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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.

Tag: Mt. Van Hoevenberg

  • Matt Dougherty Inherited One Skier at Paul Smith’s, Six Seasons Later, Two USCSA National Titles

    Matt Dougherty Inherited One Skier at Paul Smith’s, Six Seasons Later, Two USCSA National Titles

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    Matt Dougherty has a way of knowing in September exactly what he is going to say in February.

    It usually happens on the second day of the Adirondack Canoe Classic, the three-day, ninety-mile paddle from Old Forge to Saranac Lake that everyone in the North Country calls the 90-Miler. By then his skiers have been in a boat for two days. They have carried it over roughly five miles of portage trails. They are, by his description, flat on the ground.

    “It was six hours of just going as hard as you can, which is still low on the L zones, but you’re putting out power for hours and hours and hours,” Dougherty said. “And then you get back in the boat.”

    Dougherty is the head nordic ski coach at Paul Smith’s College, and also its head marathon canoe coach, which is not a combination most ski programs carry. In March his men won the USCSA national championship at Mount Van Hoevenberg, 68 points to St. Olaf’s 108, the program’s second national title in five seasons. His women finished second, as they did in 2022 when the men won the first one. He took the ski program over in the fall of 2020 with one skier on the roster and no recruits, at a college in the woods with fewer students than most high schools.

    He is also, as of this year, the subject of a feature documentary, which is a strange thing to happen to a coach at a school of this size and which he did not see coming at all.

    Four Paul Smith's College athletes hold
    Paul Smith’s paddlers with their first-place plaques after the Adirondack Canoe Classic, the three-day, ninety-mile race the North Country calls the 90-Miler. Head coach Matt Dougherty runs the marathon canoe team as well as the ski team. (Courtesy photo)

    Three days in a boat

    The marathon canoe team is not a requirement for skiers at Paul Smith’s. A lot of them do it anyway.

    “It gives me the opportunity to do the important lessons,” Dougherty said. “The 90 mile canoe race is super hard, and I can go back and be like, look at what we can do when we put our mind to it.”

    The boats are the point. In the Voyageur class, where Paul Smith’s entered a seven-paddler crew in 2024 and won its division by two hours, the craft itself becomes part of the problem.

    “It’s raining and you paddled,” Dougherty said. “You had to carry a boat that’s 300 pounds if you’re in the Voyageur canoe up and over a literal side of a mountain in a race.”

    He is after two things. One is the plain demonstration that his athletes can do more than they think, a claim coaches make constantly and almost never get to prove in September.

    “A lot of times our preconceived notion of what we can do is only limited by our own mind,” he said. “If you ask them at the end of day one, they’re like, there’s no way I can do that again. Day two, and you keep doing that, and you’re like, but what can you actually do if you open up your mind and say, like, I’m just willing to see, I’m willing to test those boundaries?”

    The other is more useful to him in February.

    “To affect change, you got to have shared experiences, even with a coach involved in it,” he said. “That say, like, we shared this really hard time, and there’s this high level of trust, and we can do super hard things. From there, we can then we can get into the training, and we can say, yeah, we’re gonna do 44 weeks of training next year, and you’re gonna put on 10 pounds in the weight room, and things that they’re like, what? But now it’s like, okay, we have a place to start from.”

    There is a third thing, which he raises without being asked.

    “It’s really hard for college students to understand all the hard things you’re going to go through in life, and I want them to be tempered and ready,” he said. “This is going to be hard to experience all of the emotions, sadness, grief, pain, but also to be like I can endure this.”

    A line of Paul Smith's College skiers in
    The roster Dougherty built. He took the program over in the fall of 2020 with one skier on it and no recruits. (Courtesy photo)

    The long way back to Saranac Lake

    Dougherty graduated from Saranac Lake High School in 1997 and got a running scholarship to Houghton University, then a small NAIA school in western New York, which is where the pattern that governs everything else started.

    “Sport was an avenue to change my circumstances in life,” he said. “It changed my life because it got me to college. I paid for college. I got a degree, and then changed my circumstances drastically.”

    He has two degrees, an undergraduate in outdoor education and ceramics, and a master’s in education from St. Lawrence in what he describes as cognitive behavior. He coached track and field for two decades before this, and he spent some of those years around people whose approach he took wholesale. One of them was Clyde Hart, the Baylor coach who put Michael Johnson, Jeremy Wariner and Sanya Richards-Ross on Olympic 400-meter podiums.

    “You’d think, man, you have like three gold medalists on your team right now,” Dougherty said. “And you’d see him interact with his athletes, and you’d be like, wow, it’s always the person first. It is what’s going on in your life today, what’s going on the person before the athletic part.”

    As a coach, he had chances to move up into Division I teams. He turned them down, and he credits his wife with the reasoning.

    “What I realized then is, it’s a numbers game and it’s not a person game,” he said. His wife, he said, put it to him as a trade: “If you do this, you lose that, and it’s going to be miserable for you.”

    He is now coaching three miles up the road from where Bill Demong grew up, at a college where Tim Burke’s father was a vice president for thirty-five years. He has a theory about what sticks from a life in that company.

    “He would probably just hide his Olympic gold and silver medal for the rest of his life,” Dougherty said of Demong, who won gold and silver in nordic combined at the 2010 Vancouver Games. “But he would happily talk about what sport did, like what those experiences were.”

    Members of the Paul Smith's College nord
    The hardware from a season in which the Paul Smith’s men won the USCSA national title and the women finished second. The team never set winning it as a goal. (Photo: Timo Ziegler)

    Goals that do not squeeze anyone out

    Paul Smith’s does not set a team goal of winning a national championship, even in years when it wins one.

    “We just set process goals, because that’s the only thing we can control is what we do there,” Dougherty said. “And we caveat that with a little like, what do we hope that gets us. If we do all those things, we hope it can lead us to contending for a national title.”

    The reason is not modesty. It is arithmetic about who a team goal excludes.

    “I take such an individualized version of goal setting,” he said. “If we put a performance metric behind it, it often squeezes out other people in the program. It doesn’t allow their goals to exist.”

    Last season one of his athletes was named to a US biathlon team for an international championship, which meant flying back from Germany and landing roughly a day before the national championships started.

    “If the women’s team had said like our goal is to only win nationals and they were second overall, like that would have put her in a position where she’s like, well, I’m taken away from the team by going to World Juniors,” Dougherty said.

    She went. The team finished second anyway. Nobody had to choose.

    The team does have expectations, two of them, and he recites them the way people recite things they have said several hundred times.

    “To be on this team, you got to be a good teammate first, and then maximize your opportunity,” he said.

    What that produces, in his telling, is a program where the standard gets set from the back of the group.

    “When a star is like, oh, I’m tired today, or this morning it’s raining and it’s 38 degrees, no one wants to ski, but they see the slowest guy kitting up and going out, then it allows all of us to kind of gain from that,” he said.

    A lone cross-country skier on a groomed
    An ordinary training day on the trails at Paul Smith’s. Dougherty says his job is to make room for whatever an athlete is carrying, without asking for it directly. (Courtesy photo)

    The person before the athlete

    The documentary spends real time on mental health, and it is the part of the conversation Dougherty warms to fastest. He starts from what he does not know.

    “I only get a piece of the story of this athlete,” he said. “We don’t know if they came from rough family life or they just feel like they don’t belong. All these things. Mental health issues are real, and I need to know about those. But I have to allow space for them to come up organically.”

    “I can’t be like, who has mental health issues?” he said. “I’ve got to create the space for that.”

    The space, in practice, is a rule about curiosity that the team applies to each other.

    “We’re constantly like, we’re not judgmental on this team. Let’s be curious,” he said. “If as we look at a teammate and we wonder what they’re going through, instead of saying like whatever, we say like, oh, what’s the source of that?”

    The same approach applies when he already knows an athlete is struggling. The problem then is how to open the door without making the asking the event.

    “The really hard thing is when you get to the point where you know stuff’s going on, finding the way to indirectly be direct,” he said. “What do you need?” is the question he finds himself asking, and it generally opens the door.

    That extends to how he thinks athletes should hold their own results. A race result, in his view, is a terrible place to store your sense of self.

    “Their performance isn’t who they are, and it’s not anything connected to their value,” he said. “Whether we win by 20 points, lose by 20 points, doesn’t change their person or their value as a person.”

    As he has gotten older he has become more concerned with sportsmanship, and he treats it as something other than a courtesy. It is how he teaches athletes to handle a disappointment and to recognize somebody else’s work.

    “When you can say like, yeah, I didn’t have a great race today, instead of being sad and dour, if you go to celebrate someone you know who’s trained hard for a year and had a great day, you can’t be sad anymore,” he said. “It just changes you.”

    He means it specifically. Clarkson won the USCSA men’s title at Mount Van Hoevenberg in 2024 and Paul Smith’s finished second, and Dougherty’s response was to have his team look closely at what the Clarkson skiers had done to get there.

    “Even though we’d love to win, when you see someone perform like that, it’s actually inspiring,” he said. “The more we can be open to looking at performance and saying like other teams did great, but there’s value in me not just celebrating them, but seeing what they did and honoring it. I think it makes us better athletes in the end.”

    A cross-country skier races past a group
    Teammates and the Bobcats flag trailside. At a college of roughly 750 students, Dougherty says, everyone on campus knows the ski program. (Courtesy photo)

    A small college and a film crew

    Paul Smith’s enrolls roughly 750 students by the college’s own count, on 14,000 acres at the northern edge of the Adirondack Park. Nearly half the bachelor’s degrees it awarded last year were in natural resources and conservation. It is the kind of place where a skier’s Saturday gets rearranged by a professor.

    “When you come here, it’s individualized; it is a personal relationship school,” Dougherty said. “My students are working with a professor; he takes an interest, he gets to know them, and then I find out, well, Saturday we’re actually going out with this professor. He’s taking us into the mountains to show us this specific part of our research.”

    “It is harder when you have 700 students. Everything about that is harder: recruiting, getting people here,” he said. “But because of that, we live in a culture where everyone on campus knows the ski program.”

    That extends past the campus. Dougherty calls the Saranac Lake and Lake Placid community around the program super fans, and he puts the college president, Dan Kelting, in that category.

    “He shows up at ski races and he’s not just there to like cheer,” Dougherty said. “He’s also there like, what do you guys need? What does the program need? What do we need to keep bringing in great students as a ski program?”

    His summary of the whole arrangement is that it could not exist anywhere else.

    “It’s this weird subculture that probably could only exist in the Adirondacks,” he said.

    Which brings up the film. A donor with a seasonal home on one of the lakes near the college met the team at an event, decided there was a story, and asked whether Dougherty would sit down with a documentary crew. Dougherty said yes without any clear idea what he was agreeing to.

    “I expected a three to five minute kind of like infomercial type thing for YouTube,” he said.

    What arrived was Adrenaline Films, an Orlando company that Dougherty said had got its start on the early seasons of Survivor and had lately been following a ballet company through the war in Ukraine. The crew embedded with the ski team for close to two years.

    “This was like pretty legit documentary crew following us for a long time,” Dougherty said.

    The result is Coach Matt and the Outdoor ‘Cats, directed by Robert Jury and produced by Michael Murray and Tim Ranzetta. It runs about 95 minutes, and it is free to watch, with ads, on Amazon Prime Video and on Tubi. Its spine is the 2024 season, in which the Paul Smith’s men lost the national title by two points.

    “They’re really just telling the story of a team,” Dougherty said. “Small, tiny school in the woods is really another theme there. You can do anything, anywhere, kind of an idea.”

    Any money the film makes goes back to the program, and he doubts there will be any.

    “My guess, without knowing all the specifics of cost, is that this is a net loss,” he said.

    The team that lost by two points in that film won by 40 in March. Nobody set that as a goal.

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    A canoe with several paddlers silhouette
    First light on an Adirondack lake. The canoe season comes first, and it is where Dougherty does his most important coaching. (Courtesy photo)
  • All in the Timing: Inside Chicco Pelle’s Last Dance in Lake Placid

    All in the Timing: Inside Chicco Pelle’s Last Dance in Lake Placid

    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.

    LAKE PLACID, New York (March 21) — As the snow settled on Lake Placid and clouds began to dissipate over Mt. Van Hoevenberg, a growing sense that something momentous could happen permeated the crowd assembling for the last Sprint of the 2025-26 World Cup.

    That something unusual would happen was assured. With the Sprint Globe already secured to Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, the golden-haired juggernaut would not be on the starting line – opting instead to rest his legs, and head, in hopes of defending his 12-point lead over Harald Østberg Amundsen in the Distance standings. By default, then, someone other than Klæbo would stand atop Saturday’s podium – a rare occurrence in a season where the Norwegian had already won 8 of 11 Sprints in commanding fashion. (Two wins evaded Klæbo due to falls; the third because he did not start in Oberhof).

    Who would take his place? Ben Ogden, the Northeast’s homegrown favorite and the Sprint silver medalist in Milano-Cortina? Gus Schumacher, Ogden’s partner in the Olympic Team Sprint? France’s embattled specialist, Lucas Chanavat, who appeared on track to rival Klæbo during the 2023-24 season, who had seized the opportunity – and the win – after Johannes’ bobble in Davos last December? Ansgar Evensen (NOR), who had done the same in Drammen?

    Or, perhaps, it would be Federico Pellegrino (ITA) – the 35-year-old elder statesman of the league; making his 344th (and penultimate) World Cup start, eyeing an 18th and final Sprint victory?

    Johannes Hoesflot Klæbo (NOR) and Federico Pellegrino (ITA) after the finish of the Finals in Davos, 2022. Pellegrino bested Klæbo on the eve of the birth of his first child. (Photo: Nordic Focus)

    It states the obvious to say that success in cross-country skiing is a matter of timing, and for “Chicco Pelle’s” 15 seasons, the timing had been just shy of right. The formative and final years of Pellegrino’s career were defined by the dominance of skiers other than he. Pellegrino made his World Cup debut in Drammen in March 2010, finishing 49th. The winner that day was Emil Joensson (SWE); runner-up was Petter Northug (NOR), then on his way to his first of two Overall Globes. These were the halcyon days in which Dario Cologna (CHE) descended from his Alpine fastness to rack up World Cup and Tour de Ski titles; when Northug, Joensson and Marcus Hellner (SWE) traded sprint victories and taunts in a bitter intra-Scandinavian rivalry. Pellegrino was 12th in his first World Championships Sprint (Oslo, 2011) and 11th at his first Olympic Sprint (Sochi, 2014).

    While notching his debut victory in December, 2014 in the Davos Freestyle Sprint, Chicco’s break came in the 2015-16 season. He won 5 of 13 sprint races, becoming the first non-Scandinavian male to win the Sprint Globe. As Pellegrino hit his stride, Northug’s star was showing its first flickerings ahead of a dramatic waning, Joensson had entered the twilight of his career, and although Sergey Ustiugov (RUS) was approaching his own prime, the factious cast of World Cup sprinters was looking for a new leading man.

    That man would not be Chicco. An upstart dramatist from Trondheim, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, had arrived to script skiing’s long, and mind-bogglingly successful, next chapter. After making his debut in Drammen in 2016, Klæbo outscored Pellegrino in the 2016-17 Sprint standings, taking his first of 8 (and counting) Sprint Globes. The two went head to head at the 2017 World Championships in Lahti, Finland, where Pellegrino surged from behind to claim his first World Title ahead of a legendary lineup, including Ustiugov, Klæbo, and Northug, but this maiden gold would also be his last. In Pyeongchang the next year, the Olympic gold went to Klæbo; Chicco brought home silver.

    The wins did keep coming for Chicco, including a tear of three consecutive Sprint victories and his second Sprint Globe in 2020-21. And, though they admittedly came in greater abundance to Klæbo (who, it should be noted, did not start in those races, or the 2020-21 Tour de Ski), it is rather glib to assert that Chicco’s career had slid “in[to] the shadow of” the Norwegian. Pellegrino bested Klæbo in Dresden and Lahti in the spring of 2018; in Lillehammer that winter; and in Davos in 2022. He was near-omnipresent on Sprint podiums and won his second Olympic silver in Beijing in 2022; moreover, he was among the very few men who could disrupt Klæbo’s dominance in the discipline, and the clear favorite when Johannes was absent.

    But Pellegrino’s win in Davos in December 2022 marked the beginning of a long, and perhaps self-inflicted, World Cup drought. Chicco declared his intention to focus on distance races ahead of Milano-Cortina, and did indeed record four such podiums in classic, skate, and skiathlon formats, alongside a welter of Sprint podiums – including an ecstatic World Championships silver in Trondheim in 2025, and Olympic bronzes on home soil in the Team Sprint (alongside Elia Barp) and in the 4 x 7.5 k Relay (which he described as “the proudest day of [his] life!”) this February.

    Elia Barp welcomes Federico Pellegrino to a bronze-medal finish in the Olympic Team Sprint in Milano-Cortina, February 18th, 2026.
    (Photo: Vanzetta/Barbieri/NordicFocus)

    Outright wins, however, were not forthcoming. By the time March 21, 2026 arrived in Lake Placid, it had become Pellegrino’s last, best chance to secure one more Sprint victory.

    Anticipation and emotions ran high. While Pellegrino had been impervious to the crowd in Friday’s 10 k Classic – earbuds deadening the world beyond his blue racing cap during warmups, and his face a deaf mask of exertion during the race – their excitement overwhelmed him on Saturday. During his first warmup lap, he skated calmly up the course’s A-Climb through a chorus of “CHI-CCO, CHI-CCO, CHI-CCO.” On his second, the frenzied chant began again, and the gravity of the impending race dragged him to a halt. His skis splayed wide against the pitch; he buried face in his hands. “The energies I got in the Final were coming from the warmup lap, where I stopped in the middle of the climb, crying,” Pellegrino told me at the finish line. “I think the public deserved this kind of show, and I deserved to finish my career, with a Sprint skate like this.”

    Pellegrino embraces the crowd ahead of Sprint qualifying in Lake Placid. “The energies I got in the Final were coming from the warmup lap, where I stopped in the middle of the climb, crying.”
    (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus.)

    To reach that final finish line, however, was a perilous journey.

    After qualifying second, Pellegrino sidestepped two falls (the first from Jules Chappaz (FRA); the second from Elias Keck (GER)) in his Quarterfinal, moving from sixth to first in the course’s final descent and level hairpin. In Semifinal 1, he attempted to close on Lucas Chanavat (FRA) and Anton Grahn (SWE) through the crest of the A-Climb but couldn’t get by; pushed to the outside on the level hairpin, he was out-lunged by Lars Heggen (NOR) in the final meters, finishing third by 0.03.

    While the Lucky Loser spot was Chicco’s to lose heading into Semifinal 2, Erik Johansson (SWE), Harald Amundsen (NOR), and Even Northug (NOR) lost time playing for a slipstream position as they approached the top of the A-Climb. Pellegrino was on to the final by a comfortable margin.

    Lars Heggen (NOR) outlunges Federico Pellegrino (ITA) by 0.03 in Semifinal 1. Federico moved on to the Final as a Lucky Loser. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    Once more around the track, and the day could be his. After being fourth out of the gate, he attacked from the outside on the B-Climb; breaking into an aggressive V-2 and taking Chanavat and Heggen by surprise, he moved into second behind Grahn. The pace increased again at the base of the A-Climb, but where Grahn and Chanavat’s broad frames moved up the hill in sweeping, powerful strokes, Pellegrino leapt into a furious V-1.

    The move was decisive. To the adulation of the crowd, he opened a decisive gap through the crest of the climb. His lead only grew through the final descent into the level hairpin, but Chicco was taking no chances. While Grahn and Heggen grappled for second behind him, Pellegrino hammered to the line, threw his arms wide and his head back, roaring with the crowd.

    An 18th victory and 46th career podium, clinched.

    Federico Pellegrino secures his 18th and final World Cup victory. Lake Placid, March 21, 2026. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    What had happened in the Semifinal, when this triumphant last dance had nearly evaded him by three hundredths of a second? And what had changed for the Final?

    “I could not do what I did in the Final, because the energies of the other athletes were still quite big,” Chicco admitted our post-race interview. “About the last downhill, I was not the same as the others. I am not, I know, but I have some different qualities, and if I could get quite good gap in the top of the uphill, then I knew that I could keep it until I end. This is what I did. This is how I loved to win all along my career – not wait until the last meter, but trying before.”

    “Sometimes it happened, mostly before Klæbo came,” he laughed. “But today I was there, and I studied the best tactics in the end . . . the public here in Lake Placid deserves this kind of show, and I think we are all happy now.”

    And, this was nothing short of “the best way” to end his journey. “I could not do different. In the end, the last four years have been strange. I didn’t focus so much on sprinting; I tried to discover my body in different fields. Sometimes I got really great feelings and performances, but then, to come back here . . . and to win in that way, I could not do more.”

    Pellegrino after his final win. “I think the public deserved this kind of show, and I deserved to finish my career, with a Sprint skate like this.” (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)
    One more podium for Federico Pellegrino, alongside Lars Heggen (NOR) and Anton Grahn (SWE). (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus.)

    In 15 seasons, Pellegrino proved himself to be far more than a runner-up to those Swedish and Norwegian titans who loomed large over his early and later years. He had taken the Sprint Globe from the Scandinavians for the first time; outsprinted Klæbo, Ustiugov, and Northug in Lahti; perpetually challenged – and occasionally beaten – the greatest athlete in the history of the sport; and secured Olympic medals on home soil, alongside a team of up-and-coming Italians ready and eager to fill his boots. “I’m really happy that he finished his career with probably one of the best weekends for him so far,” Elia Barp (ITA) told me on Sunday. “I’m very happy for him; I’m very happy for the team. I think we have proved that we are ready to race without him – not only me, but a few other young guys are ready to try to take victories next year . . . [He showed] that it is important to keep fighting and try to be a good overaller as he was in the last years. And, now we know that it’s possible; everyone is human as us, and we can do that.”

    To Chicco’s fans, that determination – to grapple with giants; to reinvent himself; to seize the final, perfect timing and a final, perfect victory – defined his career. But for Pellegrino himself, “the biggest memories will not stay about the races, but much more about the hugs I got from the teammates, from the coaches, even outside of Italy, from my family, from the people that love me – and not only when things went well; even when things were not going so well. I think this is something that sport teaches us; that in the end, it’s only a cross-country ski race, and life is different. That’s it. The hugs are something I will remember for my entire life.”

    Pellegrino, the most popular man at Zig Zag’s on Saturday, March 21. (Photo: Lily Den Hartog)

    At Zig Zag’s Pub on Saturday night, Pellegrino told this reporter’s associate that his win vindicated his decision to retire. On Sunday, soaked with rain and champagne and tears after his last World Cup race, he reaffirmed it:

    “That’s it. I tried to enjoy today as well . . . I tried to give my best, as always, and it was good after the finish line; under the rain, it was special. But with the teammates and coaches and waxers celebrating this moment, it was good for me.”

    “Now, I really need to stay with my family. They deserve this, and I need to give them a lot of time.”

     

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    “Grazie Papao!!” Team Italy was waiting at the finish of the 20 k Skate with champagne and a tribute to Pellegrino’s children and wife, Greta Laurent (ITA, ret.). (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)
  • Taiwan’s Olympic Closing Ceremony Flag Bearer, Sophia Tsu Velicer, Soaks Up the World Cup Finale in Lake Placid

    Taiwan’s Olympic Closing Ceremony Flag Bearer, Sophia Tsu Velicer, Soaks Up the World Cup Finale in Lake Placid

    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.

    Sophia Tsu Velicer (TPE) during the World Cup Finals 20 k Freestyle on Sunday in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    Taiwanese-American skier Sophia Tsu Velicer on racing in the U.S., representing Taiwan, and her mission to open doors for the next generation.

    LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — Sophia Tsu Velicer didn’t mince words when FasterSkier caught up with her in the mixed zone after Sunday’s 20-kilometer mass start freestyle at the Stifel Lake Placid Finals.

    “It was kind of brutal,” she said, still catching her breath, “but kind of super duper fun.”

    That pretty much captures Velicer’s entire approach to cross-country skiing: an honest acknowledgment of how hard it is, paired with an irrepressible love for it. The 26-year-old, who represents Taiwan (Chinese Taipei), finished 52nd in the 20 k Freestyle Mass Start in 52:50, four and a half minutes behind the winner. She’d posted a nearly identical placement in Friday’s 10-kilometer classic interval start, crossing in 33:19 for 52nd. But for Velicer, the weekend was never really about the result sheet.

    “Hang on and soak up the crowd”

    Her strategy for the final race of the season was refreshingly uncomplicated.

    “My strategy was kind of to just hang on as long as I could and try to find a group and really just soak up the crowd and enjoy this,” she said. “It’s the last race of a long season. So I think that was our strategy.”

    And what a season it’s been. Velicer arrived in Lake Placid fresh off her first Olympic Games, where she became the first woman ever to represent Taiwan in Olympic cross-country skiing. She placed 52nd in the Skiathlon and then turned heads with a 22nd-place finish in the 50-kilometer classical, the best result by any athlete from an Asian country in that event. At the closing ceremony, she carried the Taiwanese flag.

    Sophia Tsu Velicer (TPE) comes to the finish of Friday’s 10 k Classic while Jessie Diggins (USA) catches her breath. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)
    A homecoming – in the loosest sense

    Velicer was born in Michigan and grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, before eventually basing herself in Europe to train and compete. So when asked whether racing at Mt. Van Hoevenberg felt like a home World Cup, she laughed.

    “Yeah, kind of in the loosest sense of the term,” she said. “I lived in the States when I was a kid. I was born in Michigan, and then I lived in southern Indiana. So not really close to here, but the U.S. does feel very, very homey.”

    She paused, and her voice picked up.

    “It’s just so exciting to be back and to be surrounded by all these people who are just stoked to be here and love the sport,” she said. “You don’t really get this in the same way in Europe, and it’s really special.”

    Anyone who was at Mt. Van Hoevenberg over the weekend, the thousands who braved wet snow and packed every corner of the course, would be hard-pressed to argue with that.

    Opening doors for the next generation

    Velicer’s path to the highest levels of the sport was not a straightforward one. Representing a nation with essentially no cross-country skiing infrastructure meant navigating bureaucratic and logistical hurdles that most European or North American skiers never have to think about. Now, she wants to make sure those who follow her don’t face the same barriers.

    “My general goal is to just improve as much as I can and have fun,” she said of next season. “I do want to try to make it easier for younger Taiwanese skiers to enter the highest level of sport, if they’re able to, if they have the level for it, because it was really difficult for me to get here. So to make that easier for them.”

    At the 2025 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Trondheim, Velicer placed 38th in the 10-kilometer individual. She has her sights set higher for the 2027 edition.

    “I would love, love, love to get a top 30 result at World Champs next year,” she said.

    Given the trajectory of her career, from a kid racing the North American Vasa in Traverse City to Olympic flag bearer for Taiwan in the span of 15 years, it would be unwise to bet against her.

    FasterSkier’s Luke Dykowski reported from the mixed zone throughout the Stifel Lake Placid Finals at Mt. Van Hoevenberg.

     

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    Andzelika Szyszka (POL) and Sophia Tsu Velicer (TPE), (l-r) during the 20 k Freestyle Mass Start in Lake Placid (USA) this past Sunday. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)
  • Sundling Victory, Diggins Victory Lap

    Sundling Victory, Diggins Victory Lap

    This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.

    Jessie Diggins (USA) celebrates an entire career as she crosses the finish line of the 20 k Mass Start in Lake Placid. Thousands of fans in attendance celebrated with her. (Photo:  Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    While the men’s 20 k Mass Start Freestyle (raced earlier in the day) was the source of anticipation and intrigue, the Women’s 20 k was more likely to become a glorious victory lap. At the very beginning of the 2025-2026 season, Jessie Diggins had announced that this season would be her last. The most decorated American cross-country skier—and the winner of three World Cup Overall Crystal Globes—would hang up her skis after the final race in March in Lake Placid. Back then, that final day was still many months and many miles away. Today, Diggins toed the starting line for the beginning of these final kilometers. The staging of a glorious victory lap was entirely  appropriate, and Diggins would make it one whether she won the day’s race, or not. That’s how she’s raced her entire career: joy in the competition, celebration in the victory, satisfaction in the effort, gratitude for the team. She’s left us breathless as many times as she has exhausted herself at finish lines, her effort as pure as the snow into which she has toppled after victories and defeats, alike. Her total effort and utter devotion could never have been in doubt. We have loved watching her give it all. Today, in Lake Placid, we were given one last precious opportunity to do so.

    How ironic, then, that nature chose to rain, literally, on this parade. Spring conditions in the Adirondack Mountains are notoriously capricious. Lake Placid sits at the highest elevation of any village in the east, and the combination of elevation and proximity to both the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast makes it a place for weathers to converge, for clouds to gather, where the mountains wear late-season robes of white, where the skies deliver showers of snow—and of rain. We’re often reminded that cross-county skiing is a winter sport—and racing through difficult conditions is the expectation, not the exception. So if there’s a victory lap to undertake, then a full-on storm of freezing rain seems like an appropriate way to do it.

    Heidi Weng (NOR) and Frida Karlsson (SWE) provided the pace for much of the 20 k Mass Start in Lake Placid, but they didn’t manage to drop the most dangerous sprinter, eventual race winner, Jonna Sundling (SWE). (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)
    20 k Mass Start

    Fans knew who to watch: Frida Karlsson, Heidi Weng, and Diggins. And Diggins has a strategy that she folows in mass-start events: allow others to set the pace on uphills, even letting herself get gapped, only to close those gaps on subsequent downhills. When she uses that strategy, she keeps herself in contention for as long as possible.

    At the 8 kilometer mark, those contenders remained together, and were in the company of numerous others who could play a part in the strategy of tis race. Astrid Oeyre Slind has begun to find the form that eluded her in Milano-Cortina,and Linn Svahn and Jonna Sundling lurked in the lead pack, hoping to be there at the end where their lightning-fast sprints could perhaps snatch victory from the distance specialists.

    Karlsson set the pace in the early kilometers, but not at the uber-speed that has often been seen in women’s racing over the past few seasons. Weng came forward to take over the pace-making just prior to the bonus points line at 9 kilometers, moving Karlsson back into the pack where she is far less comfortable. So uncomfortable, in fact, that Karlsson immediately ran headlong into an unexpectedly fallen Slind. Both of them ended up in a tangle as Weng and the leaders glided away. Weng captured the bonus points that she needed to maintain her position on the podium of the Distance competition. Weng continued to push the pace, but all the logical contenders seemed capable of preventing her from breaking away.

    Diggins moved to the lead at the 12 kilometer mark, using her fast skis and descending ability to glide to the front before powering up a mid-lap hill. Karlsson (who had weaved her way back to the lead) took up a position at Diggins’ shoulder. These two—along with Weng and Slind—would do their best to undo the strengths of the sprinters in the kilometers that remained. But with Diggins, Sundling, and Svahn still in contention, Karlsson and Weng were leaving things a bit late.

    Karlsson, Weng, Diggins, and Sundling came through in order at the final bonus points line, seemingly less interested in those points than they were in positioning themselves for all that was likely to transpire in the final two kilometers. At the top of the final uphill, Norwegian Karoline Groetting surged to the lead. She was pursued by Karlsson and Weng, with Sundling and Diggins just behind. One kilometer to go, one major downhill to navigate . . .

    Years ago—at the beginning of what was to become an historic career—a young and impetuous Jessie Diggins was often seen to lose control on downhills. She would ultimately overcome that limitation, becoming one of the best and most daring downhillers on the World Cup scene. Today in Lake Placid, though, Diggins’ past caught up with her. Every competitor would be exhausted at this point in a 20 k race, and maintaining control on any fast, winding downhill would be tremendously difficult. As the leaders descended a steep lefthand curve, Sundling picked an outside line that was especially fast. The video replay shows Diggins seeming to notice Sundling’s acceleration. The shift in Diggins’ posture made it clear that she felt the need to accelerate a bit, herself, but the extra step she took shifted her weight to the tails of her skis. Just like that, Diggins went down. Less than a kilometer from the end of the race—just minutes from the end of an astounding career—Diggins fell from contention. Not one to lie in the snow feeling sorry for herself while a race is going on, Diggins sprung to her feet and took off in pursuit of the leaders. Her race for today’s podium may have been over, but Diggins was far from being done with the racing. If only one kilometer remained in her career, Diggins intended to race her heart out over that final kilometer.

    Jonna Sundling (SWE) was the skier everyone else in the field was most determined to drop. They didn’t . . . (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    At the front, Sundling’s daring downhill move had produced the speed she needed, and she stormed off the front followed only by the other best sprinter, Svahn. Weng was game in giving chase, but she had no chance of catching the two Swedish speedsters. Sundling first, Svahn second, Weng third. Diggins would recover from her tumble on the turn to finish 12th.

    The last fifteen years have represented a golden age in women’s cross-country skiing, and there is one skier, in particular, whose career has spanned those years: Jessie Diggins. From the dominance of Justina Kowalczyk, to the excellence of Marit Bjoergen, to the determination of Charlotte Kalla, to the brilliance of Therese Johaug, to the spotlight she shares with the truly dominant team of Swedes, Diggins has born witness to the best this sport has had to offer. From them, she learned her craft. With them, she elevated a sport and thrilled an audience. The sport will miss her exuberance and her joy, her silliness and her seriousness. Thank you, Jessie, Diggins, for doing your best, for leaving it all out on the course, and for taking us all with you on this glorious victory lap.

    World Cup Final Women’s 20 k Mass Start RESULTS

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    Jessie Diggins (USA): exuberance and joy, silliness and seriousness. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
  • Svahn Two-for-Two, Dahlqvist Claims Sprint Crystal

    Svahn Two-for-Two, Dahlqvist Claims Sprint Crystal

    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.

    Team . . . Maja Dahlqvist (SWE) wins the Sprint Crystal Globe, Linn Svahn (SWE) takes the World Cup Sprint win. (Photo:  Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    Team Sweden must face tricky circumstances in selecting its team for World Cup Sprint events, but their dilemma is made simpler by the apparent set of protocols the team follows when deciding who will race. Typically, Sweden brings only those skiers who can earn spots on the podium. Everyone else is racing back home in what we can only imagine must be the must competitive B-Team event in the world of women’s sports. In Lake Placid’s Freestyle Sprint, Sweden’s roster consisted of Jonna Sundling, Linn Svahn, Johanna Hagstroem, Maia Dahlqvist, Moa Ilar, and Emma Ribom (who did not start today’s Freestyle Sprint). That’s a fairly impressive set of starters: Sundling is 2022 Olympic Champion (and world champ from 2025), Svahn is 2026 Olympic Champion, Dahlqvist leads the World Cup Sprint standings, and Hagstroem is poised to win this year’s World Cup if Dahlqvist were to falter. Put those skiers on the starting line of a Sprint final, and it will be very difficult for any other nation to truly challenge them.

    And that is precisely what Team Sweden did . . . though not without needing to come through a chaotic and unexpectedly close Freestyle Sprint final. In the end, Svahn notched her second victory of the weekend (after yesterday’s 10 k Classic victory) ahead of Sundling and Dahlqvist (who claimed her fourth World Cup Sprint Crystal Globe). Team Sweden swept its second straight podium of the World Cup final . . . with one race (tomorrow’s 20 k Mass Start) still to be run.

    “It was so much fun—all these people, all this cheering—it’s amazing,” said Sundling.

    “Honestly, I was just trying to do as good race as I could for the day,” said Dahlqvist. “The bonus would just be the points for the overall. I just wanted a good race for today.”

    “It’s like my second home, honestly! So many people screaming my name,” said Dahlqvist.” It was really cool.”

    Twelve Americans entered Lake Placid’s Freestyle Sprint qualifying: Jessie Diggins, Samantha Smith, Julia Kern, Alayna Sonnesyn, Lauren Jortberg, Rosie Brennan, Erin Bianco, Hailey Swirbul, Ava Thurston, Renae Anderson, Emma Albrecht, and Nina Schamberger. Diggins, Smith, and Kern all advanced beyond qualifying with Diggins advancing into the semifinals.

    Jessie Diggins (USA) continues to cherish every finish line. Her retirement is a celebration, but one fans wish could be delayed a bit longer. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)
    Freestyle Sprint

    Diggins drew the first heat where she would meet up with Sundling and Faehndrich. That top-heavy field seemed to insure that this would be a fast heat, one likely to produce a lucky loser or two. Diggins’ strategy throughout the season has remained consistent: use her speed to keep heats fast, claim at least a lucky loser spot, and rely on her endurance to give her chances later in the heats when pure sprinters may be spent.

    Diggins bobbled a bit out of the start gate, allowing Sundling to burst forward to set the early pace (Sundling is typically a fast-starter and aggressive pace-setter; she was likely to try that, anyway). Diggins needed to work a bit to get around Julie Myhre (NOR) on the first uphill, but from then on it was a three-woman race. That triad was interrupted when Diggins stepped on Faehndrich’s pole basket, sending the Swiss woman tumbling in a hairpin right-hand turn. Diggins lost some speed behind the tangle of skis and poles, but she would recover before the finishing straightaway. Faehndrich would pull off a miraculous recovery of her own, hopping back to her feet after her fall, chasing down the pack, and sprinting past Diggins into the third spot. The two of them would wait to see if their times would be fast enough to advance as lucky losers.

    Svahn led a moderate-paced Heat 2, confident that no one else would be eager to lead. Jasmi Joensuu (FIN) went to the front in the loose snow of the final uphill, only to find her efforts eclipsed by Svahn swooshing out of the draft on the subsequent downhill. Svahn would advance easily, followed by Joensuu. Slow heat . . . Faehndrich and Diggins still safe.

    Kern re-entered the World Cup scene after a few idle weeks following the Olympic Games where she had begun feeling some pulmonary stress. She appeared recoved with an impressive 17th place qualifier, but her performance in theheats made it clear that she may still be a bit rusty. Kern got pinched out of position numerous times in the quarterfinal, then lost her balance rather dramatically on the last right-hander before the finishing straightaway. Her speed having been lost, Kern would cross the line sixth. Her day would end with a mnmnmnmn place finish. For Faehndrich and Diggins . . . so far, so good.

    Smith has repeated a pattern in recent world Cup Sprints, dropping to the rear early in each heat, only to unleash a torrential sprint in the closing meeters. Smith found an open lane to drive forward on the first uphill, puling even with Maia Dahlqvist (SWE) at the summit. Smith once again found a lane on the final uphill, hop-skating past Lotta Udnes Weng (NOR) before expertly pinching her out of second position. Smith entered the downhill well positioned on the tails of Dahlqvist. Smith’s good tactics would not continue as the field reached the final flats. Weng was able to wind past her, as well as Federica Cassol (ITA) who crowded Smith into abbreviated skate strokes in the finishing meters. Smith would finish fourth in the heat, and mnmnmnmnm in the day. Faehndrich and Diggins? Still in lucky loser positions with only one quarterfinal remaining.

    Faehndrich and Diggins kept their fingers crossed that the final heat would be a slow one. It was a nervous position to occupy: Hagstroem highlighted the Quarterfinal 5; she’s a skier who often ignites the pace to exhaust her rivals . . . but her first strokes out of the start gate indicated that would not be her strategy on this day. Hagstroem would hold the lead across the finish line ahead of Coletta Rydzek whose clever footwork allowed her to sprint forward to claim the second automatic advancement spot. Hagstroem’s languid pace allowed the advancement of both Faehndrich and Diggins. the home-crowd breathed a sigh of relief.

    Semifinals

    Diggins lucky loser journey continude in Semifinal 1 where her desire to push the pace found itself in the backseat compared to the similar desires of Svahn and Sundling. The Swedish pair rocketed to the front as Diggins trailed the field. But it quickly became apparent that Sundling and Svahn had no interest in setting a fast pace—they only wanted to clog the front, daring others to take the lead. On Lake Placid’s Sprint course, taking the lead had proven to be a self-destructive tactic, while attacking from behind had proven to be a risky one. Diggins found an open lane on the final climb, but found the pace too high to allow her to advance.
    The Swedes had looked supernaturally calm and relaxeda t the front, but on the final downhill the dangers of Lake Placid’s Sprint course revealed themselves again as Svahn was absorbed by skiers rushing from the rear, and Sundling found herself edged out of the lead by Anja Weber (SUI). The Swedes would call upon their superior speed to fight back into the lead before the finish line. Myhre would cross third, followed by Joensuu in fourth. Diggins would cross fifth to finish ??? on the day. The Swedes apeared relieved—and a little bit shell-shocked—in the finish area. They’d be unlikely to commit those tactical errors again.

    Dahlqvist and Faehndrich—#1 and #2 in the current World Cup Sprint standings would face off in the second semifinal. After the grinning embarassment of an initial false start, Dahlqvist would allow her teammate, Hagstroem, to vault into the lead, followed closely by Faehndrich and Rydzek. Hoping to distance herself from Dahlqvist, Faehndrich drove to the front on the final uphill. using Hagstroem as a way to block any other pursuit. Faehndrich and Dahlqvist would cross the finish line togehter, followed by lucky losers, Hagstroem and Rydzek.

    Linn Svahn and Jonna Sundling led the Swedish sweep at Mt. Van Hoevenberg. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)
    Sprint Final

    Svahn, Sundling, Hagstroem, and Dahlqvist highlighted the Sprint final, where they were joined by Faehndrich and Rydzek. With three closely-bunched contenders (Dahlqvist, Hagstroem, and Faehndrich) in the year-long Sprint World Cup competition all being present in the final, the Crystal Globe would be decided in this race. Sundling an Svahn set the pace, Faehndrich and Dahlqvist marked them closely. Hagstroem and Rydzek trailed. With Dahlqvist leading by only six points over Hagstroem—and with Faehndrich only a few more points behind them—the mathematical possibility existed for the cup to change hands at the finish line. In the end, Svahn pulled away from Sundling, and Dahlqvist separated herself from Faehndrich. Sweden would sweep the podium, and Dahlqvist would cross the finish line with arms raised as the winner of the Sprint Crystal Globe.

    World Cup Final Women’s Freestyle Sprint RESULTS

    World Cup Final Women’s Freestyle Sprint QUALIFYING

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    Team Sweden is the dominant team at the Lake Placid World Cup Final. Norway’s men’s team will just need to work harder. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    World Cup racing continues this weekend from Lake Placid and Mount van Hoevenberg:

    Sunday, March 22

    12:30 pm | Men’s 20km Mass Start Free

    2:30 pm | Women’s 20km Mass Start Free

    4:30 pm | ONE LAST LAP w/Jessie Diggins & the Retiring Stars

  • Grazie, Federico—Pellegrino Scripts the Perfect Ending

    Grazie, Federico—Pellegrino Scripts the Perfect Ending

    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.

    Federico Pellegrino (ITA) during warmup, hearing his name called by the joyous crowd lining the course in Lake Placid. It was the beginning to a tremendous day, and the final Sprint victory of his glorious career. (Photo:  Thibaut/NordicFocus.)

    “The energy that I got in the warmup lap . . . I got this feeling of power from the public,” said Federico Pellegrino.”Cheering for me. “Chicco Pelle! Chicco Pelle! And then in the Final, I could not wait!”

    Though this race—this glorious victory— came at the end of a long and illustrious career, Pellegrino was true to his word. He could not wait. He blazed off the front of a complex and contact-filled Freestyle Sprint final to storm to the 18th win of his World Cup career—his 46th podium. He had won silver and bronze medals in front of his countrymen at the Olympics of Milano-Cortina just a few weeks ago. Perhaps this final victory in front of the cheering throngs of Mt. Van Hoevenberg was sweeter, still.

    Pellegrino was joined on the podium by Lars Heggen (NOR) and Anton Grahn (SWE), two young guns who may represent the future of the sport. But Pellegrino showed he was not yet ready to allow the great names of the past to be forgotten. One last Sprint victory, and one more chance to show his appreciation to an appreciative crowd.

    “Thank you Lake Placid,” smiled Pellegrino. “It was great!”

    Lars Heggen (NOR) may see himself as the heir apparent, the sprinter most likely to triumph when Klaebo is away. That may soon be true . . . just as soon as Federico Pellegrino (ITA) retires. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    A World Cup Sprint without Klaebo is two things at the same time: both a lot less interesting, and a lot more interesting. When Klaebo is in the Sprint field, Klaebo will win, won’t he? So what does it mean when Klaebo is absent? It means almost anyone can win. And with only the World Cup Distance championship remaining to be defended (in a close race with Harald Oestberg Amundsen), Klaebo elected to sit out the Freestyle Sprint . . . marking perhaps the only time that Klaebo has been able to watch an entire World Cup Sprint competition from the sidelines.

    “It’s not very often that you have the races (in the USA),” said Klaebo. “And it’s always fun—I mean it was amazing when we were in Minneapolis a couple of years ago, and I’ve been looking forward to this race for a long time. With what happens last week, (coming to Lake Placid) was a little bit uncertain. I’m really happy that I made it, and happy that I made it to the starting line.”

    “The Americans really know how to make noise and a good atmosphere,” said Klaebo of the Mt. Van Hoevenberg crowds lining the 10 k course on Friday. “It was cool!”

    “I think it’s the right decision to skip the (Sprint on Saturday),” said Klaebo. “Hopefully I will be back at it again on Sunday with enough energy to be able to fight.”

    JC Schoonmaker (USA) was the top American among five who qualified for Lake Placid’s Freestyle Sprint quarterfinals. He would put together a fine set of performances, advancing to the semifinal and finishing the day ninth. (Photo:  Thibaut/NordicFocus)
    Freestyle Sprint Heats

    Team USA would qualify five skiers into the quarterfinals: Gus Schumacher, Ben Ogden, Jack Young, JC Schoonmaker, and Zanden McMullen. Schumacher, Ogden, and Young delivered especially eye-popping qualifying efforts: fourth, fifth, and sixth,  respectively. While Americans would ski their way into the quarterfinals, it was not to be the Americans’ day.

    Schumacher caught his pole in the start gate and immediately surrendered ten meters to the field, but an initial slow pace in the heat allowed him to catch up quickly, and to surge forward into third position. Schumacher followed early leaders Benjamin Moser (AUT) and Anton Grahn (SWE), though it was Lars Heggen (NOR) sitting quietly mid-pack that should have occupied everyone’s attention. Heggen was badly positioned mid-race, pinched out of a spot to advance on the climb, and found himself at the very back. Schumacher was pushed wide on the final turn while Heggen masterfully weaved far inside, squeaking past to fuel his dash down the final straightaway. Heggen would finish second (behind Grahn) while Schumacher would find himself fourth. Schumacher’s time would not hold up as a lucky loser. He would finish the day in 21st.

    Quarterfinal 2 had Ogden lining up beside his teammate, McMullen, and with the legend, Federico Pellegrino. Loud cheers greeted the announcement of the Americans as Ogden waved to the crowd. The heat would be paced by Roman Alder (SUI) with Ogden and Pellegrino waiting patiently for the pace to settle. Pellegrino and Ogden vied for the lead at the top of the final uphill, but neither of them really wanted it. They baited Alder back into the lead, and prepared to take advantage of his slipstream on the descent. Pellegrino showed why he is a legend in the sport, weaving through the field and into the lead as he crossed the line. Ogden showed that he may still have much to learn as he skied himself into dead ends in the finishing straightaway, fading to fourth behind McMullen. McMullen would finish the day 15th, Ogden 17th.

    Chanavat led out Quarterfinal 3; a typical tactic for Chanavat, though one that has always found itself to be ineffective against Klaebo. But Klaebo wasn’t here today . . . and no one other than Chanavat really seemed to have a plan. Counter-punching in Sprint heats can sometimes result in advancement, but it rarely results in victory. It looked like Chanavat would have the advantage. Behind him, Schoonmaker scrubbed too much speed in the hairpin turn, finding himself dropped by the acceleration of Jir Tuz (CZE) on the significant downhill. Chanavat gave chase, and the heat was all but decided. Chanavat would step out of the draft and into the lead. Tuz would follow him across the line with Harald Oestberg Amundsen claiming a lucky loser spot. Schoonmaker would finish fourth in the heat, sitting in a hopeful lucky loser position with two heats remaining.

    Sasha Masson (CAN) set the pace in Quarterfinal 4, but found himself overtaken in the final curves. Eric Johansson (SWE) and Even Northug (NOR) would advance.

    Quarterfinal 5 pitted Young against Ansgar Evensen (NOR) and Jaume Pueyo (ESP). Young would drop to the back in the opening meters, but forced his way forward by the top of the first uphill. He found an open lane on the next uphill, but may have spent too much energy advancing. Young entered the final downhill in second position, but he would fade in the final straightaway, finding himself overtake by Pueyo and Evensen. Young would end the day in 13th place.

    Semifinals

    Schoonmaker followed Chanavat, Pellegrino, and Heggen into the first semifinal, where he would mark Heggen at the rear. Maybe patience would be the righ tactic? At thefront, Chanavat drove the pace, duking it out with Pellegrino on the uphill. Grahn, Heggen, and Pellegrino would all lunge at the line in a photo finish as Chanavat faded into a lunge for fourth with Schoonmaker. Ultimately, the lucky loser spots would belong to Pellegrino and Chanavat. Schoonmaker would finish ninth on the day.

    The second semifinal was led by Johansson, who was shadowed by Evensen and Amundsen. Pueyo, Northug, and Tuz trailed the field. Johanssen and Amundsen would advance at the line.

    Federico Pellegrino (ITA) came storming into the finish area al alone. The crowd let him know who their favorite really is. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
    Sprint Final

    The Sprint final offered an excellent non-Klaebo lineup: Grahn, Johansson, Heggen, Amundsen, Pellegrino, and Chanavat.. The veterans (those likely to have a plan), Chanavat and Pellegrino, had advanced as lucky losers. Would they be fast enough to contend? The Norwegians featured a proven sprinter in Heggen with a points-hungry all-rounder in Amundsen. Sweden brought two young skiers eager to upset Norway’s podium pitch. And the starter’s pistol revealed how easy it is for even the most experienced racers to suffer the most rookie mistakes—Amundsen planted his pole tip on top of his own ski, and collapsed in a tangle in the very first meter of the race. Remarkably, he would jump to his feet and take off in pursuit of the field, which he caught before 30 seconds had elapsed. Amundsen was back in the race, but at what cost?

    At the front, Grahn and Pellegrino set the pace. They were followed by Chanavat who, for once, seemed willing to change his at-the-front tactics. As the climb began, Heggen’s ski tip fouled in Johansson’s binding. The Swede went down, and Heggen lost momentum. The leading three seemed to be getting away where Pellegrino was putting an entire career’s worth of energy to his hop skate up the steepest climb. Power-skating into the final downhill, Pellegrino had created a gap ahead of Grahn that meant the tall  Swede would not benefit from Mt. Van Hoevenberg’s notorious draft. Pellegirno would exult across his final Sprint finish line, capping a brilliant career with one final victory. Heggen would recover to dash forward to claim second, ahead of Grahn in third.

    “This was the way I dreamt, when I was young, to win races,” said Pellegrino. “To end my career in that way was fantastic.”

    World Cup Final Men’s Freestyle Sprint RESULTS

    World Cup Final Men’s Freestyle Sprint QUALIFYING

    Love Stories Like This? Help Keep Them Coming.

    Feature stories like this one take time, access, and care to produce. If you value thoughtful storytelling and independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a Voluntary Subscriber. Your support directly fuels the work we do to cover the people, places, and moments that make our sport special.

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    World Cup racing continues this weekend from Lake Placid and Mount van Hoevenberg:

    Sunday, March 22

    12:30 pm | Men’s 20km Mass Start Free

    2:30 pm | Women’s 20km Mass Start Free

    4:30 pm | ONE LAST LAP w/Jessie Diggins & the Retiring Stars

    Chicco Pelle and his fans. Grazie, Federico. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus.)

     

     

  • The Case for More American World Cups

    The Case for More American World Cups

    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.

    Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) back in action and lifted by the roar of American ski fans during the World Cup 10 k Classic in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo: Dils / FasterSkier)

    LAKE PLACID, NEW YORK — Ten kilometers into the second World Cup on American soil in as many decades, and the verdict is already clear: We need more racing in the United States.

    That’s the message panted into my microphone by every athlete in the Mix Zone; shouted over the undulating din by every supporter I spoke with on the ice-lacquered walkways lacing Mt. Van Hoevenberg. And it’s the irresistible outcome of the turnout this afternoon in Lake Placid — with a crowd that came out in droves for Diggins, the Schumacher-Ogden’s Silver Medal Squad, and a host of homegrown heroes; that braved five inches of wet, driving snow; and that stayed to see Jessie clinch the Overall Crystal Globe, a reconstituted Klæbo overtake Amundsen in the Distance standings, and to welcome the world’s best to the conclusion of the 2025-26 season.

    The reaction to racing in the United States in 2023 was overwhelmingly positive – and, it had seemed, sui generis. With four snowmaking venues spread across the Twin Cities, along with the (purportedly) highest concentration of cross-country skiers outside of Oslo, the energy that embraced Jessie Diggins in her home state and buried a generation of “almosts” for the U.S. Men’s Team in the snow and mud at Theodore Wirth could have been lightning in a bottle.

    Jessie Diggins (USA) racing on home soil in Minneapolis and did so again in Lake Placid as she concludes her storied World Cup career. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)

    I will admit my own skepticism that Lake Placid could field the fans, or the volume, of spectators to match Minneapolis. Perhaps my flight into Saranac Lake Regional Airport on Wednesday morning was my first evidence of error. Of seven passengers bobbing our way through the cloud-laden Adirondacks, four were here for the World Cup: Charlie, from Seattle; Billy (as in, Demong, the Nordic Combined gold medalist) and his son, from Salt Lake City; and myself, from D.C. Bussing to the venue the next day, I’m seated with a dozen of University of Minnesota alumni – they’ve taken off of work, graduate school, and medical school to spectate. “I’m excited just to see the number of people out cheering,” Alex Gude, who organized the trip, tells me. “I think one of the best parts about Minneapolis is just seeing the community come together, and now, away from home, we’re seeing another whole ski community come out and cheer.”

    And, indeed, they are – from across the United States, from across New England, from across the Canadian border, and from right here in Lake Placid. Once we disembark, I wade through the corn snow and the first of many falling flakes to Mt. Van Hoevenberg’s sprawling Nordic Center, where the racecourse coils around the podium and snakes below the pedestrian bridge. Patricia Damp is herding thirteen might-be-members of the local ski community across the bridge; she’s a third-grade teacher here in Lake Placid, chaperoning a class field trip to the World Cup Finals.

    Are the kids already Diggins die-hards, Ogden acolytes, Gus bus-riders? Not really, Patricia tells me. The class “was out here a couple months ago, cross-country skiing. We get to do the Olympic venues. We were at the museum a month ago. We have a friend who we watched ski jump. So, we’re very Olympic-oriented, and today we’re just out here to support the athletes and get some autographs.” Her students back her up. “We’re excited to get the players’ signatures,” Riley tells me. And while Declan is “excited to see the racers,” there’s no-one in particular he’s cheering for.

    Gus Schumacher (USA) during the Men’s 10 k Classic in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo: Dils / FasterSkier)

    From the mouths of children, our first – and perhaps strongest – argument for future American World Cups. The glitter-dusted kids in fan club bibs, wielding cardboard-cutout faces as large as they are, make for compelling pictures and undeniable evidence of Team USA’s impact on its next generation. But racing in the United States creates opportunities to draw an entirely new cohort of young people into the cross-country skiing community – kids who may have never tried skiing before; who may not have heard of Kikkan or Klæbo ; and whose parents certainly are not waking up before sunrise to livestream Ruka, Falun or Holmenkollen. They will not see themselves in this sport until they see this sport. What better way to do so than on a Friday field trip with Mrs. Damp?

    After bidding them good luck with the signature-hunting, it’s not an easy task to wade against the current of the rest of the Lake Placid Class of 2035. Also threading his way through the third-graders is Niklas Dyrhaug, immediately recognizable even five years into retirement from World Cup racing. He’s on the other side of the v-boards this weekend, broadcasting for Norwegian television. In his first sentence, he tells me: “We are enjoying being back in the U.S. In my opinion, we should be here every year.” He’s not surprised by the number of spectators, either. “Everybody who knows the U.S. crowd knows they are really enthusiastic . . . We know the tradition, the culture, and Lake Placid’s place in that history. So, personally, I’m not that surprised. It’s really cool that we’re back here.”

    That’s the sentiment just after Coaster Hill, some four kilometers into the racecourse, where Norwegian national team coach Eirik Myhr Nossum prowls the striding zone. Being back in the United States is “awesome, it’s amazing. I think we should be here every year, because you guys show up; you guys cheer for everyone, and it’s always fun to be in the U.S. and to be overseas to compete.”

    And it’s the sentiment at the finish line.

    Harald Oestberg Amundsen (NOR) after the 10 k Classic in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    Harald Amundsen (NOR) tells me, “In the outer part of the track, there were so many people I couldn’t hear my own thinking. That’s a really good thing.” Even before he arrived at the venue, “We had a run this morning in the city. Everyone was screaming at us, ‘Good luck!’ It’s a really nice atmosphere.”

    For Elia Barp (ITA), conditions were “very tough because it was really slow with this new snow, but it was fun racing for me. So I enjoyed it – at least I tried to enjoy it – it was a pack of people screaming my name so that gave me even more motivation, and was fun . . . I loved racing two years ago in Minneapolis, and here it’s packed with people, even with the snowfall, so thank you to everyone for coming. It’s really good to race here.”

    Mika Vermeulen (AUT) admits, “Honestly, this is probably the worst race I’ve done in a long time. But I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun out on the track . . . on top there, out in the forest, I just heard, ‘MI-KA, MI-KA,’ the whole time. It was insane. I had a bad race and a lot of fun.”

    As for how he feels about returning to the United States: “Great, great, actually—and feeling a bit frustrated, because it just gets me pissed that we race these [bad] courses in Europe all the time, over and over and over again, and we have these freaking jewels out here which we never use. It’s crazy. I want to go to the U.S. every year for at least a whole period. It’s called the World Cup. It’s not called the European Cup, right?”

    Fans all over the course with custom gear showing their fandom. (Photo: Dils / FasterSkier)

    Klæbo’s opinion is a bit more measured – perhaps because he has more microphones hovering around his face. “I heard some rumors that it was supposed to be quite well [attended], and when I searched up Lake Placid and read a little bit about the place, I understood there’s not that many people living [here], but when you see how many people are here, I was pretty shocked.”

    A second argument, then, in favor of World Cup racing in this country: the athletes love it. They embrace not just the energy, but the venues that push the World Cup beyond the geographic and cultural confines of Transalpine Europe.

    Benjamin Dohlby (USA) at the finish of the Men’s 10 k Classic in Lake Placid. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    For the closing statement, Ben Dohlby is among the last athletes I interview. This is Ben’s first World Cup start; a junior at University of Alaska-Fairbanks, he was 3rd in the American Birkebeiner in February. How does it feel to be making his first professional start in the United States?

    “It was crazy. I went out so hard. The fans were so loud that I didn’t feel anything, and then I felt it all and got so tired – but it was awesome; a great atmosphere.” It wasn’t too long ago that Ben was skiing laps around the glazed kilometer of manmade snow at Lapham Peak State Park in Delafied, Wisconsin; now he’s here. To his former teammates, to other up and coming skiers, and to novices across similar ribbons of snow in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, his message is simple: “Follow your dreams and you can make it happen.”

    Most of the fans hiked up on the course, but the stadium filled up as the day went on. (Photo: Dils / FasterSkier)

    That, then, is our concluding point: More World Cup starts on American soil means more starting berths for American skiers, and more chances for our most talented young skiers to make it to the starting line. We should savor the privilege of, as a host nation, pitting our athletes against the most accomplished figures in the sport, dreaming that a World Cup podium, an Olympic medal, could be in their future. When a lifetime of discipline and preparation meets the opportunity of a lifetime, the promise of Lake Placid – that miracles can happen – becomes deliverable.

    I will leave the invariable complex problems of bidding, organizing, and logistically managing future events to far wiser pundits. But, in the meantime, the verdict is clear: FIS, U.S. Ski & Snowboard, and the American Nordic community should be eager, and determined, to have them here.

     

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  • Never Count Him Out . . . Klaebo Returns in the 10 k

    Never Count Him Out . . . Klaebo Returns in the 10 k

    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.

    A week ago, it looked likethe competitive season of Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) might be over. Today, he returned to dominate the 10 k Classic Interval Start at the World Cup Final in Lake Placid. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    Two seasons ago in Minneapolis, the energy of an American crowd lifted an American skier—Gus Schumacher—to a surprising win in the 10 k Freestyle Interval Start. The FIS World Cup returns to the USA, but in a very different environment. Mt. Van Hoevenberg is an historic cross-country skiing destination and two-time host of the Olympic Winter Games (1932 and 1980), but the village of Lake Placid is tiny—barely 3000 residents. Not only is it small, but it’s really really far away from any urban centers that might provide spectators for these World Cup Finals events. New York City is nearly five hours away by car; Boston even farther. Even the closest airport (Albany, NY) is nearly three hours away, even in good weather. Many cross-country ski fans will undoubtedly arrive at Mt. van Hoevenberg for the chance to see their ski-heroes, but the crowds are not likely to be anything like what those heroes experienced two seasons ago in Minneapolis. Still, Americans will be enjoying the rare benefit of racing on home turf. Perhaps Schumacher—or another American on the rise—would be able to break through?

    Team USA sent Schumacher to the starting line along with his partner in the silver-medal-winning Team Sprint, Ben Ogden. Rounding out the American roster were Luke Jager, JC Schoonmaker, Zanden McMullen, John Steel Hagenbuch, Reid Goble, Benjamin Dohlby, Michael Earnhart, Zachary Jayne, Brian Bushey, and Hunter Wonders.

    As is often the case, Norwegian names crowded the ranks of seeded skiers: Emil Iversen, Harald Oestberg Amundsen, Mattis Stenshagen, Andreas Fjorden Ree, and Lars Heggen would toe the starting line, joined by a late-arriving Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo whose arrival was delayed while he—and Team Norway—debated his fitness to compete. After a dramatic fall (and subsequent concussion) in the Sprint semfinals in Drammen last week, Klaebo’s condition had remained in question. before the race, he admitted he might not be at his absolute best, but he felt he owed it to the fans gathered in Lake Placid to make an appearance.

    The arrival of Amundsen had never been in doubt, as he continues to joust with Klaebo in their rivalry for the Overall and Distance Crystal Globes. Like Klaebo, Amundsen remarked that he had been looking forward to this journey to Lake Placid.

    “I spoke with Ben Ogden, and he said it would be lots of people and a good vibe,” Amundsen remarked to FasterSkier in post-race interviews. “So I was looking forward to it. They are traveling to Europe and staying there a whole winter, so now it’s our turn to travel here and get some good races.”

    And a sentimental favorite during this World Cup Finals weekend would be Italy’s Federico Pellegrino who has announced that this World Cup season will be his last. At the end of this weekend, he will hang up his skis and glide off into retirement. Pellegrino’s chances for a fond farewell were improved by the announcement that his old friend and long-time rival, Klaebo, would not be competing in Saturday’s Sprint event.

    But, c’mon, the story of the day is the three point lead enjoyed by Amundsen over Klaebo in the chase for the World Cup Distance title. A week ago, it looked like Klaebo would run the table: Distance, Sprint, and Overall. Who knew this race could be so close. With as much as Klaebo has won this year, it would be understandable to assume that he would win all the Crystal Globes. But Amundsen has never been far behind . . . and with the disastrous collision between Klaebo and Ogden in the Drammen Spritnt (that resulted in Klaebo’s hospital stay for a concussion), Amundsen was able to ski well enough in the Holmenkollen 50 k to slide into the Distance lead.

    Amundsen would ski brilliantly in Lake Placid’s 10 k Classic Interval Start, battling snowy conditions, fighting his way to a fourth place finish behind Ree and Stenshagen. But it was Klaebo—who just a week ago looked like his season might be over—to reclaim what should rightfully have been his along.

    With the energy of a cheering and rowdy Lake Placid crowd,  Ben Ogden (USA) couldn’t hold back. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)

    Schumacher and Ogden would both claim impressive finishes: seventh and 11th, respectively.

    “I wanted to go out easy,” said Ogden. “But there was no hope of that with this many people cheering! I really had to fight for it at the end, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

    “The last couple of kilometers, it was really fun to hear so many people cheering,” said Schumacher. “And to know that what’s going to make them happy is me going as hard as I can.”

    Never Count Him Out

    Serious contenders in any Classic ski race would normally include Savelii Korostelev (AIN). But like his compatriot, Dariya Nepryaeva, Korostelev is a citizen of Russia. Despite his competing as an Individual Neutral athlete (AIN), he would not have qualified for an American visa. Korostelev would not get the chance to be on the starting line in Lake Placid.

    Snow continued to fall heavily during the Men’s race, gathering in fluffy inches on the course. Skiers continued to struggle, both uphill and down, and conditions looked likely to heavily influence the eventual results.

    Gus Schumacher (USA) would follow the example of his fast-starting teammate, Ben Ogden. Schumacher would finish seventh, Ogden 11th. (Photo:  Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    Ogden started in bib 20 with a loud and energetic fan club cheering him on. Ogden would lead the first 50 starters at the first checkpoint, but would find himself overtaken by Stenshagen, Pellegrino, Amundsen, and Schumacher. That’s right, Gus was on course, and charging.

    Klaebo would ease off the starting line, knowing that the accumulating snow was likely to favor earlier starters. His effort appeared measured; nonetheless, he was fastest through the first checkpoint, leading Amundsen (the only other skier whose placing probably concerned him) by 6.3 seconds, a lead that Klaebo extended to 16 seconds at 3.8 kilometers. If Klaebo was in race-shape today, Amundsen could find himself in trouble in Sunday’s 20 k Mass Start.

    Schumacher trailed Klaebo by only 20 seconds at the halfway mark. Between them could be found Pellegrino, Stenshagen, Ree, and Amundsen. Ogden still maintained a top-ten position, and he was able to spend some time in the leader’s chair while he waited for the arrival of later starters.

    Harald Oestberg Amundsen (NOR) wore the red leader’s bib in the Distance category. He is dertimined to fight to the end in his rivalry with countryman, Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)

    As the race played out, the Norwegians gravitated to the top of the list of finishers. Stenshagen would take over the lead, only to be supplanted by Ree. Schumacher would cross the line just behind Pellegrino, and only 25 seconds behind Ree. But the crowd and the headlines were awaiting the arrival of Klaebo, His splits had been fastest throughout the race, and Klaebo was hoping for even more than the win. Klaebo needed to put his recent concussion behind him, and put Amundsen in his place.

    Amundsen—wearing the red Distance leaders bib—would cross the line and into the third slot . . . but that was not to last. Likewise, the red bib was soon to transfer back to the shoulders of Klaebo. To no one’s surprise—but to everyone’s surprise—Klaebo glided across the finish line for the win, some 14 seconds ahead of second place Ree, and 25 seconds ahead of fourth place Amundsen.

    “It was a tough fight, tough conditions,” said Amundsen. “But I think it was fair conditions for everyone.”

    “It was so much people, I couldn’t hear my own thinking,” grinned Amundsen.” That’s a good thing!”

    “I’m second place in the World Cup Overall, so I’m fighting for that,” said Amundsen. “And I’m twelve points behind Johannes for the overall, so it will be a close fight on Sunday. I need to take some points in the sprints during the race, and beat him in the end . . . we’ll see.”

    With two races remaining in the season—one of which (tomorrow’s Sprint) he is likely to skip—it really does appear that Klaebo will complete the near-perfect season, gathering up not only every Olympic gold medal, but the full slate of Crystal Globes—Sprint, Distance, and Overall—as well.

    World Cup Final Men’s 10 k Classic RESULTS

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    World Cup racing continues this weekend from Lake Placid and Mount van Hoevenberg:

    Saturday, March 21

    10:30 am | Women’s Sprint Qualification Free

    11:05 am | Men’s Sprint Qualification Free

    1:00 pm | Women’s Sprint Final Free

    1:00 pm | Men’s Sprint Final Free

    Sunday, March 22

    12:30 pm | Men’s 20km Mass Start Free

    2:30 pm | Women’s 20km Mass Start Free

    4:30 pm | ONE LAST LAP w/Jessie Diggins & the Retiring Stars

  • Klaebo Is Coming to Lake Placid

    Klaebo Is Coming to Lake Placid

    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.

    Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) took all six gold medals awarded in men’s cross-country skiing at the Olympics last month. (Photo: Barbieri/NordicFocus)

    Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo made the call late Tuesday night… he’s racing.

    According to the Scandinavian press, Klaebo departed Oslo’s Gardermoen airport at 6:25 Wednesday morning, beginning a roughly 20-hour journey to Lake Placid, where he’ll arrive about a day and a half before Friday’s 10-kilometer classic interval start. The Norwegian Ski Federation confirmed the news in a press release on Wednesday morning.

    “I can see this isn’t going to be an optimal buildup, both with the long travel and not being able to adjust to the time difference,” Klaebo said. “But I want to be part of the World Cup finale in the USA.”

    The decision came after Klaebo did a training session on Tuesday morning in Trondheim and responded well. National team doctor Ove Feragen gave him the green light.

    Ben Ogden (USA) checks on Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) after their crash eliminated them from the race in Drammen, Norway. (Photo: Nordnes/NordicFocus)

    “After the fall during the sprint in Drammen, and some quiet days at home, Johannes has gradually resumed training and normal activity,” Feragen said. “He has responded well to this, without any recurring symptoms after the fall. After observation and further examinations, we have concluded that he is fit to compete.”

    Klaebo has been sidelined since March 12, when American Ben Ogden fell across the Norwegian’s skis during Classic Sprint semifinals in Drammen, Norway. The resulting crash sent Klaebo’s head into the hard-packed snow. He was diagnosed with a mild concussion, withdrew from the Holmenkollen 50k, and scrapped a planned media tour in New York City that included sit-downs with CNN, NBC, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

    Now the question shifts from whether Klaebo will race to how much he’ll race. He’s not committing to the full program.

    Harald Oestberg Amundsen (NOR), Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR), and Martin Loewstroem Nyenget (NOR), (l-r) share the Skiathlon podium in Falun, Sweden, on March 1st, 2026. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus.)

    “My expectations for performance are not sky-high,” Klaebo said. “I’ll do my best despite a poor buildup and potential jet lag. Whether I race one, two, or three events in Lake Placid, I’ll decide once I get to the USA and get skis on my feet.”

    The stakes are real despite the measured tone. Klaebo has already clinched the overall World Cup — his sixth, tying Bjoern Daehlie — and the sprint globe. But he trails Harald Oestberg Amundsen by three points in the distance standings after missing the Holmenkollen 50k. Two distance events remain: Friday’s 10 k Classic and Sunday’s 20k Freestyle Mass Start. A clean sweep of the overall, sprint, and distance globes would be a first in Klaebo’s career.

    “For cross-country skiing, it’s especially important to have World Cups in the USA,” Klaebo said. “I’ve been looking forward to this finale for a long time.”

    Racing begins Friday at Mt. Van Hoevenberg. Klaebo will be on the start line — jet lag and all.

     

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    Ben Ogden (USA) and Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR), along with Oskar Opstad Vike (NOR), (l-r) on the Olympic sprint podium last month.  It should be made clear that Ogden and Klaebo have a strong respect for one another, to say the least. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
  • What to Do in Lake Placid When You’re Not Watching World Cup Racing

    What to Do in Lake Placid When You’re Not Watching World Cup Racing

    You’ve got your tickets. You know the race schedule. You’re making the trip to Mt. Van Hoevenberg for the first World Cup finals ever held on American soil. But the racing doesn’t fill every hour of the day, and Lake Placid is the kind of town that rewards a little wandering. Over the last 15 years, my family and I have spent a lot of time in Lake Placid, and here’s what we’d suggest for filling in the gaps — whether you’re traveling solo, with a crew, or with kids in tow.

    Fuel up

    Start the morning at Big Mountain Deli & Crêperie on Main Street. They’ve got 46 sandwiches named after Adirondack high peaks, plus breakfast burritos, crepes, and all the espresso drinks you need to survive a cold morning in the stadium. A word of advice: order online in advance. The line moves faster if your food is already being made. Note that they’re closed on Wednesdays, so plan accordingly if you’re arriving midweek.

    If you’d rather sit down and take your time, The Breakfast Club is just up the street and serves a proper breakfast and lunch with views of Mirror Lake. The portions are generous, the pancakes are legit, and if you’ve got kids, the hot cocoa is a guaranteed win. They open at 8 a.m. daily and close at 1, so don’t dawdle.

    Lunch and dinner

    For a real meal, Lisa G’s is our pick. It’s a short drive from Main Street on Sentinel Road, with a menu that leans American but doesn’t phone it in — think elevated pub food with creative wings, excellent fish and chips, and a solid beer list. They serve lunch on Fridays through Sundays starting at 11:30, and dinner Thursday through Monday. Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so keep that in mind for early-week arrivals.

    For something more upscale, the Mirror Lake Inn is one of the classic Adirondack properties — a lakefront resort with a polished dining room and views to match. And if you want something a bit more casual but still special, check out The Cottage, also on the Mirror Lake Inn grounds. It’s a cozy spot right on the water where you can grab dinner or a drink in an old gondola. It’s open Tuesday through Sunday — closed Mondays.

    If you’re looking for a spot that can handle a crowd, Dancing Bears at the High Peaks Resort is worth a look. It’s at the far end of Main Street and has plenty of space — which matters on a weekend like this one, when every restaurant in town is going to be slammed. We’re fans of the food here, especially the salmon. It’s a reliable pick when other spots have a 45-minute wait.

    Breweries

    Lake Placid has two breweries worth your time, and both serve food if you’re looking to make a full stop of it.

    Lake Placid Pub & Brewery has been an institution on Mirror Lake Drive for years. The beer list is deep, the vibe is pub-casual with college banners lining the walls, and the upstairs bar is a solid spot to post up after a day at the races. They’re open daily from 11:30 a.m. (noon on Sundays) and stay open late — midnight on weeknights, 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. If you can only try one drink, ask about the Smoked Berry Old Fashioned.

    Big Slide Brewery & Public House is out on Cascade Road, about a five-minute drive from downtown and right near the Olympic Jumping Complex — which makes it an obvious stop if you’re heading to the Skirious Problems live recording Saturday evening. The beer ranges from fruit-forward lighter options to solid IPAs and porters, and the food holds its own. The burgers are good, the pizza is legit, and the buffalo wings have a bit of a cult following. They’ve also got outdoor seating with fire pits and Adirondack chairs if the weather cooperates. Open daily from 11:30 a.m. (10 a.m. on Sundays).

    Catch some NCAA March Madness

    The World Cup finals land smack in the middle of the NCAA basketball tournament, and if you need a screen and a cold beer between race sessions, Lake Placid has you covered. Wiseguys Sports Bar & Grill on School Street is the classic move — TVs everywhere, good wings, no pretense. They’re open Wednesday through Sunday. Players Waterfront Eatery on Main Street is another solid option with screens and lakeside seating if the weather cooperates.

    Stroll and Explore Main Street

    Don’t underestimate a good Main Street stroll. Lake Placid’s downtown is walkable and full of shops worth ducking into.

    Saratoga Olive Oil Company is one of those places you walk into out of curiosity and end up spending way longer than you planned. They’ve got dozens of flavored olive oils and balsamic vinegars you can taste — some combinations will surprise you, and it’s a genuinely fun challenge for your taste buds. Great for picking up a gift or just entertaining yourself for half an hour.

    The Maple Shop is exactly what it sounds like — a deep dive into maple syrup and all things maple. But it’s more interesting than you might expect. They carry different varieties and grades, and tasting your way through the range is a quick education in how much variation there is in something most people think of as one flavor.

    Adirondack Popcorn Co rounds out the Main Street tasting tour. They specialize in creative popcorn flavors — some classic, some funky — and it’s the kind of snack you can grab and take with you to the races or back to wherever you’re staying.

    Get Outside

    You’re in the Adirondacks. Get some fresh air.

    Though having recently CLOSED at the end of the 2026 season, Olympic Speed Skating Oval is open for public skating and is one of the few outdoor refrigerated ovals in the country. If the oval’s schedule doesn’t line up with yours, Mirror Lake itself often has a maintained skating area — check conditions locally when you arrive.

    Get out on the Ironman Lake Placid course on Mirror Lake Drive — hopefully it won’t be raining — like IMLP Champion Trevor Foley. (Photo: Voisin / FasterSkier)

    For our money, no trip to Lake Placid is complete without a walk or jog around Mirror Lake. The loop is about 2.7 miles on a paved path, it’s flat and accessible, and the residential architecture along the shoreline is worth the trip on its own — beautiful old Adirondack homes mixed in with classic lake houses, all set against the mountains. It’s a perfect way to shake out your legs before or after a day in the stadium.

    If you’re looking for something a bit more rugged, there are dozens of short hikes in the area, but be warned: this time of year, trail conditions are unpredictable. You might hit packed snow, mud, ice, or all three in the span of a quarter mile. Bring traction devices if you have them, and dress for the mess. Cobble Hill is a nice short option with a rewarding view at the top — nothing too long or steep, but enough to feel like you earned it.

    Need to get out for a Nordic Ski

    If you’re itching to actually ski while you’re up here, your options may be limited. Mt. Van Hoevenberg’s trails will almost certainly be closed to the public during the World Cup weekend. But if you’re willing to make the drive, the Paul Smith’s College VIC in Paul Smiths — about 30 minutes north of Lake Placid — is a strong option. We checked in with Paul Smith’s head Nordic coach Matt Dougherty, who had his team out on the trails Wednesday morning for biathlon practice. “It was actually fantastic,” Dougherty told FasterSkier. “Conditions will reflect the temperatures — normal spring skiing.” Most trails are open and being groomed daily with the college’s PB 100, though a few trails that got washed out last week are closed for the season. The VIC maintains over 25 miles of trails, including more than 10 kilometers of FIS-homologated courses and 25 kilometers of skate skiing. The system benefits from heavier snowfall than other parts of the region, which tends to keep trails skiable even when conditions elsewhere are lean. Trail conditions are updated on their Nordic Pulse page. The VIC’s winter season runs through April 1.

    Saturday Evening at the Jumps

    After the sprint finals wrap up on Saturday, head over to the Olympic Jumping Complex on Cascade Road for a live recording of the Skirious Problems podcast at 6:00 p.m. Hosts Mika Vermeulen and James Clugnet will be joined by Ben Ogden, Frida Karlsson, and Federico Pellegrino. It’s free, but organizers are suggesting it may already have sold out — check the World Cup Finals event page for the link. After that, the Palace Theatre downtown is screening Threshold at 7:00 p.m.

    Family-friendly fun

    The Lake Placid Toboggan Chute on Mirror Lake is one of those only-in-Lake-Placid experiences — a 30-foot wooden tower that launches you and a toboggan out across the frozen lake. Warmer spring temperatures have caused the chute’s closing for this season, but it’s typically open Friday evening and Saturday and Sunday during the day. Lines can build, but it’s worth the wait.

    If you’re already out at Mt. Van Hoevenberg, the Hi Notch Indoor Climbing center is right inside the Mountain Pass Lodge. It will be CLOSED during the FIS World Cup finals, but other days you’ll find a 30-foot top rope wall with over 1,500 square feet of climbing space, plus bouldering and traverse walls. All gear is provided, and instructors are on hand during daytime sessions. It could be busy this weekend, given the crowds, but it’s a great option for families or anyone who needs to burn off some energy between races.

    If you’ve got a free morning or want a half-day excursion, the Wild Center in Tupper Lake is about 45 minutes west and worth every mile. It’s a natural history museum with live animals, hands-on exhibits, and the Wild Walk — a series of treetop bridges with panoramic views of the Adirondacks. It’s open Friday through Sunday, so you could pair it with a race day or build it into your travel schedule. Just know you’ll have to choose between the Wild Center and a morning at Van Hoevenberg if you’re trying to do both.

    Closer to town, the Palace Theatre on Main Street is a beautifully maintained old single-screen movie house — a perfect way to wind down after a long day in the cold. And if your group wants something more active, Lake Placid Lanes (also known as Big Z’s) has bowling, arcade games, shuffleboard, darts, and a full bar. Reservations are recommended, especially on weekends — this place fills up.

    Lake Placid has been hosting the world’s best winter athletes since 1932. The town knows how to do this. Get out there and enjoy it.

  • Klaebo’s Lake Placid Decision Day Is Today

    Klaebo’s Lake Placid Decision Day Is Today

    This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription.

    Fans from across the United States who will be in Lake Placid are anxiously hoping Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) is well enough to travel and race in Lake Placid this weekend. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)

    Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo has been included in Norway’s 22-athlete squad for this week’s World Cup finals at Mt. Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, N.Y., BUT the six-time Olympic gold medalist’s participation hinges on a decision being made today.

    Klaebo, 29, suffered a mild concussion in a dramatic crash during the sprint semifinals at last Thursday’s World Cup in Drammen. American sprinter Ben Ogden lost his footing on the icy course and fell across Klaebo’s skis, sending the Norwegian backward and slamming the back of his head into the hard-packed snow. Klaebo lay on the ground for several minutes before being helped off course and transported to a hospital for evaluation.

    The Norwegian Ski Federation confirmed the concussion diagnosis on Friday, and Klaebo withdrew from Saturday’s 50-kilometer race at Holmenkollen.

    “He shall make an evaluation together with the national team doctor on Tuesday and would potentially travel on Wednesday,” Klaebo’s manager, Lasse Gimnes, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK on Monday. If cleared by national team doctor Ove Feragen, Klaebo would travel to New York on Wednesday — arriving just two days before Friday’s 10-kilometer classic interval start.

    The crash also disrupted a planned trip to New York City for media appearances with CNN, NBC, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal — a reflection of the enormous international attention Klaebo has drawn since his record-setting six-gold performance at the Milano Cortina Olympics. Those in-person interviews have been scrapped, though some may shift to virtual formats.

    Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) poses with the FIS Crystal Globes he won last season at World Cup Finals in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)
    The distance globe is on a knife’s edge

    The distance cup title is the central subplot heading into the finals. Before Holmenkollen, Klaebo held a 128-point lead in the distance standings. But with the Norwegian watching from home on Saturday, Amundsen’s 131-point haul vaulted him into the distance lead: Amundsen now sits at 939 points, three ahead of Klaebo’s 936. Martin Loewstroem Nyenget climbed to 914 in third. Just two distance events remain — Friday’s 10-kilometer classic interval start and Sunday’s 20-kilometer freestyle mass start. If Klaebo can travel and race, the margin is thin enough that a single strong result could flip the standings again. If the concussion keeps him out, the distance globe almost certainly goes to Amundsen.

    Klaebo has already clinched both the overall World Cup — his sixth, tying Bjoern Daehlie’s all-time record — and the sprint globe.

    Norway’s men’s squad: Harald Oestberg Amundsen, Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, Einar Hedegart, Andreas Fjorden Ree, Mattis Stenshagen, Emil Iversen, Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, Lars Heggen, Even Northug, Ansgar Evensen, and Even Solem Michelsen.

    Jessie Diggins soaks in all the energy from the home crowd during her warmup in Minneapolis — the last time the World Cup was on American snow. (Photo: Leann Bentley/USST)
    Diggins’s farewell, and notable absences

    The Lake Placid finals will serve as the final competitive races for Jessie Diggins, the most decorated cross-country skier in U.S. history. The women’s overall cup and distance cup are both decided, with Diggins winning with a comfortable margin over Sweden’s Moa Ilar in second. The three-time Olympic medalist and three-time overall World Cup champion announced before the season that this would be her last, and a farewell on home snow in front of an American crowd at the first-ever U.S.-hosted World Cup finals is about as fitting a send-off as anyone could script.

    Klaebo is not the only notable question mark heading into the weekend. Norway’s Kristine Stavaas Skistad and Mathilde Myhrvold have opted to skip the finals to prepare for part two of Norwegian nationals in Harstad next week. Sweden’s Ebba Andersson has also pulled out.

    Norway’s women’s squad for Lake Placid includes Astrid Oeyre Slind, Heidi Weng, Kristin Austgulen Fosnaes, Karoline Simpson-Larsen, Nora Sanness, Karoline Groetting, Julie Bjervig Drivenes, Tiril Udnes Weng, Julie Myhre, Lotta Udnes Weng, and Milla Grosberghaugen Andreassen.

    The men’s freestyle mass start gets started at the US National Championships in Lake Placid, NY, 1/8/26. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
    A historic venue

    The Lake Placid finals mark the first Cross-Country World Cup finals ever held in the United States and the return of World Cup racing to Lake Placid for the first time since 1979. Racing kicks off Friday at Mt. Van Hoevenberg with the 10-kilometer classic interval start, followed by a freestyle sprint on Saturday and a 20-kilometer freestyle mass start on Sunday.

    This is a developing story. FasterSkier will update when Klæbo’s decision is announced.

     

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  • Lake Placid Set to Host World Cup Finals with Full Festival Lineup March 19–22

    Lake Placid Set to Host World Cup Finals with Full Festival Lineup March 19–22

    Stifel Lake Placid Finals, a Coop FIS Cross-Country World Cup, to Bring Elite Ski Racing and Winter Festival Atmosphere to Lake Placid

    FIS Cross-Country World Cup racing, fan experiences, athlete engagement, and live entertainment coming March 19–22

    LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — The Stifel Lake Placid Finals, a Coop FIS Cross-Country World Cup, will offer more than world-class competition this March. The event will transform Lake Placid into a multi-day winter sports festival featuring themed race days, live entertainment, film screenings, interactive expo activations, and family-friendly programming.

    In collaboration with the New England Nordic Ski Association (NENSA), the 10th Mountain Division, U.S. Ski & Snowboard, and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), the Olympic Regional Development Authority (Olympic Authority) has curated a dynamic schedule that celebrates Nordic skiing and outdoor winter-sport culture.

    A central focus of the week will be spotlighting women and girls in sport, networking opportunities, and hands-on activities. Fans will also have unique opportunities to connect with athletes through meet-and-greets, alumni celebrations, and special legacy moments — including Sunday’s “Last Lap” ceremony honoring retiring World Cup athletes.

    Together, these events are designed to foster engagement, connection, and shared celebration across the Lake Placid community and the global ski family.

    One final celebration of Jessie Diggins (USA) amazing career. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)

    Event & Community Programming

    In addition to World Cup racing, the Stifel Lake Placid Finals will feature a range of community events, athlete appearances, and festival programming throughout the week. Activities include youth programming, athlete conversations, live music, demonstrations, and opportunities for fans to connect with past and present champions.

    Programming details may evolve, and additional events may be added throughout the week. Visitors are encouraged to check the official event schedule for the most up-to-date information.

    Thursday, March 19 – Community & Kickoff

    Opening day features official training and festival programming at Mt Van Hoevenberg, along with an evening film screening at the Palace Theatre that kicks off the festivities in downtown Lake Placid.

    Friday, March 20 – Theme: Past

    Friday celebrates the legacy of Nordic skiing and Olympic history in Lake Placid. The venue opens with festival programming, including the NENSA Terrain Park and Expo with L.L. Bean, regional athlete recognition connected to the 2026 Winter Olympics, and Adirondack Birds of Prey demonstrations. Fans can also watch presentations from the 10th Mountain Division, enjoy live music, and attend athlete interviews and meet-and-greets throughout the day.  A highlight of the afternoon is the “One More Lap” legacy ski, featuring international and U.S. Ski Team alumni, including Olympic legend Thomas Wassberg and American champion Bill Koch, before World Cup racing and awards ceremonies conclude the day.

    Saturday, March 21 – Theme: Future

    Saturday’s programming focuses on the next generation of Nordic skiing. Activities include the NENSA Terrain Park and Expo with L.L. Bean, athlete appearances, and fan engagement opportunities.  The Women in Sports Heroic Panel highlights leadership and opportunities for girls and women in athletics, while fans can also attend athlete meet-and-greets and participate in interactive programming throughout the venue.  Competition highlights include the freestyle sprint finals, followed by Crystal Globe presentations. Youth racing also takes center stage with the World Cup Future Stars Sprint.  Additional programming includes Lollipoppers to Olympians: A Celebration of New England Skiing, a live recording of the Skirious Podcast featuring Ben Ogden and special guests at the Olympic Jumping Complex, and evening film screenings at the Palace Theatre.

    Sunday, March 22 – Theme: Present

    Championship Sunday features entertainment, athlete appearances, and the season-ending races of the World Cup Finals. Live music, a DJ set, and ceremonial elements, including the 10th Mountain Division Color Guard and flyover, set the stage for the final competition.  The afternoon concludes with awards ceremonies and the “One Last Lap” ceremony honoring retiring World Cup athletes.

    Gus Schumacher (USA) and Ben Ogden (USA), (l-r) celebrate their silver medal at the Olympic Winter Games in Tesero, Italy. (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)

    Competition Schedule | FIS Cross-Country World Cup Finals

    Mt Van Hoevenberg | March 19–22, 2026

    World Cup official training and competition runs March 19–22 at Mt. Van Hoevenberg, where the world’s top U.S. and international cross-country skiers will compete for overall and discipline Crystal Globe honors. The weekend culminates on Sunday with championship racing, awards presentations, and the “One Last Lap” ceremony recognizing retiring athletes.

    Full competition schedule:

    Thursday, March 19, 2026: 
    11:00 – 1:00 pm | 10km Official Training
    1:00 pm – 3:00 pm | Sprint Official Training

    Friday, March 20, 2026: 
    1:00 pm | Women’s 10km Interval Start Classic
    3:00 pm | Men’s 10km Interval Start Classic

    Saturday, March 21, 2026: 
    10:30 am | Women’s Sprint Qualification Free
    10:30 am | Men’s Sprint Qualification Free
    1:00 pm | Women’s Sprint Final Free
    1:00 pm | Men’s Sprint Final Free

    Sunday, March 22, 2026: 
    12:30 pm | Men’s 20km Mass Start Free
    2:30 pm | Women’s 20km Mass Start Free

    Jessie Diggins (USA) and the US Ski Team celebrate in Goms. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)

    Broadcast Schedule

    NBC will air the Sprint Finals live on Saturday, March 21, from 1–2 p.m. ET. CNBC will air coverage of the Men’s and Women’s 10km Interval Starts on Saturday, March 21, from 2–4 p.m. ET. NBC will also air the Women’s 20km Mass Start on Saturday, March 29, from 1–2 p.m. ET on tape delay.

    For the latest schedule updates, event details, and ticket information, visit the official Stifel Lake Placid Finals event page: https://mtvanhoevenberg.com/xcworldcupfinals/

    The schedule is weather- and condition-dependent and may be subject to change.

    Tickets & Media:

    Tickets are on sale: https://mtvanhoevenberg.com/xcworldcupfinals/

    Media credential applications: https://orda.org/media/press-room/#tab+media-credentials

  • Calculations and Consequences: The Men’s Classic Sprint at U.S. Nationals

    Calculations and Consequences: The Men’s Classic Sprint at U.S. Nationals

    This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription.

    The men’s Classic Sprint heats got started with quarterfinal number one at the US Nationals Cross-Country Ski Championship at Mt Vanhoevenberg in Lake Placid NY. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)

    The last day of the U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships in Lake Placid arrived the way honest days in this sport often do. The snow at Mt. Van Hoevenberg had been churned and scoured by a week of racing and changing weather, its surface no longer pristine but revealing, the kind that gives little for free. Legs were tired. Arms were tender. Expectations had been trimmed back by accumulated kilometers and decisions already made.

    For the men lining up for the classic sprint, this was not simply a final chance at a national title. In an Olympic winter, nothing is ever only what it claims to be. The sprint was an audition—not necessarily for Olympic selection, but for relevance. For future start rights. For the ability to say, credibly, that range still exists.

    Sprint qualification, in particular, has a way of stripping sport down to its essentials. No drafting. No hiding. One lap to explain yourself. As has been said all week about sprints, it does not matter how clever you are in the heats if you cannot arrive there in the first place. In Lake Placid, that truth shaped the day from the first starter onward.

    Fin Bailey (UVM) makes his way up the Lake Placid sprint course’s signature climb. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)

    Qualification: where the day declares itself

    Qualification mattered here in a way that went beyond podiums and medals. With sprint start rights in the World Cup largely determined by qualification speed, the men knew exactly what was at stake. If this were a sorting mechanism, it was a blunt one.

    The fastest man through the course was John Schwinghamer, whose time at the top of the board set the early benchmark. But the story quickly widened. Pierre Grall-Johnson followed closely, and then Will Koch, who would soon become central to the day’s most unusual tactical thread, placed third.

    A few seconds farther back sat a cluster of names that told a deeper story: athletes with distance pedigrees, athletes chasing U23 selection, athletes managing fatigue from a long week and still trying to produce speed on demand.

    Among them was Zanden McMullen, who qualified tenth, solid but not dominant. “The qualifier felt a little off,” McMullen admitted. “I didn’t feel smooth and thought I skied poorly through the terrain. I was happy to qualify and have another chance to improve on the day.”

    That, in retrospect, was the quiet warning shot.

    Classic striding versus powerful double poling was one of the key storylines in the men’s Classic Sprint. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)

    A decision made in minutes

    If qualification is the most honest part of sprinting, it is also where improvisation sometimes reveals itself. Koch arrived at the start line with little margin and even less certainty.

    “I was already pretty tired going into the classic sprint,” Koch said. A bonk midway through the 20-kilometer freestyle earlier in the week had drained his reserves, and classic sprint had never been his strength. “With about ten minutes to go before my qualifier, I still couldn’t get my classic skis to kick.”

    The decision that followed was not theoretical. Koch asked his coach to prepare a pair of skate skis — not as a backup, but as a commitment. He reached the start with roughly 90 seconds to spare, hoping that strength alone might be enough to advance.

    Third in the qualifier erased doubt immediately. “When I ended up third, I knew it was the right call,” he said. “I never even tested a classic ski the rest of the day.”

    The gamble would ripple through every round that followed.

    Will Koch (SVSEF) powered through the qualification and heats, double poling on skate skis. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)

    Heats: when fatigue starts to speak

    Classic sprint heats at Mt. Van Hoevenberg reward clarity. The course offers opportunities, but they are conditional. Mistime a move, and the course and competition punish hesitation. Get trapped behind the wrong skis, and speed evaporates.

    Koch’s plan was simple and exhausting: lead early, create space before the climb, and survive long enough for glide to matter again. “If I could crest the climb with the group, my skis would be fast enough to carry me through,” he explained.

    For a time, it worked exactly as intended.

    But others were playing different games.

    Zach Jayne arrived at the sprint with a different set of calculations. Already qualified for U23 Worlds and carrying a narrow SuperTour points lead, his goals were layered. “I wanted to finish strong,” Jayne said. “I also wanted to make the final so I could displace other U23 athletes and help ensure my teammate Max Kluck made the trip.”

    Jayne, Koch, and teammate Carl Rune all opted to double-pole the heats on skate skis, a choice that paid dividends early. “It worked really well in the quarterfinal,” Jayne said. “But as the rounds went on and fatigue built, I was definitely wishing I’d brought a pair of klister skis.”

    That fatigue — cumulative, unrelenting — became the quiet theme of the afternoon.

    Zanden McMullen (APU) showed he had made the right calculations for himself in the final, creating a gap on the large climb, which he was able to maintain on the final downhill. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)

    Trusting kick in uncertain snow

    While some chased glide, Max Kluck made a different bet. His week had been defined by nerves more than novelty. “I was more nervous than I’ve been in years,” Kluck said. “I knew my U23 spot was on the line.”

    The snow tempted experimentation, but Kluck resisted. “I was pretty certain I wanted to stay on classic skis unless the weather took a major turn,” he explained. “I stuck with my gut.”

    The reward came immediately. In the quarterfinals, Kluck ran the climb with confidence, kick biting cleanly while others labored, arms already beginning to pay the price. “I figured I might be able to make double-poling work once,” he said. “But I didn’t think I could personally do it four times.”

    His solution was economy. By trusting his wax and striding more often, Kluck preserved his upper body for the finishing straight — a detail that would matter later.

    UVM’s Fin Bailey was showing he was on form and a threat for the podium throughout the heats, but his final got off to an unlucky start with a broken pole. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)

    The final: legs versus arms

    By the time the final assembly was complete, the calculus was visible even from the sidelines. The men who had double-poled all day carried speed — and fatigue. Those who had relied on kick carried legs.

    McMullen understood the equation precisely. “Going into the final, I knew the few boys that double-poled all day would be tired,” he said. “My plan was to keep them in reach before the final climb and then gap them.”

    Snow conditions had continued to degrade, wind and rain complicating grip and timing. McMullen’s classic skis, however, remained reliable. “Our classic skis felt good,” he said. “I didn’t think there was a need to try and double-pole the race.”

    When the decisive climb arrived, McMullen did not hesitate. He strung together clean transitions, trusted his kick, and separated decisively. “I felt really fresh still at the start of the final,” he said. “I knew I would be able to run away with it.”

    Behind him, the chase unfolded exactly as predicted. Koch’s glide carried him, but the cost of four rounds of double-poling showed. Kluck’s restraint paid dividends, his saved arms helping him close strongly. Jayne fought valiantly through fatigue, his earlier work for teammates already done.

    McMullen crossed the line alone — a national champion not because he had chased novelty, but because he had waited for the moment that mattered.

    Zanden McMullen (APU) comes to the finish of the Classic Sprint with his second national title in as many days at the US Nationals Cross-Country Ski Championship at Mt Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, NY. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)

    What the result actually means

    The men’s classic sprint did not reshape Olympic selection overnight. Sprint specialists were unlikely to be named from Nationals alone. But the race clarified something subtler and perhaps more important.

    It showed who can adapt under stress. Who can make decisions when plans unravel? Who understands that qualification speed opens doors long before medals do?

    For Koch, the day was a revelation. “The classic sprint was a really pleasant surprise to end the week,” he said, even as he acknowledged that broader goals remained unmet.

    For Jayne, consistency mattered more than headlines. “I don’t race to prove people right or wrong,” he said. “I know what I’m capable of.”

    For Kluck, the outcome was tangible. “Securing my U23 spot was the biggest goal of my season,” he said. “Locking it down here feels incredible.”

    And for McMullen, the victory was both affirmation and invitation. “I hope people know now that I’m an all-around skier,” he said. “And I hope the Olympic selection committee knows I have a lot of potential to succeed at the Olympics.”

    Zanden McMullen (APU) first place, Will Koch (SVSEF) second place, and Max Kluck (UU) third place at the US Nationals Cross-Country Ski Championship Classic Sprint at Mt Vanhoevenberg in Lake Placid NY. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)

    A quiet ending, honestly earned

    As the course emptied and the equipment was packed away, Mt. Van Hoevenberg returned to stillness. Another Nationals was complete. Another set of arguments had been made — not loudly, not always cleanly, but honestly.

    Sprint racing, especially in January of an Olympic year, has a way of revealing truths athletes might prefer to delay. Qualification does not negotiate. Fatigue does not compromise. Decisions, once made, echo through every climb and corner that follows.

    On this final day in Lake Placid, the men who listened closely to their bodies, their skis, and the snow underfoot, were the ones who left with something lasting.

     

    RESULTS:

    US Nationals Men’s Classic Sprint Qualification Results

    US Nationals Men’s Classic Sprint Overall Heat Results

     

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    What was truly on display this week at the US Nationals Cross-Country Ski Championship at Mt Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, NY was not only that cross-country skiing is an awesome sport, but the community that embodies it is something worth celebrating. (Photo Nancie Battaglia)
  • A Quiet Argument, Made Loud: The Women’s Classic Sprint at U.S. Nationals

    A Quiet Argument, Made Loud: The Women’s Classic Sprint at U.S. Nationals

    This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription.

    Sofia Pedersen (UU) and Samantha Smith (SVSEF) lead the first quarterfinal out onto the course at the start of the heats. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    On the morning of the women’s classic sprint at the U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships, the quiet around Mt. Van Hoevenberg felt deliberate.

    Not calm — no one was calm by Friday — but restrained. The week had already taken its toll. Distance races had piled fatigue into legs and minds alike, and no one arrived at the sprint believing freshness would be part of the equation. What remained, instead, was clarity: the understanding that in an Olympic winter, the most important racing of the day would happen before the heats ever began.

    “It definitely started the day tired,” Ava Thurston said. “But I was trying to just remind myself that everyone was feeling that way. Most people had raced two, if not three, of the races, and we’re all coming in in a similar place.”

    That recognition — that fatigue was universal — became the baseline. The differentiator would be execution.

    For the women with Olympic aspirations, the classic sprint qualifier was no formality or warm-up. It was the argument itself. The U.S. selection process, quietly but decisively, has elevated qualification speed to the top of the sprint hierarchy. Heats matter, but only if you earn the right to be in them. On Friday in Lake Placid, no one confused the order of importance.

    Sofia Pedersen (UU) and Samantha Smith (SVSEF) get the action started in the quarterfinals. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    Carrying the Week

    By the time the women clipped in for qualification, the week was already present in their legs.

    After Thursday’s 20-kilometer race, Sammantha Smith felt that accumulation acutely — and honestly. “After the 20 k, I was definitely feeling the fatigue and accumulation of all the racing throughout the week,” she said. “I know I’m more of a sprinter, but obviously, I was still hoping to perform well in the 20k, so I was not thrilled with the race.”

    Rather than letting that disappointment linger, Smith pivoted quickly. “I tried to quickly put it behind me and get ready for some classic sprinting,” she said. “My goal for the day was to focus on skiing a clean qualifier and ski to my strengths.”

    Hailey Swirbul arrived at the start line with similar fatigue — and a similar refusal to let it define the day. “Today, I definitely felt a little tired this morning warming up compared to the other races after a hard 20 k effort,” she said. “But so was everybody else dealing with that same.”

    For Swirbul, there was anticipation as well. “I was really excited to get to finish this week off with a classic race,” she said. “I just love classic skiing. I think it’s such an art, and I really appreciate the finesse that is needed to be able to make skis kick well.”

    Thurston framed the day with a different emphasis — joy rather than pressure. “It had been a great week so far,” she said, “so I was excited to get to go fast and run up that big hill.”

    Different approaches, same reality: the sprint would reveal who could still make good decisions under fatigue.

    Samantha Smith (SVSEF) commanded the Classic Sprint day from start to finish just like she had done in the Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    Qualification: Where the Day Was Decided

    When the women dropped into the qualifier, the course made its judgment quickly and without theatrics.

    Smith’s run stood apart immediately. She won the qualification by more than six seconds — not by forcing the issue, but by skiing exactly the race she had planned. “It was my first classic sprint of the year, so I didn’t really have too many expectations,” she said. “But I was hoping for a strong result.”

    What made the result significant wasn’t just the margin — it was the trajectory behind it. “Up until last season, I think there was a noticeable gap between my skate and classic sprinting,” Smith explained. “But the last few years I’ve really prioritized working on getting my classic sprint to a place I’m happy with.”

    That work showed. In an Olympic winter, qualification speed isn’t just about advancing — it’s about relevance. Smith’s time didn’t merely put her safely through; it reframed the sprint conversation.

    Behind her, two performances raised equally important questions.

    Swirbul and Thurston — both known primarily for their distance strength — delivered qualification runs that demanded attention. In a format that strips away drafting, tactics, and protection, they showed they belonged in the sprint conversation on pure speed.

    “I didn’t set out to make a statement this week,” Swirbul said. “I just wanted to show up and try to race my best and see where that landed me.”

    For selectors, where it landed mattered.

    Quarterfinal 4 trying to find their space and line around the U-turn on the sprint course in Lake Placid. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    A Day That Wouldn’t Sit Still

    As the day progressed, conditions refused to settle. Snow softened. Moisture crept in. Wind shifted. Ski choices that worked in the morning became liabilities by afternoon.

    “The waxing team today was absolute heroes,” Swirbul said. “They were out until the wee hours of the morning, waxing late last night and woke up for a super early morning today for a classic day with really gnarly conditions.”

    Adaptability became a skill equal to speed. “I raced on totally different skis from the qualifier to the heats,” Swirbul said. “And even in the heats, I had a couple of changes to my kick in between the rounds because our conditions were continuing to change.”

    Smith faced the same puzzle. “In my quarter and semi-final I was actually icing up a bit and too grabby on kick as the snow got wetter,” she said. “My coaches ended up stripping a lot of the kick to bring back some of the glide for the final.”

    The goal, she explained, was precision rather than excess. “The main thing was to try to have just enough kick to get up the hills but not so much that it was draggy for the double pole or downhills.”

    Thurston made a strategic choice early — prioritizing glide over grip. “I ended up going with the pair that had a little more glide for the downhill finish,” she said, “just because I wanted to be able to hang with people rather than having that extra kick on the hill.”

    Three athletes, three solutions, same underlying demand: bend, don’t break.

    Lauren Jortberg (CNEPH)leads semi-final 1 out of the starting stretch. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    Heats: Confirmation, Not Reinvention

    By the time the heats began, the hierarchy established in qualification largely held — and that, too, carried meaning.

    Smith moved through the rounds with patience and control, never forcing a moment unnecessarily. Swirbul sharpened as the day progressed, her adjustments paying dividends. Thurston continued to ski within herself, staying connected and opportunistic.

    For Thurston, the day reinforced something larger than a single result. “What it kind of said to me was that I can be really consistent,” she said, “and I’m also a strong all-around skier.”

    That consistency — across multiple races, formats, and conditions — is currency in an Olympic year.

    The women’s final gets started on the last day of racing at the 2026 US National Cross-Country Ski Championships at Mt Van Hoevenberg. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    The Final: Execution, Not Emotion

    The women’s final unfolded cleanly and decisively.

    Smith took control early, extending her advantage where momentum mattered most. The ski changes made before the final were immediately evident. She crossed the line as U.S. National Champion in the classic sprint, completing a sweep of the week’s sprint events.

    Behind her, Swirbul claimed second, a reward for adaptability and composure. Thurston rounded out the podium, another affirmation of her ability to race fast across disciplines.

    For Smith, the result was about more than placement. “I hope people see that I love to race,” she said. “I love to compete and push myself, and I always leave everything I have out on the course.”

    Everyone was deserving of a helping hand up after a full week of racing at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships at Mt Van Hoevenberg. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    What the Race Clarified

    Nationals does not select Olympic teams outright, but it argues persuasively — and the women’s classic sprint in Lake Placid made its case clearly.

    Smith’s qualification speed, combined with her technical development in the classic sprint, strengthened her position at precisely the right moment. Swirbul’s performance underscored versatility and poise under changing conditions. Thurston’s podium reinforced consistency and all-around strength.

    “I’m really happy with how this week went,” Swirbul said. “And looking forward to figuring out where the rest of the season goes.”

    Thurston echoed that momentum. “This week was so, so awesome,” she said. “I’m excited to keep racing.”

    The arguments weren’t loud. They didn’t need to be. On a tired Friday at Mt. Van Hoevenberg, they were made the way Olympic cases often are — quietly, cleanly, and against the clock.

     

    RESULTS:

    US Nationals Women’s Classic Sprint Qualification Results

    US Nationals Women’s Classic Sprint Overall Heat Results

     

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    The women’s Classic Sprint podium, including Samantha Smith (SVSEF) in first, Hailey Swirbul (APU) in third, and Ava Thurston (Dartmouth) in third at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships at Mt Van Hoevenberg. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
  • A Narrow Door, Held Open: The Men’s 20 k Freestyle at U.S. Nationals

    A Narrow Door, Held Open: The Men’s 20 k Freestyle at U.S. Nationals

    This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription.

    The start of the US National Cross-Country Ski Championship Men’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    There are moments in endurance sport when the noise falls away—not because the stakes are small, but because they are too large to announce themselves loudly. The men who gathered on the start line at Mount Van Hoevenberg on Thursday afternoon understood that kind of quiet. The banners said US National Championships. The calendar said 20 k Freestyle Mass Start. The course—four laps of five kilometers, stitched together by long climbs and fast descents—said this will be honest. But the silence said Olympics!

    For much of the week in Lake Placid, honesty had come quickly. The 10 k classic individual start exposed margins. The sprint laid bare specialization. By the time the men lined up for the 20 k Freestyle Mass Start, the argument had narrowed. There were medals to be won, yes, but more importantly, there were questions still unresolved about who might fit through the narrowing door of Olympic selection.

    For Zanden McMullen, the stakes were explicit. “Today’s race was a ‘one shot, one opportunity’ type of race for me,” he said later. He knew that anything short of a win would leave his Olympic case incomplete. That knowledge sat heavily over the first kilometers—not as panic, but as pressure carefully managed.

    What followed was not a race that fractured early or declared itself with theatrics. Instead, it unfolded as a study in restraint.

    A large, shifting group stayed at the front early on in the race. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    A Race That Refused to Break

    From the opening lap, the field behaved in a way that confounded expectations. In contrast to the women’s race earlier in the day, no decisive break formed. Attacks surfaced briefly—on climbs, into transitions—but were quickly absorbed by the physics of the course. Downhills regrouped the field. Drafting mattered. The snow was fast, the air cold enough to preserve glide, and separation proved expensive.

    John Steel Hagenbuch allowed himself to drift deep into the pack early—sometimes close to twentieth—an approach that looked counterintuitive given both his fitness and his history on the course. It was neither indecision nor passivity. “I was just staying relaxed and letting people work out some energy that I knew wasn’t going to result in any meaningful gain,” he explained. “Racing in the U.S. is very different than racing on the World Cup, and being able to relax at the start of a mass start race is perhaps the best example of that.”

    Zanden McMullen (APU) and his APU teammates Hunter Wonders (#208) and Luke Jager (#204). (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    The early splits reflected this tension. Leaders rotated through the front, but gaps rarely exceeded a handful of seconds. By the midpoint of the race, the field had thinned not through violence but through attrition—skiers falling off the back as the pace remained relentlessly honest.

    McMullen, meanwhile, adhered to a plan that demanded patience. “My race strategy was to conserve as much energy as possible,” he said. “Every time a move was made, I made sure to match it calmly but decisively.” By the second lap, he sensed the race’s texture changing. The pack stretched. Breathing deepened. The small inefficiencies of earlier surges began to show.

    Zach Jayne, consistently present near the front group, felt that tension acutely. “Holding position is always difficult,” he said. “So being aware while racing is important.” In a race defined by proximity rather than separation, awareness became a skill as valuable as strength.

    Olivier Leveille (CNEPH), John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth), Zanden McMullen (APU), Jakob Elias Moch (CU), and Brian Bushey (Craftsbury) (l -r). (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    Decisions Not Taken

    If the race hinged on a single moment, it may have been defined instead by two moments when nothing happened.

    Hagenbuch identified them clearly. The first came at the start of the third lap, at the base of the long climb—a place where he has both won and lost races before. “Looking back at it now,” he said, “the one that makes me wonder the most is the decision to not attack on the third lap.” His reasoning was sound. The conditions were fast. The field regrouped quickly on descents. “In order to get away, you would have to be very fit and have the best skis in the race,” he said. Unsure that any gap would hold, he chose restraint.

    Mons Melbye (UU) leads Zanden McMullen (APU) and John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth), and Jakob Elias Moch (CU) (r – l) down the final downhill into the stadium. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    The second moment arrived on the final sprint climb before the descent into the stadium. Again, Hagenbuch assessed the cost-benefit. He believed he could crest first—but likely only to be swallowed by the draft. “As such, I decided to follow Zanden over the top,” he said. “I think this was the correct thing to do tactically.”

    That calculus—when to go, when to wait—defined the race for several athletes. McMullen made the same choice from the opposite perspective. “There was no need to do anything rash,” he said. “Just go out and race hard and smart.”

    The result was a front group of four that arrived at the final kilometer together, legs full but not shattered, tension compressed into seconds.

    Zanden McMullen (APU) and John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth) follow Jakob Elias Moch (CU) near the end of the race. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    The Finish

    As the leaders dropped off the final descent and into the stadium, the race became what everyone suspected it would be: a matter of position, timing, and nerve.

    McMullen entered the final stretch calm by design. “During the final lap, I knew it would come down to the final meters,” he said, “and I just made sure to relax as much as I could.”

    Hagenbuch, attempting to execute his finishing move, found the narrow margins of mass-start racing unforgiving. “Getting around Jakob was the crux move of the finishing maneuver I was trying to execute,” he said. “And there just wasn’t enough room for me to come around.” Pushed slightly wide through the final sweeping corner, he lost the speed he needed. “That’s racing,” he added. “It didn’t pan out, but it doesn’t always.”

    McMullen surged cleanly to the line, stopping the clock at 47:37.0. The University of Utah’s Mons Melby was 7-tenths of a second behind, with Hagenbuch a second from the win for third. Behind them, the rest of the field streamed in—gaps small, order consequential.

    Zanden McMullen (APU), John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth), and Jakob Elias Moch (CU) — with Mons Melbye (UU) off camera — come down the finish stretch. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    What the Race Revealed

    On paper, the result was simple: a national champion crowned. In context, it was anything but.

    For McMullen, the victory represented survival as much as success. “The Olympic selection has definitely been looming over my head all week,” he admitted. The stress was real. So was the clarity. He did what he could do.

    For Hagenbuch, the outcome carried both frustration and resolve. “I still have faith that there is a path for me to the Olympics,” he said, while acknowledging that the decision now sits elsewhere. He stood by his choice to skip the Tour de Ski, citing health and long-term belief. It was not a plea, but a statement of readiness.

    Zach Jayne, who again placed himself among the front contenders, viewed the week through a longer lens. “If you look at my results a year ago or two, I was barely a name in the competitive field,” he said. Improvement, for him, is cumulative. “Overall development is just as important to me as any given race.”

    The national podium for the US National Cross-Country Ski Championship Men’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start with Zanden McMullen (APU) first, John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth) second, and Zach Jayne (UU) third. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    A Door, Not Yet Closed

    National championships often promise clarity. This one offered something subtler: differentiation without finality. The men’s 20 k freestyle did not decide everything, but it sharpened the picture. It showed who could manage pressure, who could read a race, who could wait—and who could finish.

    In an Olympic winter, those qualities matter as much as any single result.

    As the stadium emptied and the snow settled back into quiet, the door to Milan–Cortina did not swing wide. But for one, and hopefully two skiers, it remained open, narrow, demanding, and earned.

     

    RESULTS:

    US Nationals Men’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start

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    The feed zone is always full of chaos and excitement during a mass start. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
  • Where the Race Breaks Open: Women’s 20 k Freestyle at U.S. Nationals

    Where the Race Breaks Open: Women’s 20 k Freestyle at U.S. Nationals

    This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers.  If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription.  

    Traffic was thick at the beginning of the US National Cross-Country Ski Championship Women’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start in Lake Placid, NY. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    There is a particular moment in a long mass start when the race quietly declares what it will be. It does not arrive with a surge, a crash, or even a decisive move. It arrives when the pack thins just enough that the edges of the course begin to matter—when skis no longer overlap cleanly, when passing requires intention, and when each athlete realizes—often simultaneously—that this is no longer a collective undertaking.

    At Mt. Van Hoevenberg, that moment came early.

    The women’s 20-kilometer freestyle mass start at the 2026 U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships unfolded under conditions that rewarded clarity and punished hesitation. The course was wide in places, narrow in consequence. Fresh snow lined the edges, slower and heavier than the main track, turning every attempt to move forward into a calculation of cost. The pace at the front was honest from the gun—fast enough to string the field out, fast enough to strip away the illusion that patience alone would bring opportunity.

    In an Olympic winter, Nationals rarely exist in isolation. They are arguments as much as races, each result carrying the quiet weight of future conversations. But on this morning, before selection scenarios and season arcs could intrude, the race itself demanded attention. Four laps. Twenty kilometers. A course that climbs insistently and asks athletes to be precise even when tired.

    What followed was not one story, but several—layered, intersecting, and revealing.

    Colorado’s Tilde Bångman did much of the work at the front of the Women’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start in Lake Placid, NY. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    The Fast Start That Changed Everything

    From near the front, the race immediately took on the shape many expected. Kendall Kramer, eager to avoid the kind of chaos that can derail a mass start before it has truly begun, made her intentions clear.

    “I wanted to go out fast because I didn’t want any funny business—colliding or breaking equipment,” Kramer said later. “I was super looking forward to being in the front of a mass start after being caught in the back on World Cups.”

    For Kramer, the early pace felt familiar rather than reckless. World Cups, she noted, often begin faster than domestic races, and the instinct to establish position early has become second nature. The speed was assertive but manageable. She felt fit, capable, present.

    Behind her, the effect was immediate. The field stretched, then fractured, then reorganized into smaller, more intentional units. For athletes starting deeper in the field, this stringing-out created both opportunity and pressure.

    Novie McCabe, starting from bib 26, felt the opening kilometers open rather than close.

    “My plan for the start was just to stay relaxed and try to work my way up,” she said. “It honestly ended up being easier than expected because the front girls took it out so fast. It was very strung out, and there was lots of room to move around.”

    Within minutes, McCabe had navigated cleanly into the front group. What followed was less about advancing and more about survival.

    “I got to the front pack about three minutes into the race,” she said. “So I spent most of it there just trying to hang on for as long as I could—and ended up having it in me to hang till the end.”

    That phrase—hang on—would recur in different forms throughout the day, taking on slightly different meanings depending on where each skier found herself in the race.

    Ava Thurston (#8 – Dartmouth) couldn’t quite hang on to the lead group of three, but eventually skied with Hailey Swirbul (#67 – APU) and Haley Brewster (#46 – UVM) before finishing fourth overall and third-place American. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    When the Front Pulls Away

    Not everyone who tested the front pace could stay there.

    Late in the first lap, Ava Thurston made her own attempt to bridge. She came close enough to feel the rhythm of the leaders, close enough to understand the cost.

    “I tried to get back onto the front group, and I got pretty close,” Thurston said. “But I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to match their pace.”

    The realization came with consequences. For a brief stretch, she found herself skiing alone—a dangerous place in a mass start, especially early, when gaps can grow quietly and decisively.

    “That was where I did have a little bit of that panic,” she admitted.

    The panic did not last. Company arrived in the form of Hailey Swirbul and Haley Brewster, and with it, perspective.

    “Once I was skiing with them, I was kind of just thinking, ‘This is a good group. I can stay with these guys,’” Thurston said.

    From there, her race became less about chasing what was ahead and more about managing what was happening around her. She tucked in, matched surges, and responded quickly to small separations before they became something larger.

    “There were a couple of times where I would fall off the pack just a little bit,” she said. “Each time, I worked hard to get right back on before letting it be a big gap. I was really stoked on that.”

    On a course like Van Hoevenberg—four laps of sustained uphill skating—those moments add up. Fitness is exposed repeatedly, not all at once. For Thurston, the race offered reassurance.

    “This was the first race longer than 10k I’d done this year, and the first mass start that wasn’t a sprint,” she said. “It was a really good indicator that my fitness is there. It’s hard to fake anything on this course.”

    She would finish fourth, clearly separated from the podium trio but equally clear of the deeper chase—an honest result in a demanding field.

    With higher FIS points from not racing the past two seasons, Hailey Swirbul (#67 – APU) needed to ski through a lot of traffic during the early kilometers, but eventually found herself in the chase pack. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    Racing From the Back Without Racing Small

    While the front and mid-pack sorted themselves, Hailey Swirbul was running an entirely different race.

    Starting from bib 67, she entered the day knowing she would need to be deliberate.

    “I didn’t even realize I would be seated so far back until the start list came out,” she said. “Obviously, I would be, because my FIS points aren’t low at this point—but it was an experience.”

    The challenge was not simply moving forward. It was how to do so without paying too steep a price.

    “The edges of the course had fresh snow on them,” Swirbul explained. “It was much slower, and a much higher energy expenditure to get around people that way.”

    Instead of forcing passes, she waited. Instead of locking into the pace of whatever group surrounded her at a given moment, she kept her attention forward.

    “I almost approached the first couple laps like an individual start,” she said. “It’s really easy to lock into the group you’re around and forget about the people ahead of you.”

    Women’s racing, she noted, often begins with a fast, destabilizing surge—a period where the goal is simply to hang on long enough for things to settle.

    “That’s exactly what happened today,” she said. “The leaders go fast, string it out, and then the real race starts again.”

    For Swirbul, the balance was constant: advancing through traffic while respecting the race’s length.

    “A 20k is a long race,” she said. “You can’t really pay for it.”

    Though she never bridged to the front trio, Swirbul finished fifth—solidly clear of the next wave behind her—and left the course satisfied with her execution and proud of the broader team effort.

    “Our coach absolutely crushed it with skis and feeds,” she said. “It was a good day to be APU.”

    Novie McCabe (APU) maintained contact on the uphills and used the downhills to close the small gaps to Tilde Bångman (CU) at the front of the race. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    The Margins at the Front

    At the sharp end, the race narrowed to a familiar dynamic: strength, speed, and patience under pressure.

    As the kilometers mounted, Tilde Bångman began to apply pressure on the climbs, testing the group’s elasticity. By mid-race, the front had distilled to three: Bångman, McCabe, and Kramer. The chase group behind them was no longer within striking distance, and the podium places would be decided among those three alone.

    McCabe felt the pressure immediately.

    “In the last few kilometers, Tilde was skiing super strong and still really pushing the pace,” she said. “She would gap me a little bit on some of the hills.”

    Each gap mattered. Each closure required confidence—in skis, in timing, and in restraint.

    “I had some super good skis, so I was able to glide back up to her,” McCabe said.

    The plan crystallized: stay attached through the final hill, try once to make a move, and if that failed, save everything for the finish.

    “I tried to get a gap on the last hill, which didn’t quite work,” she said. “So I tried one last time at the finish.”

    It was enough.

    McCabe crossed the line first, securing the national title after a race built not on constant aggression, but on measured commitment. The emotion that surfaced surprised even her.

    “I think when I crossed the line, I mostly just felt super happy to be back racing and feeling like myself,” she said.

    The win mattered. So did what it represented.

    “Going into this week, I wasn’t sure it was the best idea for me to race frequently this season,” she said. “Now I have a lot more confidence that I can race—and maybe more importantly, recover from racing.”

    In an Olympic year, that distinction is not trivial.

    The lead pack and eventual overall podium with Kendall Kramer (APU), Tilde Bångman (CU), and Novie McCabe (APU) (l – r). (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    Kramer’s Race: Control Without Regret

    For Kendall Kramer, the separation late in the race came not through fitness, but friction.

    “My skis slowed down as they went,” she said. “They started to feel sticky—like I skied through too much Gatorade or something.”

    The effect was most pronounced on the downhills, where speed should have come freely.

    “The girls had to push my poles to speed me up to keep together,” she said. “Eventually, they could just gap on all the downhills.”

    Once the gap formed, Kramer shifted her focus from contesting the win to finishing the race well.

    “I’m happy to maintain my place and feel good,” she said. “I can’t complain.”

    What she wanted from the race, she explained, was not chaos or last-minute risk, but sustained pressure in a small group.

    “I wanted a small pack where we could test at every little bit,” she said, “as opposed to leaving it to a sprint or taking risks at a time like this.”

    She finished third, completing the podium, and left Lake Placid without repeating her national title—but with confirmation that mattered just as much.

    “I felt fit and totally capable today,” she said. “I didn’t feel bad feelings.”

    Novie McCabe (APU) managed to put a small gap on teammate Kendall Kramer to get away with Tilde Bångman (CU) and eventually ski to the national title in the finish stretch. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    What the Race Revealed

    By the time the women completed their fourth lap, the story of the day was no longer about who surged when, but about how each athlete managed the same course differently—and honestly.

    McCabe raced with restraint until she no longer needed to. Kramer raced with intent and accepted the margins. Thurston learned, adjusted, and confirmed her distance fitness. Swirbul navigated from deep in the field with patience and clarity.

    None of those narratives exists in isolation. Together, they form a portrait of a championship race that did what the best distance races always do: expose truth without exaggeration.

    At U.S. Nationals, the women did not simply ski 20 kilometers. They negotiated space, managed doubt, trusted preparation, and tested belief.

    In an Olympic winter, those are not side effects.

    They are the point.

    The national podium for the US National Cross-Country Ski Championship Women’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start with Novie McCabe (APU) first, Kendall Kramer (APU) second, and Ava Thurston (Dartmouth) third. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

     

    RESULTS:

    US Nationals Women’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start

     

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    The overall podium for the US National Cross-Country Ski Championship Women’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start with Novie McCabe (APU) first, Tilde Bångman (CU) second, and Kendall Kramer (APU) third. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
  • Smith and Melbye Win U.S. Nationals Freestyle Sprint as Qualification Shapes the Day

    Smith and Melbye Win U.S. Nationals Freestyle Sprint as Qualification Shapes the Day

    This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers.  If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription.  

    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.

     

    RESULTS:

    US Nationals Freestyle Sprint Qualification Men
    US Nationals Freestyle Sprint Qualification Women
    US Nationals Freestyle Sprint Heats Women
    US Nationals Freestyle Sprint Heats Men
    US Nationals Freestyle Sprint Heats Junior Women
    US Nationals Freestyle Sprint Heats Junior Men

     

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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)
  • Where the Margins Speak: U.S. Nationals Opens with Questions, Not Answers

    Where the Margins Speak: U.S. Nationals Opens with Questions, Not Answers

    This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers.  If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription.  

    The US National Championships got started yesterday with the 10 k Classic Individual Start in Lake Placid, NY.  Hunter Wonders (#369 – APU) took top honors in the men’s race.  (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    On a January afternoon in Lake Placid, Mt. Van Hoevenberg did what it has always done best: it asked skiers to be honest.

    The 10-kilometer classic individual start is not a format that rewards theater. It doesn’t care how good you looked in warm-up, how confident you sounded the night before, or how convincing your season-long narrative might be. It rewards pacing that’s brave but not reckless, technique that doesn’t unravel under strain, and the ability to keep making good decisions when your legs are trying to renegotiate the terms of the day.

    This year, the U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships opened with that race—two laps on the 5-kilometer loop—and the timing was no accident. In an Olympic winter, Nationals is never just Nationals. It’s an argument. It’s a week where results don’t merely “count,” they accumulate, and the accumulation becomes the story that follows athletes into selection meetings, petitions, and—if all goes right—onto a plane headed for Italy.

    Men’s 10 k Classic Individual Start Results

    Women’s 10 k Classic Individual Start Results

    Will Koch (SVSEF) on his way to 8th place on the day. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    The Course: Where You Can’t Afford to “Blow Up”

    The Van Hoevenberg course is famous for being “fair,” but fairness in skiing is rarely gentle. The climbs arrive in layered sequences—sections where you can press, sections where you can survive, sections where you can lose seconds simply by being a fraction late to a gear change. There are places to win time, and places where you simply try not to hemorrhage it.

    Hunter Wonders described the central problem precisely after the finish:

    “It has some big hills. And I really think that in this course you can’t afford to blow up. If you blow up, you’re just going to bleed so much time.”

    That idea—bleeding time—was the hidden refrain of the day. Not because athletes were exploding spectacularly, but because this loop punishes any lapse in restraint. It is a course that rewards a mind that stays intact.

    Corbin Carpenter (UAA) on his way to 10th place in the 10 k Classic at US Nationals. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    Men’s Race: Seconds as a Selection Language

    At the front of the men’s race, the margins compressed into something almost absurd: a national title decided in a space so small it could be measured in one imperfect corner, one extra step of herringbone, one pole that slips just slightly at the wrong moment.

    Hunter Wonders won the men’s 10 k Classic National Championship. Behind him, the podium fight came down to an almost unnerving closeness. The story wasn’t simply that the race was fast; it was that it was tight—tight enough to turn pacing into the defining skill.

    Wonders’ post-race reflection didn’t sound like someone who had “controlled” the race so much as someone who had managed it correctly, which is often the same thing in interval start racing:

    “Yeah. So going through it never really felt like it was my day. I knew it was going to be a competitive one, and I knew that it would just come to good skis, good feelings in the body, good pacing, and I’m just really happy that I was able to pull it off.”

    He returned to pacing again, emphasizing that his strategy wasn’t about heroics, but about avoiding the one mistake that the Van Hoevenberg loop will magnify:

    “I think pacing was the biggest challenge for me today… So I was trying to take it out hot to where I could be competitive but not blow myself up.”

    What made Wonders’ win especially convincing was how he described staying committed to his plan and then finishing with intent when the splits told him the race was available:

    “I never really changed my race plan mid-race. But I did get some good splits, especially near the end, so I just tried to finish as hard as I could.”

    And then, because it’s 2026 and everyone knows what this week represents, he said the part that matters most:

    “And then, of course, U.S. Nationals does carry some heavy weight in an Olympic year. And I’ve been thinking about this race since the races in Anchorage ended, so I’m just really happy to have it behind me.”

    He wasn’t pretending the pressure isn’t real:

    “I definitely felt the pressure, and I’m going to continue to feel the pressure throughout the rest of this Nationals. But I think I have good momentum going, and I have good confidence. I know that I’m in shape, and everything else just kind of hopefully falls into place over the next week.”

    The finish-line truth of the men’s race is that it created a kind of selection tension that will hang over the rest of the week: the top contenders weren’t separated by a narrative gap. They were separated by seconds.

    Luke Jager, who finished second, captured what that tightness means on this course and in this moment:

    “Yeah, crazy how close the times were! The course is cool because there are so many different gears in the climb that people can all have different focus spots and still end up so close together at the finish line. It is really cool, fair racing like that.”

    That line—different focus spots, same finish—explains why the top of the results can look like a near-tie without being random. You can ski this course well in different ways. But you still have to ski it well.

    Jager also spoke directly to the Olympic subtext without overplaying it:

    “I’m not naive enough to say that the Olympics aren’t on all of our minds, but I’m also really having fun just trying to do my best and working to solve the puzzle of how to perform on any given day. Italy would be sweet, but I’m super thankful for this opportunity to even be feeling that pressure at all. It’s been fun to have such a big challenge.”

    And then the warning embedded in the closeness:

    “The close times just show me that you can’t take anything for granted, and each race could be someone else’s day. Fun to have to try and be as dialed and prepared as you can every day when the stakes are high.”

    In other words, this wasn’t a day that “settled” anything. It made the next races more consequential.

    Men — Top 10 (10 km Classic Individual Start)

    1. Hunter Wonders — APU — 25:28.8
    2. Luke Jager — APU — 25:30.2
    3. Olivier Leveille — Orford – CNEPH — 25:30.8
    4. Zachary Jayne — University of Utah — 25:31.2
    5. John Steel Hagenbuch — DAR — 25:35.6
    6. Zanden McMullen — APU — 25:36.4
    7. Mons Melbye — University of Utah — 25:55.3
    8. Will Koch — SVSEF — 25:58.1
    9. Brian Bushey — Craftsbury — 26:00.1
    10. Corbin Carpenter — UAA — 26:01.3

    Men’s 10 k Classic Individual Start: Complete Results

    Hailey Swirbul (APU) on her way to a national title in the 10 k Classic at US Nationals in Lake Placid. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    Women’s Race: Swirbul’s Return, and a Course That Doesn’t Flatter Anyone

    If the men’s race was defined by a razor-thin margin, the women’s race had a different feel: not less intense, but shaped by a performance at the front that felt like a statement. And the words that followed from the winner did not sound like someone who had stumbled into a good day; they sounded like someone who had been building toward a day like this for a long time.

    Hailey Swirbul framed her win as the visible outcome of a longer experiment:

    “Winning this race felt like finally getting to watch the outcome of a long experiment unfold! I’ve wanted to approach this season from a place of curiosity to see if I can get fitness and strength back after a 2.5-year hiatus. It has felt so rewarding to get stronger and remember how it feels to race and go hard again.”

    She described the way racing itself can re-teach an athlete what “hard” feels like:

    “Each race or hard interval session reminds me what it feels like a little bit more.”

    And then she said what almost everyone in the finish area seemed to be thinking, whether they admitted it or not:

    “This course is legit. I didn’t hear the words ‘I felt good out there!’ come out of a single person’s mouth! It was a battle of self against hill.”

    That sentence carries the whole day inside it: not a battle against other people, exactly, but against the course’s capacity to strip away pretense.

    Hailey Swirbul (APU) charges up one of the many climbs on that Lake Placid course behind Virginia Cobb (#120 – DAR) and Marit Flora (#76 – UAA). (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    Swirbul’s race plan—at least as she described it—was deeply personal in its logic. Not a copy of someone else’s pacing, not a response to what she imagined others were doing, but an attempt to ski in a way that matched her strengths:

    “I tried to ski true to myself. I wanted to use momentum and my own body weight the most effectively I could to get around that course as fast as I could- regardless of how the pacing looked for others.”

    And because it’s an Olympic year, she made the subtext explicit:

    “I have my eyes on an Olympic Team spot, and I’m going to continue to fight for it until the team is officially named. I’m not thinking beyond this week of racing here at Nationals. One step at a time, staying present…”

    Then the line that reminds you why athletes keep doing this:

    “…and enjoying getting to live this life and see so many people from old racing days— it’s a good life.”

    Women — Top 5 (10 km Classic Individual Start)

    1. Hailey Swirbul — APU — 28:42.5
    2. Erica Lavén — University of Utah — 29:14.4
    3. Tilde Bångman — University of Colorado — 29:23.9
    4. Novie McCabe — APU — 29:26.1
    5. Samantha Smith — SVSEF — 29:47.3
    6. Ava Thurston — DAR — 29:48.8
    7. Rosie Fordham — UAF — 29:56.7
    8. Kendall Kramer — APU — 30:02.7
    9. Renae Anderson — APU — 30:14.2
    10. Alayna Sonnesyn — Team Birkie — 30:16.0

    Women’s 10 k Classic Individual Start: Complete Results

     

    McCabe: Process as a Way Through Uncertainty

    Novie McCabe’s post-race comments carried a tone that felt especially relevant to this week: gratitude, yes—but also a clear-eyed description of how fragile a season can feel, and how an athlete can build stability by focusing on what can be controlled.

    “It meant a lot to be starting today for sure! I think that being a bit unsure of whether I’d be starting these races made me feel pretty grateful for the opportunity to go out there and give it my best today.”

    She described the emotional mix honestly:

    “There were, of course, lots of doubts and some nerves going in as well, but I really tried to just enjoy the skiing and made that my main goal going into it.”

    And she emphasized that conditions and course feel matter—not as excuses, but as context:

    “The conditions were insanely nice today, which helped, and this course is one of my favorites!”

    On pacing, McCabe described a strategy rooted in self-knowledge:

    “Honestly, I kinda just went out as hard as I could within reason, and tried to relax and hold onto it. I know the splits don’t really make it look that way, haha, but I am not the fastest starter, so it is usually best for me to go out at what feels like a pretty hard pace.”

    Then she explained the architecture of her day: not results goals, but process goals. She made a point that’s easy to dismiss until you remember what an Olympic week does to people:

    “Being focused on process goals going into a race really helps me develop a framework for success.”

    She listed those goals with specificity—how she wanted to feel, what she wanted to focus on, what she wanted her mind to do when discomfort arrived:

    “…going out hard but comfortable and trying to hold it, skiing well (not skiing hard), be the focus of the day, keeping up the positive self-talk, and finding the good and noticing what is going well throughout the race.”

    And on Olympic pressure, she offered a perspective that will sound familiar to anyone who has ever had a season disrupted by health or inconsistency:

    “I think it has honestly helped me out in terms of handling self-imposed Olympic qualification pressure to not have had the best lead up and be pretty unsure of what I would be doing as far as racing goes this year…”

    She described her focus as narrower—day by day—because it has to be:

    “…it has taken some of my focus off of results… It has just kind of led to an approach where I take it day by day, and don’t really think much further into the future than that.”

    That isn’t resignation. It’s an operating system. And it’s one that often works, especially on a course where you can lose time in the exact moment you start racing the future instead of the hill in front of you.

    Rosie Fordham (UAF) leaving it all on the course on her way to 7th place overall. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    Samantha Smith: A Double Life and a Very Real Result

    Samantha Smith’s presence near the top of the women’s results came with a storyline that’s unusual even in American ski racing: balancing elite cross-country skiing with Division I soccer at Stanford, and arriving at the heart of ski season off a long NCAA tournament run.

    She spoke about the short transition plainly:

    “Yes, that’s correct, that our soccer team’s long run into the NCAA tournament has made for a much shorter transition to the season. I’ve only been on snow for a few weeks, so I know my ski fitness is improving every day.”

    She described the emotional carryover of playing for a national title—how it can become fuel rather than a distraction:

    “Playing in the National Championship was an amazing experience—we were so close to winning it all. It was a tough way to end such a great season. I’m taking that fire from our final game and pouring it into my skiing.”

    And she framed her path as something she’s embracing, not defending:

    “I know my path is different from others, but I’m doing what I love, and I think there’s a lot to be said for staying true to that. I’m trying to take everything step by step, live in the moment, and focus on what I can control!”

    On the scrutiny that comes with missing ski events earlier in the season, she emphasized the lessons she’s drawn from doing two sports seriously:

    “…for me, I feel like there’s actually a lot I can pull from the two sports and use it to my advantage.”

    She described last year as a “trial year” and explained how she’s adjusted:

    “I needed that test phase to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. I made some adjustments this year in training, switching things up a bit, and I feel like that’s helped me a lot going into this season.”

    She credited Braden Becker for helping with training and coaching through the fall:

    “I owe a huge thank you to Braden Becker, a retired skier, who’s now a grad student at Stanford. He helped me a lot with training this fall, and it honestly made a world of difference…”

    And then she returned to the mental challenge of this week—high stakes, lots of uncontrollables—and the philosophy that keeps an athlete from spiraling:

    “…I’m just trying to focus on what I can control—my attitude and effort.”

    Finally, she addressed the question of what a distance result might “say” about her:

    “I was happy with today’s result… I think today’s race was a good indication of my trajectory for the rest of the week and the rest of the season.”

    And she framed versatility—distance and sprint—as part of the argument she wants to make this winter:

    “…hopefully showcase some of my versatility in different distances and disciplines, which I think can be important for big competitions like the Olympics.”

    Alayna Sonnesyn (Team Birkie) on her way to 10th place overall. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)

    Why This Week Matters So Much

    For the men, the arithmetic of Olympic selection is already partly written—and partly unresolved. At present, the United States is allotted seven men’s quota spots for the Olympic team, with the possibility that an eighth could roll down following this weekend’s World Cup races in Oberhof, Germany. That uncertainty is where much of the tension at U.S. Nationals resides.

    It is also where most of the speculation comes from—so take it for what it is, informed but unofficial. The six American men who recently raced the Tour de Ski appear, by any reasonable reading of the criteria, to be on solid ground. Each currently ranks in the top 45 on the FIS World Cup sprint and distance overall lists, the threshold set by the US Ski Team that meets the objective requirements for Olympic selection.

    Within that group of six, there is also ample sprint depth to cover the four available starts in the individual classic sprint and to form a competitive two-man sprint relay. As a result, Tuesday’s Freestyle Sprint at Nationals is likely to carry less weight for those athletes racing in Lake Placid with dreams of making the Olympic roster. Instead, the races most likely to function as closing arguments—particularly if an additional quota spot materializes—were Sunday’s 10 k Classic and Thursday’s 20 k Freestyle Mass Start. For at least one man, and potentially two, those performances may determine whether this week in Lake Placid becomes a footnote or a turning point.

    On the women’s side, the picture is far less settled—and far more fluid. The United States has eight Olympic quota spots available, but only a portion of them is considered secure. Jessie Diggins—if it were ever in doubt—has already satisfied the objective criteria by finishing in the top eight in World Cup races that are part of the Olympic schedule. Julia Kern and Rosie Brennan also appear well-positioned, based on their respective rankings on the sprint and distance overall lists.

    That still leaves as many as five remaining spots to be determined, drawing from a complicated blend of results across Period One on the World Cup, the SuperTour events in Alaska, and, critically, U.S. Nationals this week in Lake Placid. For those athletes, Nationals is not simply a domestic championship. It is an audition, a data point, and—in some cases—the clearest remaining path onto the Olympic team.

    John Steel Hagenbuch (DAR) on his way to 5th place overall on the day. (Photo: Phillip Belena/EISA)

    Grover: “There’s Going to be Space”… and then the Paperwork

    US Cross-Country Ski Team Director Chris Grover offered perhaps the clearest explanation for why the opening races at Nationals feel unusually charged—not because they deliver final answers, but because they create space. Space in which athletes can move themselves from the margins of the conversation toward its center.

    The story, as Grover framed it, is not simply who wins. It is what a result permits: what doors it opens, what arguments it strengthens, and how it positions an athlete within the broader, inevitably imperfect machinery of Olympic selection.

    As Grover put it in an interview with FasterSkier, U.S. Nationals does exactly that—it creates room:

    “…it’s going to be a great story because there’s space. There’s going to be space on both the men’s squad and the women’s squad, by the looks of it, for athletes to qualify from Nationals, to have great U.S. Nationals and come over, especially on the women’s side…”

    That space, however, is not filled automatically. In an Olympic year, it is accompanied by paperwork, petitions, and deliberation—an acknowledgment that performance, while central, is rarely the entire story.

    Grover outlined the petition process that follows Nationals, a step that often receives less public attention but carries significant weight:

    “…all athletes who want to be considered for discretionary selection… We’ll put in an application. Or a petition rather, where they will kind of write out what their case is, why they should be considered…”

    Those petitions, Grover explained, are then evaluated by a selection committee—six people tasked with translating results, trends, and context into final decisions:

    “…we have the six-person selection committee that will pick the team. So as a committee, we’ll read everybody’s application, and then we, as a committee, will decide whether we want to elevate somebody using Coach’s discretion to be selected.”

    Even the arithmetic of quota spots, Grover noted, is subject to forces beyond any one athlete’s control. On the men’s side, the possibility of an additional spot remains unresolved:

    “…it’s after Oberhof… qualification for nations also closes on January 18… and at that point a spot [might be] available…”

    Which is to say: timing matters. So does patience.

    Taken together, Grover’s explanation underscores a truth that every athlete racing this week understands intuitively. Lake Placid does not merely crown national champions. It produces evidence—sometimes decisive, sometimes ambiguous—for a selection process that will soon harden from theory into reality. And once it does, the margins that feel abstract today will become permanent.

    Ava Thurston (#45 – DAR) on her way to 6th place overall on the day. (Photo: Phillip Belena/EISA)

    What Sunday Actually Did

    The first day of Nationals did not select the Olympic team. It did something subtler and, in some ways, more powerful: it established the tone of the week.

    On the men’s side, it proved that the domestic field is not going to give anyone breathing room. Wonders’ win was decisive in the only way that matters in interval start racing: he was fastest when everyone had to ski alone. But the closeness behind him reinforced Jager’s point—each race could be someone else’s day. In a week like this, that’s not a platitude. It’s a forecast.

    On the women’s side, Swirbul’s victory felt like a day where preparation and belief finally aligned. But even she framed the week properly: one step at a time, staying present, not thinking beyond Lake Placid. McCabe and Smith offered two different versions of the same survival skill: build a framework, focus on process, control what you can, and let results become the output rather than the obsession.

    If there was a single emotional throughline, it was this: the athletes weren’t pretending the Olympics weren’t there. They were trying, in different ways, to keep that fact from hijacking the work.

     

    A Conclusion in the Shape of an Interval Start

    There’s a particular quiet that follows an interval start classic race—not silence, exactly, but the hush of athletes doing their internal accounting. A national championship can feel like a celebration. In an Olympic year, it can also feel like a deposit: something placed into the larger selection ledger, something that will matter later, in rooms the athletes won’t be in, in conversations they can’t control.

    What makes Lake Placid different—what makes Mt. Van Hoevenberg feel so permanent—is that it refuses to dramatize any of this. It simply asks the same thing of everyone: ski two laps honestly, manage the climbs, keep your head when your legs get loud, and finish without bargaining.

    Wonders said he felt the pressure—and expects to keep feeling it. Jager said the closeness means nothing can be taken for granted. Swirbul described a long experiment that finally yielded its outcome. McCabe described building success from process, not prediction. Smith described a life lived between two sports, and a focus narrowed to attitude and effort.

    Taken together, those aren’t just post-race quotes. They’re the first chapter of the week.

    And in an Olympic winter, first chapters matter—because the next race arrives quickly, and the story keeps writing itself, one start at a time.

     

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    Brian Bushey (#345 – Craftsbury) on his way to 9th place overall. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
  • Season Finale: Diggins and Hagenbuch Crowned National Champions in 40 k Classic

    Season Finale: Diggins and Hagenbuch Crowned National Champions in 40 k Classic

    This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers.  If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription.

    USA’s Jessie Diggins (seen here competing in Falun Sweden earlier this season) concluded her long season with a victory in the 40 k Classic Mass Start at Mt. Van Hoevenberg. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)

    The World Cup season ended a week ago in Lahti, Finland where Jessie Diggins raced to a courageous ninth place in securing (by the narrowest of margins) the Distance World Cup Crystal Globe (to go along with her Overall Crystal Globe secured a week prior). Lahti’s 50 k Classic Mass Start definitely felt like the end of a long season, but for Diggins—and for men’s Lahti 50 k eighth place finisher, Gus Schumacher—it certainly was not. More racing remained as the stars of Team USA headed back to Lake Placid to race alongside their countrymen in SWIX SuperTour and Spring Nationals events.

    Spring racing can be brutal: everyone’s gunning to knock off the top stars, many of whom are running on fumes at the end of a seemingly endless season of travel and competition. But racing at home is one of the responsibilities that many of those stars continue to take seriously. It can be an arduous responsibility—even the stars of Team Norway went home to participate in spring championships where World Cup Champions, Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo and Simen Hegstad Krueger, found themselves fourth and sixth, respectively, in their National Championship 10 k. One thing appears obvious: cross-country ski racing is always hard, no matter who you race against.

    And so skiers found themselves at one last starting line in Lake Placid: one last ski marathon, one last high-speed tour of the countryside, one last opportunity to race cross country toward glory.

    2025 NCAA Champion, John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth) demonstrated his Classic skiing prowess once again in winning the 40 k Mass Start at Mt. Van Hoevenberg. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen)
    Men’s 40 k Classic Mass Start

    By the 10 kilometer mark, the Men’s 40 k had become a three-man affair featuring the Classic skiing prowess of Remi Drolet (SMS T2), John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth), and Schumacher (APU). That trio created a rapidly expanding gap of 15 seconds over a group of chasers that included Brian Bushey (UU), Reid Goble (BSF), Michael Earnhart (APU), and Finn Sweet (UVM). A little more than a kilometer later, that gap would expand to 25 seconds, then to 52 seconds by 15 kilometers. The race was going up the trail, and the leaders showed no inclination to wait around for anyone else.

    Lots can happen during long races, and it’s not impossible to make up places or to get across gaps that had been created earlier. But it’s a supremely difficult to accomplish any such late-race jumps when skiing alone. Nonetheless, Xavier McKeever (CAN) succeeded in bridging the gap to the chase group, joining up with them by 18.75 kilometers. Still, by the 20 kilometer mark, the chasers trailed 1:27 behind Schumacher, Drolet, and Hagenbuch.

    Gus Schumacher (APU) led much of the Men’s 40 k Classic, only to find himself outmaneuvered by a cagey John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth). (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)

    Race splits suggested that Schumacher did most of the leading in the front group, matched consistently by Drolet, and followed by Hagenbuch. With 15 kilometers to race, the dilemma in the lead group belonged to Drolet—he was the least explosive sprinter, statistically not as likely to win in a sprint as were his breakaway companions. If Drolet hoped to win this season-ending marathon, he’d need to make a move soon. Perhaps Drolet made just such a move out on the course—one that Schumacher and Hagenbuch countered. Or Perhaps Schumacher had turned up the pace to prevent any such strategies from happening. Regardless, it was Schumacher and Hagenbuch who created a gap, detaching Drolet by 27.5 kilometers, though by 31.25 kilometers, Drolet clawed his way back to the leaders where Schumacher continued pushing the pace. But it was a final surge from Hagenbuch that would nip Schumacher at the line by less than a second. The win belonged to the Dartmouth skier while Drolet faded to third.

    Men’s National Championship 40 k Classic RESULTS

    Jessie Diggins (USA) has raced a long and fruitful season in 2024-2025. In front of her fans one last time in the National Championship Classic 40 k, she was not to be denied. (Photo: Authamayou/NordicFocus)
    Women’s 40 k Classic Mass Start

    Teammates Jessie Diggins (SMS T2) and Julia Kern (SMS T2) have spent so much time together over the years. From travel and training to start lines and podiums, these two long-time friends have skied thousands of kilometers together. Why not 40 more?

    By five kilometers, the Women’s 40 k Classic had formed itself into a race among a lead group of five: Diggins (SMS T2), Julia Kern (SMS T2), Erica Laven (UU), Selma Nevin (UU), and Margie Freed (Craftsbury). But, soon after, Diggins and Kern began to pull away, at which point the remaining field began splitting into groups of twos and threes. The pace had gotten too hot at the front; the race reached an early point where few skiers were likely to enjoy the prospect of skiing the remaining 30+ kilometers alone. Strategically, it seemed smartest to group up, to conserve energy, to at least ski with company for the distance that remained. Even so, Laven continued to ski on alone, suspended in the unenviable no-man’s-land between second place and fourth place. Laven wasn’t likely to catch Diggins and Kern, but it also appeared that she wasn’t willing to slow her pace just for the chance to have some company. Laven skied on alone, her position on the podium nearly 30 lonely kilometers away.

    Julia Kern (SMS T2) has often proven herself to be a skilled distance racer. In Lake Placid, she skied shoulder to shoulder with her friend, teammate, and rival, Jessie Diggins (SMS T2). (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    By the halfway point, Diggins and Kern enjoyed a two minute advantage over Laven, with the rest of the field another minute+ behind and strung out all across the 518 area code. Racing 40 kilometers is a daunting challenge, and many of these skiers had never raced so far before. Surviving and thriving across so great a distance are skills that must be learned with experience. Today was delivering that sort of experience for many.

    Teammates in training, rivals in racing, friends at the finish line. Jessie Diggins (SMS T2) and Julia Kern (SMS T2) share a moment after the Team Relay at the 2025 World Championships in Trondheim, Norway. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)

    In the end, Diggins and Kern would deliver the first- and second-fastest splits at nearly every check point of the final 15 kilometers. It would’ve been great to hear their conversation on the race course: did they reminisce about seasons past and races remembered? Or were they making plans for training dates and racing duels in the future? Ultimately, they sorted things out over the final kilometers of this 40 k Mass Start, with Diggins turning on the jets at around 37 kilometers to solo in for a 14 second win in this latest round of their friendly rivalry. Laven would complete her solo mission to claim a hard-earned third.

    For Diggins and Kern, there will be many more kilometers still to ski together, but that will be after another spring, after another autumn, when cross country ski racing returns next season.

    Women’s National Championship 40 k Classic RESULTS

    Until next year. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)

     

     

  • SMS T2 Captures National Championship Mixed Relay

    SMS T2 Captures National Championship Mixed Relay

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    Canada’s Remi Drolet (seen here competing in the World Cup Classic Mass Start in Lahti, Finland) was one of a number of skiers with World Cup experience who added international flair to the National Championship Mixed Relay at Mt. Van Hoevenberg. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    On Saturday in Lake Placid, NY, mixed relay teams competed for a unique National Championship, for rivalry-fueled bragging rights, and for the possibility of earning National Nordic Foundation (NNF) distinction and prize money for their teams. It was an international party thrown at the end of a long and challenging season . . . a party that all participants seemed heartily to enjoy.

    Julia Kern (USA) took the handoff from Remi drolet (CAN), and never looked back. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    The top 15 teams all came through the first checkpoint within eight seconds of each other, but that was as close as the racing would get; SMS T2 pulled out to an early lead that it would never relinquish. Live timing systems revealed that the race had broken open by the middle of the second leg, with SMS T2 building a lead of 15 seconds ahead of second place, 30 seconds ahead of third. SMS T2 enjoyed a considerable lead over the rest of the field when the exchange took place at the halfway point as the winning team—Remi Drolet, Julia Kern, Ben Ogden, Jessie Diggins—cruised to victory, arriving at the finish 1:17 ahead of its nearest rival, University of Utah.

    Ben Ogden (USA) offered lucky fans a chance to ski with him after the conclusion of the Team Relay . . . but first, he had five kilometers of racing to deliver. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)

    The 4 x 5 km Team Relay represents a unique National Championship race; a result that determines podium positions for the National Championship Team Relay, even though numerous participants may be from counties other than the USA. SMS T2’s Remi Drolet is Canadian. Similarly, the runner up team—University of Utah—had three foreign skiers on its roster: Erica Laven, Selma Nevin, and Joe Davies. And the third place team—Alberta World Cup Academy—is comprised entirely of Canadian athletes. This makes for a National Championship race that’s a decidedly international affair.

    In the race for the NNF Cup (sponsored by the National Nordic Foundation), SMS T2’s team may have won the day, but it was the University of Utah that earned the Cup with points earned by their athletes’ combined finishes claiming the season-long championship.

    Events at Mt. Van Hoevenberg conclude on Sunday with the 40 k Classic Mass Start that marks the end of the domestic ski season. Racing begins at 8am Eastern Time with live timing being provided by Bullitt Timing.

    National Championship Mixed Relay RESULTS

    NNF Cup TEAM STANDINGS

    USA’s World Cup Champion, Jessie Diggins (seen here competing in the recent World Championship in Trondheim, Norway) could be forgiven for taking it easy in this inconsequential relay event at the end of a long, arduous season. But taking it easy is just not Diggins’ way. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)