What the U.S. Ski Team Changed After Threshold
Matthew VoisinSeptember 3, 2026
Matt Whitcomb let the Brinkema brothers film a full World Cup season with Jessie Diggins. As Threshold returns to rental, he still has not watched it.
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11/17/2023—Ruka, Finland For American fans of cross-country skiing, Jessie Diggins is definitely the voice of our sport. Following a 2023 season that saw her crowned World Champion in 10k—and finishing second overall in the season-long FIS World Cup—she returned to training and preparing for the season to come; but things didn’t go exactly as planned. Recently, Diggins sat down for a scheduled media interview to discuss her relapse into an eating disorder from which she’d...
Nordic Nation: Prioritizing mental health and rediscovering passion with Hailey Swirbul
Rachel PerkinsFebruary 18, 2023
In this episode, we chat with Hailey Swirbul, who – at just 24 years old – has been competing at the top end of the sport for quite some time. A bronze medal in the 4 x 3.3k relay at the 2017 Junior World Championships in Soldier Hollow put Hailey – and relay teammates Julia Kern, Hannah Halvorsen, and Katherine Ogden – on the map in a big way in US Skiing. Hailey has gone...
Intertwined with historic medal-winning races, tales of adversity overcome, and athletes with whom fans become enamored once every four years, the Olympics also brings about stories of defeat, the complexities of human emotion, and the simple humanity of the athletes competing at the Games, who are often glorified solely on the grounds of their seemingly inhuman capacities and accomplishments. While stars like Simone Biles and Mikaela Shiffrin remind us that extreme pressure to perform does...
“Chill with the judging”: Jessie Diggins has a message for Mikaela Shiffrin’s trolls
Nathaniel HerzFebruary 20, 2022
ZHANGJIAKOU, CHINA — American alpine racing superstar Mikaela Shiffrin struggled at the Olympics, failing to bring home any medals. Last week, she posted a message to social media broadcasting some of the hateful criticism she’d received during the Games, telling her audience that “there will always be turkeys” and that it’s “not the end of the world to fail.” Cross-country star Jessie Diggins, after winning a silver in her final race of the Games —...
Nordic Nation: Challenges of the Pro-Athlete Journey with Hannah Halvorsen, Hailey Swirbul, and Kate Barton
Rachel PerkinsDecember 1, 2021
In this episode, we have U.S. Ski Team members Hannah Halvorsen and Hailey Swirbul along with development team coach Kate Barton. The original idea behind the conversation was to discuss a variety of challenges female athletes of all levels experience during their careers based on an infographic posted by the organization Voice in Sport, shown below. As the conversation evolved, it became clear that this conversation will resonate with athletes of all genders, ages, and...
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) released results from a wide-ranging survey to assay how the challenges athletes are experiencing during the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown. According to the Athlete 365 Survey Findings, there were over 4000 respondents across the globe, of which 80 percent were athletes, with the remainder described as “entourage” and “stakeholders”. Six percent of respondents were from the U.S. Of the challenges described by athletes, 56 percent found it hard to train...
Nordic Nation: Holly Brooks on Mental Health During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Rachel PerkinsApril 10, 2020
We’ve all heard the phrase: “These are unprecedented times.” And it is true. What the world is facing during the Covid-19 pandemic is something that none of us have experienced before. We are all feeling it. Uncertainty is ubiquitous and caused by a myriad of factors. We may be concerned about the health of ourselves and our families, or about the financial impacts of our country coming to a halt. We might be attempting to...
On May 26, Maddie Phaneuf wrote a crisp and revealing blog post about her struggle with mental health issues after the 2018 Olympics. The blog post was titled Invisible Battles, and like many who suffer from a mental health crisis, her struggle was real but often difficult to discuss candidly. Phaneuf does a great service to the community by describing the symptoms she experienced and how she sought help from mental health professionals. Phaneuf...
Closing the Gap: Head Games
FasterSkierJanuary 16, 2018
Editor’s Note: The following is part of a series proposed by Maks Zechel, a 20-year-old Canadian cross-country skier embarking on his first season training abroad. In August, he made the big move to Norway, where he’ll be training and racing with Team Asker for the entire winter. Through these updates, Maks hopes to share his personal “observations, stories and lessons learned” to help close the gap between North American and Scandinavian nordic skiing. Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. ...
An Open Letter About Depression in Competition
FasterSkierDecember 28, 2016
If you follow U.S. skiing closely, you’ve probably heard of Paul Everett. After three years on US Biathlon’s development team, Everett, 20, is currently a Montana State University sophomore and member of the Bridger Ski Foundation in Bozeman, Mont. He is studying exercise science and psychology, and wrote the following letter for an assignment. It’s about depression and anxiety in athletes, “more specifically ski racing about what it is like for those competing with these disorders and...
Athletes at all levels of the competition spectrum constantly seek the missing piece of their performance puzzle. For many years now, sport psychology has played an increasing role in solving that puzzle. From the World Cup to the junior ranks, FasterSkier explores how some skiers and coaches make use of sport psychology.
After graduating from college with a math degree, I was stuck in a call-center job that I hated and struggling with a family history of anxiety and heart disease. Then a few good mentors got me cross-country skiing. I've since enrolled in grad school at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and joined their ski team. Almost every aspect of my life changed for the better.