From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.
The highs were high and the lows were low in the Olympic team sprint in Italy, with the Ogden-Schumacher men’s team claiming silver and the Diggins-Kern women’s pair finishing out of the medals. Devon and Nat break the whole thing down.
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Gus Schumacher (USA), Ben Ogden (USA) announce the arrival of a new American cross-country tradition. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus.)
PREDAZZO, ITALY — Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo still had something special to do. American skiers still had something special to prove. But the Team Sprint is never as simple as just lining up and racing. Contending nations need to consider the field, rate the strengths and vulnerabilities of their competition, and make a plan to best take advantage of the circumstances. Then they have to ski it . . .
Not that they needed to, but the Norwegians must have come up with a different plan. For nearly a year—since the straightforward, matter-of-fact Team Sprint victory of Klaebo and Valnes in last year’s World Championships—I’ve been thinking of the Norwegian Team Sprint strategy in only one way: whoever is paired with Klaebo just needs not to get dropped. Stay out of trouble, avoid tangles, respond to the attacks from other teams but don’t allow yourself to be made vulnerable by launching attacks of your (efforts that could, then, be counter-attacked). When considering strategy, picking Klaebo’s partner in this team event seemed like a straightforward selection to make . . . but more than one Norwegian could fit neatly into that role. It’s a role that’s been performed admirably by Valnes in the past, and by Iversen before him (both of them on this year’s Norwegian Olympic Team roster). It’s a role that could have logically been taken on by Harald Oestberg Amundsen, who is both a very fast sprinter and the reigning World Cup Distance champion. All three of them are fast, All three of them are great endurance skiers as well as fine sprinters. None of them would be likely to get dropped by anyone else in the field, and all have a wealth of experience skiing in the should-to-shoulder, rough-and-tumble style of pack racing that is typical of a Team Sprint event. Pick one of those guys, right?
Not so fast . . .
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo finds himself paired in this Olympic Team Sprint with Einar Hedegart. Hedegart is certainly fast, and it’s rumored that he possesses the highest VO2 Max of any Norwegian athlete (in any sport). That would certainly come in handy if Hedegart’s job was to drop everybody in order to give Klaebo a head start on the anchor leg. But is that even necessary? The Team Sprint finishes on the same hill as the Individual Sprint. Remember that hill? The one that’s made Klaebo famous for his unmatchable 11 mph scamper that’s all over the internet? If you put all the best skiers in the world at the bottom of that hill, and say “go,” Klaebo will win a race to the finish line by a mile. We thought the plan for the Team Sprint would take advantage of that advantage.
What does teaming with Hedegart get them? Those are questions that someone over in Norway must’ve considered. If Hedegart tries to break away, he makes his team vulnerable to counter-attack . . . and he already showed in the 10 k Freestyle (where he went out way to fast, and bonked like an inexperienced age-grouper) that he may not yet possess a full understanding of pacing. Furthermore, Hedegart possesses nowhere near as much World Cup Sprint experience as Iversen or Valnes or Amundsen. They’re less likely to get stepped on or pushed over or boxed in. With Hedegart—well, he’s fast, but the Norwegians really don’t know what they’re getting.
On the other hand, Hedegart’s raw speed is what Norway may be seeking. With his bronze medal in the 10 k Freestyle, he showed that he was a fairly even match for the speedy Frenchman, Mathis Desloges (already with three silver medals in these Olympic races). And France is starting Desloges in the first leg of the Team Relay (opposite Hedegart). One way or another, Klaebo’s performance is fairly predictable, so all the significant question marks are swirling around Hedegart.
Ben Ogden (USA) had one job to do—create the gap. (Photo: Barbieri/NordicFocus)
The American Dream
It seems like the American men also have decided to try out an unexpected strategy. It would have been easy to assume that Team USA might hope to get Ben Ogden—the team’s most accomplished sprinter—into the anchor leg so that he could battle his way to the finish line among the other designated sprinters. A sprint finish for the medals, assign your best sprinter. Right? Maybe not. The US team decided that the anchor leg will be skied by Gus Schumacher, himself no slouch as a sprinter, and an occasional visitor to World Cup Sprint semifinals and finals. But if Schumacher skis the anchor leg, then he’s likely to find himself sprinting against Klaebo and Federico Pellegrino and Jules Chappaz. Schumacher may not match up too well against those three . . . but if Schumacher is given a lead going into the anchor leg, there aren’t many skiers in the world who can chase him down. Perhaps what USA is counting on is Ogden being able to launch an attack in the penultimate leg that disrupts the other contenders, allowing Schumacher to coast home alone. Klaebo may already be well off the front by then, but who knows? Maybe there’s a medal for the Americans in this strategy that might not otherwise have existed.
“I was incredibly nervous before today’s race,” said Ogden. “But the parts, the moments where I’m nervous are, like, the lead up, you know? I know that once the race starts, I can just get to this headspace where I can be confident and be strong and be smart with my movements in the group. And that’s a really good feeling.”
Time to line up and race . . .
Einar Hedegart (NOR) would need to be both fast, and patient in an event that he had never skied before. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Men’s Team Sprint
Unlike the Individual Sprint where the event is raced in heats of six skiers, the Team Sprint is a 15 team melee whose selection of teams is based on the compiled individual qualifying times of each team’s sprinters. Once the final field is decided, they just line ’em up, and say “Go.” With 15 teams charging around the Sprint course, it would seem to be anyone’s race. Ironically, pre-race ski-pundits would have us believe that the three medals should only be distributed among four teams: Norway, France, Italy, and the USA. But teh efforts, attacks, and foibles of many other teams are likey to have an impact. As other recent relay events have amply demonstrated, there is much that can interrupt all best-laid plans between the prediction and the finish. Soon, either those experts would look like geniuses, or fools.
Ogden would be compelled to deal with Desloges, Hedegart, and Anger in Leg 1. While the Ogden-strategy may have been to accelerate in his leg—creating a gap that will allow Schumacher to maintain an advantage—Ogden was not likely to pursue the all-out-from-the-gun that Diggins employed in the Women’s Team Sprint. It’s just too athletically expensive to race that way.
Ogden started front and center of the front row, where he was followed quickly by Austra. The first meters were confusing as Riebli (SUI) needed to scramble to find a replacement pole in just the first few seconds of racing. Ogden and Desloges made the early tempo. The field would begin to stretch out, more out of concern for safety than exhaustion.
“We did our one thing that we talked about: we were gonna meet on the right hand side of the exchange zone,” said Ogden. “Without fail, every single time we caught we came in on the other side, on the far and had to cross, and had to cross through like 15 people in order to get to our guy on the other side. And it was one of those things where we both honed in on the fact that being on the right hand side of the exchange room was not working. But it was also like, we can’t risk going to the left hand side and having him not see us. So we just had to sort of stick with it. And, you know, made for a couple fast first 20 seconds of the legs to try to catch back up.”
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) will do what he’s going to do. Teams from all other nations will scramble for silver and bronze. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Leg 2—Klaebo’s fast lane
Klaebo may not have been happy at being forced to weave through the field after the exchange (and Hedegart’s presence in the crowded scrum of the transition must have been nerve-wracking), but this is not Klaebo’s first rodeo. He made his way easily to the front followed by Pellegrino and Edvin Anger (SWE) who decided he wanted to take the lead. Klaebo and Pellegrino were only too happy to let the confident young Swede do the work.
“I was trying to save energy and not lead,” said Schumacher. “When you start off out of the stadium and third or fourth, and another line comes up behind you, you’re eighth pretty quickly. And then, yeah, coming into the stadium, there was a big slingshot, and I was sort of like—I don’t know—I felt like I was generally on the wrong side of that . . . I kept my head, stayed calm, which I’m really proud of.”
“It’s nice to be able to trust Ben,” Schumacher continued. “To tag him far back, and he’ll tag me back in a great spot. And he set me up in that last lap perfectly. Then I had a pretty simple job to do, and I’m really glad I was able to do that.”
Leg 3—Hedegart’s patience
Hedegart inherited the lead from Klaebo, but he led at a pace that indicated he was not interested in laying down the law. Not yet, anyway. Hedeagart settled in behind Lauri Vuorinen (FIN) while the field spread out behind them. No real breakaway yet, but the group was beginning to feel the strain. There wouldl be less “trouble” for Hedegart to encounter on the course, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. All of Norway held its breath.
Gus Schumacher (USA) has often shown the sort of speed and endurance needed in the anchor leg, but his performances in recent Olympic races left some questions. He answered loud and clear. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Leg 4—Schumacher’s arrival, Desloges’ disasters
Hedegart had again come through transition with the lead, follwed by Sweden and France. Anger again wanted the front, perhaps hoping to create some gaps of his own. Desloges spent Leg 4 suffering his second broken pole of he day. France was faltering irretrievably, and the field sensed an opening in the medals. Team USA had sat concealed in the field all race, but Schumacher was begining to move forward, and to make his presence felt. Canada shadowed USA. With the field still hanging together, Team USA may have been ready for Ogden’s Leg 5 surge.
Leg 5—Ogden’s encore
Just like they may have planned it, there went Ogden leading Hedegart up the significant hill. Hedegart may have possessed the lead, but the USA was putting its plan into effect, as well. While all the leaders remained in contention, it looked like the pre-race script was remaining consistent.
Celebration at the finish. Ben Ogden (USA) and Gus Schumacher (USA) team up to make history. (Photo: Barbieri/NordicFocus)
Anchor Leg—USA!
Ogden had done his job, as had Hedegart. One lap to go, with Klaebo enjoying a small lead over Schumacher, Anger, and Pellegrino. With only the anchor leg remaining, what USA needed was a skier with flashing speed and bottomless endurance. That’s Gus Schumacher . . .
“The best way to do that is just go as fast as you can,” said Schumacher. “And I think today I did a good job of just looking forward. Klaebo was gonna ski this fast. If I can stay close to him, I’ll also ski it fast.”
Schumacher made his way to Klaebo’s tails as Pellegrino dropped Anger. Medals waited on the horizon as Klaebo shifted into top gear on his signature hill. Pellegrino made up ground on Schumacher, but did not close the gap enough to benefit from the draft on the downhill where the field spread out in a test of glide wax and base prep. Gaps held as skiers entered the finishing straightaway where Klaebo wrote Olympic history to become only the second Winter Olympic athlete to win five golds in a single games. Additional history followed in Klaebo’s wake, as Schumacher erupted across the finish line to grab silver for Team USA, his first Olympic medal, and Ogden’s second silver of these Games.
“Once the race starts, I just race the same way I have since I was five,” said Ogden. “So that’s a really nice feeling. And I think that the test of this championship has like, like, set me up really well to just be confident and leap, (to) control the pace and then go hard and be confident that I could, that I could make some time. So was a good feeling.”
Pellegrino offered the home-crowd yet another thrill when he crossed the line to deliver his second bronze medal.
Relief, exhaustion, satisfaction: Federico Pellegrino (ITA) has long carried the weight of Italian expectations. With his second bronze medal of these Olympic Winter Games, Pellegrino is writing the closing chapters of his career con brio e brillantezza. (Photo: Barbieri/NordicFocus)
The legendary American speedskater, Eric Heiden, won every single event on the speedskating card in the Olympic Winter Games of Lake Placid, 1980. Those unprecedented triumphs—from the explosive 500 meter sprint to the brutal 10,000 meter marathon—made it clear that even among the very best in his sport, Heiden reigned supreme. As performers and performances have specialized across all sports, it appeared unlikely that anyone would ever so dominate a sport again. Well, with his own fifth gold medal, Klaebo has proven to be Heiden’s equal. And with one event still remaining in cross-country events at these Olympics, a modern athlete may yet prove the sort of dominance once known only to the great sportsmen of history.
American sports fans certainly remember Heiden. But today, in Val di Fiemme, the performance that would make hearts beat and souls rejoice—the medal that would see American sports fans leaping from the couch in the middle of the North American night—belonged to Ben Ogden and Gus Schumacher, rivals throughout their long careers, teammates for a decade, and partners in the race that earned only the third cross-country skiing medal in America’s Winter Olympic history.
Bill Koch has long borne the mantle of American cross-country skiing. He is now joined in that task by more American skiing stars including Jesie Diggins, Ben Ogden, and Gus Schumacher. (Photo: Peter Ashley)
Way back in 1976, American viewers were glued to the TV sets watching races from Innsbruck, hoping to see Bill Koch win his second Olympic medal. Back then, that’s what we thought would happen . . . win one medal, win another. But while Koch performed admirably in the race that followed his historic silver medal, he did not earn a place on the podium again. Today, in Val di Fiemme, Ben Ogden made a little history of his own, becoming the first American man to earn a second Olympic medal. He did so in a display of grit, of determination, of long-standing cameraderie and cooperation with his longtime teammate, the indefatigable Gus Schumacher who, himself, became only the third American man to claim an Olympic medal.
Soon, we may stop talking about historic finishes for American skiers. As a team, most of the firsts and onlys now lie behind them. What arrives in their place is legitimacy and respect, and a future that may bring expectation and anticipation in place of mere hopes and dreams. American cross-country has arrived, just in time to establish a bright future when some of its bright stars are preparing to depart the stage. Mission accomplished, plan complete.
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History in hand: Gus Schumacher (USA) and Ben Ogden (USA) hold American silver. (Photo: Barbieri/NordicFocus)
Ogden remained refreshingly loose on the podium: “I was giving (Klaebo) some $#!* for the fact that they had the least cool podium outfits,” Ogden recalled. “And then he said, ‘How many golds do you have?’ I was like, well, that’s a good point, but they still have the least cool podium outfits. There can be no denying that . . .”
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers who have helped put our Nat Herz on the ground at the Olympics. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription.
Four Norwegian men, including Martin Loewstroem Nyenget (NOR), Mattis Stenshagen (NOR), Harald Oestberg Amundsen (NOR), Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR), (l-r) set to lead the Men’s 20 k Skiathlon out of the start and begin the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Winter Games in Tesero, Italy. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
PREDAZZO, ITALY — The snow in Val di Fiemme had finally settled. After a colder night and a full day’s distance from the most recent snowfall, the surface beneath the men’s skis on Sunday morning felt less negotiable than it had twenty-four hours earlier. It was firmer, faster, and exacting—the kind of track that rewards decisiveness and punishes hesitation. On a course defined by momentum, there would be no neutral moments.
By the time the leaders crested the Zorzi Climb for the final time, illuminated by the bright northern Italian sun, one truth had been clarified: the Olympic Men’s Skiathlon had not produced a surprise. It had produced a confirmation.
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo arrived in Val di Fiemme as the most accomplished skier of his generation, the reigning master of range—sprint speed married to endurance patience, and the man who, one year earlier at the World Championships in Trondheim, Norway, became the first skier ever to win gold in every event. On Sunday, in the opening men’s race of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, he did not reinvent himself. He simply waited, watched, and delivered exactly what the sport has come to expect.
But the Skiathlon is never only about the man who wins it. It is about where the race breaks, who is caught on the wrong side of that break, and how little time there is to recover once it happens.
In Val di Fiemme, that truth arrived early—at a fast right-hand corner about two kilometers into the race—and again, more quietly but just as decisively, midway through the skate leg, when a tangle in the pack ended one of Norway’s strongest medal threats.
An unfortunate early crash took Gus Schumacher (USA) out of a top performance. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Firmer Conditions, Faster Consequences
The men’s skiathlon opened with a 10-kilometer classic leg, mass start, with athletes seeded by season-long results. It is a procedural detail that becomes strategic fact the moment the gun fires: the highest-ranked skiers line up at the front, while those just behind them must navigate the churn.
On Sunday, the pace was relentless from the first kilometer. The field stretched quickly as athletes fought for position ahead of the course’s first defining technical feature—a fast right-hand corner roughly two kilometers in, where the trail bottoms out before pitching uphill again.
It was the same corner where Jessie Diggins fell in Saturday’s women’s race. And once again, it reshaped the day.
Several skiers went down in the crash, including Edvin Anger (SWE), Zak Ketterson (USA), and Gus Schumacher (USA)—all athletes with legitimate top-ten potential under normal circumstances. The cost of falling there was immediate and severe: not just lost momentum, but lost momentum at the precise moment the leaders were accelerating uphill and creating separation.
“I was dead last after the fall,” Schumacher said afterward. “Unfortunately, Zak fell right in front of me. It was tight coming into that corner, and I didn’t see what happened to Zak, but into the dropdown I got one ski around him and the other caught and spun me around off track.”
“I did what I could, but when the people at the front are still going as fast, it’s hard to catch them. All I could do was ski as smoothly as I could for the next 18 k. At that point, it’s an individual race. I feel like I skied well for being back there.”
Zak Ketterson (USA) was involved in the same crash as Schumacher and was forced to burn many matches early while playing chase, which ultimately proved too costly. He ultimately ended the race in 43rd place. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Ketterson’s version of the same moment underscored how quickly the situation unraveled.
“I fell on that same corner Jessie Diggins fell on yesterday,” he said. “I was hopeful we’d ski it well, but coming into it everyone started snowplowing and freaking out and someone in front of me fell.
“I fell pretty hard, but I got back up and just burned so many matches catching back up to the group. I was fighting from there to the finish.”
Ahead of them, the race did not wait.
Xavier McKeever (CAN) had, what he described, the race of his life. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Control Without Calm
With the early chaos, the classic leg splintered the field. A front group formed, thinned, and re-formed, the pace steady enough to discourage attacks but high enough to extract a cost from anyone forced to chase.
For the U.S. team, there was at least one quiet positive. Head coach Matt Whitcomb felt far better about ski preparation than he had the day before.
“We had, in general, very competitive skis today,” Whitcomb said.
But ski quality can only matter if contact is maintained.
“When you get taken out of contact with the leaders,” Whitcomb said, “the people you’re drafting off of are slower than the leaders. It’s kind of negative compounding—you just drift away.”
By the time the top eight skiers entered the stadium for the ski exchange at the end of the classic leg, the race had already begun to select for those who could tolerate discomfort without revealing it. Among them were Norway’s Mattis Stenshagen, who soon faded, France’s emerging depth, and Klaebo himself—observant and patient.
Then the skis changed, and the race revealed its teeth.
Harald Oestberg Amundsen (NOR) got tangled with Savelii Korostelev (AIN), which caused him to fall and lose contact with the lead pack. Korostelev managed to stay on his feet and was able to earn a fourth place. (Photo: Barbieri/NordicFocus)
A Quiet Turning Point in the Skate Leg
The opening kilometers of the freestyle leg altered the race more subtly, but no less decisively.
At approximately 11.5 kilometers, Harald Oestberg Amundsen (NOR)—who had positioned himself exactly where Norway would want him entering the skate portion—tangled skis with Savelii Korostelev (AIN). Amundsen went down. The lead group did not.
He remounted quickly, but the elastic had snapped. His chance to fight for a medal in the opening race of the Games was gone.
For Norway, a team that has dominated the men’s World Cup season at times filling nearly the entire top ten, it was a small moment with outsized implications.
Hugo Lapalus (FRA), Martin Loewstroem Nyenget (NOR), Savelii Korostelev (AIN), Mathis Desloges (FRA), Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR), (l-r) formed the lead pack and became the group that would battle for the podium. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Desloges, a Yellow Card, and a Protest That Went Nowhere
As the race accelerated, Mathis Desloges (FRA) briefly found himself leading at the end of the first skate lap. In a moment of confusion, he mistakenly turned into the ski exchange lane before cutting back through the V-boards and rejoining the course.
The detour shortened his route by only a few meters and offered no meaningful advantage. The race jury issued Desloges a yellow card warning and allowed the result to stand.
After the race, AIN filed a protest, arguing that the infraction should result in disqualification and elevate Korostelev, who finished fourth, to the bronze medal position. The jury rejected the protest.
Desloges framed the day not around controversy, but around progression.
“I’m very happy,” he said. “The preparation was very good. Two years ago today, I became [the U23 World Champion], and now it’s different. I’m better than two years ago.
“This medal is for my family, for my friends, and for everyone on the French team—the staff and my family.”
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) delivered a spectacular move on the Zorzi Climb that opened up a large gap in the final kilometer. (Photo: Barbieri/NordicFocus)
Klaebo on the Zorzi Climb
There are moments in ski racing that feel preordained—not because they are inevitable, but because the athlete who executes them has taught the sport to expect them.
Klaebo’s move on the Zorzi Climb belonged to that category.
He waited. He measured. And then, on the final ascent, he applied a pressure no one else in the group could answer. The gap opened quickly, almost unbelievably so if he had not done the same thing so many times before, and by the time the course tipped back toward the stadium, the Olympic gold medal was no longer in doubt. Klaebo came to the finish with enough margin to ease up, take off his poles, and ski the final meters, celebrating in front of the stadium crowd.
For Klaebo, the performance was the product of both familiarity and tension.
“The last couple of days have been nerve-racking,” he said. “I’ve had a very high resting heart rate these days. I’ve been very nervous, but this is my third Olympics, so you get a little bit of experience. This is a track and course that we know a lot from previously—we’ve done a lot of World Cups here.”
When the skis changed and the race accelerated, that experience showed.
“I had good skis, my body felt good,” Klaebo said. “It’s always good to start a championship in good shape.”
One year removed from his historic sweep in Trondheim, Klaebo arrived in Val di Fiemme carrying questions that extended well beyond a single race. Six gold medals are available in Milano Cortina. No man has ever won them all.
“We’ll see,” Klaebo said. “I’m going to take one race at a time. But it’s a pretty good start. With the weather and the crowds, it was amazing out there.”
Mathis Desloges (FRA) and Martin Loewstroem Nyenget (NOR), (l-r) come down the finish stretch battling for the silver and bronze medal. (Photo: Barbieri/NordicFocus)
Nations in Contrast
France: Depth and Belief
If Norway remains the benchmark, France is no longer content to chase quietly.
Desloges acknowledged Norway’s status entering the race, but did not concede anything beyond the present tense.
“The French athletes are very strong,” he said. “Of course, the Norwegian guys are also very strong, but I believe we can be better. Today, I’m very good, and I’m happy.”
France backed up that belief with the most comprehensive team performance of the day, placing second, fifth, ninth, and fifteenth.
“We see the French team on a similar level as our team,” Whitcomb said. “When we have success, they’re one of the first teams to congratulate us. They’re just a really passionate group, and we love to see them succeed.”
Hugo Lapalus (FRA) and Mathis Desloges (FRA) celebrate an unbelievable day for France. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Norway: Gold, Bronze—and Perspective
For Norway, the medal count told only part of the story. A gold and a bronze would thrill nearly any other nation, but the context surrounding this team—deep enough to leave world-class skiers at home—made the result feel more measured.
Bronze medallist Martin Loewstroem Nyenget (NOR), racing his first Olympic event, framed the day not as a shortfall, but as an arrival.
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR), Martin Loewstroem Nyenget (NOR), Harald Oestberg Amundsen (NOR), and Mattis Stenshagen (NOR), (l-r) all entered the day with hopes of an Olympic medal for Norway; two delivered, two did not. (Photo: Barbieri/NordicFocus)
“I’m really happy and proud,” Nyenget said. “It’s a result of training, but also of time away from family and a lot of hard mental work. The past days and weeks, I’ve been nervous, so it’s good to be done with my first Olympic race.
“To have this first race in this atmosphere, with these blue skies, and have my wife and little kid in the stadium somewhere—it’s a really good day.”
Asked whether gold and bronze constituted a satisfactory outcome, Nyenget was direct.
“I think so,” he said. “We have some really high pressure. We’ve been doing crazy good in the World Cup, but usually in championships, all racers are at their very best. You see today that there is strong competition from the French, and we took two podium places. It’s good.”
After the fall Gus Schumacher (USA) spent the day racing his way through the field, eventually finishing in 24th place. (Photo: Barbieri/NordicFocus)
United States: Disappointed, Not Discouraged
For the U.S. team, the early crash changed everything.
Schumacher and Ketterson were forced into playing chase. Zanden McMullen, who avoided the crash, felt the day slip away in the skate leg.
“Today’s race was not great, but not horrendous,” McMullen said. “I felt really good in the classic leg and then I don’t know what happened in the skate portion. I was cramping up quite a bit and just didn’t have it.”
Hunter Wonders (USA) on his way to 31st place. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Hunter Wonders, making his Olympic debut, focused instead on the scale of the task.
“It was hard,” Wonders said. “It was a hard course with tricky conditions. The skiathlon is difficult because it mixes up the muscle groups you use and takes a second to transition, but it was fun. Great Olympic debut.”
Whitcomb struck a measured tone.
“I’m feeling good, not great,” he said. “Slightly disappointed, but not discouraged. Nothing about that feels negative to me. This is just one of the days of the Games, and now it’s behind us.”
Xavier Mckeever (CAN) fighting for a top ten, eventually finishing in 13th place. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
Canada: The Race of a Lifetime
For Canada, the day belonged to Xavier McKeever, who finished 13th after spending much of the race on the edge of the top ten.
“Oh man—that was incredible,” McKeever said. “I can’t believe what just went down, to be honest.”
He described a race that improved with each kilometer.
“I felt like I skied it really smart—tried to conserve as much energy as possible—and I just felt better and better,” he said. “The skate felt really good, which is sweet, because that’s usually a weak spot for me.”
Mid-race, the realization crept in.
“You can’t really comprehend what’s going on,” McKeever said. “You’re just like, ‘Holy crap, I’m here right now, fighting for top ten.’ It’s surreal, but you’ve got to focus on the race.”
The result carried deeper meaning.
“To be honest, I was about a foot away from not making this Olympic team,” he said. “To come here and have the best race of my life so far on the first day at the Olympics—I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Mathis Desloges (FRA), Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR), and Martin Loewstroem Nyenget (NOR), (l-r) share the Olympic Men’s 20 k Skiathlon podium in Tesero, Italy. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
One Race Down
The skiathlon rarely offers mercy, and Val di Fiemme offered none.
There will be more races, more chances, and more medals to chase. Klaebo will insist he is taking this one race at a time. Everyone else will count.
On firmer snow, with no ambiguity left beneath the skis, the hierarchy revealed itself plainly—and the Olympic Winter Games began exactly where cross-country skiing so often does: with Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo setting the standard.
On the ground reporting by FasterSkier’s Nat Herz.
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