettan.
Julia Kern (USA) and Emma Ribom (SWE) in the first quarterfinal on Friday. (Photo: NordicFocus).
In that quarterfinal, Stenseth (NOR) set a pattern her countrywomen would follow throughout the day; taking the inside lane at the start and leading out the early action. The Swedish counter throughout the day was to let the Norwegians do the pace-setting and hit that decisive last hill hard. Kern meanwhile comfortably moved in the pack, always near the front but never commanding the lead. When they hit the last hill, Ribom surged and Stenseth followed from the other side of the trail. Ribom crossed in 1st – 2:47.54, and Stenseth crossed in 2nd – 2:48.21 (+0.67). Kern had followed the Stenseth move up the hill, and held on in a late sprint with Anna Svendsen (NOR) for 3rd place 2:48.60 (+1.06).
The first heat had been fast, though Kern in 3rd place would be forced to wait out the rest of the quarterfinals before learning if her time was good enough to earn a lucky loser spot.
In the 3rd quarterfinal, Jessie Diggins tucked in behind the Norwegian pair of Tiril Udnes Weng and Kristine Stavås Skistad, and through the early part of the race was in a comfortable position in the pack. As that field rounded the corner that led to the course’s only prolonged downhill, however, Finn Katri Lylynpera and German Katharina Hennig tangled up and went down. Diggins was held up ever-so-slightly, but the spot on the course was unfortunate, stifling the momentum Diggins hoped to build by skiing out from the back of the field. She ended the heat in 5th place.
Jessie Diggins (USA) got caught behind a pile-up during her quarterfinal Friday. Diggins qualified 11th on the first day of World Cup season. (Photo: NordicFocus).
When the rest of the dust had settled on the quarterfinals, the first heat proved to be the fastest, sending Julia Kern into the semi-finals where she would race out of the second heat.
In the first semi, Emma Ribom and Maja Dahlqvist formed a Swedish contingent matching up to a three-strong Norwegian contingent of Tiril Udnes Weng, Ane Applekvist Stenseth and Anna Svendsen. The sixth skier in the heat was the host nation’s Jasmi Joensuu (FIN), who also has a strong American skiing connection – an alumni of Denver University, where she was an All-American and part of DU’s NCAA national title winning teams in 2016 and 2019.
Former Denver University skier Jasmi Joensuu (FIN) (3rd from left) had a breakout day, finishing 4th place overall. (Photo: NordicFocus).
On the Ruka hill, Joensuu earned the distinction of having the best finishing kick of the day. In a heat where the Norweigans took it out fast, and then Maja Dahlqvist took them out even faster, the Finn was able to hold on to the pack just long enough so she could kick back into contention in the final climb. Joensuu followed Weng and Stenseth on the hill, who overtook Ribom and Dahlqvist, but saw themselves be out-double poled in the sprint. The result: Emma Ribom 1st place, 2:44.99, Dahlqvist 2nd (+0.05), Weng 3rd (+0.09), and Joensuu 4th (+0.67). It was the fastest heat of the day.
Julia Kern started her semi-final alongside Johanna Hagstroem (SWE), Frida Karlsson (SWE), Kristine Stavås Skistad (NOR), Lotta Udnes Weng (NOR), and Tereza Beranova (CZE). The Norwegians again took the inside track and took the heat out in front. Kern, for her part, chose to stick behind the pairing of Swedes early in the race, The pack didn’t have the same ferocious pace as the previous heat, instead seeing a quiet battle for positioning going into the final hill. Kern came into that in 3rd place, before losing ground as Czech Tereza Beranova made a massive push. That broke the field into a final sprint early, with Hagstroem (SWE) coming out on top in 1st – 2:47.16 and Skistad (NOR) getting Beranova by a boot’s throw for the 2nd spot (+0.43). Kern finished the heat in 6th place (+4.92).
Julia Kern after the semi-finals on Friday. Kern finished the heat after a strong performance in the qualifier and quarterfinal. (Photo: NordicFocus).
The Final: three Swedes – Emma Ribom, Johanna Hagstroem, and Maja Dahlqvist, two Norwegians – Kristine Stavås Skistad, and Tiril Udnes Weng, and one Finn – Jasmi Joensuu. The dynamic was everything a spectator would expect watching the rest of the days racing, but the decisive moment was not.
The Norweigans took the final out hard from the gun, while the Swedes took the early part of the race to find the right position. That eventually led to a moment of attrition, where the field slowed and stared over into the downhill, not daring to be the first down into it. That led to a more jumbled pack going into the final hill than usual, but it was still a similar race to what had been seen all day. The Swedes took to the uphill at full speed, and seemed to gain a slight advantage on their Norwegian and Finnish pursuers. The final turn looked to be all that was left between them and a podium sweep. Dahlqvist led it out, then Ribom, then Hagstroem.
And then, Dahlqvist went down. One of those trips that every skier has tripped. A little touch of the toe under the boot, and she hit the ground. Ribom and Hagstroem were left to sprint for the victory, and Ribom took the win, 2:49.22.
Hagstroem in 2nd (+0.91) and Weng in 3rd (+0.93) rounded out the podium in the first race on the first day of the World Cup season. Last year’s sprint champion, Maja Dahqvist, crossed the line well after the field, broken Swix Triac in hand.
Emma Ribom crosses the line for her first World Cup win in the Ruka classic sprint. (Photo: NordicFocus).
On a course designed to open the World Cup with a piece of decisive terrain, its latest chapter was defined by an accident that no amount of engineering could snuff out. Maja Dahlqvist, the reigning sprint champion takes a tumble. Emma Ribom, the 24 year-old, takes her first World Cup win. New season, same Swedes.
Women’s podium: 1st – Emma Ribom (SWE), 2nd – Johanna Hagstroem, 3rd – Tiril Udnes Weng (NOR). (Photo: NordicFocus).
American skiers had strong results further down the qualifying list. Rosie Brennan placed just outside of heats in 32nd (+9.15), while Alayna Sonnesyn placed 43rd (+12.36), Novie McCabe placed 52nd (+17.28), and Lauren Jortberg placed 54th (+19.33).
Lauren Jortberg (USA) during qualifying on Friday. (Photo: NordicFocus).
The Canadians also saw a strong grouping of skiers in the results, with Dahria Beatty 38th (+10.16), Katherine Stewart-Jones in 45th (+12.48), and Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt in 46th (+14.03).
Novie McCabe (USA) during qualifying on Friday (Photo: NordicFocus).
In the spring of 2020, the Bridger Ski Foundation (BSF) launched a new professional racing team, led by Andy Newell, who spent nearly two decades on the U.S. Ski Team as a staple and leader of the American men’s program. Launching early in the pandemic, the BSF Pro Team had few opportunities to show their strength in the first race season, but they came on strong in 2021-22. During U.S. Nationals in Soldier Hollow in January, the BSF Pro Team had at least one athlete in the top-10 in each race, except the men’s 30 k skate, with podium performances by Mariah Bredal in the 10-kilometer classic (3rd) and Logan Diekmann (2nd) in the 1.3 k skate sprint.
After growing up in Vermont and developing as a skier at the Stratton Mountain School, and later training with the SMS T2 elite team through most of his professional career, Newell moved to Bozeman, MT in 2018 with his wife and former SMS T2 teammate Erika Flowers, who had grown up in Bozeman and taken a job there. Both at a transitional point in their ski careers, Newell would continue to pursue World Cup skiing for another two seasons, while Flowers continued to train with her sights more focused on domestic racing.
Inside the wax cabin, Andy Newell prepares skis for his athletes during the 2022 U.S. Cross-Country Championships in Soldier Hollow, UT. (Photo: Arlin Ladue / BSF Pro Team)
Over the last four years, this transition has seen Newell race his final World Cup events and officially leave professional ski racing behind, only to launch and support the thriving BSF Pro Team, alongside his online coaching business, Nordic Team Solutions. In this interview, which took place on Friday, June 3rd, Newell provides insights into this transition from athlete to coach, while also adding behind-the-scenes details of getting the Pro Team off the ground. He also speaks to the challenges of elite training groups, their role in supporting the trajectory of U.S. skiing at the international level, and what’s in store for the BSF crew this summer.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
FasterSkier/Rachel Perkins: Starting with the timeline, in the spring of 2018, both you and Erika started to transition to ‘retirement-lite‘. And at that point, you were already talking about doing some coaching and working in athlete development. Is that when you guys moved to Bozeman? And from there, what was the evolution of your relationship with the BSF program?
Andy Newell: Well, I was actually still on the U.S. Ski Team in 2018, but we did move to Bozeman that year. I was still racing essentially full time, but at that time I started a business, Nordic Team Solutions, and with that, I launched a summer training program where I was coaching college kids, so summer of 2019 was my first year where I was kind of stepping more into a formal coaching role. Which for me felt natural because I’ve always kind of participated in and loved the whole training camp vibe.
Growing up at Stratton, Sverre [Caldwell] always had these amazing summer camps for juniors that I participated in my entire life. And then, as I became an older athlete and a U.S. Ski Team athlete, I would actually help with some of these training camps as well. And then in my years with the U.S. Ski Team, I had this program that I started calling “speed camps,” which a lot of people might remember. We would host these free clinics around the country that would coincide with the U.S. Ski Team training camp. Basically we would reach out and have a bunch of juniors come and join us for an afternoon of rollerskiing and agility courses and fun stuff like that.
So to me, it felt like a natural progression to take that a step further – once I launched the Nordic Team Solutions business, where I was running the website, to then pair that with a summer college training group. So my first year here in Bozeman, I actually ran that group independently from BSF… so I was actually not part of BSF in that first year of 2019. I was planning to race some World Cups, did race some World Cups in 2019-20, and then COVID put a quick end to our season when we were getting ready to race in Quebec and Minneapolis.
I had planned on those being my final World Cup races as a professional, to go out racing in Quebec and in Minneapolis and had spent all year preparing for those specific races. And sure enough, they were canceled. So it was like, ‘Surprise! You’re officially retired now.’ And at that point is when I signed on with Bridger Ski Foundation to be the elite team coach.
BSF Pro Team athlete Hannah Rudd races the classic sprint qualifier during a post-U.S. Nationals SuperTour event. (Photo: Arlin Ladue / BSF Pro Team)
FS: The announcement of your hiring went out in April 2020 – which kind of feels like a lifetime ago, but it also seems like it would have been a somewhat challenging time to launch a new elite team. Was the foundation already there with the BSF program or was this the onset of the elite team program?
AN: There was an elite team in 2018, but it disbanded because the coach, Rogan Brown, went on to [coach at Denver University], and there were only a handful of athletes here in Bozeman at the time. So in 2019, there was no elite team tied in with BSF, and then in 2020 when I was hired, it was essentially my job to kind of relaunch this program, and to make it a successful program.
There’s no reason why BSF should not have a successful elite team. The Bridger Ski Foundation has been around for over 70 years. It’s very well established here in Bozeman; we have a great pool of young athletes that participate in the youth skiing program – hundreds of athletes.
Andrew Morehouse was signed on as the new nordic director in 2019, and then I came on in 2020. And we shared a vision that, in order [for BSF] to be a premier club, we should have an elite team. And then basically, I had free reign to kind of do what I wanted, which I’m super grateful for – that BSF has kind of given me the ability to choose the team makeup the way I see is best, and to choose how I run the program.
We work closely with the juniors and Andrew Morehouse and the youth programs in town, so I very much have taken the model that I learned growing up at Stratton and tried to implement that here in Bozeman.
At that point [in 2020], I basically just got on the phone and started calling some different athletes that I had met or worked with through NTG camps. The US Ski Team in 2018 and 2019 would hire me to come to NTG camps or development team camps – that was part of my business as well – so I started reaching out to different athletes and mentioning to them that we were going to start a new team here in Bozeman. So I was able to recruit nine athletes initially to come to the team, which was great.
Here’s a preview of the 2021-22 BSF Pro Team. Note that one of the original 2020-21 athletes, Leah Lange, stepped back from her racing career after the team’s first season to begin coaching in Big Sky, MT.
BSF Pro Team athlete Finn O’Connell welcomes his teammate to the line during the U.S. Cross-Country Championships in Soldier Hollow, UT. (Photo: Arlin Ladue / BSF Pro Team)
FS: Can you say more about getting the team off the ground?
AN: So we launched [the Pro Team] in 2020 in the midst of COVID, which – there were so many unknowns and unique circumstances to try to convince these athletes to move to Bozeman and train here in the midst of all that was going on. And we essentially only had very unofficial racing our first season of 2020-21. Kind of a mismash of some official races, some non-official. But in hindsight, it was a nice opportunity for us to just build a team and spend a lot of time training with one another.
When you name a team like this as a coach, you have no idea what type of team culture or team vibe there’s going to be – you’re bringing all these different athletes from different colleges or different programs around the country. You want to create a team that really acts and feels like a team and you have no idea what type of form that’s going to take. So in hindsight, to have that COVID year where we just spent a lot of time training with one another, building the team here in Bozeman, was nice to lay that foundation so that we could have what was a very successful season last year in 2021-22.
FS: You’ve still got Nordic Team Solutions going on also. Has your work there shifted in any way and how do you balance your time between both of those?
AN: It has shifted in that, my first few years with NTS, I would actually hire [myself] out and go to more training camps. As I mentioned, I would help the U.S. Ski Team out with some of their NTG camps, or I would be hired by a club to go do a two or three-day training camp with them. And that has pretty much stopped, because my priority time-wise is with the BSF Pro Team. So I don’t travel so much for any other coaching duties, I mostly just travel to training camps with the BSF Team and work with them here in Bozeman.
But I do still run the website, which is a great resource for training information for ski clubs, high school coaches, college coaches, or any individual that’s looking to learn more about training. I still run that [program] on a weekly basis and in published training plans and right strength plans for various individuals.
BSF Pro Team athletes (l-r) Hannah Rudd, Mariah Bredal, and Erika Flowers celebrate Bredal’s third place finish in the 10 k classic during the 2022 U.S. Cross-Country Championships in Soldier Hollow, UT. (Photo: Arlin Ladue / BSF Pro Team)
FS: In terms of Bozeman: you spent most of your career based in Vermont, though Erika has roots in Bozeman. How have you found that setting for leading this Pro Team and what are your thoughts on the training environment there?
AN: The environment for training is fantastic here in Bozeman; we have access to mountains, access to a long season of skiing. We’re just an hour and a half away from West Yellowstone where we often have early FIS races, or we’re within driving distance of Sun Valley, Canmore, all these other places that historically have early-season racing. The rollerskiing is quite good here and there’s already a great support network within the Bridger Ski Foundation community.
What is tough, with any elite team, is the fundraising aspect. I actually rebranded it as a Pro Team for a reason, because I want these athletes to be not scraping by, but to be actually making money while pursuing their dreams of being an Olympic-level racer. I think they deserve that, and I think that’s what all professional skiers deserve in the U.S.
But it’s taken us some time to get there, and we’re not there yet. Fundraising is a huge part of my job on a yearly basis; we essentially have to fundraise from scratch all the money that it’s going to cost to travel around the country, or travel to Europe with these athletes who are making World Cup or World Championships. All the wax, all the hotels, all the logistics – all of that falls on a single program budget, basically.
And I think there’s a huge potential for that in Bozeman. Bozeman is one of the fastest-growing towns in the U.S. and there are a lot of new businesses here, so I think our fundraising potential is huge. But given the fact that we started in COVID, and we’ve only been here for two years, we’re still trying to figure that piece out. And so that’s a place where we still have room to grow.
And I would encourage anyone out there who’s reading this to realize the importance of these pro teams that we have in the country… We have Stratton, we have Craftsbury, we now have the Birkie Team, we have Sun Valley. And these clubs are essentially responsible for the development of the US Ski Team. This is the club model that we have adopted. Now, you know, it’s now been 30 years since we’ve, more or less, adopted this model. And we’re not getting any money from the U.S. Ski Team to develop these athletes. These clubs are and are all self-funded. APU is a little different since it’s tied in with the university.
Unless you have a massive endowment or some other amazing bankroll that I am not familiar with, these pro teams and elite teams are fundraising their entire budgets on a yearly basis. Every single year, you have to raise the amount of money to send these [athletes] to these races. And that’s challenging, but it’s a hugely important piece of our development, because we wouldn’t have the U.S. Ski Team that we have now – we wouldn’t have the depth or the success on the U.S. Ski Team level – if we didn’t have these clubs as feeder programs. So I think it’s important that people help support these teams.
BSF Pro Team athletes Lauren Jortberg and Logan Diekmann earn their first World Cup starts in Lahti, FIN in Mar. 2022. (Photo: BSF Pro Team)
FS: Looking back over the last few years, what are some of the indicators of success that you look at in identifying what’s going well for the program? And what are some of your objectives in terms of heading into the next few seasons?
AN: That’s a great question. The goal we have here with the Pro Team is international success, and that means I don’t bring someone onto the BSF pro team [whose only] ambitions are racing SuperTour and winning the Birkie, although those are amazing achievements. Those are, for sure, stepping stones in our development. But my goal is to put people on the U.S. Ski Team, and to qualify people for World Championships and Olympics.
So international success is what we strive for, and that’s how we measure our season, and how folks are doing. Last year alone, we had three athletes achieve their first ever national podiums in Soldier Hollow. We actually qualified four different athletes for World Cup, although two of them – Finn O’Connell and Mariah Bredal – did not get to start there because they were canceled. But both Logan Diekmann and Lauren Jortberg started their first ever World Cups, which is great. We finished the year with Logan Diekmann as the overall sprint champion on the SuperTour. Finn O’Connell was the second best ranked distance skier on the SuperTour, and he also qualified for the U.S. Ski Team [as a B-Team member]. So for us, that was a solid year, and I was very proud of the way the team performed and much of the team, if not half the team, was able to have personal bests and be called up for some type of international racing, whether that was through World Cup or Opa Cup, and that’s exactly what you know I want to do. That’s my mission: to get these kids into those big international races and have them perform well.
FS: Can you speak a little bit about the depth of the team, too? Momentum seems like an important thing with elite or pro teams. Just having that critical mass of athletes that are on the same level, or have similar objectives. Is that something that you’re seeing with the BSF crew?
AN: Yeah, absolutely. I think the phrase ‘critical mass’ is for sure something that you see with these pro teams. I mean, it’s hard to deny the Jessie Diggins/Julia Kern effect that Stratton has right now. That’s a huge draw to their program.
I think, for us, considering we started with zero members of the U.S. Ski Team on our pro team, and now we have one B-Team member – I’ve just been really excited with our success so far and how the team has stayed driven and motivated and helps push one another. That’s why I do this job – I love the team environment. That’s what I lived in my entire life; I was on the U.S. Ski Team from when I was 18 years old until I was almost 36 years old.
So the concept, the feeling of being part of a team, where people are genuinely supportive of one another you share in the training process and learning process, and you’re pushing one another, that’s the most valuable and successful scenario you can have. So I’ve been glad that we’ve somehow been able to find that nice mix of motivated individuals that genuinely get along and have fun with one another, and are able to travel the country and have put together successful race weekends.
The BSF Pro Team out for a rollerski during a June 2022 camp in Lillehammer and Sjusjøen, Norway. (Photo: BSF Pro Team)
FS: Last program question: what’s new and what’s on deck for this summer? You mentioned that you guys are heading to Norway. What other summer/fall camps or projects are you guys working?
AN: [Starting with the team roster:] so far this year, we’ve added Sarah Goble to our squad squad. She’ll be a new athlete with us next year. We also have her brother Reid Goble on the team, who has been great. I think those two have a ton of potential.
We did lose Lauren [Jortberg] to Stratton – and you know how these clubs work, it’s a very friendly exchange. I’m sure we’ll find ways to collaborate, and that’s honestly what I find a lot of value in is elite teams collaborating with one another. Last year, we did a bunch of training camps with Sun Valley [Gold Team]. We joined Stratton and Sun Valley in Lake Placid training camp. We did some camps in the Midwest where we’ve had overlap with some Birkie athletes. And so I’ll continue to do that this year.
We are scheduled to go to Norway next week for a two-week camp where we’ll be in Sjusjøen for five days, and then on Sognefjellet ski fields for five days. We’ll try to overlap with some fast foreign skiers while we’re there and try to learn from some folks over there, and we’re bringing a handful of college skiers with the Pro Team as well on that trip. After that, we’ll be back here in Bozeman for the main summer training block and that’s when we do our BSF college training group as well. That runs through the end of June and into the first week of August.
So we have a solid six-week block of training here in Bozeman, which has been the staple of the BSF program the last couple years – having this really competitive college training group. It’s been so fun to see that program grow and see the success of the college training group. The first year with BSF, we had folks like Sophia Laukli on the team, and so many talented individuals. It was great to see them develop here in Bozeman and then have such amazing seasons that winter. So we’ll continue that program where for six weeks we’ll have a team of 12 collegiate athletes that join the Pro Team on daily training all the way through August.
After the summer training group ends, we’re planning to head to the Midwest for another training camp, like we did last year. We try to get to low-altitude in August. Right now we’re looking at Marquette as our training destination, and we’ll try to collaborate with Team Birkie on some sessions out there. And then we’ll be going to Park City camp in October, like we always do, to join the many clubs from around the country and the U.S. Ski Team for their [fall] camp. And then we’ll probably get on snow early here in Montana or in BC as the snow flies.
FS: How much crossover is there between the collegiate group that you have joining in the summer and the Montana State University (MSU) program?
AN: Historically there are not many MSU kids that stay in town [over the summer]. This year I think we have two MSU kids in the college training group, so that’s great. If there are MSU athletes in town, we try to prioritize them to get them onto the team to keep them within the community. But a lot of college kids go home, whether it’s Alaska or back east or the Midwest. But we do have some good crossover and I have a good relationship with Adam St. Pierre and the university. We use their facilities all the time – we just did a round of testing on the rollerski treadmill at MSU – so it’s handy to have those types of resources nearby.
Logan Diekmann bites his medal after finishing second in the US SuperTour standings in the classic sprint in Whistler, BC during Canadian Nationals/US SuperTour finals in Mar. 2022. (Photo: BSF Pro Team)
FS: I know you’ve also got the Jim Bridger Trail Run coming up this summer, and there is a new rollerski race component. Can you share more information on that?
AN: We’re doing our first ever Jim Bridger Rollerski Race at the end of July, which is paired with our annual trail run. I’ve been working with the town of Bozeman to shut down a city block behind where the MSU campus is, and we’re going to be hosting a crit-style rollerski race on the weekend in downtown Bozeman.
We have prize money for that, and we’re getting some great sponsors on board. So that’ll be a cool event.
FS: Can you also talk about how that event supports the BSF Pro Team?
Yeah, absolutely. Like I mentioned, we as a Pro Team essentially need to raise $150,000 each year just to get the [athletes] to all the races and try to cover their expenses. That is a travel budget, a wax budget, everything – and that needs to be raised on an annual basis. For us, the Jim Bridger Trail Run is one of our biggest fundraisers.
It’s an incredible amount of work. It’s a weird part of my job to be a coach, but also an event organizer. There’s a lot of weird things that go into being a ski coach. But, if we can make the Jim Bridger event big and successful, we can actually raise a lot of money for our budget. So that’s why we put so much attention and effort into it. It’s also a good chance for us to partner with local sponsors to raise money for the Pro Team, because all proceeds from these events go directly to the Pro Team.
So historically, it’s just been a trail run, but this year I wanted to add a rollerski event for a couple reasons. One: I think it’s a huge development tool for BSF. We have so many talented youth skiers in this town. I want them to kind of be exposed to this type of high-level rollerski racing that we see in Europe. We see it all over Norway and Sweden and Germany; we need to have high-level rollerski races here in the U.S. So my secondary goal is to have this be an annual thing, where people know there’s going to be a quality rollerski race that’s super exciting to watch, fun to participate in, there’s going to be prize money and sponsors, so we can make it an annual thing and have it tied in with all the different clubs throughout the West. I’m hoping teams from Sun Valley, Park City, and all over the West will bring their athletes here to compete in this rollerski race on July 30th in downtown Bozeman.
FS: And they’re staggered, right? So people could do both theoretically?
AN: Exactly. The rollerski race is on Saturday, running races are on Sunday. The running race is 10 miles, but we also have a 5k option for the younger kids. And we have U16, U18, U20 and open class for the rollerski race. Swix and Salomon are sponsors of the event, and we’ll be getting a race rollerski fleet from Swix, so these are going to be matched rollerskis for the open men and women, so it’s going to be a legit rollerski race.
We’re hoping to livestream it too. TBD on that, but check the BSF Facebook page for live streaming.
After eight years at the helm of the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 team, head coach Pat O’Brien is in the process of taking a few steps back, passing the reins to Perry Thomas, who has spent the last five years as the assistant coach at the University of Vermont.
Perhaps highlighting this transition and the sharing of responsibilities the two are in the process of navigating, FasterSkier connected with Thomas in mid-May while he was in his second week of supporting the SMS T2 athletes who had joined the U.S. Ski Team for their spring training camp in Bend, OR, and with O’Brien who was back in Stratton, having recently wrapped up with his participation in U.S. Ski & Snowboard spring congress sessions.
Pat O’Brien supports some of the SMS T2 athletes during a 2022 SuperTour weekend in Sun Valley, ID. (Photo: SMS T2)
A 2006 graduate of SMS himself, O’Brien raced collegiately for Dartmouth College, then spent four years training and racing professionally with the Craftsbury Green Racing Project. His move from Craftsbury back to Stratton was timed with his retirement following the 2014 Sochi Olympic Quad. Given his age and the proximity to his racing career at that time, many of the athletes on the T2 team were among what he called his “peer group”, having overlapped with many of them during either high school, college, on the race course, or all of the above. Jessie Diggins and Sophie Caldwell Hamilton were quickly becoming rising World Cup stars on the women’s team, while Andy Newell and Simi Hamilton headlined the men’s roster, and a young Julia Kern and Katharine Ogden were spending a PG year training with the T2 team.
Eager to stay connected with the sport after retirement, O’Brien seized the opportunity to take over in Stratton, stepping in as his predecessor Gus Kaeding departed.
“Ski coaching is the one thing that I’ve always known that I wanted to do, it was just kind of a natural progression for me. I knew that I was done with my athletic career – I didn’t really want to ski race anymore – but I knew that I still wanted to ski, I still wanted to be involved and to give back to the sport. I felt like, to some extent, when you spend basically your entire life skiing, you get pretty good at understanding the sport. But we never know as much as we think we do, and we always need to be students of the sport and have an open mind and learn.”
As he began his coaching career, he quickly realized that writing training plans and facilitating training was only a small subset of the responsibilities of an elite club coach.
“Good coaching is being comfortable wearing a bunch of different hats. And I mean, I joke, but the actual coaching is such a small part of it. The nitty gritty of pulling an athlete on the side of the trail and looking at video and all of that is important, but you’re there as a friend, a drill sergeant at times, and as someone that is just really trying to be supportive.
“And that’s all-encompassing. So for me, it has been a pretty fun experience to see people figure stuff out and be there to support them when they needed a little extra help and to do it in a pretty collaborative, dynamic way.”
He described his experience transitioning to coaching primarily as a mindset shift from the inevitable self-centric focus required of professional athletes toward selflessness; but the work required and pace of life remained equally taxing.
“When you coach at a club level – all coaching is a demanding job. I do think that you have to – I don’t want to use the word ‘sacrifice’, but when you transition from being an athlete yourself to being a coach, your job as an athlete is to be a little selfish. You’re trying to maximize your athletic performance. You need to have balance… but at the end of the day, you need to make sure that you’re training well and with purpose, you’re recovering well, you have goals and you’re going about achieving them. It shouldn’t be simply looked at as like what you have to give up to do that, but to be the most professional athletes and succeed against people who are trying to do the exact same thing, you just have to do a really, really good job with it. And coaching is the same thing. You have to be willing to approach everything that you do with the same degree of drive and focus that you would as an athlete…
“Basically, I just threw myself into it with the same approach that I had as an athlete which is, I’m just going to work, and work, and work, and learn all along the way. And then give it my best push and know that if I get to the point where that balance starts becoming harder and harder, or I can’t really do the job that I want, to be supportive of the athletes [to the level I want to be], that’s when you’ve got to know that you either double down and keep pushing or make a transition.”
While O’Brien is no less dedicated to the SMS T2 program or its athletes, a new endeavor has begun which will make achieving the balance he described significantly harder: he’s about to become a father. His wife, two-time Olympian and long-time U.S. Ski Team member Ida Sargent, is due in mid-August.
After eight years as head coach of the SMS T2 team, Pat O’Brien takes a step back as he and his wife, Ida Sargent, begin their family. (Photo: SMS T2)
Since retirement, Sargent has been working for her high school alma mater, Burke Mountain Academy, in Northern Vermont, and is currently the Academic Director for the school while also teaching STEM classes. O’Brien has been splitting his time between Burke and Stratton, which lies roughly 150 miles southeast in the opposite corner of the state. His usual coaching schedule pulled him around the country for weeks at a time to support athletes at U.S. Nationals and SuperTour events, and sometimes around the globe for World Cup, U23s, and other international camps and races.
While he acknowledged that there are many examples of coaches at all levels who have successfully juggled a demanding work and travel schedule with raising a family, what felt like the best fit given his and Ida’s vision and priorities for their own growing family was for O’Brien to decrease his level of responsibility with the T2 program, allowing greater flexibility and more time at home.
“I just felt like there’s part of me that was like, ‘I’m not seeing a pathway that I feel like I can still commit [to coaching] at the level that I want and know that you need to in order to to do the best job with your job, while simultaneously trying to start a family.’ I felt like it was my time to reevaluate and maybe step back or be completely done with ski coaching, because I certainly didn’t want Ida to have to put her growing career on hold to be the [primary] caregiver…
“Eight years is a long time to do something and I am very proud of what the team has accomplished in that time… it’s really cool having spent this time seeing athletes grow, not just not just athletically and within their their ski careers, but as individuals from high schoolers to finishing up college to full blown ‘this is my job.’”
While his role will be smaller, O’Brien is certainly not stepping away from the T2 team altogether. “Starting a family does not necessarily mean that it means the end of being involved in the sport,” he said. “It just means trying to figure out what the right relationship is with it.”
Pat O’Brien supports SMS T2 skiers Julia Kern and Alayna Sonnesyn at the 2022 U.S. SuperTour Finals in Whistler. (Photo: SMS T2 Blog)
The exact balance and distribution of responsibilities remains a work in progress as Thomas moves into the head coach role and the new season of training begins, and both O’Brien and Thomas are excited to collaborate and support one another throughout the year.
Explaining his philosophy as “under-commit so I can open perform”, O’Brien anticipates taking on many of the behind the scenes tasks that support the team, from collaboratively blocking out the season calendar, to managing travel logistics for camps and SuperTour races. As he put it, the little details of deciding “which flights to take to get from Canmore to Sun Valley” and where to stay are often made easier with several years of trial and error under your belt.
While Thomas will spend more time with ski boots on the ground, both in Stratton during the summer and at races and camps throughout the year, O’Brien anticipates he’ll still be plugging in a fair amount too. Though his stay might be shortened to the period immediately surrounding races, he plans, at minimum, to be in Houghton, MI for U.S. Nationals in January, and also the SuperTour finals in Craftsbury in late March.
He’s also excited to reconnect with the team in Stratton early in the summer before Ida gets close to her due date, but also to take off a few of his usual coaching hats while doing so.
“I think it’ll be really fun for me to actually be able to flow in and out get to see people, connect with them, but also not be like ‘Okay, now I don’t have to worry about making sure that the van’s filled up with gas, or water jugs have been filled, or that I’ve ordered all the lactate strips in advance so that we don’t run out.’”
Perry Thomas out for a crust ski with the SMS T2 athletes who joined the national team training camp in Bend, OR this spring. (Courtesy photo)
As Thomas gets his feet under him in Stratton, he explained that he feels “very fortunate that Pat will still be involved.”
“As much as I can have him in the mix, the better,” Thomas said. “His knowledge with skis and wax is just unreal, so tapping into that resource is huge for me, for sure.”
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UVM assistant coach Perry Thomas in action during the 2022 U.S. Cross Country Skiing Championships in Soldier Hollow. (Photo: Instagram @oneswellperry)
Prior to joining the UVM program, Thomas spent five years as the assistant coach at the University of Vermont, working alongside head coach Patrick Weaver. During his own collegiate racing career, Thomas spent four years racing for the University of New Hampshire, where he served as team captain during his senior year in ‘12-13. Departing briefly from the cross-country ski world, he spent a year teaching high school science to underprivileged youth in the Oakland area of California, before returning to the Northeast to begin his coaching career as the assistant coach at Williams College in Massachusetts.
“Working at UVM was unreal – a great experience,” Thomas said emphatically. “I really loved working with Patrick Weaver and the athletes there and it seems like almost a seamless transition, in many ways. Four of the skiers on the T2 team I actually coached at UVM. So knowing a lot of athletes here already – what they’re working on with technique, and racing, and goals and all that – has been very seamless, and that’s been great.”
The UVM graduates who now ski for SMS T2 include Alayna Sonnesyn (‘18), Bill Harmeyer (‘20), Lina Sutro (‘21), and Ben Ogden (‘22).
The UVM ski team celebrates a successful 2022 NCAA Championship. Assistant coach Perry Thomas is at the far left. (Photo: UVM Skiing)
Given the caliber of these athletes and the success of the UVM team as a whole during his tenure, Thomas credits his time with the program to the acceleration of his development as a coach, preparing him to take his next steps forward with SMS T2.
“Patrick Weaver definitely gave me a lot of opportunities and ownership over different facets of coaching that team and I think that’s been instrumental in me being here now with T2. I was able to go to World Cup Finals with Ben Ogden in Quebec his first year in school [in 2019], and I was just able to do trips like that on my own with athletes. That was huge for my development as a coach and for my experience of waxing, ski testing, and [other responsibilities at that level of racing]. So working at UVM was a lot of fun – I’m gonna miss it for sure – but it set me up very well for this transition.”
Ben Ogden gets a congratulatory fist bump as he heads to the podium during his sweep of the 2022 NCAA Championships. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
A theme of both Thomas and O’Brien’s comments on the difference between collegiate and elite club coaching is small in terms of the training and technique coaching itself, but vastly different in terms of the opportunities elite club coaches have to support their athletes.
“I think the big differences are what we can and can’t do throughout the year from collegiate [racing] to the elite team,” Thomas explained. “Like, I wouldn’t be here [in Bend] and been doing an on-snow training camp if I were at a college team. And obviously the racing schedule is super different.
“The college schedule is pretty efficient, whereas the SuperTour calendar is quite a bit more spread out. And then, in addition to that, you have an athlete’s like Jesse Diggins, and Ben Ogden, and Julia Kern that are going to be on the World Cup, as well as athletes that are trying to make it to the World Cup. And at UVM, we had crazy talented athletes – Ben Ogden is one of them – so working with with high caliber athletes is nothing entirely new, but dealing with athletes where some are on the World Cup and some of them on the SuperTour is an interesting dynamic that you don’t often get with the college teams.”
In terms of what Thomas adds to the program as he steps in as head coach, he described his coaching philosophy and the environment he seeks to create within the training group, which keeps athletes motivated and happy through the arduous and long-term development process.
“[Cross-country] skiing is such a hard sport – it’s so much time that that we’re putting in, and so many sacrifices that we’re making, that I wholeheartedly believe in making that time that we’re together training and working hard fun and enjoyable,” Thomas said. “I think that’s a big part of what we do – and it has to be a big part of what we do – because like I said, it’s a hard sport. So I think making things light and having fun with all that is super important. And that’s definitely something I bring to the table in that regard.”
The SMS T2 team enjoys spring skiing at the Mt. Bachelor Nordic Center. From left to right, Alayna Sonnesyn, Jessie Diggins, Lina Sutro, and Lauren Jortberg, with head coach Perry Thomas. (Photo courtesy Alayna Sonnesyn)
But Thomas will add more than just fun to the T2 program. While he may be, as phrased by his new colleague, “almost too humble”, O’Brien was quick to highlight Thomas’s preparedness to prescribe training, coach technique, and otherwise lead an elite team stacked with some of the nation’s best athletes.
“If you have been at a D1 college program where you’re dealing with 15-20 athletes and that dynamic environment where student athletes are constantly balancing all these different commitments and time constraints… And really, what you learn there as an athlete and what you learn there as a coach is that working with a club – it just isn’t that different.”
O’Brien added that the shift to an elite club from college may, in fact, be easier than going in the other direction. When athletes no longer have to miss key workouts to take an exam or rush off to class halfway through a team meeting, barriers to consistent communication and training are removed, and consequently a coach has a greater capacity to build relationships with the athletes as they stack together the bricks of the training program.
“You get an opportunity to really work one-on-one with the athletes and to really be there to facilitate and support their training and their racing. In that sense, I think coming from a college background – especially given his ties with many of the current athletes that are on the team – you’re just working with the same people and you’re doing the same stuff.
“I mean, there’s no magic formula,” O’Brien continued. “Someone can claim that they can write the best training plan in the world. And that’s all fine and dandy – there are definitely people who do an amazing job with it and they really enjoy that aspect of that aspect of the sport. But at the end of the day, it’s just really just working with people. You don’t need to make it more complicated than it is. The best athlete is not a robot. The best athlete is someone that is self aware, that can think critically, learn from mistakes, recognize when things go well, and the coach is there to support them along the way.”
New SMS T2 head coach Perry Thomas working with his athletes during a 2022 spring training camp at the Mt. Bachelor Nordic Center. (Photo: Lauren Jortberg)
Thomas identified building upon his relationships and experience with his former athletes, who account for half of the team’s eight athletes, as something he’s looking forward to in joining T2.
“I am very appreciative of the continuity and being able to work with some athletes I’ve worked with in the past,” said Thomas. “I love all of them – they’re incredible people, incredibly hard workers. So to be able to continue working with them is just awesome. With that, too, it’s like – I have been working with Ben for the last four years, I worked with Lina Sutro for four years, I worked with Alayna for a little bit. It’s just a matter of knowing how they operate and how they train and knowing what they’ve been working on too. It’s easy for me in training, [even] this morning, to see some of them and be like, ‘okay, like this is something we’ve been working on for the last however many years’ or maybe, ‘a couple years ago, this was something we’re working on’. So let’s continue this, let’s continue these cues that we’re working on, and have that continuity there.
“It’s been awesome to be able to continue that work with them. It’s nice to see the progress – to see what they were doing in college a few years ago, and then to see where they are now, and then also to be able to help them through the transition to professional skiing.”
Simultaneously, these UVM-T2 athletes are excited to be working with their former UVM coach again. In an email to FasterSkier, Alayna Sonnesyn reflected on her time as a professional skier guided by O’Brien, while crediting Thomas’s contributions at UVM for her reaching the professional level in the first place.
“Stepping into the professional ski world four years ago and onto the SMS T2 team was super intimidating to me,” wrote Sonnesyn. “The team has been home to some of the fastest skiers in the world and I was clueless when it came to racing at that high of a level. Pat O’Brien helped steer me in the right direction as I made this adjustment and took huge jumps in my skiing ability. He taught me when to train for fun and when it was time to buckle down and get serious. When Pat says it’s go time, you go! He helped develop me from a reasonable distance skier to a strong and powerful distance AND sprinter, a trait I never thought I would be capable of. Pat’s knowledge of the sport and ski waxing, as well as the mental and emotional obstacles that come along with it, is unparalleled. He was a coach that believed in me as a junior skier and saw potential. The only thing that can make a good ski race even better is when Pat gives you a proud hug at the finish line. Although I will miss these hugs and his direct coaching, I know that he will use these skills to care for his growing family and I am excited to see where life takes him next.
Perry Thomas works with a few of the SMS T2 ladies in Bend. (Photo: Alayna Sonnesyn)
“Back when Pat was just seeing the potential in my college skiing, I was working with Perry Thomas when he was the assistant coach at UVM. I feel like my athletic career has come full circle as I get to transition back to a coach who helped put me in a place where I first believed skiing professionally was an option. Although I only had the pleasure of working with Perry for one year at UVM, it was a very special season! I instantly trusted him with my skis and could feel his enthusiasm for the sport radiate on the ski trails. I’ve witnessed just how hard Perry has worked over the years and how well-prepared he is to take over the position as head coach of the SMS team. Just in the first month of working with Perry again, I already know the team is heading down a path to continue its mission; local inspiration, international excellence.”
Likewise, Lina Sutro shared she is looking forward to the transition, applauding Thomas’s dedication to his athletes.
“I am truly so excited to be working with Perry again,” she wrote. “He is one of the most hard working and committed coaches I have worked with. He has a strong work ethic that I am excited for the Stratton community to experience. Pat and Perry both give so much back to the ski community and their athletes, I am excited to see the two of them work together.”
The 2021/2022 SMS T2 Team. Back row (l – r): Ian Torchia, Ben Ogden, Bill Harmeyer, and Will Koch; front row: Alayna Sonnesyn, Julia Kern, head coach Pat O’Brien, Lina Sutro, Katharine Ogden, and Jessie Diggins. (Photo: SMS T2 Blog)
As for the broader questions of “what’s new?” and “what lies ahead for the SMS T2 team this summer?” Following Katharine Ogden’s retirement in March, Lauren Jortberg will join the team as the fifth athlete on the women’s side – five and five is what the team identifies as the sweet spot for numbers. Jortberg joins Jessie Diggins, Julia Kern, Alayna Sonnesyn, and Lina Sutro. The men’s team is light this season, as Ian Torchia moved on this spring also, leaving behind a three-man roster of Bill Harmeyer, Will Koch (who also competes for University of Colorado), and Ben Ogden.
After Bend camp, the team will part ways with many attending “a big event in the Midwest” which happened over Memorial Day Weekend. The SMS T2 team will finally reconvene as a whole in Stratton in early June. Though regional and international camps are planned, particularly for athletes named to the national team, Thomas anticipates ample quality training based in Vermont and the surrounding region.
“We’ll be in the Stratton area for the majority of this summer,” he explained. “I think one of the cool things that we’re doing is: Sverre, and Pat and I have started working on doing a summer [training] program, so we have some awesome athletes joining our crew this summer.”
This list includes University of Utah and U.S. Ski Team skiers Sydney Palmer-Leger, Novie McCabe, and former SMS junior athletes Adam Witowski and Zander Martin, who now ski for Michigan Tech and Bates College, respectively. JC Schoonmaker and Gus Schumacher also plan to join the T2 team for some training in Vermont throughout the summer.
“So a really stacked crew, for sure,” said Thomas. “It’s gonna be a really exciting summer to say the least.”
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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.
Women’s 1.4 k classic sprint podium in Falun, Sweden: Jonna Sundling (SWE) took the win ahead of Anamarija Lampic (SLO) and Maja Dahlqvist (SWE). (Photo: NordicFocus)
We’ve arrived at the final weekend of World Cup racing. After the cancellation of the finals scheduled to take place in Tyumen, Russia and the difficulty of finding a last-minute replacement, these three days of racing in Falun, Sweden will be the culmination of the 2021/22 World Cup season. On a warm sunny day, in full spring conditions, the women executed an exciting classic sprint on the familiar 1.4 k Falun sprint course. With this being the last sprint of the season, it was also a day to cement the places in the running for the overall women’s sprint globe (none of the team events happening Sunday will influence the rankings).
Starting with a bang, Jonna Sundling of Sweden won the qualifier by an astonishing margin of +8.41 seconds, ahead of runner up Jasmi Joensuu of Finland. The American’s put three women into the quarter-finals, led by Rosie Brennan in 7th (+9.61). Julia Kern qualified in 17th position (+12.30), followed by her teammate and roommate, Jessie Diggins in 18th (+12.49).
Jessie Diggins on her way to 18th place in the qualifier. Diggins ultimately ended her day 19th. (Photo: NordicFocus)
These were the only three American women competing today as unfortunately some late-stage positive covid tests barred the rest from competing. Having made it through a winter of international travel, living, and competing during the Omicron surge, Hailey Swirbul and Katherine Ogden announced on Monday that they had both tested positive in Norway. Lauren Jortberg, who had her World Cup debut in Lahti, Finland two weeks earlier, came directly to Falun to prepare for this weekend, only to test positive on Wednesday.
No Canadian women made it into the top thirty, their first finisher was Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt in 32nd (+17.54). Katherine Stewart-Jones led a string of fellow country-women, finishing 37th (+19.49), followed by Dahria Beatty in 38th (+19.75) and Jasmine Drolet in 39th (+20.08). After competing at World Juniors in Lygna, Norway, Drolet joined the senior women and made her first World Cup appearance in the Holmenkollen 30 k last weekend where she finished 42nd.
Dahria Beatty (CAN) racing to 38th in the classic sprint qualifier on Friday (Photo: NordicFocus)
As crowds of fans gathered, the women’s quarterfinals kicked off at 12:15 local time. In the first heat, a fast pace bought three women tickets to the semi finals, led by Anna Svendsen of Norway. After winning the classic sprint qualifier in Drammen, Norway last week only to fall in the quarter finals, Johanna Hagström (SWE), skiing on a home course, made it safely through in second. Kerttu Niskanen of Finland took third but with a fast enough time to snag a lucky loser position.
Heat two was controlled entirely by Sundling as she skied easy out front, spreading the rest of the field. Behind her came Johanna Matintalo of Finland and Julie Myhre of Norway who made it to the semis as the second lucky loser. Brennan (USA) finished fourth, +3.39 behind Sundling, ending her day in 16th overall.
Rosie Brennan races the quarterfinal after qualifying 7th. (Photo: NordicFocus)
“It was warm and wild out there today,” wrote Brennan after the race. “This course is quite technical and has some challenging downhills which has made it a tough course for me in the past so I was ready to make some progress today. I had a good qualifier and that gave me some confidence for the heats. I had a very stacked heat which can go either way for me. I struggled finding space to move on the uphills which is my strength and that ultimately cost me moving on to the semi-finals by less than a second. In the bigger picture, I do think I made some strong progress on some of my weak spots on this course and I am really excited about that. I am also still feeling good and excited to race which bodes well for the rest of the weekend.”
In heat number three, Anamarija Lampic of Slovenia took on the lead, as Diggins and Moa Lundgren of Sweden chased. Entering the final straight Nadine Fähndrich of Switzerland employed her blistering finish speed to surpass both Diggins and Lundgren, and nearly overtake an unsuspecting Lampic. This left Diggins in fourth place in a heat that was not quick enough to make lucky loser. Diggins ends the sprint season in fourth place in the overall sprint standings with 351 points; having entered the day in third with 339 points, she was bumped off the podium by Sundling.
Jessie Diggins races in heat number three in the 1.4 k classic sprint in Falun. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Heat four saw an easy pace from the gun, with the pack largely staying together. With all six athletes still in touch as they crested the big climb, Kern navigated into third place on the ensuing tight downhill corner. An injection of speed from Maja Dahlqvist (SWE) over the next rise split the pack as Lotta Udnes Weng (NOR) shadowed, followed by Kern still in third. In the long downhill glide-out, Weng overtook the Swede, entering the final corner in first. Right with her were Kern, Dahlqvist and Laura Gimmler of Germany. A close finish saw Kern out double-pole Dahlqvist to take the win, with Weng coming second. However, a disqualification for Weng bumped Dahlqvist into second and thus have her a ticket to the semi-finals.
Jasmi Joensuu (FIN) and Maiken Caspersen Falla (NOR) duke it out in the quarter-final (Photo: NordicFocus)
After a redeeming win in Drammen last week, Maiken Caspersen Falla of Norway charged off the startline for heat five. Joensuu (FIN) and Heidi Weng (NOR) took up the chase and eventually overtook Falla on the long descent back into the stadium. Together the two Norwegians pulled away from the Finn as Joensuu faded slightly. Falla finished first and Weng, with a scream of satisfaction, crossed in second.
Heidi Weng (NOR) racing in quarterfinal heat number five (Photo: NordicFocus)
Echoing her moves from the quarter-final, Sundling (SWE) approached semi-final number one in the same manner, skiing smooth and easy out front. Lampic (SLO) followed with some occasional slips on a mushy course. Those front two continued to pull away, Sundling making it look easy as she found herself well clear of the rest of the competition. Lampic maintained second position and Matintalo (FIN) came in third, though was not quick enough to move onto the final.
In the second semi-final, Falla (NOR) took the lead, again trailed by Weng (NOR). Once again, Kern (USA) moved into third position on the tight middle downhill portion, setting herself up well. A fall from Weng on the next hill took her out of contention as Dahlqvist (SWE) moved into second position, Kern still in third. Switching tracks, Dahlqvist stumbled but managed to stay on her feet as Kern took the lead into the final corner. Kern held onto first position with some strong double poling and behind her Dahlqvist, Falla and Fähndrich all qualified for the final in second through fourth positions respectively.
Julia Kern, closing out fast (Photo: NordicFocus)
Making her first sprint final since a stage race in Lenzerheide, Switzerland in December, Kern was all smiles on the start line as the athletes lined up for their final round. Right away, Sundling and Lampic began to pull away from the rest of the field. Up the A-climb, Sundling broke into a herringbone, clearly moving fast as she increased her lead. Dahlqvist who had been in third was overtaken by Kern who topped the hill in third. Lampic was holding strong in second, though being chased by Kern. Navigating the remaining corners and descents, Sundling cruised easily to the finish with enough of a lead to give a celebratory wave before crossing the line.
No challengers around, Jonna Sundling cruises to victory. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Coincidentally, Sundling won by the same margin over Lampic (+8.41 seconds) as she had on second-place qualifier Joensuu (FIN) earlier this morning. “I don’t know what is behind this result today, but the last weeks I’ve been feeling really good and it’s nice to keep the shape still,” said Sundling after her dominant victory. She added, “I didn’t compete so much in the beginning [of the season] because of injury but my motivation is on top and so is my shape, and it’s just fun to ski right now.”
Behind them, Dahlqvist was finding a second wind in the finish straight and overtook Kern to finish in third. Kern finished fourth, matching her season personal-best from Lenzerheide where she also finished fourth, in a skate sprint.
Anamarija Lampic (SLO) heads towards a silver medal as behind her Maja Dahlqvist (SWE) overtakes Kern (USA). (Photo: NordicFocus)
“[Kern] was really smart through the quarters and semis,” reflected coach Matt Whitcomb, “where she would ski really smooth through the first climb, and position herself really well. And normally what was happening is she was both being smart tactically and feeling very good today and that just led to a break between positions 3 or 4 and allowed her to get away. And her doublenpole punch at the end was as good as I’ve ever seen her today.”
Julia Kern after fending of Nadine Fähndrich (SUI) to finish fourth in the 1.4 k classic sprint. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Regarding the final in which Kern seemed to have a lock on third but lost out in the closing stages Whitcomb said, “We talked about if there was a big mistake she made and we decided she could do the same thing 10 times and maybe land on the podium four or five times. She had some stumbles, had those things not happened, it would have been a little bit closer between her and Maja [Dahlqvist], but I don’t want to discredit Maja, she had all kinds of fire in the finish today.”
He added, “It was cool, Julia’s parents are out here today, she has raced well when her parents are watching. It’s important to point out that she was fourth and not fifth, she fended off a hard-charging Fähndrich and we’re really happy with her performance today.”
Listen to the full interview with U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Matt Whitcomb here.
Julia Kern races through the heats in Falun. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Kern has put together a string of strong performances in the final period of World Cup racing, placing in the top-10 in each of the last three sprints. These results come on the tails of a first Olympic appearance that left her wanting more, after having rebounded early-season from a 2020/21 season she had described as challenging.
“It’s a bit of a bittersweet ending,” Kern said in a call. “We’ve been on the road for so long now that, after the Olympics, especially, I was feeling excited to go home. But now when things are going well and I’m feeling really good, I don’t want to go home and I don’t want the season to end. I’m happy to end on a high note and find my stride after a frustrating Games. It’s just kind of reminded me how important having some sense of normalcy is, and I’ve kind of embraced that more after the Games. I think that’s paid off, plus some hard work, and I’ve had a little extra fire from the frustration after the games. Happy to end the season this way, and [we have] another shot tomorrow, so I’m excited for that race.”
Commenting on how these strong results and better energy feed momentum, Kern discussed a mid-week training session she felt primed her for today’s sprint.
“Now that I’ve been having really good energy in training… I have to give a big shoutout to our staff. On Tuesday this week, I did an interval workout here on the courses. I had Matt, Kate [Barton], and [tech] Chris Hecker out there with me, racing me around the course doing speeds, throwing elbows, pulling tactical moves, practicing the slingshot. Those types of sessions are super valuable for me when I put the energy to put in a good interval session. I learned so much from that session, and it gave me the confidence here today to ski well in the heats and be ready for anything.”
Kern continued with a laugh that her family is her fourth place good luck charm, as they also watched her race to fourth in Lenzerheide, SUI during the Tour de Ski, ending with a comment on the American team as the season draws to a close.
“I think our team has done a really incredible job, working through all the different colleges this season has brought. When things get tough, we bring out humor and come together. I just feel more and more appreciation for the team. My wax tech Eli and I have worked really hard all season together to start linking together some classic performances. We’ve had four classic races in a row now, and pretty much all personal bests, so that’s been a really fun relationship to build and [I appreciate] all the hard work the wax team puts in.”
Full post-race interview with Julia Kern. Apologies for the bad echo — working through the kinks as we work our way along the audio learning curve.
Julia Kern edges out Maja Dahlqvist (SWE) in the classic sprint semifinal in Falun. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Dahlqvist already had the sprint globe on lock, but her third place finish today only reinforced her strength in sprint racing this season as she racked up 638 points throughout the year. She began the season with four straight wins and earned a silver medal in the Olympic skate sprint last month. A fourth place finish in Drammen was the only time this season in which she did not finish on the podium in a sprint event.
“It feels really really, super duper good,” said Dahlqvist about taking home the globe. “I’m super happy with that.”
Sweden’s Maja Dahlqvist is the 2022 World Cup sprint champion. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Last year’s sprint globe winner, Anamaria Lampic (SLO) finished second this year with 506 points. After today’s victory, Sundling (SWE) overtook Diggins (USA) to move into third in the sprint standings with 442 points. Delaying her start to the season after sustaining an injury in an early-season FIS race, Sundling’s first World Cup start was Dresden in mid-December where she finished second in the individual skate sprint. She did not take part in the Tour de Ski, but returned to the World Cup circuit in dominant fashion, after collecting three Olympic medals, one of each color, and taking fourth place in the 30 k.
In the final three weekends of World Cup racing, Sundling landing on the podium in four out of the five races she entered, including a third place finish in the legendary Holmenkollen 30 k classic last weekend.
Anamarija Lampic (SLO) congratulates the days winner, Jonna Sundling (SWE) (Photo: NordicFocus)
Racing continues tomorrow with a 10 k skate interval start for the women. Sunday will feature two new team events, with a mixed relay happening in the morning followed by a mixed team sprint in the afternoon.
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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.
Snapping back after a week away from racing, the World Cup resumed in wintery Lahti, Finland with a 1.6 kilometer freestyle sprint. The American women made their presence immediately known, landing three of five athletes in the top-five in qualification, with four in the top-30.
Rosie Brennan skis to fifth in qualification in Lahti. (Photo: NordicFocus)
On the heels of a bronze medal in the event, Jessie Diggins was second in qualification, +6.71 behind the time of 3:17.37 posted by Sweden’s Olympic champion Jonna Sundling. Julia Kern was next for the U.S. in fourth (+7.59) behind Russia’s Natalia Nepryaeva, with Rosie Brennan just behind in fifth (+8.61). Hailey Swirbul also raced into the heats, skiing to 26th in qualification (+16.56).
Jessie Diggins posts the second fastest time in qualification during the freestyle sprint in Lahti, FIN. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Leading the Canada team Cendrine Browne raced to 29th in qualification (+17.37), advancing to the heats.
Racing in heat five, Diggins moved to the front of the pack inside the first minute of racing, with Kern on her tails heading up the first climb, with Julia sliding back to third in the following descent. Nevertheless, the Americans maintained control of the heat heading up the climb and around the course’s hairpin turn, where cheers could be heard from the sidelines, urging “Alright, Jessie! Alright, Julia! Hard over the top! Hard over the top! Come on, push, push, push!”
Rounding the final bend to the finish, the Americans were side by side at the front, with Sweden’s Anna Divyk looking for an opportunity to sneak through from their draft. Kern was on the inside of the bend, stepping powerfully to maintain her momentum as the threesome headed into the final 100 meter sprint. Still right alongside her teammate, Kern led the boot throw to win the heat, with Diggins +0.1 back, and the Swede on their tails to cross the line +0.39 seconds back in third. As the fifth heat proved to be the fastest of the quarterfinal, Czech athlete Katerina Janatova also advanced as a lucky loser after finishing in fourth, just over a second behind Divyk.
Julia Kern and Jessie Diggins take to the course during the quarterfinals of Lahti’s freestyle sprint. (Photo: NordicFocus)
In the first semifinal, it was Sundling and Dahlqvist at the front, with teammate Emma Ribom and Nepryaeva jockeying for the third and fourth positions through the first half. The Swedes rounded the hairpin in first through third, but Nepryaeva, Nadine Fähndrich (SUI), and Janatova remained close on their heels. Coming into the finish lanes, it was Sundling in front, with Ribom nipping Dahlqvist at the line by 0.11 seconds. Nepryaeva crossed fourth, 0.6 back from Dahlqvist, leaving the two awaiting the outcome of the next semi to determine their fate heading into the final round.
The Americans raced in the second semi, along with an additional two Swedes, Divyk and Johanna Hagström, plus Slovenia’s Anamarija Lampic and a German, Coletta Rydzek.
Julia Kern tucks into Jessie Diggins draft during the freestyle sprint heats in Lahti, FIN. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Heading up the climb to the hairpin, it was Diggins at the front, with Hagström on her tails and Lampic maintaining contact. The group had thinned, leaving the remaining three women trailing behind on the descent with a gap between each.
In the adrenaline-filled final meters, it looked like Hagström would hold the advantage to the line, but a high tempo Diggins and accelerating Lampic were closing fast. Throwing their boots three abreast, the women crossed the line dead-even for a three-way photo finish.
A slow motion replay of the slide showed that it was Lampic who crossed first, with Diggins .03 seconds behind, and Hagström in third, separated by an additional 0.01 second. With Lampic’s time clocked roughly 0.7 seconds slower than Nepryaeva’s in the first semi, only the top two women advanced, leaving Hagström just off the mark.
Kern crossed fourth in the heat (+1.94) to end her day in eighth overall.
“Today was a lot of fun,” Kern said in a U.S. Ski & Snowboard press release. “The conditions were great, the stadium and course were filled with lively spectators and I was really excited to get back to racing the World Cup! I felt like I had a lot of great energy today, skied well, and enjoyed the awesome atmosphere while racing side-by-side with Jessie in the heats! I was stoked to put down maybe my best World Cup qualifier and see that my body is ready to fire after the Olympics.
“I have only raced two races in the last two months,” Kern continued, “so I have been excited for Period 4 World Cups with lots of racing opportunities. I am someone who loves to race. I had a blast skiing with Jessie in the heats today, we train together all year long, working hard and pushing each other, and also rooming together, so it is fun to ski well together and take charge of the heats. ”
Julia Kern races to eighth place in Lahti’s freestyle sprint. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Sundling looked to leave nothing to chance in the final, gapping the field before the halfway point, with Lampic and Ribom leading the chase group a few seconds back.
Descending from the hairpin, the Swedes were in first through third, with Sundling still well off the front. Diggins had moved up onto Dahlqvist’s tails in fourth, which she held heading around the final bend into the stadium and into the lanes.
Jonna Sundling (SWE) cruises through the final to win the 1.6 kilometer freestyle sprint in Lahti. (Photo: NordicFocus)
While Sundling cruised cross the line for the win in 3:12.86, it was Ribom and Dalqvist fighting for the second and third spots to determine the order of a Swedish podium sweep. It was Ribom in second at the line (+3.28), fending off Dahlqvist in third (+3.67), interrupting her streak of World Cup wins this season.
Diggins held her ground close behind the Swedes in fourth (+3.93), with Lampic closing fast for fifth (+4.01). Nepryaeva closed out the women’s final in the sixth spot (+4.69).
Jessie Diggins throws her boot for fourth in the final round of Lahti’s freestyle sprint. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Following the race, Diggins said she was happy to be feeling like herself again following the brief post-Olympic break. It was just six days ago that Diggins fought through food poisoning induced fatigue, cramping, and delirium to earn a silver medal in the 30 k skate.
“I was incredibly tired after the Olympics,” Diggins said in a post-race audio clip, embedded below. “That 30 k took more out of me than maybe any race in my entire life. So I was just feeling lucky to be out there and racing and able to feel like my body is back.”
In addition to providing insights into how things shook our for her, Diggins commented on the experience of watching newer members of the team earn their first World Cup starts, specifically Lauren Jortberg, Bill Harmeyer, and Logan Diekmann.
“Happy to be part of that rite of passage. That was really, really fun.”
Sweden’s Jonna Sundling hugs Emma Ribom (right) after finishing one-two in the freestyle sprint in Lahti, FIN. (Photo: NordicFocus)
“I feel amazing right now,” Sundling said of her win in a post-race interview with FIS at the finish. “I think I’m in a good place in my career and it feels really good to ski right now. Today, I just tried to trust my skiing and it went really [well], so I’m happy.”
When asked about the Swedish podium sweep, Sundling broke into a wide grin. “I’m so happy, and for Emma, it is her first, so it’s really good.”
A Swedish podium sweep in Lahti, with Jonna Sundling taking the top spot ahead of Emma Ribom and Maja Dahlqvist. (Photo: NordicFocus)Rosie Brennan races in the fourth quarterfinal heat in Lahti, FIN. (Photo: NordicFocus)
After sharing the lead with Slovenia’s Lampic through the second half of the fourth quarterfinal, Brennan rounded the final bend into the finish in second position, moving to Lampic’s right with 50 meters to go. While Lampic maintained a lead by several meters, Germany’s Rydzek crept up alongside Brennan, throwing her boot at the line to edge out the American by 0.04 seconds. As the third heat saw times roughly four seconds faster than the fourth, Brennan was unable to advance as a lucky loser and ended her day in 13th.
Crossing in sixth in heat one of the quarterfinal, which saw Sundling and Nepryaeva go one-two, Swirbul finished 28th today. Swirbul maintained contact with the lead pack through the hairpin turn, where Sundling and Nepryaeva accelerated off the front to thin the pack.
Hailey Swirbul races in the first quarterfinal heat in Lahti. (Photo: NordicFocus)Cendrine Browne (CAN) races in the second heat of the quarterfinals in Lahti, FIN. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Canada’s Browne also ended her day in the quarters after racing in heat two. Browne was +2.19 behind Sweden’s Maja Dahlqvist who comfortably won the heat, with the Canadian in sixth to end her day in
Also racing for the U.S., BSF Pro Team’s Lauren Jortberg raced was pulled up from the SuperTour for her first World Cup appearance. Jortberg is ranked 11th overall in the SuperTour standings and is third on the sprint list behind APU’s Rosie Frankowski and Becca Rorabaugh, both of whom opted to race the American Birkie this weekend.
Lauren Jortberg (BSF Pro) makes her first World Cup appearance in the 1.6 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Lahti, FIN. (Photo: NordicFocus)Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt (CAN) races the 1.6 k freestyle sprint qualifier in Lahti, FIN. (Photo: NordicFocus)
Outside the top-30 for Canada, Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt was 33rd today, less than a second away from the heats, with her teammate Dahria Beatty just 0.25 seconds behind her in 34th. Laura Leclair was the final Canadian racer in the women’s field, finishing 54th in qualification (+25.41).
Women’s racing continues tomorrow in Lahti with a 10 k individual start classic.
SuperTour racing continued on Friday in Craftsbury, Vermont, as part of the Henchey Memorial Carnival, which also included Eastern Cup and collegiate racing. The three-day event is presented by the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, NENSA, U.S. Ski & Snowboard, and the University of Vermont (UVM), the EISA carnival host school.
Racers were faced with snowy conditions for the opening 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint as a winter storm made its way across the Northeast. Friday morning’s grooming report mentioned 6 inches of fresh snow, as more continued to fall throughout the morning.
On the women’s side, last weekend’s 10k freestyle winner, Alayna Sonnesyn (SMS T2), won the qualifier in 3:58.27, ahead of BSF Pro Team’s Lauren Jortberg in second and APU’s Rosie Frankowski in third. Perhaps a nod to the wintery conditions, these top three finishers were separated by over six seconds.
Sonnesyn advanced from the first heat of the quarterfinals into the semis, where she finished third in the first heat behind Katharine Ogden (SMS T2) and Ava Thurston (Mansfield Nordic Club), who crossed the line together, roughly 0.4 seconds ahead of Sonnesyn. As the second semi, which was won by Jortberg, was roughly four seconds faster on average, Sonnesyn did not earn a lucky loser spot in the final. Instead, Jortberg advanced with Anna Bizyukova of UVM, Frankowski, and Craftsbury’s own Margie Freed.
Despite the trend seen in the qualifier, the final featured tight racing, with the top five athletes finishing within two seconds of one another. Just 0.6 seconds separated second from fifth.
A scene from the women’s final of the 1.4k freestyle sprint in Craftsbury. (Photo: Instagram @nensa_nordic)
Coming out on top was Ogden, who won the final in 3:59.08. After racing on the World Cup from the opening races in Ruka through the midway point of the Tour de Ski, Ogden has gone three-for-three in SuperTour sprints since returning stateside, winning classic sprints in Soldier Hollow and Lake Placid before checking off a skate win today.
Just behind, Jortberg took second place (+1.30) with U18 athlete Thurston closing in third (+1.78). Bizyukova was next to the line in fourth (+1.86), with Frankowski less than a meter behind in fifth (+1.91). Freed rounded out the women’s final in sixth (+4.51).
“I think that the biggest thing to note about today was that it was blizzarding!” wrote Ogden in a post-race email. “The heavy falling snow made the heat racing very tactical and rewarded being very quick off of the line. There was one lane on the course that was packed down by traffic and the other areas were pretty soft!”
Ogden was just 11 points behind Caitlin Patterson on the Olympic qualification distance list, based on the athletes’ best two distance races on the SuperTour or at the U.S. Cross Country Championships, during which Ogden competed in only one race – the 10k individual start classic where she was second to Patterson. The following weekend in Sun Valley, she was second in one distance race and fourth in the other, behind three Olympians and ahead of Patterson in each. As the races at U.S. Nationals were scored at a higher point value, Patterson took the final Olympic spot, leaving Ogden on the wrong side of the cusp.
Nevertheless, Ogden has found silver linings in the additional time back east.
“It was a blast to be able to race with the EISA. I miss skiing for Dartmouth (Ogden graduated in 2021), so it was fun getting to ski with some of my old teammates and some new Dartmouth skiers. It was also pretty great to ski in lots of natural snow, we rarely get a snowstorm this big anymore and it was undeniably very fun.”
The women’s podium after the opening freestyle sprint race which kicked off a weekend of SuperTour, Eastern Cup, and EISA racing. (Photo: APU Nordic Ski Center / Instagram)
As Thurston is, remarkably, still in high school, Bizyukova was the top collegiate racer to earn today’s EISA sprint title. The second and third placed collegiate racers both hailed from Dartmouth College, with Callie Young finishing fifth in the first semifinal and 10th overall, and Jasmine Drolet taking sixth in the second semi for 11th overall.
The men of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) Gold Team swept the top-three spots in the men’s qualifier, with Karl Schulz leading the way in 3:23.48. Peter Holmes was 0.33 behind in second, with Johnny Hagenbuch in third (+1.21).
Schulz carried momentum from the qualifier win into the first quarterfinal, which he won by half a second, but his day ended soon after in the semifinal. Racing in a fast first heat that contained two eventual podium winners and found both lucky losers, Schulz was fifth in the heat, +1.72 behind winner Matias Øvrum of UVM. Sam Wood (SVSEF) was second in the heat, ahead of last weekend’s sprint winner Zak Ketterson (Team Birkie) and Gregory Burt (UVM).
In the second semi, which was nearly three seconds slower, Canada’s Étienne Hébert (CNEPH) edged out Holmes by 0.1 seconds to go 1-2 and advance to the final round.
Zak Ketterson leads up the final climb in the men’s freestyle sprint final in Craftsbury. (Photo courtesy Zak Ketterson)
The top two spots in the final were decided by a close finish between Ketterson and Øvrum, with Ketterson crossing 0.28 ahead in a time of 3:22.57 to earn his third SuperTour sprint title of the season. Øvrum was second, though he was named the collegiate race winner for UVM, with Hébert crossing the line a few meters behind on his own in third (+2.17).
“I’ve always really liked racing at Craftsbury,” Ketterson wrote to FasterSkier after the race. “It’s an awesome place and this year Team Birkie has been lucky enough to stay right at the Outdoor Center. The race course is right out our back door!”
Ketterson also provided insights to the final round for those following from afar.
“The final was really close! I gave it everything I had at the top of the last hill but I definitely started to get tired and bogged down a bit into the finish. Matias skied a smart race and gave me a really good challenge in the last few meters but luckily I was able to fend him off. It was a tricky day with super soft fresh snow and I’m happy I was able to execute.”
Zak Ketterson races a snowy freestyle sprint qualifier in Craftsbury. (Photo courtesy Zak Ketterson)
Wood was fourth in the men’s final (+6.9), with Burt fifth (+7.17), and Holmes sixth (+10.82).
The men’s freestyle sprint podium after the opening day of SuperTour racing in Craftsbury. (Photo: Instagram @nensa_nordic)
As mentioned, Øvrum was the top collegiate racer, with Burt second, going one–two for UVM. Third place among college athletes was Allan Luke of Dartmouth, who finished sixth in the first semifinal and 12th overall.
Craftsbury’s Day 1 coverage of the the 2022 Henchey Memorial Carnival: SuperTour, NENSA Eastern Cup and UVM EISA carnival.
After a brief break, the SuperTour picked up in Lake Placid this weekend, with a fluoro-free Period III kicking off with a 1.5-kilometer classic sprint. The frigid forecast called for overnight lows of -5 Fahrenheit, with a wind chill as low as -23F. Highs during the day were only predicted to climb into the low single digits. Qualifiers were scheduled for 10/10:45 am, with quarterfinals for the open men beginning at noon – hopefully, enough time for a few degrees of warmth to reach the trails.
The weekend competitions would be hosted on Mt. Van Hoevenberg’s new World Cup trails, which are paved for rollerski use in the summer, and played host to NENSA’s “Keys to the Castle” sprint event in September. For those familiar with the venue, the new courses are tucked into the north-facing hillside, just south of the 1980 Olympic stadium and biathlon range. The new serpentine loop intersects with the final Ks of the classic “Ladies 5” outer loop, but overall remains closer to the stadium to allow access to the recently improved snowmaking system.
Jessie Diggins (SMS T2/USST) pushes over the climb during the final round of the Keys to the Castle sprint. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)
With a large reservoir and advanced technology, this new World Cup loop can be made winter competition ready within four days, though Van Hoevenberg’s nearly 50k of open trail might suggest that coverage is not currently an issue.
There was praise for the course from many athletes, including those that have seen both Lake Placid, and everywhere in the world beyond Lake Placid.
“It raced much more like a world cup course!” said Alayna Sonnesyn (SMS), in an email to FasterSkier. Katharine Ogden (SMS) too, said of the course, “it was WAY more fun than the old one…[which] was pretty flat.”
The course designers at Lake Placid seem to have carefully been taking notes on what makes sprint racing exciting over the course of its evolution as a discipline in the sport. An historic venue for American skiing, these developments may be a long-time coming for Mt. Van Hoevenberg, but it’s clear that they were executed with mastery so VanHo can continue to expand upon its legacy in the decades to come.
This course featured a long, final uphill climb to test a skier’s mettle, then a short, technical downhill into the finish to test their tactical brains. And in between; transitions, transitions, and more transitions.
Becca Rorabaugh (APU) said of this : “The final climb always turned into a drag race, and I liked the pitch because it favored a bit of a stride over an all-out run. Skiers still had to be alert through the downhill and finish, though; positions often changed in the stadium.”
The weekend, hosted by the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) in Lake Placid, also served as the second NENSA Eastern Cup weekend. Thus, senior athletes from American elite clubs lined up alongside regional junior racers, eastern collegiate racers, and Canadian athletes who traveled from Quebec, Ontario, and beyond. 382 athletes, 176 women and 206 men, on the start lists for the qualifier, and separate heats were run for the U18/U20 and U16 categories.
Without livestream, FasterSkier has relied on live timing and athlete interviews to shed light on how the sprint races unfolded.
Men’s 1.5-kilometer Classic Sprint
After returning from a stint in Europe where he raced the Tour de Ski, Team Birkie’s Zak Ketterson set the mark in the men’s qualifier, stopping the clock at 3:04.79. Sun Valley’s Peter Holmes skied the next fastest time in qualification (+0.72), while Étienne Hébert was just behind in third (+1.41). Hébert hails from Quebec and currently trains at the Centre National d’Entraînement Pierre-Harvey (CNEPH), based at Mont Ste Anne.
Each of these men moved smoothly through the rounds, with Ketterson getting edged out by Bill Harmeyer (SMS T2) in the first semi, and Homes and Hébert going 1-2 in the second. Racing in the second semi saw a tighter spread and faster times, bringing Julien Locke (Black Jack Ski Club) and Logan Diekmann (BSF Pro) who had finished a close third and fourth, respectively, along to the final as lucky losers.
The final featured a tight finish among the top four men, with Ketterson off the front to finish in 3:04.71, earning his second consecutive classic sprint victory. Ketterson had dominated the classic sprint in Cable, WI, and stood at the top of the SuperTour leaderboard, thereby earning start spots for the Tour de Ski. The timing of the Tour caused him to miss the subsequent classic sprint in Soldier Hollow, UT.
During the Tour, his first World Cup starts, Ketterson was less than a second shy of qualifying for the classic sprint heats in Oberstdorf, Germany, and had been roughly five second out of the Top-30 the day prior in a 15k skate. He was the only American on the men’s team to finish the Tour. After the Tour, Ketterson made a quick turnaround to attend the weekend of distance racing in Sun Valley, Idaho, where his results (15th in the 15k classic and 34th in the 10k free) were far below what might be expected from him.
Zak Ketterson races the freestyle sprint qualifier in Lenzerheide, SUI, the first event of the 2021/22 Tour de Ski. (Photo: NordicFocus)
In a post-race email to FasterSkier, Ketterson shared how he felt about the Tour and what the recovery process has been like for him.
“The Tour de Ski was a fantastic learning experience with lots of ups and downs. I am pretty happy with my performance on the Tour given it was my first time on the World Cup, but I definitely think I will be faster next time around now that I have had the experience. Post Tour I was incredibly empty, both physically and mentally. To have to change gears pretty much immediately after the last stage of the Tour and head straight to Sun Valley for some super competitive SuperTour races at high altitude was definitely a recipe for disaster on my body. I felt like I was just going through the motions and my body wanted nothing to do with those races.
“These last few weeks at home in Minneapolis provided me with some long-overdue recovery. My hunch after some really lackluster racing in Sun Valley was that there was no need to overthink anything and that the issue was probably just that I was tired. I took time at home to mentally and physically reset and started to feel a lot more like myself as the Placid races approached. Today, it all came together and I felt a lot more race-ready.”
Ketterson also commented on the improvements that have been made at the Mt Van Hoevenberg venue, explaining how it supports the growth and elevation of domestic skiing.
“I am blown away with the venue at Mt. Van Hoevenberg! The venue truly feels like it’s ready for World Cups, or even another Olympics. It’s really inspiring to see big investments into nordic skiing venues in the United States, and I can’t stress enough how big it is for us athletes. I can’t wait to come back to Lake Placid sometime later to really experience this place because I think it’s so awesome here.”
Behind Ketterson, just 0.26 seconds separated second through fourth in the men’s final. Holmes won the boot slide to snag second (+0.72), while Harmeyer took the final podium spot in third (+0.92). Hébert was just 0.06 seconds shy of the podium, ending the day in fourth (+0.98).
Harmeyer provided insights into his approach to the day, along with insights into the moves that contributed to the excitement at the finish line.
“I felt really good in the heats today,” he wrote via email. “The course was certainly difficult and tactical. Placement in the group was really important and that was especially apparent in the final. We had a group of four dudes going over the top of the final climb into the long descent before the finish. It was an absolute scramble trying to get into the tracks on that final downhill. At one point, I had my left ski in the right part of the track and Étienne had his right ski in the left side of the track. Not easy to squeeze two guys going 30+ mph into a single track but somehow, I came out ahead which was just enough to lunge at the finish for third.”
During Period I, Harmeyer took third in the classic sprint final in Cable, and was just off the podium in fourth the weekend prior after the freestyle sprint in Duluth, MN. After qualifying in fifth, a crash in the quarterfinal left him 24th in the freestyle sprint in Soldier Hollow during the U.S. Cross Country Championships. A few days later, he was 51st in the 15k classic. In the Soldier Hollow SuperTour classic sprint, Harmeyer qualified in fourth, and just missed the final to end his day in eighth.
Reflecting on the season as a whole, Harmeyer wrote, “I had a really good start to the season with some strong races in the Midwest. But overall, things have been frustrating. I’ve been struggling with some cold weather triggered exercise induced asthma that got really bad after the first supertours in the Midwest. I continued to struggle with it through a disappointing Senior nationals and decided to take a bit of time off to reset, recover and do some testing. I’m hopeful the worst is behind me and that I’ve got some good protocols lined up to prevent anything from happening in the future. My primary goal for the remainder of the season is to win the Stowe Derby, specifically the derby meister.”
Wrapping up with a comment on the venue, Harmeyer added, “The new courses at Lake Placid are sweet! The sprint course is incredibly tactical but also rewards tough, explosive skiing. I had an absolute blast out there in the heats. The distance courses are hard but I’m excited to be doing a mass start on those for this Sunday. Overall, Van Ho has done a great job with course management and their snowmaking to put together some killer courses.”
After a gap, Diekmann crossed the line in fifth (+5.81), while Locke rounded out the men’s final in sixth (+9.11).
The women’s field began right where it left off in SuperTour classic sprints, with the winner of the last race at Soldier Hollow, Katharine Ogden, (SMS) finishing the qualifier in first place (3:40.49). She was followed by Lauren Jortberg (BSF Pro Team) in second (+2.2), and Ava Thurston (Mansfield Nordic Club) in third (+6.1). The qualifier indicated, again, the overall strength of the field that has characterized this year’s SuperTour, with the heat qualifiers all within 30-seconds of each other (26.0 seconds to be exact).
That field remained tight in the quarterfinals as well. All five quarterfinals saw winning times within a mere five seconds of one other, with Katharine Ogden turning in the fastest time of the round at 3:42.77, and Alayna Sonnesyn winning her heat in 3:46.12.
Ogden commented to FasterSkier that she “didn’t really have any strategy in particular. I find that it is better for me to make strategy in the moment during sprint heats because you never know what’s going to happen out there… I just tried to conserve as much energy as possible in the quarter and semi.” It would pay off later on.
Meanwhile, also progressing to the semifinals was the APU one-two punch of Rosie Frankowski and Becca Rorabaugh out of quarterfinal 2. Despite being primarily known as a distance racer, Frankowski, came into today leading the SuperTour sprint classification and “set a blistering pace,” according to teammate Rorabaugh. With it, she pulled the duo into the semifinals together.
After all the quarterfinals were through, the semifinals were set with a who’s-who at the top of the SuperTour sprint standings, rounded out by Canadian Katie Weaver (Hollyburn XC Ski Club) and Minnesotan Margie Freed (Craftsbury).
The first semifinal featured a battle between two SMS T2 teammates, Katharine Ogden and Alayna Sonnesyn, and two APU teammates, Rosie Frankowski and Becca Rorabaugh. Frankowski again set the pace for the heat, with teammate Rorabaugh commenting that “[Rosie] is so strong on the uphills that she pulls the whole heat to a faster time.” Frankowski, however, couldn’t quite outlast Ogden and Sonnesyn, who used the downhill after the final climb to launch into the first two positions. Ogden won the heat in a time of 3:39.23, with Sonnesyn and Frankowski in second and third, respectively, by less than a second. Rorabaugh finished fourth, but along with Frankowski won the lucky loser spots into the finals – setting up another round of the SMS-APU duel.
In the other semifinal, a close battle throughout yielded a win for Lauren Jortberg (3:45.15) and a second place for Erika Flowers (+0.90). The result sent another teammate pairing into the finals, with both skiers coming from Bridger Ski Foundation (BSF).
At Lake Placid – a place that has over the past century proved to be able to gather the entire world around skiing – it was perhaps appropriate that the women’s final would bring together three teams from across the American continent. Two from Vermont (SMS), two from Montana, two from Alaska (APU), and away they went!
Katharine Ogden commented that the field didn’t waste any time: “It was pretty hard from the gun, as per usual.”
Rorabaugh, meanwhile, made a change in strategy, deciding to follow her teammate Frankowski more closely in the early part of the race. “I was trying to stay closer to the front of the pack since I had let a large gap form in the semifinal that I couldn’t make up,” she explained.
That adjustment was one that helped create a pack that was tight throughout the race, and that was a bit harder to find a position in.
Sonnesyn commented that this led to her having to adjust. “I had great energy but got tangled up a few times on the second hill, so I really had to ski from behind in the second half of the race,” she wrote. “Luckily, I had great skis and remained calm and was able to push through the final stretch.”
In that final stretch, on the final hill, a “drag race,” as Rorabaugh described it, ensued. It was instigated by Ogden, who saw the final climb as the place to make her move, and made it. She came over the top in first place.
“[I] got lucky,” she told FasterSkier. “Pat [O’Brien, SMS T2 head coach] had provided me with some really fast skis that allowed my move to stick going back down the hill.”
Perhaps it wasn’t all luck though. Ogden came across the finish line in first place (3:40.13) after winning the qualifier, her quarterfinal, and her semifinal. It was an all-around dominant performance for one of the U.S. brightest stars in the classic sprint.
Meanwhile, Becca Rorabaugh had powered through the transition into the final downhill and came up with the reward of second place (+3.40), She was followed by Alayna Sonnesyn, who remained cool, calm, and collected as she skied her way through the pack to third place (+4.29).
The final was rounded out by fourth place Rosie Frankowski (+4.74), fifth place Lauren Jortberg (+5.63) and sixth place Erika Flowers (+17.77).
The result was reached at the end of an exciting day that encapsulated the beauty of ski racing – with excitement and energy perfectly juxtaposed against the extreme absence of that energy in the air. Preparing for cold temperatures that are forecasted again for the 10k freestyle mass start tomorrow, the top finishers today all expressed that the temps are part of the appeal in the northeast this weekend.
From Rorabaugh, “I don’t mind cold temperatures – I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska!”
From Sonnesyn, “I like to think the Midwesterner in me prepared well!”
And from Ogden, the perfect Vermont tip: “As Sverre [Caldwell] told us last night, tricky race conditions can work to your advantage if you prepare better than anyone else. Wise man :)”
Precipitation was no longer a threat for the final day of racing in Soldier Hollow on Friday, a 1.5-kilometer classic sprint offered alongside the 2022 U.S. Cross Country Championships, yet classified as SuperTour only. However, athletes still faced unseasonably warm weather as blazing sun brought temperatures into the low 50’s on course during the midday heats.
Howling wind and rippling bibs could be heard as background noise as Adam Verrier called the event on the livestream, creating extra work for the athletes who would fight through degrading course conditions throughout the heats. This extra work showed in the times on course; with the combination of freestyle technique and significantly faster course conditions, Sunday’s sprint races featured times over a minute faster on average. A similar difference was seen even between the qualifier today at 9 a.m., when temperatures were still colder and tracks firmer, and the heats which began at 12:30 p.m.
Warm temperatures, degrading tracks, and loose granular spray set the stage for a challenging classic sprint in Soldier Hollow. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
“Sprint” seemed to perhaps be a misnomer, as times in the women’s heats climbed over five minutes and were well above four minutes in the men’s heats. Combined with a qualifier, this meant athletes who raced through the final saw between 16 and 20 minutes of racing, testing their endurance and fitness differently from the average sprint event.
Women’s Race: Katharine Ogden on Top from Qualifier to Final
On the heels of a second place finish in yesterday’s 15k classic, Katharine Ogden (USST/SMS T2) set the bar in the qualifier, finishing in 3:51.79.
Julia Richter (U of Utah) was the second fastest qualifier (+0.77), ahead of Lauren Jortberg (BSF Pro) in third (+1.48). Both Ogden and Jortberg won their quarterfinal to advance comfortably into the semis, however, Richter took fifth in Heat 4 and did not advance.
In the first semifinal, two Craftsbury teammates Annika Landis and Caitlin Patterson led the way in the opening climb, with Ogden and Sydney Palmer-Leger (USST/U of Utah) sitting in third and fourth a few strides behind. Descending from the high point, a third Craftsbury racer, Michaela Keller-Miller, had pulled to the front, but was quickly overtaken by Patterson and Ogden as the pack headed into the final short herringbone climb before the long descent toward the stadium. Patterson and Ogden sat in low tucks, letting their fast skis glide as long as possible before transitioning to doublepole as they headed over the bridge and into the finish.
Sydney Palmer-Leger heads out for the 10k interval start classic race during the 2022 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Soldier Hollow. (Photo: John McColgan)
Upping the power in the final 200m, Palmer-Leger accelerated to make contact with Patterson as the women crossed over the bridge, but Patterson had better glide in the quick descent from the bridge’s exit, maintaining an advantage as they headed into the final stretch. Patterson tucked in on the tails of Ogden in the left-most track to go one-two in the heat, with Palmer-Leger not quite in the fight for an automatic qualifier spot finishing 1.5 seconds behind Patterson in third.
In the second semi, Bridger Ski Foundation (BSF) Pro Team members, Lauren Jortberg and Hannah Rudd lead the charging, looking as if their skis were gliding well as they pushed the downhills, perhaps with compromised kick as both showed signs of slipping in the final punchy climb.
In the long glideout, Lauren Jortberg moved from the far left side of the course outside of the track into the second track, losing some time on Rudd who had stuck with the second track from the start. Nevertheless, both held a significant gap over the remainder of the heat as they doublepoled over the bridge and into the finish lanes. Rudd took the win in 4:55.52, roughly +0.7 seconds ahead of Jortberg in second.
A few meters behind, Craftsbury teammates Margie Freed and Alexandra Lawson raced side by side to third and fourth, and as the heat proved to be seven seconds faster on average than the first, both advanced to the final.
As the women’s final headed out of the stadium and toward the first climb, Lauren Jortberg who was the first in a train of two BSF skiers, had her ski stepped on as she was switching from doublepole to a run outside the track. This caused Jortberg to stand up, spin sideways and crash in slow motion. Rudd, who was just behind, quickly moved around Jortberg without going down, soon taking the lead charging up to top of the first climb with Patterson, Freed, and Ogden close behind.
Patterson looked strong with solid kick as she chased a slipping Rudd up and over the final long climb, but it was Ogden on fast skis who quickly moved into second on the subsequent downhill.
Over the last punchy climb the women ran. Heading into the long glideout, Ogden was off the front in the left-most track, but Rudd and Patterson remained within reach a few ski lengths behind. Descending off the bridge, the top three accordioned together, all choosing the same track with Ogden confidently leading the way to the finish. Patterson, who was in third, moved into her own lane to the right, slowly gaining ground on Rudd as they headed to the line.
Katharine Ogden leads Caitlin Patterson and Hannah Rudd to the line during the SuperTour classic sprints in Soldier Hollow. (Photo: Livestream Screenshot)
Ogden maintained her lead to stop the clock in 5:01.63, while Patterson edged out Rudd for second (+0.98) and third (+1.53), respectively. After regaining contact with the pack following her crash, Jortberg finished fourth (+6.64), with Lawson fifth (+7.11), and Freed sixth (+21.55).
“I was having a lot of fun out there today!” Ogden wrote to FasterSkier after the race. “The sprint was definitely on the long side, especially late in the day, but that did not significantly affect my strategy; I am confident in my endurance as well as my short duration power. I was really excited to have fast skis from Pat [O’Brien] and it was fun to experience the high level of sprinting in the U.S. currently. I also haven’t really done a full sprint day in a while so that was a lot of fun! It was also so impressive to see Caitlin get her fourth podium in as many races and to see Hannah Rudd have an incredible breakout performance today!”
Katharine Ogden celebrates her win in the classic sprint while Caitlin Patterson edges out Hannah Rudd for second and third. (Photo: Livestream Screenshot)
In a post-race email, Patterson reflected on her experience racing through the heats.
“My racing today went fairly well, and it was a beautiful day to be out skiing and spectating,” wrote Patterson. “The sun-warmed snow became quite wet and broken apart for the heats, and combined with the wind, it certainly made a long sprint with plenty of herringbone and some sloppy tracks. I tried not to really think about the time duration much, it was mostly about getting from start to finish, however long it would take. All of the heats required some scrappy skiing, moving around through the slush and timing the length of the tuck. Now I’m really looking forward to some recovery after a good week!”
Patterson also spoke to the week of racing in Soldier Hollow, where she finished on the podium four times in as many races, including wins in both the 10k individual classic and the skate sprint. But she was not the only person in a green suit putting together a successful week. Yesterday, she shared the distance classic podium with teammate Adam Martin. On Tuesday, Crafstbury went 3-4-5 in the 20k skate, with Lawson and Freed leading a chase group behind Frankowski and Patterson. And today, five CGRP women raced in the semis, with three advancing to the final.
“Everyone at Nationals is really feeling the fatigue, and myself and my team were no exception out there today. The race coughs are becoming quite terrible from so many days of racing at altitude, which is not the most fun to be coughing uncontrollably in this time of COVID. However, I was really proud of our whole team, with 5 women in the top 10! We have a really strong group, as evidenced by the performances in the distance races too; it came as no surprise to me that the women were awesome today, because training and doing intervals all summer and fall we’ve been neck-in-neck and pushing each other.”
The women of Craftsbury with coach Pepa Miloucheva. CGRP put five women into the semifinal and three into the final of the SuperTour classic sprint in Soldier Hollow. (Photo: Facebook Crafsbury Green Racing Project)
For Rudd, this was her first career SuperTour podium. Originally from Plymouth, MN, she graduated from University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) in May, 2020 before heading to Bozeman to join the newly minted BSF Pro Team. Placing in the top-10 in each of the three stages of the 2022 U.S. Cross Country Championships, Rudd has steadily worked her way up the results list, finishing 10th in Sunday’s freestyle sprint, 8th in the 20k mass start free, and 6th in the 10k interval start classic. She ends her week in Soldier Hollow on a podium high note.
Hannah Rudd is a member of the BSF Pro Team based in Bozeman, MT. (Photo: bridgerskifoundation.org)
“Yesterday was a pretty exciting day for me!,” Rudd wrote to FasterSkier after the race. “The sprint course at Soldier Hollow this year was very challenging as it included three solid climbs. During the qualifier, the course remained very firm and fast. However, the temperature quickly began to rise throughout the day, and by the time the quarterfinals began, the sun was baking the course, the wind was blowing, and temps were nearing 50 degrees. This made the snow begin to transform and slow down and turned the tracks into mashed potatoes in some sections.
“I woke up in the morning feeling quite tired from the past week of racing so I was not sure how the day was going to play out,” Rudd continued. “I ended up qualifying in 22nd, so it was clear that I had some work to do in the heats. I felt like I was able to gain momentum and energy throughout the day, and progressed through the quarters, and semis and onto the final. Going into the final, I knew that my team’s skis were running really well so I tried to ski big and relaxed and put myself in a good position for the last downhill. It was pretty neat to be in a final with my BSF teammate Lauren Jortberg, who is an incredible sprinter and someone that I have learned a lot about sprint racing from over the past few years. I was extremely excited to land myself a spot on the podium and think it will help me to continue building momentum and confidence for the rest of the season!”
The podium ceremony for the women’s final following the SuperTour classic sprint in Soldier Hollow. Katharine Ogden took the win ahead of Caitlin Patterson and Hannah Rudd, with Lauren Jortberg 4th, Alexandra Lawson 5th, and Margie Freed 6th. (Photo: Facebook Craftsbury Green Racing Project)
Men’s Race: Colorado’s Magnus Bøe Upsets Schoonmaker in the Final
In qualifying, JC Schoonmaker (USST/UAA) showed why he has been the U.S. Ski Team’s most reliable fixture of World Cup Classic heats this season, winning the qualifying with a time of 3:08.43, 6.42 seconds ahead of 2nd place Peter Holmes (Sun Valley SEF). Andreas Kirkeng (University of Denver) rounded out the top 3 (+6.57), in a field where the top 30 were all within 20 seconds of each other.
With a dominant performance in qualification, the racing throughout the day always seemed to have one eye on where Schoonmaker was in the field. In his quarterfinal, Schoonmaker looked to start conservatively from the back of the field, which led the whole heat to sit back as well. When he moved to the front at the beginning of the first climb, the race surged forward with him. No one could match him, however, and he finished with a comfortable lead, with Kjetil Bånerud (NMU) taking the 2nd semifinal spot (+1.02).
JC Schoonmaker prepares for a sunny and warm classic sprint in Soldier Hollow. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
The following two quarterfinals also previewed the competitors, and their preferred way of attacking the course, that would define the semifinal and final racing later on.
The second heat set a stark contrast in pace to the previous heat, with Noel Keefe (U of Utah) and Bill Harmeyer (SMS T2) leading the field out hard from the gun. Hunter Wonders (APU) and Johnny Hagenbuch (SVSEF) were able to keep with the pair though, and ended up out-sprinting Keefe and Harmeyer going into the finish. Still, the duel between Keefe and Harmeyer led to a blistering pace for the heat overall, and they would claim the lucky loser spots for the semifinals.
Then came the 3rd quarterfinal, featuring winner of today’s most aggressive racer award (unofficially handed out here, by Fasterskier), Ian Torchia (SMS T2), who in every heat he was in today would hammer out to the front of the pack while others seemed content to let the field play out. He was joined in the heat by Magnus Bøe (U of Colo.), who made his move on the first climb, stayed out in front, and came through in first place. Torchia, meanwhile, held onto second to advance automatically to the semifinal.
The semifinals marked more an amalgamation of race strategies than anything unique. But it was an amalgamation – which requires multiple parts. And indeed, on a course known for rewarding smart-racing, and in conditions – above freezing, on man-made, wind-swept snow – that reward smart waxing as well.
Magnus Bøe and JC Schoonmaker are off the line during the 2022 U.S. Cross Country Championships freestyle sprint stage. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
The first semifinal featured Schoonmaker and Bøe, both of which stayed back in the back during the early part of the course. Going into the first climb, Bøe took a look back, saw Schoonmaker and Harmeyer were sitting in fifth and sixth place, respectively, and decided to attack. He led over the top, into the downhill, and up the final climb. Schoonmaker successfully did maneuver through the pack to counter the move, and on the final climb took the outside line up, cutting in to tuck behind Bøe going into the final downhill. When they came up, Schoonmaker had used the draft to put himself out front, while Bøe held off a late-surge from Hunter Wonders (APU) to take the second qualifying spot into the finals.
The second semifinal was again led out by Ian Torchia, who was then followed by former sprint National Champion Tyler Kornfield (APU). Kornfield seemed content to sit behind Torchia until the first climb, when he put in a burst of speed and broke open the field. The smartest racer, however, may have been Karl Schulz (SVSEF), who rode Kornfield’s attack, and then drafted, to go into the final climb with speed. By the time he hit the downhill, he had a gap which would remain unclosed. Kornfield, who had gone into the downhill in second, found himself joined by Noel Keefe and Ian Torchia into the final sprint for the second spot. As it would happen, all three would make it through to the finals, with Kornfield in second, and Keefe and Torchia being rewarded for their efforts early in the race by claiming the two lucky loser spots to the final.
The A-final then looked like this: JC Schoonmaker, Magnus Bøe, Karl Schulz, Tyler Kornfield, Noel Keefe, and Ian Torchia.
JC Schoonmaker races the qualifier during the SuperTour classic sprints in Soldier Hollow, UT. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
With memories of Schoonmaker’s dominating qualifier in mind, it seemed like the field orbited around him off the line. Schulz found himself in front, but not going full bore to open the field up. Even Torchia, when he did make a move to the front, didn’t seem to do so with the same force that had marked his quarter and semifinal attacks. Schoonmaker waited until the first climb to move to the front, and then the final really was on. Schultz seized on the attack, and then put an extra-push into the downhill to try and open up an unclosable gap like he had in his semifinal. It was a good move, but one that didn’t prove to have the same force as his previous attack, and going into the final climb he was joined up with Bøe and Schoonmaker.
Then, Schoonmaker’s pace seemed to drop-off, with a few noticeable slips that progressed into a herringbone. Bøe, meanwhile, went for the herringbone from the get-go. He was the one that made contact with Schulz before the course gave way to a final downhill on the day. Schultz held a gap on the field through the glideout and over the bridge, but it proved not to be enough of a margin to feel comfortable in the final stretch. Meanwhile, Schoonmaker had fallen back to fifth.
Utilizing his dominating doublepole sprint, when they hit the final 100m it was all Bøe, who closed a significant gap to catch Schulz in the final 50 meters. Looking as if he was leaping forward with each push, Bøe switched lanes, overtaking Schultz just before the line and letting out a fist pump as he realized a SuperTour – and collegiate – victory in a time of 4:08.28. Pushing to the line, Schulz was a close second (+0.35). (Video clip here.)
Magnus Bøe overtakes Karl Schultz just before the finish of the men’s classic sprint final. (Photo: Instagram @cubuffs)
After a gap, Schoonmaker, who was fighting for the final podium spot alongside Kornfield and Torchia, crossed the line outside of the track in third place (+4.53). Kornfield was a half second back from Schoonmaker for fourth (+5.10), with Torchia fifth (+5.64), and Keefe sixth (+11.02).
After the race Bøe explained that he changed his tactics in the heats relative to Sunday’s freestyle sprint, though he joked he thought it wise not to reveal everything.
“Today was a windy and slow-condition day,” Bøe wrote in an email. “There was headwind in the first half, and tailwind in the second half. Hence, pulling during the first half would be pointless. Furthermore, the second half, particularly for the last downhill there was very little to gain on the slipstream, due to the low speed and the ‘suctiony’ snow (cold conditions create better glide for the person coming behind on ‘heated tracks’). Therefore during all my heats I pretty much went all out from the top of the last uphill all the way to the finish, which on sunday would’ve been a suicide.”
Bøe walked through the final, including how he reacted to lead changes and adjusted his strategy when the race began to play out differently than anticipated.
“The final started off very slow, but then the positioning battle developed gradually from under the bridge. My main focus was to keep my eyes on JC, since he was clearly the favorite of the day, and I knew I would do well if I laid it up to beat him. Hence I never fell for the temptation of passing him, even though I had many chances of doing so. However, he did get tired during the last climb and tried to get others to pass him. This is when Karl took off and gained a massive gap that at first seemed too late to close. As soon as I realized that JC might not be able to catch up, I committed to catching Karl by myself. I made sure to put in a great push before the downhill straight, and did the ‘supertuck’ to gain every single inch I could. Once I started double poling towards the last bend it was just heads down and maximum effort. Was never certain I would catch Karl, I thought maybe he’d have something left at the very end. But lucky for me he didn’t and I had just enough to pull it off.”
University of Colorado’s Magnus Bøe heads out for the men’s 30k mass start free during the 2022 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Soldier Hollow. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
A dual citizen of Korea and Norway, 23-year-old Bøe has already built a robust resume in international ski racing, including competing for Korea during the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang. Earlier this week, Bøe was fifth in Sunday’s freestyle sprints and finished 11th in the 15k classic. His only down race of the series happened in the 30k mass start freestyle, where he finished 43rd (+12:30.9).
“This week of racing has been up and down, from a miserable 30km where I got lapped, to today’s win. It’s been a lot of fun, and not least has been helpful for my shape. Next up is the Super Tour in Sun Valley, which I am looking forward to. Think I would be able to build on top of what I gained during this week.”
For Schultz, today also marked a career-first SuperTour podium. The 23-year-old Lake Placid, NY Native raced for the University of Vermont (UVM) until graduating in May, 2020, then heading to Sun Valley. Schultz had a podium just-miss earlier this year in a freestyle sprint where he finished fourth during the opening weekend of SuperTour racing in Duluth, MN.
“I was pretty fatigued from the three races prior,” Schultz wrote after the race. “I knew there was a decent headwind on that first climb, so I decided I’d tuck in behind up and over the first climb. I figured I’d need to save my strength for the final climb and long finishing straight, so I played my cards well and pushed where I needed to, and it just worked perfectly. I’ve learned sprinting is about preserving energy for critical parts of the course, it couldn’t have gone better.”
“And I won’t lie,” Schultz continued. “The spectators and everyone cheering allowed me to find another gear, especially up the last climb. I dug deeper than I have before.”
The men’s podium of the SuperTour 1.5k classic sprint in Soldier Hollow: Magnus Bøe took the win ahead of Karl Schultz and JC Schoonmaker. (Photo: Instagram @nysefnordic)
Writing to FasterSkier after the race, Schoonmaker explained how changing conditions forced athletes to make tough decisions about skis as well as tactics.
“It was a pretty crazy difference from this morning to the afternoon,” Schoonmaker explained. “The morning was icy and fast and the heats got really sloppy and slow. I had amazing skis in the morning and in the heats I struggled a bit with choosing whether to go for more kick or glide. I ended up asking for less kick to free the ski up a bit and I’m still not sure what was the right call. It was just really challenging conditions.”
Schoonmaker also explained that he had made fewer adjustments to the technique he had found such success with in Sunday’s skate sprint, however, the final proved to break the mold of what has historically proven to be the recipe for Soldier Hollow sprint racing.
“For this course I tried to take a somewhat similar approach as in the skate race by respecting the draft on the last downhill and trying to be careful about the guys behind me there. In the quarterfinal I felt I was able to ski away and create a big enough gap so that I couldn’t get sucked back in by the draft. In the semifinal, I tried to stay more in the pack and use the draft for myself. The final was tricky because I was going to try and use the draft again but Karl put in a really good move on the last hill that I couldn’t match. Then I was leading the rest of the pack and I decided to push over and try to catch Karl rather than go to the back to find the draft. It ended up not working out so great, but I’m happy with the day and the tough effort.”
We conclude a week of racing at Soldier Hollow, then, with a race that highlighted the strength and depth of the domestic circuit of U.S. skiing at present. Variable conditions on a technical course, which racers approached with tactics as diverse as the regions they hail from, indicated that this is a field that represents top-level racing. It was a testament to the development and growth of the sport in this country that a top-level racer like Schoonmaker can come off the World Cup and find a field where every heat is raced with closeness and intensity in his own country. That bodes well, and is a great place to leave the last national gathering of the US ski racing community before its best representatives look to take a crack at the Olympic Games in Beijing next month.
The spirit of the sport captured at the finish line as Alaska Winter Stars athlete Meredith Schwartz embraces her coach at the finish of the classic sprint in Soldier Hollow. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
FasterSkier extends congratulations to all athletes who competed in Soldier Hollow this week, commending their efforts in a fiercely competitive field through a variety of race formats and course conditions. Also, a big thank you to Tobias Albrigtsen and John McColgan, who generously shared their photos with us throughout the week. Stayed tuned for an upcoming gallery highlighting many of the fantastic images that were not included in our reports.
