From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.
The 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.
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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)
Samantha Smith (#1 – SVSEF) was the fastest qualifier and advanced through all her rounds in first on her way to the national championship at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
There is a particular kind of pressure that lives in a sprint qualification. It isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce itself with theatrics. It sits in the quiet places: the moment you realize the warm-up loop is over and you’re headed back toward the start; the thin stretch of time when your poles feel too long and your gloves feel too tight and the only thing you can hear is the scrape of skis and the soft, practiced urgency of coaches repeating the same cues they’ve repeated for years.
In the heats, there is cover. There is a draft. There is a corner to hide behind, a decision to delay, a shoulder to lean into, a mistake you can sometimes survive. Qualification has none of that. Qualification is a solitary negotiation with speed, oxygen, and the course itself. And in an Olympic winter, it also becomes something else: a sorting mechanism. A gate. A reminder that at the Games, you don’t get to be “good in the heats” if you don’t first earn your way into them.
At the 2026 U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships in Lake Placid, Tuesday’s freestyle sprint at Mt. Van Hoevenberg offered that truth clearly. On the women’s side, Samantha Smith (Sun Valley SEF) was the fastest qualifier. On the men’s side, Zanden McMullen (APU Nordic Ski Center) topped the morning results.
By the end of the afternoon, the national titles belonged to Smith — who converted qualifier speed into clean, controlled racing through every round — and Mons Melbye (University of Utah), who did something deceptively difficult: he kept winning as the format stopped forgiving mistakes.
Dartmouth College’s Ava Thurston was impressive all day on her way to third overall. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Qualification as the Real Story — and the Olympic-Year Subtext
The sprint format always tempts us to focus on finish-line photos, final turns, and last lunges. But if you’re trying to understand what this race meant in the broader context of the week — and in the longer context of an Olympic winter — you start with the qualifier.
Smith’s win in qualification wasn’t just fast; it was decisive in a way that matters in a discipline where tenths often separate confidence from chaos. She led Alayna Sonnesyn (Team Birkie) by nearly two seconds, with Lauren Jortberg (CNEPH) third and Ava Thurston (Dartmouth) fourth.
On the men’s side, the top end was deep and tightly packed. McMullen led Owen Young (University of Vermont) by just over a second, with Michael Earnhart (APU Nordic Ski Center) essentially on Young’s shoulder. Melbye qualified fourth, with Cole Flowers (University of Alaska Fairbanks) and Max Kluck (University of Utah) close behind.
This matters because international sprinting — the kind that happens at the Olympics — is not a format where you can count on “finding your way through the rounds” if you start your day in the wrong place. Qualification is where your sprint begins or ends.
The subtext, however, differs by gender. On the men’s side, the Olympic pathway through domestic sprinting appears closed this winter. On the women’s side, the picture has felt more open, with multiple domestic spots likely in play and sprint specialists carrying meaningful leverage. The sprint, then, does not “mean” the same thing for every athlete — but it still demands the same thing from all of them.
Eventual winner, Samantha Smith (#1 – SVSEF) controls the start of the women’s final at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Women: Samantha Smith’s Control, Sonnesyn’s Speed, and a Final that Rewarded Discipline
Smith won the qualifier. Then she won her quarterfinal. Then she won her semifinal. Then she won the final.
Behind her in the final were Sonnesyn in second and Thurston in third, followed by Nina Schamberger (University of Colorado), Jortberg, and Katherine Weaver (Alberta World Cup Academy).
Sonnesyn’s day began where the pressure was heaviest.
“I am really proud of my sprint qualifier,” Sonnesyn said. “There was a lot of pressure on it, and I was feeling that, so I really leaned into the energy of those around me. I left everything I had out there on that course. Not perfect, but really good.”
In the final, she was clear-eyed about what limited her chances to fight for the win.
“I always need to keep working on my starts,” she said. “It’s really hard for me to get going that fast, and I ended up getting a bit boxed during the final because I didn’t have a great start. That being said, I think that final hill and the super fast downhill at the end worked in my favor.”
Alayna Sonnesyn (#2 – Team Birkie) pushes over the top of the sprint course’s main climb. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Smith described a day defined by managing nerves and executing details.
“I was quite nervous going into today’s race,” Smith said. “I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to perform well, so I tried to channel the nerves into adrenaline. I focused on skiing smoothly, working the transitions, and finding the most efficient line out there.”
The final climb played directly to her strengths.
“The final hill was definitely my favorite part of the course,” she said. “I really love to hop skate, and the gradient of that hill is perfect for it. On this course, transitions are critical, so I tried to be really disciplined about skiing hard over the tops and pushing into the downhills.”
Thurston, who qualified fourth and finished third overall, described a sprint day built around process rather than pressure.
“My approach to nerves was to focus on having fun and getting to the start line ready and excited to race,” she said. “Having my whole team here helped a lot. Chatting and joking with teammates and competitors really eases my nerves.”
She found her biggest opportunities during the heats.
“During the heats, I gained the most time on the final big hill,” Thurston said. “The wide trail made it an ideal place to pass. I’m still working on my double pole at the start, so that’s an area where I think there’s more speed to unlock.”
Lauren Jortberg (CNEPH) leads her semifinal at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Jortberg’s fifth-place finish, after qualifying third, served as a reminder of sprinting’s second demand: doing the work repeatedly under imperfect conditions.
Jortberg said the qualifier remained her primary focus, especially in an Olympic winter where advancing matters as much as how fast you ski.
“Sprint qualification is something I’ve been working on a ton,” she said. “That’s the most important part of the day, especially when it comes to World Cup skiing — just moving on. I was happy with my qualifier. It wasn’t my best skiing, but it was solid.”
She said lingering fatigue from the previous classic race played a role, particularly after spending much of that race running due to skis that wouldn’t kick.
“I definitely felt like I was carrying some fatigue from the classic,” Jortberg said. “So I’d say the qualifier was okay, but not my best work. I know I can ski better than that.”
Jortberg said the Van Hoevenberg sprint course suits her strengths, but emphasized that the margins — especially on the downhills — leave no room for lapses.
“I really like this course. It plays to a lot of my strengths — strong V2, a long climb, and hop skating,” she said. “But you have to be diligent everywhere, especially on the downhills. You can’t be lazy for even half a second.”
In the semifinals, she said the tight schedule and downhill dynamics ultimately limited her ability to move forward.
“My semifinal was only about eight minutes before the final,” Jortberg said. “I couldn’t really clear the lactic acid, and I didn’t have much time. I got passed on the downhill and then couldn’t really move in the final.”
Despite the broader Olympic context, Jortberg said she is deliberately keeping her focus narrow.
“I try not to stress about spreadsheets or criteria,” she said. “I just want to race, have fun, and ski the best way I know how. That’s really all you can do.”
Smith added one more note at the end of the day, confirming she plans to continue racing later in the week.
“As of now, yes, I am planning to race the 20-kilometer on Thursday.”
Eventual winner, Mons Melbye (#4 – UU) in his quarterfinal at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Men: Melbye’s Title, Jayne’s Podium, and Endestad’s Deep Run from 16th
On the men’s side, the qualifier winner did not win the title.
McMullen was fastest in the morning, but the championship ultimately went to Melbye, who qualified fourth and then won his quarterfinal, semifinal, and final.
Behind Melbye, Sasha Masson (CNEPH) finished second, Zachary Jayne (University of Utah) third, and Ari Endestad (Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center) fourth. Michael Earnhart finished fifth, with Owen Young sixth.
The University of Utah was central to the men’s story throughout the day, with Melbye winning the title and Jayne joining him on the podium.
Zach Jayne (UU) during qualification. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Jayne described a qualifier that didn’t match his expectations — and a deliberate reset once the rounds began.
“Coming off a skate qualifier win in Alaska, I was disappointed after my qualifying performance,” Jayne said. “I thought I was capable of much more. Knowing that, I went into the heats with a better plan focused on composure and power. I was more relaxed and less nervous once I committed to that.”
His view of sprint racing was blunt.
“The rounds were incredibly close, but it only matters where people are at the finish — nowhere else,” he said.
Young (University of Vermont), who finished sixth overall, described a day shaped largely by the pressure of the qualifier and the need to earn his way into the rounds.
“Heading into the race today, my internal goals were a bit of a mixed bag,” Young said. “The main focus was result-based, but I really approached the day thinking about the qualifier. I’ve only raced one sprint this season, and the result was pretty mediocre, so I was pretty dead set on just trying to qualify.”
Once through the qualifier, Young said his focus narrowed to managing the rounds one at a time.
“After the qualifier, I tried to just take each heat one at a time and give it my best shot to move on,” he said. “I don’t really try to preserve energy in the qualifier — I usually give it everything I’ve got. That might not be the smartest choice for later in the day, but the confidence boost from a fast qualifier can really help mentally in the heats.”
Miachael Earnhart (APU) on his way to posting the third fastest qualification time. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Endestad’s fourth-place finish told a different story: one of survival, adaptation, and opportunity.
He qualified 16th in what he described as one of the tightest sprint qualifiers he had ever seen at Nationals, then raced his way through the rounds into the final.
“Ideally, I would’ve liked to qualify a little higher,” Endestad said. “But with how close it was, I felt lucky just to be in the heats at all.”
The physical cost of the day was obvious.
“This course is so hard,” he said. “I threw up after the qualifier and had to fight to stay composed through the quarter and semi. There were only about 12 minutes between the semi and the final, so it was about breathing, keeping it down, and making good decisions.”
Tactically, he was clear about where he needed to attack.
“It might have looked like patience early, but honestly, I was barely hanging on from the start,” Endestad said. “The goal was to be in position for the main hill, because that’s where I felt I could really put the hammer down.”
Ari Endestad (APU) leads teammate Michael Earnhart (APU) during the heats of the Freestyle Sprint at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
Michael Earnhart said his goals at U.S. Nationals were shaped as much by the SuperTour standings as by the result of any single race.
“One of my goals coming into Nationals was to try to take back the SuperTour lead heading into Period 3,” Earnhart said. “Today helped me with points against Hunter Wonders, but not against Zach Jayne. It’s still very close, and both of them are really good athletes.”
He admitted he arrived with higher expectations after last season’s skate sprint performances.
“After last year, I really wanted to try to win today,” he said. “So I was a little disappointed to come in fifth. But with how close the qualifier was and how strong the competition is getting in the U.S., I’m not overly disappointed. It’s a reasonable result.”
Earnhart said experience helped him stay composed through the rounds.
“I’ve done a lot of heats on the SuperTour, so I feel confident in this field,” he said. “I try to ski to my strengths, stay relaxed, and ski with the confidence that I deserve to win the heat. Normally, that gets me through, but sprinting is unpredictable.”
He added that Van Hoevenberg offered rare opportunities to move in a skate sprint.
“The main sprint hill is wide enough to move, and jump skating is my strongest technique,” Earnhart said. “When the qualifier is six seconds from first to 30th, it’s fine margins. Sometimes you need a little luck — but you also have to make your own.”
Mons Melbye (#4 – UU), Sasha Masson (#11 – CNEPH), and Zach Jayne (#12 – UU) on their way to first, second, and third places, respectively, with Ari Endestad (APU) trailing in fourth place during the men’s Final at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
What It Means — and What It Doesn’t
It’s tempting in an Olympic year to treat every Nationals result like a verdict. But Nationals is not the Olympics, and a domestic sprint is not a World Cup sprint field.
What it can be is a stress test.
For the women, the sprint reinforced that athletes who can combine elite qualifier speed with repeatable execution are building strong cases. Smith won both the qualifier and the final. Sonnesyn backed up top-end speed with a runner-up finish while clearly identifying where she can improve.
For the men, the sprint may not be about Olympic selection, but it was revealing and also adds to the season-long narrative. Melbye showed an ability to win under repeated pressure. Jayne demonstrated resilience after a disappointing qualifier. Endestad showed how quickly sprinting can reward those who survive long enough to find their moment.
Young’s comments also underscored the tradeoffs athletes are navigating as the week continues.
“I don’t have a definite answer, looking forward to the rest of Nationals,” he said. “I’d like to throw down top results in the 20k and the classic sprint, but I need to talk with my coach and assess the best plan to give me the best shot at scoring enough points. That could mean skipping the 20k and focusing on the sprint, or maybe doing both — it’s tricky with no rest day and the body starting to feel the last couple days of racing.”
Katey Houser (MSU) leads Ruby Serrouya (DU) and Marit Flora (UAA) in their quarterfinal at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships Freestyle Sprint. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
A Closing Note from Lake Placid
By late afternoon, the sprint course felt smaller than it had in the morning. Not only because it changed slightly for the juniors, but because sprint days compress experience. The same hill feels steeper the fourth time. The same turn feels tighter. The same finishing straight feels shorter.
That is the quiet lesson of a National sprint in an Olympic winter. It doesn’t allow vagueness. It demands specificity. It asks for one fast lap — and then asks you to do it again, and again, and again, under less forgiving conditions.
Samantha Smith and Mons Melbye won because they answered those questions most consistently.
For everyone else, Lake Placid delivered the same message sprinting always does: if you want to be part of the story later, you still have to earn your way into the next round now.
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Mons Melbye (#4 – UU), Sasha Masson (#11 – CNEPH), and Zach Jayne (#12 – UU) on their way to first, second, and third places, respectively, with Owen Young (UVM – far left), Ari Endestad (#16 – APU), and Michael Earnhart (#3 – APU) trailing to start the men’s final at the US National Cross-Country Ski Championships. (Photo: Nancie Battaglia)
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.
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.
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.”
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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Mikey Sinnott on the World Cup last December in Lillehammer, Norway. (Photo: Facebook/MWSC)
A freshman skier in Sun Valley, Idaho, Mikey Sinnott was literally a foot shorter than the rest of the guys on his team, or so his longtime coach Rick Kapala says. Small but mighty, Sinnott came up through the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) junior ranks, making it to the Idaho youth championships and eventually winning two Junior National titles, and reaching Junior World Championships in 2004 and 2005 and U23 World Championships in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
But before he was a globetrotter, Sinnott was a fighter — holding his own in a wrestling brawl with two dozen kids and a handful of coaches, an annual lighthearted tradition at the SVSEF. According to Kapala, who was always at the bottom of the pile, Sinnott was forever the last man standing. Everyone else would eventually give up, but not Mikey.
Mikey Sinnott at the 2011 U.S. nationals classic sprint, where he place second for a career best. He repeated the feat in 2012 with another silver in the classic sprint in Rumford, Maine. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad/flyingpointroad.com)
“You could never pin Mikey,” the SVSEF head coach and nordic program director said. “He was the definition of scrappy.”
As Kapala spoke those words on the phone Tuesday, he almost immediately retracted them. Sinnott would not want to be called scrappy, but that’s what he was. He didn’t tap out, Kapala said, he never quit.
Looking back, he was glad Sinnott didn’t get overlooked like some U16s that haven’t reached physical maturity do. While Sinnott’s results and performances were promising, an outside coach observing him at a glance might not have picked him to achieve what he later would.
But Sinnott understood the importance of grit, and paired with an academic gift that led him to study psychology and neuroscience at Dartmouth College, he had punched his ticket to success early on, Kapala said.
His timing was also ideal. By the time he finished up at Dartmouth, where he was an NCAA All-American and named to the association’s Division I Skiing Championships Team all four years, Sinnott was ready for the big leagues, and his choice to return to Sun Valley was simple.
They had started an Olympic development team (now the Gold Team) a few years earlier — an attractive option for a hometown skier looking to go pro.
“At that point, I wasn’t going to go to northern Maine, I wasn’t going to go to the Midwest, I wasn’t going to go to Alaska — there weren’t really any other teams,” Sinnott reflected on the phone two weeks ago. “When I went off to college, that was one of Rick’s goals … to make the Sun Valley Ski Education program one of the cradle-to-the-grave programs like in Europe.
“I think it’s been a very, very wonderful program,” he added after seven years on the team. “It’s been a model for how we need to start developing more in the U.S. Sun Valley was the model for what’s made the U.S. Ski Team [in the 1960s] … I think we continue to be that model and impress and improve.”
In five seasons, Sinnott, now 29, amassed more than 20 World Cup starts. He claimed the overall SuperTour title in 2013 to start last season in Europe, where he raced seven of those World Cups.
But last winter, starting in November, Sinnott didn’t feel anywhere close to on top of the world. He was fatigued and had been feeling that way since late October, yet he couldn’t pinpoint why. His legs lacked power, but he figured he could compensate with mental toughness, which some call ‘grit.’
“I just kept telling myself that I had to make it work,” he said. “I never really had a lot of explosive energy in my legs for whatever reason, but I kind of knew that was the year, if I was going to fight through any stupidity, that was the year I had to do it … It was an Olympic year.”
The Continental Cup leader who kicked his season off with the U.S. Ski Team (USST) in Kuusamo, Finland, Sinnott placed 74th in his first race (a classic sprint) and 113th in the 10 k classic the next day. By the end of the three-day series, he was 92nd overall.
A few weeks later in mid-December, he spoke openly about not being in top form. But he still wanted to perform well at U.S. nationals and give his best shot at making the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
At the same time, Sinnott, widely respected as a master of calculating points in the U.S., knew his domestic ranking wasn’t competitive enough to put him in the running for the Olympic team. If he wanted to make it to Sochi, his first Olympics in two Olympic cycles he’d been training through, he knew he needed a top 30 on the World Cup.
The closest he’d come after Kuusamo was 78th in the classic sprint at Asiago World Cup in Italy. In late December, he returned to the U.S. for nationals in Utah, where he placed fourth in the 30 k freestyle mass start and fifth in the classic sprint. Even if he’d won all of nationals, Sinnott didn’t expect to make the Olympics. At the same time, he said anyone’s best chance was to ski faster than lone USST male there: Erik Bjornsen.
“I knew how fast I was skiing and I knew I wasn’t going to beat him,” Sinnott said.
“The U.S. Ski Team wants to do everything they can to not take any non-U.S. Ski Team members to the Olympics,” he added. “So I knew the only opportunity I had was to get a top 30 on the World Cup … That’s why I stayed [in Europe].”
Mikey Sinnott (l), of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF), climbs up and over a hill in the 30 k freestyle mass start at 2014 U.S. nationals. (Photo: Bert Boyer/All proceeds from photo sales donated to NNF)
Olympic selections came and went, Sinnott wasn’t picked, and by the time February rolled around, he was back on the SuperTour circuit and feeling drained. He recalled one race in St. Paul, Minn., where he was skiing in the top three with four kilometers to go, and he was bored.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know, maybe I should just drop out because I don’t even care,’ and that was kind of pathetic,” he reflected.
He ended up third on the day, and later that month, placed 24th in the American Birkebeiner — an event, like nationals, he said he felt horrible in.
“I’ve never just been so sluggish through an entire season like that,” Sinnott said. “It wasn’t an overtraining thing, but I just never felt that I had the spark.”
He ended up eighth in the 2013/2014 SuperTour overall. Because he wasn’t among the closest contenders for an Olympic spot, he wasn’t crushed when he didn’t make the team. But his season did leave him with untied ends he would later have to reconcile.
“There was no sudden crash or hope lingering on that some people were affected with because I had a better understanding [of the criteria],” Sinnott said. “When I was younger I thought, race your hardest and things will turn out well, and I quickly realized that wasn’t the case. You have to make your own luck and work your hardest because nothing’s going to be given to you … you have to force your way onto a team or force your way into a start race because you earned your way.”
Change of Seasons, Change of Pace
A couple Fridays ago, Sinnott was hanging up a piñata midday in his Sun Valley home. He wasn’t recovering from the morning’s training session with the Gold Team, and he wasn’t gearing up for an afternoon workout, either.
Since last spring, he had been a working man in a different sense: marketing and writing for the Sun Valley Harvest Festival, one of the top 10 fall festivals in the country. And with the September festival in the rearview, he was prepping for a party at his place.
Mikey Sinnott (lower r, facing camera in green) at Sun Valley’s annual Baldy Hill Climb, while Darlene Young (with poles, in blue) pushes on. (Photo: Facebook/Jon Engan)
He’d certainly been working out — just not in the traditional sense that he’d been accustomed to for the last seven years. He’d done the unofficial Ultimate Man.Ultimate Woman series, the brainchild of former Sun Valley coach Chris Mallory and a compilation of four local offroad endurance events: the Boulder Mountain Tour (30-kilometer ski race), Backcountry Run (16-mile trail run), Double Galena Grinder (45-mile mountain-bike race), and the Cheeso Double Baldy Hill Climb.
The series ended Sept. 27 at the top of the 9,020-foot Bald Mountain, where Sinnott placed eighth on the day and fourth overall.
Rather than run more than 3,000 meters to the summit, the ultimate men and women had to ascend it twice: biking up Baldy, riding the gondola down and running/hiking back up. Twenty-five people started the series, four finished, and among them, Sinnott skied the fastest time in the Boulder Mountain Tour (BMT) and notched the second-fastest time in another event. He lost an hour in the mountain-bike race and was down to fourth — last — by the end of the series.
“Running after you bike is awful,” he said. “Eleven months ago, I signed up for [this] race series … I know I’m not going to do it again.”
Meanwhile, after the BMT in February and before the Backcountry Run in July, Sinnott decided whether to continue ski racing through 2014/2015. Still unsure exactly what went wrong last winter — he tried to rest more; he tried to train more — he reasoned it was worth stepping back and trying to put everything back together, and started training again in May.
Sinnott and Miles Havlick during an August 2013 training run through the sagebrush in the Upper Salmon River Valley, Idaho. (Photo: Facebook/Miles Havlick)
It didn’t take long until he realized he wasn’t having fun anymore.
“I just wasn’t enjoying getting out the door anymore,” he said. “If there wasn’t someone waiting for me, then I wasn’t motivated to go exercise on my own.”
Reasoning he was “fighting an uphill battle in an uphill sport,” Sinnott said it wasn’t worth wasting his time or his coaches’. Kapala said they sat down and talked about it.
“We sort of sensed it was coming,” Kapala explained. “There’s a natural lifespan to cross-country careers. Mike was certainly of the caliber that he could’ve chosen to ski another year or two years — I don’t think we would’ve seen any drop off in his production … but I think he looked at it like he was trying to make this Olympic squad …
“I said, ‘You’ve had an exceptional career in ski racing,’ ” he added. “ ‘You really think the experiences in total that you’ve had in ski racing would be that much enhanced by slugging it out for another four years?’ He was already like, yeah, I think it’s time for some new challenges.”
Sinnott said conversations with Gold Team head coach Colin Rodgers also helped open his eyes to where he stood mentally.
Last season’s Gold Team, with former skiers Mikey Sinnott (retired, third from r) Chelsea Holmes (now at APU, second from r), and Rose Kemp (retired, second from l). (Photo: Facebook/SVSEF Gold Team)
“He’s been saying for the last year I just didn’t have the same personality with skiing,” Sinnott said. “And I saw him recently and he thought I’d recovered into my old self. Rick’s super supportive … and they all just care so much. All my coaches just want what’s best for me.”
Sinnott’s Favorite Moments:
(as written in an email)
“A few highlights for myself were the Dartmouth College National Championship, winning the Boulder Mountain Tour, my first European World Cup in Milan, and racing the Holmenkollen. Lots of memories, but those were special for a variety of reasons:I loved collegiate racing. It is the best domestic race series we have. Such comaraderie, and racing for something bigger than yourself. I loved how much of a team we were, and how meaningful it was to so many people to bring home the National Championship. Our school, our alums, the East Coast. I even remember heading straight to U23s while they were still tabulating the scores, and upon arrival getting a hearty cheer from Pat Casey. He was so proud to see a group of Americans, all under 23, be the top team. It showed US skiing was on the rise, and we didn’t have to look up to the Euros anymore. It was a pretty cool feat, and an incredible group of people to be a part of. I think there were three or four future Olympians, and two future World Championship runners.
Winning the Boulder Mountain Tour was special because it was my first real professional title, and it was in my home town, in front of family and friends. Wow. Such a special moment to represent them. My home town is beyond supportive, and it feels great to show them what they are supporting.
Of course skiing in Milan was all together unreal, and a wonderful new persepective on what could be achieved through skiing. I remember seeing Kikkan on the podium, and seeing her mobbed for autographs. I remember seeing lots of the U.S. team being mobbed for autographs. Riding the bus with all the world elites, joking with them (okay, Simi joked with them, I gawked a little), being in such a world center and to have it lined with fans of nordic skiing. Wow. I thought it couldnt get any better… But oh did it.
Finally, racing the Holmenkollen. I had a terrible race that day, and was well out the back from the get go. It was slushy and slow. I loved every minute of that suffer slog. The course was lined by thousands of fans who had camped out for days. They were chanting my name around every corner, before I was even in sight. There was such energy and appreciation and excitement, it was beyond contagious. They willed me onwards no matter how tired I became. I cannot express what that felt like, to be among the worst in the race, and still have this wall of humanity urging you and screaming for you. Wow. Those Norwegians do it right.
A lot of my best memories come from the people I met, and the people I shared my career with. I could list a multitude more stories, but they mostly center around the people and how their interactions left an imprint on me. I stayed and raced for a week with a Norwegian racing team — so generous, so kind. Erik Stange took me for a ski tour outside Lillehammer that ended at a waffle house, only available via skiing. Last season, a friend came to watch me race in Davos and brought a huge poster that had personal remarks from a dozen or so close college friends encouraging, and cajoling me. It was great.”
Looking back, Sinnott had a long list of career highlights: Dartmouth’s national championship, winning the 2008 BMT, his first European World Cup in Milan in 2012, and racing at Holmenkollen that same season.
“I loved collegiate racing,” he explained. “It is the best domestic race series we have. Such camaraderie, and racing for something bigger than yourself. I loved how much of a team we were, and how meaningful it was to so many people to bring home the National Championship.
“Winning the Boulder Mountain Tour was special because it was my first real professional title, and it was in my home town, in front of family and friends,” he added. “Such a special moment to represent them. My hometown is beyond supportive, and it feels great to show them what they are supporting.”
And that’s why he planned to stick around town and help out while he plans his next move. Throughout the offseason, Sinnott has been working with U18 skiers and younger on the SVSEF Comp Team, shadowing them during workouts to push and motivate them a few times a week.
“He’s getting ready to transition to the next phase of his life … [and] he’s taking this year to give back to our program,” Kapala said. “We’ve got this group of ten kick-ass U18 guys — think of that workout when they’re going out for this hour-and-a-half roll and Mike is embedded in that workout with them. … That’s huge.”
Kapala said his program reserves some money for guest coaching, and while it’s not much, he knew Sinnott would do it for free.
“I’ve been blessed with the coaching that I’ve had over the years … [with Kapala, Ruff Patterson in college, Travis Jones and Rodgers on the Gold Team],” Sinnott said. “I know that I don’t have some of those characteristics especially at a youth level … I don’t have the consistency day in and out required of a quality coach.”
So he doesn’t necessarily envision himself as a full-time coach one day, but he’s happy to jump in as needed.
In the meantime, he said he’ll be taking the next year to figure out his new career path and will continue to work with the Sun Valley Harvest Festival through the winter. He started the job in May as a means of keeping him mentally stimulated while training. When he stepped away from skiing in late May/early June, he began to call it his career.
Sinnott spent the next several months focusing on the leadup to the festival and coaching on the side. He create a life plan beyond that, but he has a few ideas.
“I thought I was going to map [it] out this summer — that never happened,” he said. “I want to know exactly what I want to do before I start looking into grad school. Since I graduated, neuroscience has become a more popular field among the smarty pants of the world, and my brain has atrophied…”
He has yet to find out what that field holds for him, but above all, Sinnott remembers enjoying school, the curriculum, “the knowledge, and the horizon they presented with some of the unknown,” he said.
He has a Sun Valley mountain pass this winter, so he figured he’d take some downhill runs on powder days to sort it out. This month, he headed east for 10 days for a wedding in New Hampshire.
“I’ll bring running shoes, but I don’t have to bring rollerskis, so that’s a plus,” he noted.
And while he might travel a bit, and give races like the Birkie another try (at a more leisurely pace), he’ll continue to call Sun Valley his home.
“I’ve traveled around and looked at various places and there’s nothing compared to here,” he said. “The Norwegian national team, they [came] here before the Olympics in Salt Lake and Vancouver, and they say this is the perfect training place.”
And the team has been an integral part of his experiences.
“It’s always been, the team I want to hang out with on the [domestic] circuit is Sun Valley,” he said. “They’re good people that I have fun with.”
Leaving the Gold Team, which includes Miles Havlick, Matt Gelso, Ben Lustgarten, Mary Rose, Makayla Cappel, and Paige Schember, Sinnott said it’s in a good place.
“[That’s] the best team in the country this year. They’re unbelievable,” he said. “There’s definitely times where I’ll see time trials and I’ll say, ‘Oh man, I wish I could be out there.’ If I wanted to be out there, I would be. It’s not like anyone told me no, I just don’t want to be out there anymore. It’s been really good to be more social and adventure with friends. I haven’t really second-guessed it.”
Kapala said Sinnott could be the poster child of how to have a great life ski racing, which is why it’s so valuable having him around.
“I’ve learned way more as a coach from Mike than Mike has learned from me,” he said. “I never got the sense that Mikey was just in it for results. Because of that, you get the kind of guy who’s perspective on the sport is really helpful and powerful and now he’s out there training with our juniors. … That’s another piece of us really getting somewhere.”
![Mikey Sinnott on the World Cup last December in Lillehammer, Norway. (Photo: Facebook/MWSC) https://www.facebook.com/maine.Winter.Sports.Center/photos/t.1309153346/10152451352903312/?type=3&theater](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/10/996997_10152451352903312_1032363334_n.jpg")
![Mikey Sinnott at the 2011 U.S. nationals classic sprint. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad/flyingpointroad.com)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/10/Sinnott.jpg")
![Mikey Sinnott (l), of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF), climbs up and over a hill in the 30 k freestyle mass start at 2014 U.S. nationals. (Photo: Bert Boer - http://bertboyer.zenfolio.com) All proceeds from photo sales will be directly donated to NNF. Sinnott's former Sun Valley teammate Miles Havlick (5) leads the chase pack during the U.S. Nationals 30 k freestyle mass start while Sinnott (second from l) gets tangled on the way up. (Photo: Bert Boyer/All proceeds from photo sales donated to NNF)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/sinnott-start-of-lap-4.jpg")
![Mikey Sinnott (lower r, in green) at the Sun Valley's annual Baldy Hill Climb, while Darlene Young (with poles, in blue) pushes on. (Photo: Facebook/Jon Engan) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203960529367676&set=a.2885261424722.135136.1655738374&type=1&theater](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/10/10698531_10203960529367676_2132184619576859090_n.jpg")
![Sinnott and Miles Havlick during an August 2013 training run through the sagebrush in the Upper Salmon River Valley, Idaho. (Photo: Facebook/Miles Havlick) https://www.facebook.com/mileshavlickxcskier/photos/t.1309153346/565991460102601/?type=3&theater](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/10/1097083_565991460102601_1067815160_o.jpg")
![Last season's Gold Team, with former skiers Sinnott (third from r) Chelsea Holmes (now at APU, second from r), and Rose Kemp (retired). (Photo: Facebook/SVSEF Gold Team) https://www.facebook.com/SVSEFXCGold](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/10/1049203_407696976008895_904010771_o.jpg")