For those of us suffering from the post-ski-season let down—or for those who simply can’t get enough ski-related content—an effective way to help address these issues will be to take 46 minutes to view “Kikkan,” a nicely produced short documentary about the life of Kikkan Randall. Presented (sponsored) by L.L. Bean and Providence Health Alaska, the film includes details of Randall’s childhood, ski career, cancer struggle, and personal life.

The movie is a candid chronological biopic of an athlete who has faced daunting challenges, and unlike many cinematic athletic biographies it does not quickly regress into a warm sepia toned homage to the subject. Instead, the film is a frank look at a life full of ecstatic highs, searing lows, and Randall’s continuing ability to deal with her life’s challenges.

Randall delves into chapters of her life which most viewers will be familiar with, but there is a lot more detail than the average viewer already knows; the details are quite interesting. Among those more interesting details are interviews with Sadie Bjornsen regarding Randall’s late-hour inclusion in—and Bjornsen’s subsequent exclusion from—the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic Team Sprint. Bjornsen provides some context to a story that many are familiar with, but probably don’t know the details that she reveals. It’s another very candid portion of the film that helps viewers connect emotionally.

The movie is also packed full of familiar names and faces with Erike Flora, Sophie Hamilton, Holly Brooks, Liz Stephen, and Jessie Diggins also making appearances. Randall’s parents are also interviewed.

Randall discusses her early Olympic disappointments and her final Olympic highpoint of winning a gold medal with Jessie Diggins. She also addresses the challenges of having a family while being a professional athlete.

There is much time spent on Randall’s breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. It’s in this part of the movie where Randall really lets the viewers in, and where the emotional connection happens, mostly because Randall is more open and emotional about raw details of her life than she has ever publicly been. It’s a chapter of her life which for many people might have been the beginning of a slide into a long downward spiral, but like most things in her life, Randall rose up to meet things on her own terms. She also talks briefly about her 2021 divorce from Jeff Ellis, occurring shortly after her cancer treatment had ended and subsequently forcing her to go through the pandemic as a single mother.

There are also enough training and ski scenes to keep viewers entertained.

The short film is generally well produced with nice, but sometimes duplicated, footage of Randall skiing in Alaska. These shots are aided by sweeping overhead drone footage (the inclusion of high-quality aerial footage available through drones has been as much of a game-changer for lower-budget productions as the first fiberglass skis were for cross-country.) There is one distracting audio section that would never make it into a major theatrical film, but it’s over quickly and might add a homespun feel—or not. There are also some mildly annoying border framing effects and added scratching/graininess effects whenever old photos are shown. This kind of easy special effects unfortunately now happens regularly in modest budget films since such effects are so readily available to include and some think add a sense of higher production values. Regardless of these production choices, the movie is enjoyable to watch and informative.

“Kikkan” is well worth the 46 minutes to watch. It will make you feel a connection to one of North America’s cross-country skiing legends that you might not have had previously. It will also help you to transition from the ski trail to whatever else it is you do in the spring and summer. “Kikkan” is now available to view for free on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiNCCHXzdRU

Both the president of the university and the university’s athletic director were present for the announcement, marking the moment. “It has been truly amazing to see how much the program’s return has energized our community,” said Nevada Athletics Director, Stephanie Rempe, “We look forward to this new era of Nevada Skiing and continuing the program’s rich, proud tradition.”

But they acknowledged that having a nordic team is part of that equation, stating a plan to add nordic as soon as it is feasible (i.e. in the budget). 

For many decades, beginning in 1936 when skiing was first established at the University, UNR had a successful team that hosted both cross-country and alpine skiing. Over that time, the program produced four Olympians (including Katerina Hanusova Nash, who represented the Czech Republic at five Olympics, three times in cross-country skiing and twice in mountain biking) and earned 14 top-10 team finishes at NCAA Championships. But in 2010 the ski program was cut. 

The reinstatement of skiing at UNR was made possible by the University’s recent acquisition of Sierra Nevada University, which had an alpine team already in place. This season’s alpine roster will be composed primarily of athletes who had previously been competing at Sierra Nevada University, with the addition of a few new skiers and transfer students.

UNR’s ski team will compete as part of the Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association (RMISA), which currently has nine member schools, though only five have both alpine and nordic programs. 

“We’ve kind of let it be known to the athletic department that if they want to be competitive on the NCAA circuit, they’re going to need to fit in alpine and nordic,” said Gus Johnson, former racer for the UNR cross-country ski team and current advocate for that program’s return. Johnson is also a member of the UNR Ski Team Boosters and nordic sports director for Auburn Ski Club (ASC).

While there are only a handful of people working to bring back nordic to UNR at the moment, Johnson is hopeful about the future, “Being a Division I school, championships are important to them, so they realize that they need to get nordic started and it’s probably two or three years down the road,” he said. 

Athletic programs getting cut from college budgets is not unusual, the University of New Mexico is perhaps the most recent skiing example, but it is less common to see those programs make a return. “It’s pretty rare that NCAA programs get reinstated,” said Johnson, “So there’s a glimmer of hope that nordic will be the next step.” 

Readers interested in learning more about the effort to add nordic should contact Johnson. 

After technique work on snow comes race effort on rollerskis. Racing Thursday evening in Hitra, Norway, Ben Ogden led four American men when he placed 18th in a field of nearly 100 in the 54-kilometer classic mass start, the opening race of the Toppidrettsveka race series in the Trondheim region of western Norway.

Ogden finished 50.2 seconds back of the winner, and 10.4 seconds off the podium. He was followed by fellow USST athletes Finn O’Connell in 47th (+3:57.4), Johnny Hagenbuch in 55th (+6:38.4), and JC Schoonmaker in 65th (+9:26.0). Kevin Bolger and Walker Hall are also on this trip, and may compete in upcoming races.

The race was won by Max Novak of Sweden in 2:03:13.6, after he and Norwegian Gjøran Holstad Tefre distanced themselves from a 17-man chase pack within the final 10 kilometers. Novak used a powerful acceleration on a small uphill 1.8 kilometers out to open up a small gap on Tefre, which he held all the way to the finish. Tefre finished 1.8 seconds back of Novak. Mikael Gunnulfsen of Norway won a group sprint to finish third (+39.8).

Perhaps the best-known retired skier in the field, Petter Northug, 36, finished 38th (+2:53).

The women’s race, in which no Americans competed (there are no American women on this training trip), was won by Norwegian Astrid Øyre Slind, who covered 54 k in 2:10:40.5, a staggering 12+ minutes ahead of Lotta Udnes Weng in second. Friend of the program Frida Karlsson finished in 2:25:31.2 to place fifth in a field of twelve women.

U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Matt Whitcomb was buoyant about the team’s fitness and recent training heading into the race.

“Everyone is healthy,” wrote Whitcomb in an email to multiple media outlets Thursday morning, “and we’ve all had one of the best training camps of my coaching career. The guys have had a blast together. We’ve trained hard, both on and off snow. While we’re training into these races, everyone feels ready to race. Training through the summer races is a common approach.”

Thursday’s races started at 6:20 p.m. in the evening local time, with the men’s winner finishing at 8:23 p.m. and the final American not finishing until after 8:30 p.m., suggesting a late night for all after cooldown, recovery, and coming down from the high of racing.

Competition continues in western Norway with a classic sprint on Friday, then a 10/15 k interval-start skate race on Saturday morning and a 5/10 k classic pursuit Saturday afternoon. FasterSkier will publish a more detailed article after the final race. The races will be shown on NRK, if you can manage to access the Norwegian broadcaster from where you live, and may be livestreamed on the event’s Facebook page.

Results: men | women

If it’s August, it must be time to ski.

Head Coach Matt Whitcomb and roughly half the men on the U.S. Ski Team, accompanied by a couple of well-known distaff guests, have spent the last week on snow in the Torsby Ski Tunnel in southwest Sweden. They raced in the nearby Inge Bråten Memorial rollerski race earlier today, and will compete in the Toppidrettsveka rollerski series in Norway starting on Thursday. It’s a multi-stage Scandinavian adventure to help prepare for next year’s race season.

American World Cup skiers have pursued a variety of options for summer snow over the years, depending on budget, logistics, travel time, and team size. The Alaskans historically gravitate to Eagle Glacier, spending three one-week camps on snow in the Chugach Mountains between June and August. Athletes from the rest of the country have traveled to one or more of the Snow Farm (New Zealand), Falls Creek (Australia), Sognefjellet (Norway), Dachstein Glacier (Austria), Passo dello Stelvio (Italy), Oberhof ski tunnel (Germany), Torsby ski tunnel (Sweden), or Planica ski tunnel (Slovenia), typically toward the end of the northern-hemisphere summer.

(Elsewhere this summer, Jessie Diggins and Julia Kern are currently midway through a three-week stay in Falls Creek, while several other SMS women are in Oberhof. The Alaskans are generally staying put, hoping for groomed trails at Hatcher Pass in as little as seven weeks from now.)

This year, for Whitcomb and six national-team men, the answer is Torsby. Whitcomb flew across the Atlantic on August 12, joined by athletes Johnny Hagenbuch, Kevin Bolger, Finn O’Connell, JC Schoonmaker, Ben Ogden, and Walker Hall, as well as USST coaches Greta Anderson and Kristen Bourne. Their two-week trip includes a week-plus on snow in Torsby, a rollerski race in nearby Sunne, and rollerski races in the Trondheim region.

This year’s trip roster has “just six men,” Whitcomb said in a phone call while driving to the airport last Friday.

“We’ve been whittled down after Covid,” he said, which among public names claimed Sophia Laukli after her recent brace of wins in the Stranda Fjord trail race and Lysebotn Opp rollerski race. That said, the American men were joined by well-known Swedish guests Maja Dahlqvist and Frida Karlsson, as well as much of the German team. (Dahlqvist and Bolger are dating.)

So why Torsby? In part because it presents a strong training option on the merits, in part because of money.

As for the training facility, it’s not just the ski tunnel. In addition to the roughly two-kilometer-long ski track inside a refrigerated tunnel, the area also contains “a rollerskiing track, biathlon stadium (outside and in the tunnel), extensive running trails through the surrounding hills and forests, and a fully equipped gym attached to the tunnel,” as Norway-based Canadian athlete Maks Zechel wrote on this site in 2017.

And as for money, Torsby is closer and cheaper than the southern hemisphere. “We weren’t able to fit it into the budget to have a bunch of people go down to New Zealand or Australia, and the Eagle Glacier facility is closed still,” Whitcomb said. “So we wanted to have an option for those that were maybe already on the East Coast or willing to travel. So we’re pretty excited.”

“It’s been about 10 years since I’ve been to Torsby,” Whitcomb continued. “We brought the women’s team there in 2012 in a joint camp with the Swedes.”

Whitcomb also noted the relative ease of travel within Scandinavia: “In terms of itinerary, it’s a two-hour drive from Oslo [to Torsby]. When we get back to Oslo on the 21st to fly to Trondheim, that’s a 55-minute flight in the middle of the day, so it’s all fairly simple travel once we’re over there. It’s like traveling around New England.”

Another thing in common with New England: klister-cover skiing. Whitcomb described the snow inside the tunnel as manmade – snow guns are visible near the entrance – but as infrequently refreshed. “And so depending on when you’re there, it can be varying degrees of aged snow, but it tends to be fairly stable,” he said. “A variety of classic skis will work, and a variety of waxes will work. Generally a bit of a violet or some sort of 45 base covered tends to work, and some sort of medium grind.”

The tunnel is a valuable resource, but its terrain is “by no means ideal” as a direct replica of a World Cup course, Whitcomb acknowledged. The tunnel has two hills per lap, Zechel wrote, “which are steeper in one direction and more gradual in the other, making for a great place to work on striding. Most senior men would one-skate the hills at race pace, but they are still steep enough for offset technique work at lower speeds.”

But what does the tunnel have? Snow. Which is, to state the obvious, “a slippery surface,” per Whitcomb. This is specifically opposed to the “surefire kick” of the rollerskis that are most athletes’ go-to summer training modality.

Conditions in the tunnel can sometimes be “mealy,” Whitcomb observes, “even if you’re skating. It requires you to not just set the ski down, but to be able to ride it and negotiate the unpredictable nature of snow. Having a dose of that in the middle of summer has always been, we feel, a beneficial addition to the overall [training] plan.”

Whitcomb drills down on these dynamics when asked about the specific appeal of estival snow, especially what he’s learned over the last two years following no time on snow in summer 2020. Here’s his answer, quoted in full because it’s intriguing:

“One of the things that I have come to believe more and more over the last several years is that all great technique starts with the ability to use our feet well. You have to be able to stand well in your boots. Your boots have to be really comfortable, and that might mean you have to have insoles, or maybe it doesn’t; it might mean you have to have custom boots, maybe it doesn’t.

“And then you have to have a ski that you’re comfortable standing on. And all of that has to do with how comfortable you are with standing on a slippery surface below all of that. It’s like this four-layer deal where you have the body, the boot, the ski, and then the snow. And for anyone that has a hard time being stable on their feet, it’s going to be very difficult to ski well in the rest of the body. And so I think snow definitely allows us to focus by simply dropping our poles and learning to use the feet, just skiing easy for 20 or 30 minutes every session without poles, skating or classic.

“Because for those of us that don’t naturally use our feet well we often tend to use our poles as crutches, and it sort of masks the stiffnesses and the instabilities that we all have, myself included. But you take those poles away and you’re exposed to nothing but your balance, your ability to gain traction by kicking properly. And so that’s something that snow can do for you.”

*   *   *

The plan was to spend 20–25 hours on snow in the tunnel this past week, with secondary workouts on hillier outdoor terrain when necessary. Intensity in the tunnel was focused on speed; “we want to be a little bit mindful of breathing too hard,” Whitcomb noted.

He explained, “The Swedes are often talking about the challenges of coming from outdoor temperatures into the tunnel, which is quite humid – or at least cold, I don’t know if it’s humid – but they feel like it can irritate the lungs. So any intensity that we’ll do in the tunnel will be more along the lines of controlled threshold, and we’ll be masked up for those that have sensitive airways.”

After all that work on snow, it was time to race. The men competed in the Inge Bråten Memorial sprint race in Sunne earlier today, with Ogden and Schoonmaker taking 4th and 6th in the final, respectively, in a stacked field.

(Whitcomb calls Bråten, who died in 2012 at age 63, “an old friend of the team, somebody I knew.” A full article on the rollerski races is forthcoming on FasterSkier later this week, but you can find results from Sunne here now, and results from Toppidrettsveka here starting on August 25.)

Tomorrow the team flies from Oslo to Trondheim, where “we’ll live out near Aure on an oil facility,” Whitcomb notes. “And we’ll train there and sort of prepare for Toppidrettsveka, which is a four-stage event over three days. And then we’ll fly home on that Sunday,” August 28.

The men will have logged 20+ hours of on-snow time at almost precisely the midpoint between Bend Camp (late May) and the start of the World Cup season (late November). They will have explored the difference between rollerski kick and setting the wax on slippery surfaces. And they will have gotten to engage in high-level rollerski races with other top athletes. They’re all small pieces of the puzzle as the athletes build toward the season-opening races three months from now, be that in Ruka or closer to home.

Related reading:

A summer without snow: Athletes and coaches on a year with no summer skiing (October 2020)

Closing the gap: Summer skiing (August 2017)

Pro Workout: Ski Tunnel race prep time trial with Noah Hoffman (November 2011)

ANCHORAGE — Watching training sessions at a Regional Elite Group camp, the summer training series held around the country for the nation’s top junior skiers, is one part tantalizing glimpses of the future of American skiing, ten parts the cumulative reality of a lot of focused work in the present. These kids are fast, they are committed, and they are strong. But long-term success in endurance sport takes time, and they know it. Judging from the final two practices in a long and rainy week at Alaska REG camp, the future may be some ways off, but it is bright indeed.

Let’s back up a little. This year’s Alaska REG camp was held in Anchorage during the week of July 18. Comparable camps occurred elsewhere in June and July for the three other regions of a sprawling nation: in Truckee, California, for the Western Region; in Marquette, Michigan, for the Central Region; and in Craftsbury, Vermont, for the Eastern Region. Athletes, aged roughly 14 to 20, are picked on the basis of their performance in Junior National races, state high school races, and higher-level USSS races.

One or more of U.S. Ski Team coaches Greta Anderson (Development Team Coach), Bryan Fish (Cross Country Sport Development Manager), and Kristen Bourne (D-Team Coach) were present at all four camps. They were assisted in each region by a who’s who of junior coaches from local clubs.

The supporting cast in Anchorage included Galen Johnston, Jack Novak, Eric Strabel, Jan Buron, Eliza Rorabaugh, Naomi Kiekintveld, Seiji Takagi, Jenny Kimball, Trond Flagstad, Adam Verrier, and Kristen Bourne (coaches); Billy Crumm (strength session); Ja Dorris, Joey Caterinichio, and Laarni and John Power (dinner hosts); and Shannon Donley (registration). Between coaches and athletes, all of Alaska Nordic Racing, Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center, Alaska Winter Stars, Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks FXC, and University of Alaska Anchorage were represented here last week.

The camp schedule is not easy, reflecting the fact that it selects from high-achieving juniors who are already comfortable training twice a day. The tests typically make headlines; the canonical REG week contains an uphill run, a classic rollerski uphill doublepole test, and a skate rollerski agility sprint, results of which are combined with USSS/NRL points to select high-performing athletes to attend a national team camp in Park City in the fall. This year’s Alaska camp was no exception, as all three tests featured and results were recorded.

But camp is more than just the tests, says Anderson. Speaking in an in-person interview last Friday afternoon, while apparently tireless athletes began a spirited soccer match at the other end of the Service High School infield just moments removed from agility drills and strides, the USST coach emphasized that the testing is only one aspect of camp, alongside of broader training value and the chance for athletes from different clubs and regions to make connections.

As for the training value, Anderson noted, “One of the challenging things about camp is that at times it can feel like just testing, or very testing-centric, very evaluation-centric. And what we’re trying to do at these camps is to make sure that there’s a lot of training value. Coaches bring that training value; organizationally, the way we set up that environment can add training value; the thing that gives the most benefit for training is getting really good athletes together, who may otherwise only see each other in competition, to compete head-to-head, to train head-to-head, to do some intensity workouts together that they might otherwise not be able to get together and do. So I see a lot of value there.”

And as for those connections, Anderson is asked what U.S. junior skiing is doing well at present.

“Working together really well,” the Development Team Coach immediately replies. “I think at the club level and the athlete level, you see a lot of athletes across clubs training together and working hard. They’re pretty cohesive right now. We’re getting stronger as a nation. Peer-to-peer coaching is getting to be more of the norm, where athletes will train together and say, Oh, I’m trying this, or, I’m working on this. So we’re starting to have more conversations about skiing, which I think – the larger picture there is that our culture as a ski nation is getting stronger. And we’re starting to see the results come with that.”

Anderson is also impressed by the level of commitment that she sees in the country’s various clubs. “One of the things I’ve noticed a lot with this group is that many of them are systematically training throughout the year, in strong programs, quite well,” she notes. “And so there’s a lot of patterns of similarity between technique for those that are skiing with their respective clubs. I think that’s cool; it speaks to a culture of training among many of those club programs. There’s good enthusiasm; there’s good cohesion; and there’s certainly a strong sense of competitiveness in the time trials that we’ve seen so far.”

But fun is important, too, Anderson adds. “We have a sport where you maybe have a twenty-year-long career with ups and downs, and lots of learning along the way. What people remember, and what makes it enjoyable in the hard times – if there is something that makes it enjoyable – is the people that they share it with. And so I think just getting that group together any time, and quite frankly the testing and the intensity workouts are things that are shared that add value to those bonds, or really accelerate how quickly a group of people can trust each other and enjoy training together. But really, it is as simple as, it should be fun.”

The athletes sound similar notes. Here’s Rosie Whittington-Evans, 18, a recent Palmer High graduate set to ski at Colby College this fall: “Camp’s been really fun. I really enjoyed the first dinner that we have together, which is on the first day after playing a little bit of handball. And it gives you a chance to kind of meet everybody at camp. It gives you a chance to put yourself in situations with people that you might not have talked to but have been racing against for a couple of years. And yeah, it’s been really fun.”

Whittington-Evans, who was attending her second REG camp in as many years, appreciated the bonding-specific focus of this year’s camp: “I honestly was expecting more, like, testing first, like we did last year. Instead of – I think Greta is trying to make it more speed- and practice-based and just kind of team bonding at first, which I think works really well this year at camp. And it made you feel more comfortable around the people at camp with you rather than just hopping into an uphill time trial.”

Whittington-Evans was grateful for the high-level training group around her this week, particularly after spending high school racing in the Mat-Su Valley, slightly removed from the crucible that is Anchorage high school skiing. “Being surrounded by people that are more your speed or even faster” is “really nice,” she says. “I think camp is a really important thing to have. And it really brings the community together of racing and it gives you a chance to not just have people you’re racing against but also friends that you’re racing against.”

Justin Lucas (16, Service High School, first REG camp) says much the same.

“The best thing I’ve gotten out of this week is probably a couple of things: getting to meet the other teammates,” he observes. “Seeing how each other team trains, so we really get to learn from each other. Like some things you may not learn in one club, they can learn from another. It’s just a lot of interactions and learning from each other. So I think that’s my good part of this week so far.”

Coming into the camp, Lucas was expecting “a lot of hard training, lots of double training days. Which so far they’ve done,” he noted on day five of a six-day camp, “so it’s pretty much everything I had expected.”

But it had also been “pretty fun,” Lucas said. “I got to meet some of the other people from other teams. So that’s good, a good way to meet other people and get some good training.”

Lucas spent the week squarely focused on the present, but with some long-term plans in mind as well: “Right now we’re in high school, so it’s like a lot of people may focus on wanting to get first place at, say, a high school race, or State. But I think it’s more important to have your mind set on the bigger picture. Like, you may not win every race in high school. But that doesn’t mean the end of your ski career. It means you have more time to train, more time to get better. And in a few years, who knows, you could be racing World Cup.”

So does Lucas have results goals he can share?

“I’d like to hopefully make the Olympics one day, but if not, I’d like to at least make it to World Cup.”

Lucas’s long-term aspirations seem pretty plausible when you consider the context in which they were voiced. Retired athlete Nina Kemppel (four Olympics, five World Championships, 119 World Cup starts) was spotted on the Service trails during the warmup for Friday’s track workout, which occurred essentially across the street from Gus Schumacher’s house (one Olympics, one World Championships, 36 World Cup starts by age 21), in case you’d like your ready-made symbolism for the past, present, and future of American skiing. You really can get there from here.

But back to the present for the moment, there was one more test yet to administer. And so, early Saturday morning, it was time for the redoubtable Gasline Time Trial.

Gasline was the leitmotif of last year’s Alaska REG article, and has been an integral feature of Alaskan dryland training since at least the era when Kemppel was competing for Team Gold 2002, later and better-known as APU Nordic Ski Center. Course records are 10:20 for the women (Rosie Brennan), and low nine minutes for the men (Schumacher’s 9:12 on Strava is not the course record, but is close to it). Briefly put, you run uphill for 1.4 miles and 571 vertical feet, and it gets harder as you go along; read the 2021 article for the metaphorical implications of it all.

This year’s Gasline was the same as it ever was, but it came at the very end of camp. And so, after a bounding session, and a classic rollerski distance session with speeds, and a skate rollerski L3 session, and a strength session, and a rollerski agility course test, and a mountain bike session, and an uphill doublepole time trial, and Friday’s track session, and three presentations and two (Covid-safe outdoor) team dinners – most of which, by the way, occurred in a downpour during what will likely be the rainiest July ever in Anchorage in 100+ years of recordkeeping – on Saturday morning, it was time to run uphill. Fast.

Athletes parked at the finish at Prospect Heights at 8 a.m., then ran downhill en masse for bear protection. After an additional warmup on the Hillside trails and some instructions, a coach said “Go!” shortly before 9 a.m., and off they went from the canonical low point on Gasline.

While the athletes charged up the hill, coaches and support staff sprinted to their cars to drive back to Prospect Heights in time to beat the athletes to the finish. A reporter just had time to hear parts of two songs, “Unstoppable” and “Running Up That Hill,” on the six-minute drive, which feels scripted but was the actual playlist in this cultural moment. You can’t spell “kismet” without “KMXS Anchorage,” aka Mix 103.1.

The first finishers burst off the trail onto Sidorof Lane less than ten minutes later; Ari Endestad’s PR of 9:29 was the fastest time publicly posted to Strava on the morning. For every athlete there, it marked just a handful of minutes in a multi-year journey. The future is bright, but it stands on the other side of a lot of hard work. 

Related reading:

This year’s REG camps around the country: West | Central | Eastern

Alaska REG camps, past and present: 2021 | 2017 | 2007

The four nations argue that it was unlawful to deny them the option of voting no to Eliasch, and that the election procedure violated FIS statutes and Swiss law. 

Unable to vote no, the dissenting delegates decided to either walk out of the election in protest or abstain from voting altogether. Members of the appealing ski associations have suggested that Eliasch would not have received a majority of the votes cast if an option to vote no had been offered. Had that happened, the appealing nations may have been successful at installing a new candidate. 

Instead, Eliasch received 100% of the votes cast, leading his opponents to characterize the proceedings as, in the words of the German delegate, a “farce.” Nevertheless, Eliasch received 70 of a possible 117 votes—a clear 59% majority, and a five vote increase from last year. 

For FIS, an appeal of voting procedure technicalities is unprecedented: as a rule, FIS presidential elections have been uncontested and decided by acclaim. In response FIS released a statement saying the allegations, “are entirely without merit or substance.”

Eliasch was reportedly told in advance about the appeal during a meeting in Innsbruck with the Austrian Ski Association. “He took it very professionally and said he needed it too, otherwise [the allegations] would resonate throughout his term,” according to Chrisitan Scherer, the head of Austrian skiing. 

While the CAS case will examine legal minutiae, it is best seen as the latest contest in a power struggle between a bloc of dominant ski nations and FIS President Eliasch, whose agenda to rapidly centralize media rights under FIS and shake up the World Cup calendar has threatened their hegemony. 

“If you think about the bloc here [in FIS], it’s the French, Germans, Swiss, Austrians, Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns,” said Dexter Paine, the U.S.’s former FIS Vice President and Councilor who was voted off the council over his support of centralization. 

What the bloc hopes to achieve from the CAS appeal is unclear, though it seems unlikely to overturn the result of the election. The aim may be to stall Eliasch’s agenda as the case will take months to resolve, or to wound him politically and bring him to the bargaining table in a weaker position. It may also be that the four appealing nations are determined to find a way to overturn the election and install their preferred candidate: Urs Lehmann, the head of Swiss Ski.

Eliasch’s election in 2021 interrupted the Swiss reign at FIS, with just two Swiss men— Marc Holder and Gian Franco Kasper—leading the Federation for the previous 70 years. Lehmann, who called the FIS election a “muppet show”, appears to be an opposition candidate that will preserve the bloc’s established order.

Both Paine and Eliasch spoke to FasterSkier earlier this month to discuss the issues facing FIS as it attempts to centralize the media rights, expand the reach of the World Cup, and attract a larger audience in North America. 

Eliasch’s bid to modernize FIS in the near term will now be hampered by Paine’s absence from the council, an assertive bloc, and entanglements at every corner with the sport media company Infront.

While there has been general disagreement between the bloc and Eliasch over centralization, one development in particular has alarmed the bloc as well as Infront: A judgment won in Swiss court that found FIS to be the rightful owner of World Cup races and not, as was previously understood, the hosting National Ski Association. 

With this ruling in hand, Eliasch has suggested that the contracts with Infront could be broken—a move that would take centralization from the theoretical realm, where it has support from the bloc, to the immediate, where it does not. 

Much of Infront’s contracts for FIS events extend to at least the 2025/26 season, with Swiss Ski signing a deal that lasts until 2027/28. 

Urs Lehmann, the head of Swiss Ski, opposes the notion of breaking contracts. “That’s not possible,” he said to Tages Anzeiger. “Infront hasn’t done anything wrong, on the contrary, it’s a big partner of the FIS when it comes to world championships.”

For his part, Lehmann said centralization would require a long time frame, presumably after 2028, and could be done only after proving that Ski Associations would receive at least the same amount of money. 

Eliasch has said that FIS has ample funds to give “cast-iron guarantees” to match Ski Association’s deals with Infront, saying, “We can back it up any day of the week.”

FIS’s financial assets at the end of 2020 amounted to around $146 million, suggesting that if the Federation is prepared to dip into their reserves, it has the ability to support Ski Associations through the transition. 

Infront’s VP of Strategic Communications, Jörg Polzer, outlined the risks for FIS of moving away from the current arrangement in an interview in Ski Racing, suggesting that the new proposal “would represent a de facto expropriation of the National Ski Associations.”

Polzer also felt that the outcome would be a “plethora of legal claims and lawsuits for many years to come,” the result of which could mean that fans might not be able to access “FIS World Cup coverage as conveniently and widely as it is the case today.”

Centralization under FIS threatens to disrupt both Infront’s profits and its valued portfolio of winter sports which encompasses all seven winter Olympic sport federations. It is likely to respond to broken contracts by both halting payments and pursuing damages from National Ski Associations.

Eliasch reassured members in a letter to the FIS council stating, “The FIS will award all national ski federations compensation for all claims by Infront.”

The plan to centralize FIS, known as the Concorde Agreement, is supported by US Ski & Snowboard, who believe the proposal would help modernize the sport and increase funding for everyone. 

Paine said that “Johan [Eliasch] has been really explicit about the fact that he would envision that revenues related to media would increase under the new model. In fact, he’s talking about potentially up to a 25% increase in revenues.” 

Still, the bloc has opposed the centralization of media rights, with Austria’s Scherer saying, “you can’t just take them (media rights) away from us, as an organizer you also bear the risk.” Scherer’s position is that hosting events should come with a risk/reward incentive. Considering that the opposing nations host many events, including the highest profile ones, the rewards are significant. 

The Ski Associations of the bloc also oppose the “expropriation” of ownership that centralization presents. Scherer argued that it could only be done on a voluntary basis—an option that would defeat the purpose of centralization, but preserve the bloc’s influence over skiing.

Facing resistance, Eliasch decided to table the Concorde Agreement to allow for a period of consultations with members. “We decided not to bring [the Agreement] forward to Congress, because it needed more work,” Paine said.

Some representatives have complained about poor communication between Eliasch and National Ski Associations with regards to his plans for centralization.

Paine agreed that improvements are needed in this area, saying, “FIS needs to do a much better job articulating why this would be good for everyone in the sport, and how they would make sure that those countries aren’t any worse off than they were before.” 

Though Paine added that, “Johan has been very explicit about the fact that he is going to seek the advisement of the [FIS] Counsel, and all members, on all the items regarding centralization rights.”

Entanglements with Infront

Another challenge for FIS will be breaking free from Infront. The company has become enmeshed in the fabric of FIS, from the television production of races, to long term contracting of rights, to negotiating sponsorships, to even building the FIS app and website.  

FIS will also have to overcome its own independent marketing agency, FIS Marketing AG, which was created in 2009 to acquire and sell the sponsorship rights to FIS World Cup events. 

FIS Marketing AG (FISMAG) is majority owned by FIS (51%), with 24.5% owned by Infront, and the final 24.5% owned by Tridem Sports. The venture is led by Christian Pirzer—the CEO of Tridem Sports, a two man marketing firm started by Pirzer in 2008 and based in Freienbach, Switzerland. 

“Part of Johan’s platform, and I think most candidates’ platform, was to bring all of that in house,” said Paine. “I think people didn’t fully understand why 49% of our marketing organization was owned by a third party.” 

Infront’s role in the venture has been principally to acquire sponsors, billing €855,000 for its services to FIS Marketing AG, according to an SEC filing in 2018. For its part, FIS recorded its 2018 income from partnerships at 676,000 Swiss francs—around €577,000 at the time. 

“Most entities own 100% of their sponsorship revenues, and I think it’s unusual that FIS wouldn’t,” Paine said. Questions have been asked about whether this arrangement is in the best interests of FIS. “We don’t [even] have a title sponsor for Snowboard. That just always astounded me.”

Eliasch intends to end the venture, writing in a letter to the FIS Council, “We have terminated all agreements related to FISMAG so we have removed this obstacle to realizing our sponsorship potential.” To date the firm has not been closed, and Swiss courts are reportedly handling the injunctions necessary to stop it from continuing.

According to German paper Bild, Pirzer is suing Eliasch to defend himself against allegations that he has been involved in fraud. Pirzer said simply, “I have filed a criminal complaint against Johan Eliasch for defamation.” 

Infront Sport and Media is based in Zug, Switzerland, and is led by Phillipe Blatter—nephew of former FIFA president Sepp Blatter who presided over the governing body of soccer from 1998 to 2015 when he stepped down after a massive corruption investigation roiled the organization and put him under investigation for fraud. 

After Phillipe Blatter was appointed Infront CEO in 2005, the company won comprehensive distribution rights to the FIFA World Cup until 2022. Infront released a statement in 2015 squashing “unwarranted assumptions” of nepotism with regard to its FIFA contracts. 

While Infront remains a respected titan of its field, the company has been dogged by investigations over the improper sale of media rights in Italy’s Serie A soccer league, advertising in the German Football Association, and antitrust activities. The company’s 2019 prospectus stated possible investment risks included negative publicity “prompted by actual or alleged criminal activities, such as money laundering, tax evasion or bribery.”

In 2015, Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group purchased a controlling stake in Infront for $1.2 billion. The Group was a key player in China’s drive to create 300 million Chinese skiers, building, among other things, the world’s largest indoor ski area in Harbin. Wanda Group acquired Infront six months prior to the IOC vote on hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics, and the addition of the Swiss company was seen as a boost to Beijing’s successful bid. 

Should Eliasch prove successful at centralizing the rights, it is still likely that Infront would remain involved with FIS, considering its primacy in its field and the fact that other centralized sports such as biathlon and F1 both contract with Infront. 

Paine said that he’s “been an advocate for Johan sitting down with Infront. I think there has to be some negotiation with all the parties involved, if this is going to come to a successful conclusion.”

Eliasch met with Infront in May, and was scheduled to meet again in June. “I’ve been a big advocate for those conversations taking place,” Paine said. “I was the loudest advocate, quite frankly, on the Council for making sure that Johan was in dialogue with Infront.”

A Push for More Racing in the United States

Paine and Eliasch also drew ire from some nations over their push for more World Cup racing in the United States, aimed at attracting a larger American audience.

The seasonal stops on the World Cup have grown so indelible that there’s been little room left for visits to new venues. “The calendar from one year to the next has looked very similar,” said Paine. “There were very few changes.”

The arguably stagnate routine has kept World Cup racing of all disciplines overwhelmingly in the Alps region and in the Nordic countries, and moves to change this has frustrated some nations. “It’s about planning security,” argued Walter Reusser, the Alpine Director at Swiss Ski. 

Eliasch argued that the prescribed calendar has hindered the growth of the sport, particularly in the U.S. “I know [FasterSkier is] focused on cross-country, but alpine is a good example,” said Eliasch. “NorAm races, which are the second tier, are much more famous than the FIS World Cup races in the U.S. That tells you that something is really off. And when do we come to the U.S.? At the wrong time [November] when there is little interest in ski racing. So we have changed that, at least for alpine, so that we come back in March. We go to Aspen and Palisades Tahoe, as it’s called now. And here we hope we get proper viewership, and we can build much more time and engagement with American viewers.” 

Though American alpine skiers have gained widespread fame, as a television audience the U.S. does not make the top ten for alpine, ranking somewhere below the likes of Slovenia.

“Johan has said whether it’s cross-country, or alpine, we need to have more events outside of Central Europe and Scandinavia,” said Paine. “And those countries, once again, are the countries with the most events. If we’re going to hold events in North America or in Asia, they have to come from somewhere.”

The addition of men’s alpine racing in Aspen and Palisades Tahoe next winter comes at the expense of Norwegian venue Kvitfjell. Erik Røste, the outgoing head of Norwegian skiing responded, “The Norwegian Ski Association will do everything we can to ensure that both women and men can run the World Cup in Norway in the years to come. As a large and dominant alpine nation, this is important.”

Paine dissauged fears that the Cross-Country World Cup races tentatively scheduled for Minneapolis, MN and Cable, WI in 2024 would be in jeopardy without his seat on the Council. “I don’t believe there’s any issues,” Paine said. “That cross-country calendar seems to be pretty widely supported. Chris [Grover], has done a really nice job in building relationships.

“Look, there’s going to be a lot of turnover in cross-country as Erik Røste is going to be done in June and there is going to be a new head of the Norwegian Ski Federation, as well as all the issues with races in Russia given the conflict in Ukraine. My sense is that we’re in good shape for the 2024 races, particularly since everyone was ready to go with the Minneapolis races when the pandemic led to its cancellation.

This is good news for American fans waiting since 2001 for the Cross-Country World Cup to return on home snow. For Paine, long an advocate for more racing on our shores, the bolstered American World Cup calendar is a job well done. 

Woods brings wealth of collegiate Nordic team competition, coaching and leadership to SVSEF 

SUN VALLEY, Idaho – June 19, 2022 – Effective August 1, 2022, Becky Woods will step into the role of Cross Country Program Director at Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF). Woods comes to SVSEF from Bates College in Lewiston, ME, where she served as the Head Men’s and Women’s Nordic Ski Coach alongside additional leadership roles from 1994 to 2022.

“We are thrilled to welcome Becky Woods to the team at SVSEF and to embrace her exceptional leadership and coaching experience at the helm of our Cross Country programs,” said Scott McGrew, SVSEF’s Executive Director. “Her proven ability to guide athletes in the pursuit of excellence both on the trails and in the community, along with her deep appreciation of the Nordic culture and the passion behind the sport, will make Becky a tremendous asset for our cross country teams and for our greater ski community in the Wood River Valley.”

Woods’ leadership as a collegiate coach, mentor, administrator, and teacher offer a unique skillset and balance to the Cross Country Program Director position at SVSEF. In her role as Head Men’s and Women’s Nordic Ski Coach at Bates College, Woods was responsible for leading and managing all aspects of a successful Division I Nordic Ski Program, while bringing staff, athletes, and volunteers along to carry out a clear mission as a top priority. She attributes much of her success in her career to fostering a culture of trust, respect, and support, and understands the importance of imparting a true love of skiing and a respect for the process it takes to be successful.

“I am humbled to have the opportunity to lead this great group of SVSEF coaches and athletes,” said Becky Woods, incoming SVSEF Cross Country Program Director. “It is evident there is expertise, talent, and support within the organization—and a true sense of community. Having spent time in the Wood River Valley, I am honored and excited to become a member of the team and help SVSEF Cross Country continue to grow and excel as a ski community.”

In Woods’ role as SVSEF Cross Country Program Director, she’ll provide program-wide leadership and day-to-day management while supporting the overall vision and mission of the organization. She’ll be instrumental in the successful recruitment, training, and retaining of a world-class coaching staff and the ongoing development of an athletic program that supports each participant in achieving their personal and athletic potential.

Founded in 1972, the SVSEF Cross Country Program has consistently been recognized as one of the best in the country; most recently as the 2021 USSA Cross Country Club of the Year, and in 2022, the Junior Girls brought home their third consecutive National Championship team title. From the youngest Devo kids to elite athletes at the Comp Team, Post-Grad and professional level, our program is 250 athletes strong and steeped in Nordic traditions driven by a strong sense of family, community, competition, and camaraderie.

During the 2021/22 season, three members of the XC Gold Team competed in the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics, and two additional SVSEF alumni were named to the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team. For the upcoming 2022/23 season, five athletes from the SVSEF Cross Country Program have been named to the U.S. Cross Country and Para Nordic Ski Teams.

For more information about the SVSEF Cross Country Programs, please visit svsef.org.

About Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation 

Since its inception in 1966, the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation has been a longstanding pillar in the community, providing snowsport programs and offering academic assistance to support student-athletes in reaching their highest potential. SVSEF offers an array of programs for athletes ages five and up, from learn-to-ski and ride through FIS and other national and international-level competition. The organization offers financial assistance to families, so that anyone who wishes to may participate. For more information, please visit svsef.org. 

The following article was initially published on FasterSkier on April 2, 2003. It was written by Pete Vordenberg, who at the time was the assistant coach of the U.S. Ski Team, under head coach Trond Nystad.

Nystad’s boss was Luke Bodensteiner. The development coach was Chris Grover. Athletes on the men’s national team included Justin Wadsworth, Carl Swenson, Torin Koos, Kris Freeman, and Andrew Johnson, plus a grand total of one (1) woman, Wendy Wagner. If you’ve followed American nordic skiing at any point in the last 20 years, you likely recognize some or all of these names.

This article is the first of a four-part series, which Vordenberg published on FasterSkier over a few days in April 2003, looking back on the just-completed 2002/2003 season. It is, like many archival pieces in this series, both timeless and dated. The athletes train hard in the morning, rest in the middle of the day, then have a second training session in the afternoon. That much is familiar. The athletes are expected to spend much of the summer and fall living in Park City, where a national-team skier works at Home Depot during his recovery window. That much is less so.

Finally, the genre of this document itself likely deserves comment: This is the second-in-command of the USST, drafting a candid memoir in these humble pages. This is, as the saying goes, tremendous content; I found this entire series compulsively readable, and am thrilled that Vordenberg took the time to write it.

It is also, perhaps, reflective of the evolution of this site and how information from national team coaches is passed on to the devoted cross-country fans following from the U.S. While it’s unlikely that Matt Whitcomb or Chris Grover would write something comparable in length for FasterSkier anytime soon, Whitcomb took the time to speak with FasterSkier after virtually every World Cup or Olympic race this past season, while Grover remained quick to respond and support our coverage by phone or email. Grover also recorded an interview with FasterSkier editor Rachel Perkins earlier this week that will be featured on the Nordic Nation podcast tomorrow. It’s a shift from the written word toward more audio-based media, but the dedication of the U.S. Ski Team coaches remains unchanged.

This piece also feels like a reflection of its era, and of the unique energy that Vordenberg brought to it. As for the era, this was, in both ski years and tech years, generations ago; there was a certain informality to early-aughts cross-country ski journalism that has, for better or worse, largely leached out of the current incarnation of FasterSkier. The unfiltered stuff is all on Instagram now. And as for Vordenberg, well, if you compare this piece with either his book or a published interview with the man, suffice to say that he has a well-defined voice.

Next month will mark 20 years since the opening scene of this article, set in mid-June, 2002. It will still be hot in Park City. El Chubasco will still feed hungry skiers. Chris Grover will still be coaching the national team. It will still be impossible to look cool while doing spenst. Athletes will still spend the summer rollerskiing, running, and doing strength, while dreaming big dreams about the race season ahead. The work will still continue. As Vordenberg writes here, “Even among the youngest athletes on the team there are no spring chickens, no overnight successes. Believe that.”

*   *   *

A tale of the US Ski Team’s 02-03 Season – Part 1

(by Pete Vordenberg, April 2, 2003)

I first met Trond Nystad in Norway in 1993. We had raced each other the previous season at the NCAA Championships but did not meet. He beat me at that Championship, which I considered a fluke, and he likely considered status quo. In Oslo, where we met, we did not say as much, but like dogs meeting for the first time at the ends of their leashes, we would have tangled if given the chance – just to see who was tougher.

Later we were teammates on the Factory Team, and there became friends. We trained, traveled and raced together all over the US for a few seasons. Train, Travel and Race with someone and you come to either respect them… or not, to like them, or not.

Over the next five years I came to both like and respect Trond. We were competitors first and friends finally. And this is important, because I have just spent the past two months with Trond in such close quarters as to be literally living out of the same suitcase, and before these past two months, the two months prior to that, and before that, save for a few blessed weeks around Christmas, we have been together nonstop since June when he hired me as his assistant.

Trond is the head coach of the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team. I am the assistant coach. Our boss, the man who hired Trond and, at Trond’s request, me is Luke Bodensteiner. Luke is a man who if we were dogs I would hope was restrained by a strong leash, a heavy chain, for there is no hope tangling with Luke. Luke is in the captain’s chair. He is the man who would go down with the ship if it were sinking, and he is the reason it is not sinking. He is bulletproof – the target of many ski snipers. I know. I have shot at Luke. I still shoot at Luke – though these days more constructively.

This is the tale of Trond and my first year with the team as coaches, the tale of the US Ski Team’s 02-03 season. It is told from my perspective and my perspective alone – not necessarily that of the U.S. Ski Team or anyone else connected to it. There are stories and some detailed info on our training and technique as well as racing, travel and life on the road… enjoy.

*   *   *

Trond gathered the troops for the first time in mid-June. Park City, Utah was ninety-five degrees. It was one-ten in Salt Lake. We sat together for the first time as a group, sweating. There is Chris Grover, Development Coach. He is the man behind Kris Freeman and Andrew Johnson’s rise from the top of the junior to the top of the senior ranks. Chris has helped revolutionize how we train strength and how we teach and understand technique in the US. There is Chris Hall, our wax and ski man, Katie Gould, our manager. There is Luke and Trond, and me.

There is Justin Wadsworth, the oldest member of our team, staff included. Justin was racing in his first world championships in 1989 while I still had a year of high school left. Carl Swenson is the second oldest member of the team, staff included. Carl, Luke and I raced each other as juniors – we go way back.

Justin, Carl, Luke and I were teammates together on the US Team ten years ago. We had ideas on what could be better – a lot of ideas.

There is Wendy Wagner, our only woman on the National Team. I have known her since she was a star at Western State College. In 1997 we took a trip together to race a series of races in Northern Sweden. That is what a lot of people don’t know or understand. These racers have been at this a long time. Long before you ever heard of them they were training and racing and paying their own way to race four times a week and ride around places like Northern Sweden in an over-crowded van dreaming of one day being fast enough to win medals.

Even among the youngest athletes on the team there are no spring chickens, no over night successes. Believe that.

Just because the first time you ever heard of Torin Koos was at the 2001 pre-Olympics [Nationals] doesn’t mean he rolled off the hay wagon that morning. Torin Koos can run a mile in four-minutes and five seconds. He spent his youth panting around the oval and skiing in the North West’s sloppy excuse for snow, and these things he has done a lot. And he is the youngest on the team, the one with the least amount of training behind him.

The next youngest is Kris Freeman. Kris trains close to 800 hours a year, and has for several years. So has the next youngest, Andrew Johnson. Kris and Andrew can be grouped together because they are the first skiers to come from the new school of thought in US Skiing. It is more of a hands-on approach. They have lived and trained together under the guidance of Chris Grover, and now Trond and I, for three years – year round. They were good to start with and they got better.

This year Kris won the World Under-23 Championships, the 30km, by a minute forty-five. He was fourth in the 15km at the regular World Championships, seconds from a medal… feet from the gold. He was only seconds from the win in the Skiathlon (running-pursuit) at the Worlds, and won the opening leg of the relay. He dominated the opening leg of the World Championship relay. Damn.

Carl Swenson took fifth in the 50km, was a second closer to a medal than Kris in the Skiathlon, and had the fifth fastest relay time. Damn. That is fast.

That is Koch fast, or almost.

New Koch! Coming soon!

*   *   *

Our first task that sweaty June was to create a team. This task took priority over all others – over training, over results. Over everything becoming a cohesive team was the number one priority. Together we could succeed in an atmosphere of support, open communication, confidence and fun. To solidify this notion we would jump, as a team bonding exercise, from a 440 foot cable car toward a shallow rocky river below… but that is later.

Cohesion is not so tangible as medals. How do you measure its success? By medals? No, for, though not likely, you can win without it and you can fail in spite of it. I measure it in hindsight. It was not a total success. There are yet bugs in the system. We have more work to do. But it was a big success. I know this because as I write this I am on my way home on a plane from a long stint traveling and racing in Europe with the same small group of people, which followed on the heals of a long stint in Maine, which followed a long stint on the road all over the Western US, Fairbanks, Alaska and Canada which followed a long stint training and coaching in Utah and New Zealand all with the same small group of people – and even after all this I don’t want to kill any of them. That is success. We have communicated well, we have talked through the difficult situations that have and will inevitably arise. And we are all in one piece. I’ll call it a good start.

*   *   *

“Yo homes! How’s it hanging?” is Trond’s patented greeting.

It is July and team training has begun in earnest. Team training, not training. The athletes have been training since their last race last April. In July we start official team training. We train together at least once a day, more often twice a day.

A typical July day we meet at the ski team office at eight. The skiers are there at seven fifty-five. “Five minutes early” is team cohesion policy number seven. There are fifteen policies. The athletes came up with them.

“Yo homes, how’s it hanging?” says Trond.

“You’re late, man,” says Andrew – smiling. It is eight, but as we are not early, we are late. Communicating openly and in a timely manner is cohesion policy number three. We operate by these policies.

We load in the van and depart for training at roughly twenty times the appropriate speed. We came together easily, fell into our routine as if it were habit, and it is habit. At the start of the rollerski road the skiers pile from the van, pull poles and skis out behind them and in pairs, singles and small groups (the Development team is training with us too) start off down the road.

Today Trond stays in the van and drives. I get out and ski with Wendy and Aelin Peterson who trained with us much of the summer. Trond zooms ahead, stops and takes video. He stops skiers, offers some technique advice, takes some lactate measurements to make sure everyone is going the right pace, jumps in the van and zooms ahead again. I offer a few technique suggestions to Wendy and Aelin as we ski, watch them, see what I think they could do better. Being open to constructive criticism is policy number eight – Wendy and Aelin play with my suggestions, make adaptations, feel for themselves what works.

Some days I drive, take video and lactate measurements and Trond skis. Sometimes Chris Grover drives. We have to trade off, or we’d die from the training. We are ex-racers all of us. The Italian National Team is coached by an ex-racer; the German National Team is coached by an ex-racer. The Norwegian team’s coaching staff is full of ex-racers, as is the Swedish staff… it is likely we all had ideas on how it could be done better. Now we have the chance to do it.

After the rollerski we return to the Ski Team office, the athletes go home, or head to El Chubasco for lunch. El Chubasco is awesome.

*   *   *

A typical morning distance session is two hours. We do it in level 1; only on a few hard climbs do they hit level 2. They move with snappy, powerful yet relaxed technique even at this easy pace. They generally throw in sprints along the way – just pick-ups of around ten seconds. Technique is always a focus. Training is not social time. There is little conversation, save for the coaches making suggestions. In training they focus on training. Anything else is just going through the motions.

Midday there are projects for the coaches and rest for the skiers… most of the skiers. Andrew Johnson heads to work at Home Depot in Salt Lake. It can be a hundred and twenty on the asphalt down at the Depot in Salt Lake. Andrew works inside. Skiers have a very hard time supporting themselves by skiing alone, even on the national team.

Too much of our work this summer involved trying to find extra funding – and without success. We can never do everything we want, but we tweak our budget and wring it for all it is worth. There is much organizing and planning to do. There are dates and locations to nail down and luckily we have Katie Gould to help us or we’d never have made it. Also, we are trying to develop our training program and trying to bring our sports science department into the mix. Along with Grover we are working to come up with some better teaching tools for our development efforts. For Trond and I, every day is brand new. We are fresh faced and new on the job and we are just finding things like the copy machine, the coffee pot. The question is always the same, what can we do better, what aren’t we doing, how do we win medals? How do we win medals? That is our business.

Afternoon training starts at four. It’s a dry heat; this Park City afternoon we run up a trail of soft, brown fluff. Our feet beat the dust into the air. It sticks to our legs. We are brown with it when we reach the weight room after a half hour jog and twenty minute session of plyometric jumping called spenst.

Spenst is hilarious. Picture a herd of skiers hopping like mad on one leg up a dusty trail, in a cloud of foot-kicked dust, and then they walk down relaxed, arms swinging loose, as if nothing happened, only to turn back around at the bottom and repeat the uphill assault on the other leg. Each jump is maximal. We do 10 jumps per leg, three times, times three exercises. And then we do some bounding. All efforts are maximal – the idea is to develop explosive power.

The weight room is sparse for cross-country skiers. There are plenty of squat racks, but not many dip bars. With the help of the strength staff we have devised our own exercises and created a means to train the muscles we want to train – we made our own dip bar. We believe in lifting heavy weights. We believe in throwing the medicine ball at each other as hard as possible. The first time I caught the medicine ball for Andrew Johnson I stood there ready to receive a lame lob of a toss, and was literally knocked ten feet back by the 8kg ball he launched straight at my head. I made a sound like, “guck!” and was unable to toss the ball back to him at anything but an arching lob. The next day my forearms were useless and sore from catching the medicine balls rocketed at me.

Andrew Johnson can do three sets of five dips with 110lbs hanging from his waist. Wendy Wagner can do three sets of five pull-ups with 40lbs hanging from her waist. Kris Freeman can hoist 220 pounds into the air by a doublepole pulley so fast and hard the whole machine trembles. Wadsworth’s stomach is a grotesque xylophone of muscle. There is no messing around in the weight room.

While many programs in the US treat general strength as a side addition to training, for us it is an integral part of the plan, of getting fast enough to win medals. We did two main blocks of max strength training where in we did five exercises three times each using weight so heavy it could only be lifted around five times per set. We focused on weighted pull-ups and dips, a double-pole simulation devised by Trond, and leg press – all using huge weight. In addition to this we did an extensive routine of core strength – mostly tossing heavy balls around using all the muscles of the stomach, hips and back. We also did some rollerboard with the board canted as steeply as possible, so steep it was frightening trying to mount the tipsy little seat. This routine we did three times a week. The weight session was always proceeded by a run of half an hour to an hour and once a week by the routine of spenst. Simple.

That is one day.

*   *   *

There’s more. Here are links to the rest of the series, along with excerpts from each installment.

Part two: Summer training: “I’m not giving you enough secrets. I have so far given you all of our secrets. ‘Our goals are shared and so is our success.’ That is team cohesion policy number 6. We dream together, work together and succeed together. There is a photo of Kris Freeman held aloft on the shoulders of his teammates after his fourth place at worlds. This is metaphorical. What is harder to show is that his teammates are also standing on his shoulders. Even harder yet to show: he is standing on the shoulders of all the coaches and people who have helped him in the past, of the athletes who have come before him, a whole network of support…and harder yet to show, that this country’s ski community as a whole is standing on his shoulders as well, his and Carl’s and the rest of the national team’s shoulders – waiting for that glimmer, waiting for the next Koch. Expecting something like trickle down economics. These skiers have the potential, via their international success, to pull American skiing up by the bootstraps. But they can’t succeed alone. We can’t do it alone.”

Part three: European campaign: “We actually have several potential medallists. We have Kikkan Randall, who has unfortunately suffered illness after illness early in the season, but who is an incredible talent and a potential medallist at U-23’s. We have Kristina Trygstad-Saari, who was 6th at Junior Worlds the previous year, and a Continental Cup winner earlier this season. We have Leif Zimmerman, who is a rising talent. We have Torin Koos who is a definite contender in the sprint. We have Andrew Newell who has proven himself to be the fastest sprint prelim racer in the country this year. Andy had the second fastest sprint prelim time at Junior Worlds this season and finished 7th there behind two of his US teammates – including Leif. There are others who are fast, but not yet fast enough – for now I won’t list them. They are skiers who will rise with time and training. I believe in them, and we have patience for them. This is a strong team. Chris Grover, Development Coach, has just come in from Junior Worlds and is in charge of the team.”

Part four: Final chapter, for this year: “The race [at Holmenkollen] is on. Kris is skiing in the top ten. Andrew and Carl are skiing in the top 30, Lars Flora and Dave Chamberlain, who both paid their own way here are in the 40’s. Dave dies first. His skis iced badly and he couldn’t fight it off. He came by me looking like a drowned rat. Andrew starts to die next, he falls down the results sheet with every km, but keeps fighting hard. Lars stays steady. Kris is still around the top 10 to 15. Carl starts to fade. Then Kris starts to fade. Things are going downhill, and then it starts to snow hard. The race blows up. This is ski racing. …

“I think this team is the New Koch just as Mathias [Fredriksson] is the next Gunde – or at least inasmuch as anyone can be. There will never be another Koch or another Gunde, but this team will be the next big thing.

“I’ll tell you now so you are not too surprised, at times we are going to fail and flail in route. We’re going to screw up and we’re going to piss people off and it won’t always be graceful, but we will attack this project with vigor, patience, and persistence. And squeezing it for one second at a time, we will succeed.”

The following article was first published on FasterSkier in June 2009. It is reprinted now in advance of the upcoming announcement of athlete nominations for the 2022/2023 U.S. Ski Team, a subject of perennial interest for American ski fans. Based on the published objective criteria for team naming and athletes’ current world ranking, it appears that multiple athletes who are current or recent NCAA skiers will be named to next year’s national team.

Like many archival stories shared over the past few months, this article is simultaneously both dated and timeless. On the one hand, it discusses then-current college athletes Matt Gelso and Alexa Turzian, both of whom graduated from college in the early 2010s and have been retired from pro skiing for years; this was a long time ago. On the other hand, the article was written by an obscure FasterSkier reporter named Nat Herz, and the third collegiate athlete it discusses is one Rosie Brennan. Brennan said that she “felt that the USST had not given her enough time to fulfill her potential” as a college athlete, Herz wrote in 2009.

Well over a decade later, Herz was of course interviewing Brennan in Zhangjiakou at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Brennan’s second Games as an athlete and Herz’s third as a reporter. As famed nordic ski analyst William Faulkner once wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

At the Beijing Games, Herz wrote an article on Brennan’s career path entitled, “Rosie Brennan won’t take home medals from Beijing. She still helped change U.S. cross-country skiing.”

As Herz noted in the recent Brennan article, surveying some of this history, “At the start of Brennan’s career, the U.S. Ski Team was pushing athletes, hard, to skip conventional four-year college and commit full-time to skiing for the American program. [Jessie] Diggins, 30, did that. Brennan went to Dartmouth University and raced on the collegiate circuit When she started at school, she was also supported by the U.S. Ski Team. But then, after her sophomore year, she was cut.”

Contrasting this with the present day, Herz wrote, “the U.S. coaches now concede that the cold shoulder they gave to collegiate athletes was the wrong approach. At the Beijing Games, more than half of the American team finished or is enrolled in a traditional college program.” (This does not include athletes skiing for and taking classes at Alaska Pacific University; APU does not have an NCAA-affiliated ski team.)

Herz quoted 2022 Matt Whitcomb on these dynamics: “Being social in college, and being a kid a little bit, for a little bit longer, is what we now understand helps us get longer careers. You could almost look at Jessie Diggins as an anomaly.”

The simple takeaway, after reading these two articles against each other, is roughly, “The U.S. Ski Team opinion has changed; college is now recognized as having an important place in longterm athlete development; NCAA skiing is now a good avenue for many U.S. skiers.”

There’s correlation and then there’s causation, and while this article is not making bold claims about either, this newer line of thinking does prompt reflection on the ski-career trajectories of past NCAA champions. Keep in mind, the American development system, the staffing, coach education, and training philosophies of NCAA programs, and the ability of NCAA athletes to race both collegiate and international race circuits, etc., have all evolved over the last decade, along with the thinking of the U.S. Ski Team. There are also a myriad of reasons why an athlete may step away from sport before achieving top results. There’s no control group, and a lot of confounding variables in considering this (very small) data set.

That said, here’s a quick look back at American athletes who won an individual NCAA championship in the first two decades of this century: Chris Cook, Glenn Randall, Matt Gelso, Sam Tarling, Reid Pletcher, Miles Havlick, Paddy Caldwell, and Ian Torchia, for the men; Lindsey Williams, Lindsey Weier, Amy Glen, Joanne Firesteel Reid, Anika Miller, and Katharine Ogden, for the women.

To paint in broad strokes, you could reasonably conclude that, historically speaking, winning NCAAs as a young American skier has generally not been associated with longterm World Cup–level success, with Cook, Reid (biathlon), and Katharine Ogden being exceptions that disprove the rule.

But if you shift your focus from 2000–2019 to 2020–2022 and consider American NCAA champions over just the last three years – Ben Ogden (x3), Sydney Palmer-Leger (x2), Sophia Laukli, and Novie McCabe, all of whom save Palmer-Leger raced in Beijing and already have multiple World Cup top-30s – you may conclude that this is another area that is now changing. NCAA skiing could have a very different status in this country another 13 years from now.

Performance, not college, was reason for USST cuts

Nat Herz, June 24, 2009

In the middle of May, the U.S. Ski Team (USST) dropped seven of the 18 skiers that were on the team. Three of those seven skiers are currently attending college: Matt Gelso and Alexa Turzian at Colorado University (CU), and Rosie Brennan at Dartmouth.

Following those skiers’ dismissals, the USST released a new set of recommendations that called for elite high school skiers to take time off to train before starting college. That announcement spawned abundant discussion on this web site and within the cross-country community, centered on the role of college programs in the development of the nation’s best skiers. Over the last few weeks, FasterSkier spoke with the dismissed collegiate skiers, as well as the staff of the USST, about how these decisions were made, and about collegiate skiing in general.

According to USST staff, these three skiers — and the other four that were dismissed from the team—were not dropped because they were attending college, per se. Instead, they were dropped due to a simple lack of improvement, and a lack of integration into an international-caliber development pipeline.

According to the athletes, the sacrifices they make to participate in a college skiing program are more than offset by the other benefits that their schools have to offer: financial support, opportunities for intellectual development, and—with a social life—a distraction and respite from the rigors of a full-time program. And, some still argue, it can provide a platform for international success.

Toward International Success

According to USST Head Coach Pete Vordenberg, for the nation’s best high school skiers, the college route just hasn’t worked as it is currently structured.

In an e-mail to FasterSkier, Vordenberg wrote that most young American skiers start out behind their international counterparts in terms of fitness. In order to catch up, these athletes need the highest possible level of training and racing—at “the closest level to the best that we can design and carry out,” he wrote.

The closest level to the best, Vordenberg continued, means year-round training on an individually-designed plan; closely monitored and coached training and recovery; and racing as much as possible at the highest level.

Potentially, Vordenberg wrote, college programs could provide this level of training and development necessary for international success, but that recently, this has not been the case.

“Can a college program provide [the type of support] described above? I don’t see why not,” he wrote. “Can college programs bring skiers toward international success? Again, why not? Have the skiers we have had on the USST and on NCAA teams progressed at the same rate as our non-college athletes? No. And this is where the discussions started.”

“We have had college skiers on the USST for many years, and over the past three years there was a concerted effort to build stronger partnerships with college teams by being sure to work with college skiers and post-collegiate skiers who showed promise and commitment,” Vordenberg wrote. However, he continued, “the way this partnership was working has not been good enough for the athletes.”

However, Vordenberg added, the three college skiers were not cut specifically because they were in school.

“This was not college driven,” he wrote. “This was performance and pathway driven…We cut athletes whose results were not showing that they were on track to international success.”

College’s Draw

According to the three collegiate skiers dropped from the USST, there were other considerations in their decisions to attend school aside from support for skiing. First, there’s economics. According to Gelso, CU offers him a scholarship, as well as financial support for training and racing.

“On top of…paying for all the trips and training, if you’re on a scholarship you have tuition and books, which is huge,” he said. Referring to his decision to attend and remain in college, he said that he thought he was “a little too economic, but I was thinking, ‘this huge package of benefits and funding—I don’t want to let that go.”

Then, there’s the academic stimulation that academics provide, which Gelso and Turzian said helps them to function better as skiers.

“I kind of need that second thing—I go crazy with just training and I get overloaded with it,” Turzian said. “I think maybe later in life, right before the [2014] Olympics, definitely I’m going to put my full focus into skiing, but really, [college] keeps a good balance. When I was skiing my best in my senior year of high school, I was still playing soccer and taking AP classes.”

Finally, Gelso said, college provides a social scene.

“I know what training camp is like—it’s mind numbing,” he said. “I think time is better spent going training in the morning, going to class, training in the afternoon, hanging out with some friends later—I think school provides a good balance.”

The collegiate skiers interviewed by FasterSkier acknowledged that attending college resulted in moderate limitations on their training and racing, but they also said that they did not feel they were sacrificing their potential for international success.

Gelso said that while college skiers can only feasibly train about 600 hours a year, simply opting to attend school did not necessarily limit your potential.

“I think racing at NCAAs and getting the experience at college—I don’t think that limits your ability to ski fast,” he said. “I think some of the college races have better FIS points than a lot of the SuperTours. They’re competitive races, and they’re every weekend.”

Brennan said that having experienced college, she would still have made the same decision to go to school rather than ski full-time.

“The opportunities in terms of training that I have at Dartmouth are much better than I could have gotten anywhere else,” she said. “I have a great coach, and great teammates.”

Brennan added that she probably would be able to do more hours if she were training full-time, but that she had still been able to increase her training load every year that she’d been at Dartmouth. She also said that she felt that the USST had not given her enough time to fulfill her potential.

“It was my understanding…that Alexa [Turzian] and I were guinea pigs at that point, to see if we could make this work,” she said. “To really make that a good test project we would need to complete college, so I felt kind of short-handed in that regard…Freshman year of college is a little iffy; I’m only a sophomore, so I felt like I didn’t have enough time to see if it was going to work.”

With regard to Brennan and Turzian’s situation, Vordenberg wrote that the USST has a policy to not discuss team issues publicly, but he did write that “the general guideline for being on the team is two years minimum.”

“We try to look closely at the athletes all the way along the way and make changes and adjustments,” he continued. “But at some point, even with injury, we have to say ‘look, something isn’t working here.’ And if something isn’t working, we have to make a change.”

According to Kevin Cutts, who attends Northern Michigan University, colleges can train skiers at an internationally competitive level—it just depends on the commitment of the coaches and the skiers.

One of the problems, he said, is that “half the coaches at these programs don’t know what the hell they’re doing.”

Cutts said that he knew of a number of programs where coaches did little more than drive vans, or import European skiers who already have been training and racing at a high level and require little actual coaching. At NMU, he said, both of his coaches have masters’ degrees in exercise physiology, and their system has produced four skiers in the past few years that have been on the USST.

“College skiers just need to get more education about training,” he said. “They need to realize how hard they actually have to train, and define for themselves whether they’re going to commit to this.”

College, Cutts said, is the closest thing the United States will ever have to a club system.

“Our culture isn’t going to support the actual regional club system like they have in Europe, because our focus is on major, mass media sports like football and basketball,” he said. The problem right now, he said, is “a lack of communication between the college programs and the USST. If they decided they wanted to work together more, you’d see a lot more progress.”

Other Paths

One thing that the dropped athletes said they had realized was that the USST was not the only path to international success.

“My ultimate goal is just to make the Olympics,” Turzian said, “and I now realize that it’s not a part of the USST.”

Brennan said that while she also thought there were other pathways to success, “sometimes, you’re fighting a political battle as well, if you’re not on the [USST].”

According to Farra, the Nordic program director for USSA, qualification for the Olympics and World Championships is based on objective criteria, and “anybody can make that.”

However, for those who are not members of the USST, coming up with the funding to train and race can be difficult.

Caitlin Compton, who attended NMU and was passed over by the USST, has managed to ski full-time for the last four years, but said that she sometimes struggles supporting her training and racing.

“The door is wide open—they say that and they mean that,” she said, referring to qualification for international competition. “The one thing that does become tricky is that without the national team title…you do miss the opportunities sometimes.”

Compton said that while she was able to attend the recent USST camp in Bend, she had missed out on other training camps, trips to New Zealand, and funding.

“You get these opportunities, but you only get one shot, or you get a very small window,” she said. “If you want to be on the international circuit on an ongoing basis, you have to nail those big races.”

Farra said that for the USST and USSA, with their limited resources, “it’s about looking at our imperative: our job is to medal at the Olympics in 2014.”

“How we’re going to do that with limited money is by investing in people we believe are going to be the ones that are going to get it done with us,” he said. “If we had more money, we’d widen the scope.”

Related reading & listening:

Rosie Brennan won’t take home medals from Beijing. She still helped change U.S. cross-country skiing. (Fasterskier, February 2022)

Ben Ogden: Balancing Olympic and NCAA Skiing Ambitions Alongside a New Wave of Top US Skiers (Fasterskier, April 2022)

Nordic Nation: Transitioning to the World Cup with Ben Ogden, JC Schoonmaker, and Gus Schumacher

Nordic Nation: Getting to Know the Future of the U.S. Ski Team — A Conversation with Sophia Laukli, Novie McCabe, and Sydney Palmer-Leger

The comments on the original version of this article (June 2009): scroll to the bottom, click on the WordPress icon () to load the comments, and read down. Featuring thoughtful perspectives from Marty Hall, Chad Salmela, Ben Husaby, Morgan Arritola, Eric Strabel, Adam St. Pierre, and several other recognizable names in American skiing.

USST Nominates 11 for 2010 Season, Focus is on International Success (FasterSkier, May 2009)

Team Nominations 2010, Controversial Topic (statement by Pete Vordenberg, May 2009)

Increasing the value of a product is important. Consumers are drawn to the idea of high tech being better than run of the mill technology. To catch the attention and dollars of consumers, the marketing team will often use terms like “Aircraft Grade” or “Medical Grade” to make the ski manufacturers’ offerings more attractive. The idea being, if some  material is good enough for the high tech and safety conscious aviation industry, it is going to make the ski products more durable and increase our enjoyment when using this piece of technological wonder.

Reversing this trend of taking aircraft grade into the ski industry is a Vermont start-up bringing the nordic ski industry into aviation. For the past five years, the northern Vermont think tank, AlphaQuebec (AQ), has been exploring the use of base structure grinding to improve the takeoff performance of aircraft using skis instead of wheels.  

The fundamental problem of skis being slowed down by high moisture snow is the same for both airplanes and skiers. AQ has been investigating ways to make skis slide easier which doesn’t involve waxes or additives. Chief Research Associate, Shelby Taylor explains.

“We know waxes reduce the friction between the base of the ski and the snow. With a nordic or alpine ski you can easily wax the bases. Even a small airplane like a Piper Cub (max weight 1,200 lbs or 550 kg.) you cannot just pop the ski onto a bench and iron on your favorite wax. About three years ago we started experimenting with adding structure to the airplane ski bases. This works great, but again, applying the structure to the bases is not a simple process with the skis attached to the plane.”

Taylor explains that, “Most ski equipped aircraft are single engine bush planes weighing in between 1,200 and 3,500 lbs. (550 to 1,500 kg.) with the largest ski equipped aircraft currently in operation being a military transport LC-130 with an operational weight of 120,000 lbs. (55,000kg.) which is used to supply research stations in Antarctica. Good luck finding a ski form to wax those babies!

“Most of the ski equipped airplanes are used to move people around in snowy environments like Alaska where aircraft are used like an Uber. To keep the economies up and running many areas of the country rely on small, ski equipped aircraft to move people and products. The ground run of a ski plane is slightly longer than the same ship (plane) on wheels. Deep snow is like classic skiing in untracked or wind slabbed junk. You can move but not easily. Just like a skier, the plane sinks in and a lot of space is needed to bring the aircraft up to a speed where the wings develop lift and eventually the skis ride on top of the snow. The plane speeds up and is able to take off. If the snow is high moisture content the ski riding on the surface is slowed by the suction between the ski and the snow. Ground runs can be doubled and its often that there just isn’t enough room to safely take off. Landings can be a problem too because the moisture can grab the ski and act as a sudden brake potentially tripping the airplane and flipping it onto its back.”

We get dressed to spend a few hours outside and drive to the airport testing facility. The airfield feels like a throwback into the mid 1940s. Most of the airplanes were originally built right after WWII when general aviation had a small boom in activity. The airport has several Piper Cubs, a small 2-seat, high wing training airplanes made from steel tubes and covered in Dacron cloth to make them aerodynamic; several Aeronca Champs, a direct competitor to the Cub; Cessna 170 a more modern (these were made in the late 1950s)  high wing, four seat all aluminum, and the cutest Taylorcraft, a direct descendant of the Cub with side-by-side seating made just like the Cubs and Champs. Every airplane is equipped with skis. They need to be, the runway isn’t plowed during the winter.

“This is our testing fleet.” Taylor beams with pride. “We have several of the same airplane and therefore are able to test different grinds on each ship. We can load them the same in order to run side by side comparisons in the same snow to see what works the best. You’ve seen wax techs on the test hills holding hands to normalize the in run? We don’t have the airplanes touching for our tests and have the same pilot try the different grinds. This way we remove pilot technique from the data and to the best of our abilities have the only variables be the base grind.”

After the tour of the fleet we entered a large windowless hanger at the edge of the airstrip. “What are all of these?” I ask. Inside is the R&D lab where AQ has been experimenting with driving across waxing and structuring machines. The building is filled with mechanical objects more resembling pallets than ski tuning equipment, most of them less than 12 inches tall (30cm).  

“As we discussed earlier, removing a ski to do anything requires a lot of time and work. As a skier, you should remember that not every grind or wax is appropriate for every snow condition.” Taylor replies. “This pile of stuff to our left was the first attempt at having a roller apply hot wax, cool, scrape and brush the skis as the airplane taxied (moves along the ground) across it. Great idea but super impractical. We found some promise with highly fluorinated waxes but obtaining them was difficult. The only reliable source for fluorinated waxes was another small Vermont company, BoxButter,  and they were having troubles with the EPA closing the recycling loophole they had been using to bring these waxes to the market. 

“It’s a bit ironic in how aviation has dumped literally thousands of tons of fluoros into the environment with the deicing solutions, fire retardant foams, and in the manufacturing of wire insulation for electrical systems. In truth, all of the fluoros used by the ski industry in a year is less than the weight of fluoros used to de-ice just one airliner. You guys were screwed in terms of pinning all of this environmental damage onto the ski industry. We didn’t want any part of the hassle and decided to leave the fluoro debates to others and be able to present a green alternative. 

“These taxi across things we called ‘Dial-a-Wax’ and were a cool idea but not marketable. Plus, a fully loaded airplane is going in the 60 to 90 mile-per-hour range (100 to 140 kph) when in contact with the snow so wax didn’t last too long. It’s a good idea but super duper impractical so we turned to the next Holy Grail of ski speed; grinds.”

I follow Taylor through another door. Inside the small room looks like a mechanical horror movie. Strewn all across a dozen workbenches are parts from  disemboweled Wintersteiger and Reichman stone grind machines. The next row of benches is filled with structure rollers and enough granite discs enabling the room to pose as a curling supply. Stood up along the walls and held in place by wide elastic bands are dozens of aircraft skis with different colored tags Taylor informs me are used to identify the grind.

“We were able to gather information from national team wax techs  by distracting them with cider doughnuts and beer. While they were eating we made rubbings of the ski bases.” My quizzical look invites further clarification. “When you were in grade school did you ever place pieces of blank newsprint on old headstones before rubbing the long side of a crayon to copy the impression? We did this on skis which gives us darker areas which are high and blanks where the base has been ground away. With modern scanning equipment, we gave the density of the color of the rubbing a value, built proprietary algorithms  and were able to reproduce the grinds on these granite discs. After we went through all of the trouble rubbing out the bases we got lucky; one of the Scandinavian techs is also a pilot and had just scared the crap out of himself trying to fly back to the home country to grab a pile of skis. When this tech heard about our project he coded the national team grinds and then gave us the entire top-secret binder filled with hundreds of pages of notes. This saved us a lot of crayons, doughnuts, and time.”

She leads me to a table covered in a canvas tarp. Grabbing a corner of the khaki fabric she yanks the cloth leaving it as a pile on the floor next to the bench.

“This,” she says with a lot of enthusiasm “is the Aero-Lift. A method to grind aircraft skis while they are attached to the plane. It’s like a car-wash in that the pilot can sit in the cockpit while a conveyor pulls the skis across the wheels. This is the prototype and it is showing a lot of promise. Sensors out in the field measure the moisture in the snow, air temperature, pyranometer (measures solar radiation falling onto a horizontal surface), humidity, crystal microscopy, and albedo (to determine particulate matter in the snow) and use this information to determine the most effective grind.  These algorithms can also predict what grind is most appropriate at different speeds.”

We move to another bench where a contraption resembling an old wooden ladder with PVC pipes as rungs sits idle.

“For those pilots who cannot afford the stone grind, this device, the Structure Ladder, allows them to structure the skis on the move. The benefit is being able to get the structure quickly and easily. It also doesn’t remove any of the base so while it doesn’t work as well its considerably better than nothing at all. Small time operations without the financial resources will just have to accept the lower performance. Just like skis, money makes airplanes go fast.”

Taylor grabs one of the white PVC pipes and pulls it. The pipe isn’t the actual structuring tool but a cover for the rollers beneath it.

“We have developed a set of structuring rollers each approximately a centimeter wide. It’s mounted on a centering spring so skis with differing arrangements of skegs (longitudinal edges bolted to the underside to help with directional control) can be serviced. The springs keep the appropriate pressure to impress the plastic and push it out of the way so the skegs do not keep the structuring tools off the plastic bases.” NOTE: The springs are undergoing the patent process with some litigation so we were asked to not publish photographs of the actual parts. “Each of these structure ladders contains eight different rollers. Pull the cover for what you believe will work and then just taxi across and just like that you are ready to go.”

We spend a few more minutes in the R&D room before leaving through a backdoor to go for a flight in  one of the AQ test Cubs. The idea of nordic ski technology helping the aircraft industry be safer and more fuel efficient is pretty great but I think it will be a while before Boeing or Airbus brags about the next generation of airliners made with nordic ski grade ideas.

Like Pokorny, Phinney is a 2016 graduate of Middlebury College, before continuing with her ski career, first with the SVSEF Gold Team and then the SMS T2 team until 2020. The 2019-2019 season was perhaps her peak year from a performance perspective; spending ample time in Europe racing World Cups, Phinney popped a top-20 during a skate sprint in Lahti, after having taken third at U.S. Nationals a month prior, behind Julia Kern and Hannah Halvorsen. At the end of the season, a crash during Spring Series left Phinney with a torn labrum in her shoulder, for which she underwent surgery later that year and rehabbed, before eventually stepping away from professional skiing. 

Phinney is currently in her final semester of graduate school where she’d pursuing a Master’s Degree in Health Systems, Management, and Policy through the Colorado School of Public Health. She now lives in her hometown of Boulder, CO with her partner, fellow retired SMS T2 skier Kyle Bratrud. 

FasterSkier (FS): When did you begin the process of becoming certified as a TD? What was your experience like with the certification process? Were you able to “fast-track” given your experience as an athlete and has your experience as a high level racer been an asset?

Kelsey Phinney (KP): I began the process of becoming a TD this past fall after a conversation with Annie Pokorny about ways to stay involved with the sport. My experience as a former racer has certainly been an asset. While I have learned much more about the specific rules than I knew when I was racing, I hope my ability to bring a racer’s perspective to decisions – like where to start and end turning zones in a classic race –  helps make races safer and more fair.

FS: You mentioned Annie helped get you involved. Can you say more about what those conversations were like? What/who were some of the other factors/people that motivated you to become a TD? 

KP: The primary reason I looked into becoming a TD was to give back to the sport within my current time constraints as a full-time graduate student. There is also a shortage of TDs in Colorado, which motivated me to follow through with the training and certification process following my conversation with Annie. 

Since I’m currently living in Boulder, the races hosted in Colorado are all within driving distance for me. This year, I was the assistant TD at a junior race in Aspen the weekend after my fall semester wrapped up, as well as at a college race in Steamboat a couple of weeks ago.

FS: There is an overall need for TDs in the U.S., and while there are some noteworthy female TDs who have or will be jury members at the World Cup, World Championship, and Olympic level, there are few women in the role domestically. We ran an article about the need for TDs in 2017 and at the time, there were only 10 women listed in the U.S. Is this something that you considered prior to becoming a TD? 

KP: To be honest, I didn’t think much about the lack of female representation of officials when I decided to work towards becoming a TD, but I do think representation matters and it is important to have diverse voices and perspectives included in the decision-making process. I’m happy to contribute to increased representation of women among the officials domestically. I think my racing experience and age are other important qualities I bring to the table.

Spearheaded by brand ambassador Simi Hamilton, the team of Sophie Hamilton (Caldwell), Sadie Maubet-Bjornsen, Liz Stephen, Matt Gelso, Sylvan Ellefson, and Erik Bjornsen will be racing as members of the mountainFLOW Eco Wax team.

Based in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado, where Hamilton grew up, mountainFLOW Eco Wax is the maker of a line of plant-based ski waxes and bike maintenance products that spare the environment without compromising the performance skiers and riders expect. The company officially began in 2016 after years of tinkering in founder Peter Arlein’s kitchen. Experimenting with various plant-based alternatives to the petroleum based products that the ski industry has historically relied upon, Arlein ultimately concocted a solution that he felt checked all the boxes. 

Why consider an eco-friendly wax? 

“It’s a classic micro-pollution problem where you can’t see the wax coming off [your skis],” Arlein explained in a call. “It’s not like you’re littering and you can see what you threw on the side of the road, but in aggregate, it becomes a big issue. And all of these pollutants are collecting and accumulating in the rivers because they melt in the snow, and then that melts, and then it all flows down into the local watershed.”

Arlein, who has worked in the ski industry for more than 20 years as everything from a fry cook to a patroller, explained that prior to mountainFLOW, he had tried all the available eco-friendly products, but was never satisfied with the performance relative to the traditional petroleum based products on the market.

“Eco waxes, for a while, were really bad,” Arlein said simply. “So we’re here to show, first and foremost, our waxes are high performance — and they happen to be non-petroleum and made from plants. Because it can be as green as possible, but if it’s slow, then it’s not a very good product.”

He explained that most eco-friendly products had historically relied on soy wax as a main ingredient, which is readily available, relatively cheap, and easy to work with.

“But it’s also super soft,” he said “So, in anything colder than 30 degrees. It’s just too slow.”

Through experimentation and research, mountainFLOW has developed a set of recipes that use a variety of plant-based waxes to account for the variation in moisture and friction of different temperature ranges, with which cross country skiers are well-accustomed. The ingredients they landed on had traditionally been used in the organic health and beauty industry, which is ultimately where mountainFLOW sources them. 

“We’ve tweaked the ratio of plant waxes, and the different types of plant waxes that we’re using, to mimic the qualities of a traditional wax. You can measure hydrophobicity, you can measure hardness, which are the main characteristics that a normal wax has.” 

Expanding well-past Arlein’s kitchen, the company began to take off in 2019 after appearing on ABC’s Shark Tank.With patents on the wax formulas in hand, mountainFLOW eco waxes quickly found their way into over 600 doors. The products are now sold at retailers nationwide and now reach as far as New Zealand and Europe. Demonstrating commitment to protecting the environment, mountainFlow is a Certified B Corporation with all USDA Certified biobased products, with biodegradable and 100% post-consumer recycled packaging materials to boot.

With the harmful effects of fluorinated waxes and how to halt their use at the forefront of discussions in the cross country ski community for the last several years, the concept of eco-friendly alternatives should pique the curiosity of environmentally conscious skiers. But what the elimination of fluoros has also perhaps highlighted is that cross country skiers are reluctant to compromise when it comes to ski speed on race day.

Arlein explained how mountainFLOW has stepped up to this challenge in creating its line of race waxes, innovating with materials developed for purposes well-beyond the scope of sliding around on skinny skis as quickly as possible. 

“We were able to source this ceramic nanopowder that mimics qualities of fluoros, but it’s totally non-toxic and biodegradable,” Arlein shared. “It was actually developed by the Department of Defense for use in bulletproof vests, because it’s really durable and hard. But it also happens to be super hydrophobic and slippery, so then it started being used to coat runners for luge and bobsled. We found this little lab that was making it in the Midwest, and we licensed the rights to use it for ski wax. And so that’s what we’re putting in our non-fluoro race wax, and that’s what everyone will be skiing on at the Birkie.”

The mountainFLOW race wax lineup includes three temperature ranges – cold, cool, and warm – which they’ve tested against comparable products from companies like Swix and Toko. 

“We’ve found that the wax works especially well in cold temperatures with hard abrasive snow.”

The mountainFLOW team is in luck. Temperatures in Cable, WI the three nights prior to the American Birkebeiner on Saturday the 26th are currently predicted to be -8, -6, and -1 Fahrenheit.

Arlein comes from an alpine ski background and says his progression with cross country skiing began last year when he headed out with his wife on skate skis. “We did not go very far. And I was dying. And I looked terrible,” he laughed.

Luckily, he was already connected with Simi Hamilton, whose older sister had grown up with Arlein’s wife. Knowing the mountainFLOW products would perform just as well on cross country skis as they did on alpine and backcountry boards, he called Hamilton from his car that day hoping to rope him in for some guidance.

“I was like, ‘Simi, I need help. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not good at this sport. And I don’t know enough about it to speak from an authentic place. Can you help?'”

Hamilton, who has been a long-time ambassador for Protect Our Winters and spokesperson for environmental policy, quickly agreed. Hamilton paired technique advice with perspective on mountainFLOW’s ability to meet the demands of committed cross country ski racers. Having spent decades racing on the best and most expensive waxes, filled with some of the harshest chemicals, he can speak better than most to the performance of mountainFLOW’s products relative to alternatives. 

“I’ve been super impressed at how well their waxes have performed,” Hamilton wrote in an email. “I haven’t had a chance to try any of their products in super wet or dirty snow yet (after all, this is Colorado), but I really think the moly is going to work awesome for those springtime conditions. We’ve had a pretty wild winter here with huge temperature fluctuations and periods of big snowfall followed by seemingly endless dry spells, and all of the waxes I’ve used thus far have performed just as well if not better than the fluorinated paraffins I’ve used in the past for hard training sessions, etc. Because I’ve been able to get out on my alpine and backcountry skis more than normal this year, I’ve definitely been better about keeping my gear in good shape with somewhat regular waxing. Without a doubt, I can say that arcing turns in powder or on groomers is way more enjoyable with some fast planks under your feet.” 

Though Hamilton says he has used mountainFLOW products since the early days of tinkering in Arlein’s kitchen, it was not until this summer when he joined the team as an ambassador and consultant, first testing some of their bike lubes and cleaning products.

“I was super impressed right off the bat with their stuff. Like the ski waxes, it worked just as well, if not better, than the very best traditional (petroleum-based) lubes and cleaners I’ve found. I’ve gradually become more involved with the company over the last handful of months mostly because I really believe that what they are doing is making a difference in our ski and bike communities. They are throwing out the conventional belief that the petroleum-based products that are already out there are the only products that work well.

“MountainFLOW is showing the outdoor industry that we can venture into the mountains and use products that are both 100% sustainable and enrich the important mountain experiences we seek,” Hamilton emphasized.

“And perhaps most importantly, they’re just an awesome company with some incredible people at the helm who love to share the stoke they have for being outside and doing really fun things.” 

As the two schemed ways to reach the cross country ski market with mountainFLOW products, bringing a team to the Birkie seemed like an obvious choice. Arlein said the team would be “super fun, and maybe not super serious.” Perfect for a group of retirees looking for an excuse to get together. 

“I was immediately psyched about the idea mostly because Peter’s number one objective was to just go have a great time at what is probably the most iconic ski event in the country. I think cross-country skiers in general are some of the most attentive people out there when it comes to climate change and other important environmental issues, so to be part of a team that can introduce this company, their ethos, and their standard-setting products to a community of people who want to be a part of the solution and not the problem, is super cool. Not to mention it’s just going to be a heck of a good time to hang out with [my former teammates] for a few days. We’re gettin’ the band back together and I couldn’t be more psyched about all these pieces falling into place!”

Those heading to Hayward this week can find the mountainFLOW team at the Birkie expo, where you can chat with Arlein and the race team about the products and race-day wax recommendations, buy waxes and tools, or have your skis waxed – for free! – by the crew. Otherwise, find mountainFLOW online or at a retailer near you, and try knowing there is a 100% money back guarantee should the products fall short of your expectations. 

At one point in time, skiing was simply a way to get from point A to point B.

Take stock of humans gliding on snow at this moment in 2022, though, and it can seem as if the world is too much with us. In Beijing, where the eyes of the world were recently fixed on skiing, trillions of dollars have been poured into constructing perfectly manicured laps that have increasingly become the sport’s preferred method of racing. Last week, the Olympic 30-kilometer women’s mass start entailed four laps of a 7.5 k course. The men’s 50 k race the day before was originally intended to simply up the lap count, six on an 8.3 k course. Then there’s the ever-dizzying array of equipment and disciplines. 

The pandemic has seen the proliferation of alpine touring skis, and fights about who gets to use that equipment at what cost. Going from the metaphorical Point A of skiing – the individual euphoria and joy brought by juxtaposing the beating thrum of your heart and skis on the snow against the frozen world – to Point B – the kindred spirits who’ve taken the warmth generated and cultivated it into a genuine community – has become an increasingly difficult journey as those literal distances collapse on one another.

Perhaps then, it’s time to make the distance between start and end too stark to ignore. Perhaps, point A can be set at the tallest point in American skiing’s home state, and point B at the town center of its most quintessential ski village.

That’s just what the Stowe Derby intended to do when it was revived last Sunday in Stowe, Vermont.

The goal: hold a race with 77 year old history in a way that’s representative of the venue’s skiing culture and heritage, imparting it to participants who will be ready to spread it far and wide.

As race director Sarah Sterner said in an interview with FasterSkier, “Stowe’s heritage is a love of skiing. And not defining it beyond that. That’s what has lifted the Derby all these years, and it’s what we want the Derby to give people this year too.”

It all started as a bet

The Derby is part living history, and part tribute to the basic blocks that formed skiing in America. Telling its tale includes the key characters, in key places, and at key times, that came to define the sport we all do and love today.

That tale is oft-told, but not worn. It begins with two pioneers in Stowe in the early post-World War II period where optimism and inginuity spread to all corners and walks of American life. 

Erling Strom was a Norwegian-born, American-made wanderer. After spending his childhood in Telemark, he landed in 1919 in Arizona, setting out to become a real life cowboy. His stint there though, was short. He set off for the high peaks of Colorado with his skis, where he grew into a last gasp of the old wild-West legends. He skied up Longs’ Peak, and later became the first person to ski up Denali. His feats landed him a job as a ski instructor at Lake Placid ahead of the 1932 Olympics, where he would spend the rest of his career and his life.

Sepp Ruschp landed in America as the threat of Nazism spread over his native Austria in 1936. He was a cross-country national champion in the previous two years there, and had written all 90 ski clubs in the United States at the time looking for a job that would allow him to flee. The Mt. Mansfield Ski Club in Stowe responded, and he became the head ski coach there, and at the University of Vermont, before turning around to serve his newfound country with the 10th Mountain Division in World War II.

When Ruschp returned in the winter of 1945-6, he and Strom were out skiing, scouting routes to erect a chairlift on the Mt. Mansfield slope above the town of Stowe. Prior to the war, Stowe’s ski trails had been a loosely defined set of forest roads put in as part of a Conservation Corps (CCC) project during the Great Depression. The first tow rope had gone up in the area in 1940, but Strom and Ruschp were of a generation where being proficient in backcountry touring, jumping, nordic and alpine racing were a requirement for a skier, and each had a quiver of skis including one or two pairs of hickory-made, pine-tarred, gliders.

The first law of the endurance universe held – put two skiers together and they will eventually start talking about gear. Strom and Ruschp decided to test what would be the best single-pair of skis to start at the top of Mt. Mansfield, race down the 2,500ft slope, and then across the valley into town to the steps of the iconic Stowe community church. To decide, they organized a race.

The first Stowe Derby ran on the last Sunday in February, 1946. According to an article in the Stowe Reporter from 1975, 12 men, all of whom were required to be over 35 years old, completed the 4.5 mile downhill on Mt. Mansfield, followed by the 5.5 miles across the valley to Stowe town. Sepp Ruschp won with a pair of nordic skis in a time of 1:03:36.

Over the next twenty years, Ruschp and Strom raced the same course every year there was enough snow on the last Sunday in February. The single restriction, one pair and only one pair of skis, came to define the essence and spirit of the Derby. The 5.5 mi cross-country jaunt at the end of the downhill meant that nordic skis, which increasingly were becoming narrower, tended to be the choice. In waves of 5, skiers would start at the top of Mt. Mansfield, and most would eventually wipe out. That proved to be a human interest story, and drove up the number of spectators from the town below. Under Ruschp’s coaching, a generation of alpine talent was emerging from the Mt. Mansfield ski club, with the skill of these skiers directly proportional to the appeal of watching them have to master the art of having their heel free on the slope of Mt. Mansfield. At a Derby during the 1950s, you could watch the likes of local kid (and eventual Olympic ski champion) Billy Kidd heading down the slopes.

The Derby hit a rough patch in the 1950s that nearly saw it become lost to the unpredictability of New England winters. After a few years off in the 1960s, Johannes Von Trapp (of Trapp’s Family Lodge) partnered with the Ski Club to revive the Derby in 1972, which marked the beginning of the Derby becoming a fixture within – and a distillation of – New England’s vibrant ski scene. By 1983, the Derby saw what then race director Dudley Rood called 700 “enlightened lemmings” lining up to hurl themselves down Mt. Mansfield. 

The Derby had found itself at a perfect confluence in Stowe, and New England, at a perfect time. The sport of cross country skiing had got an injection of interest, especially in Vermont, following Bill Koch’s silver medal at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics. The New England collegiate carnival circuit ended its race season on the last Saturday in February, which allowed its racers to hit the Derby the next day. The field which had started with two of America’s most accomplished skiers of their generation had somehow maintained its über competitiveness on a course that was increasingly absurd when considering the direction of the sport.

One of the skiers who joined along during these years was a man who became synonymous with Vermont skiing. Murray Banks helped found the Mansfield Nordic Club on the west side of Mt. Mansfield, and remembers clearly the “wool knickers, flannel shirts, and backpacks full of beer – ah yes, it’s the Derby” of the day.

Judging by the memories Banks can most clearly recount – the Derby in these years as much about what happened when the skiing went wrong as it did when it went well:

“[I remember] coming off a sweeping turn and seeing a skier from an earlier wave veering off the Toll Road, down a mogul run. A split second of indecision at Mach 1 and over I went with him. I like mogul skiing, but not on nordic skis. It was ‘Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride’ for a couple hundred meters…it was not uncommon to see people at the finish with blood on their bib in those days – an honor!”

The Derby made its only concession to the march of time in 1987, when the development of skate skis, which Banks noted “made things so much easier,” caused race organizers to split the race between a skate competition held in at 10:00am, and the classic Derby (on classic skis) held at the traditional 12:00pm start.

Even when conceding to time though, the Derby somehow made the development that kept it happily behind the times. In addition to adding the skate race, organizers also added a “Derby-meister” category – harkening back to the days of the “ski-meister” when jumping, cross-country, and downhill events in junior and senior ranks were scored cumulatively, rather than as separate disciplines.

The catch: to compete in the Meister category, skiers would have to figure out how to go from Point B to Point A, coordinating their own logistics to catch a ride back to the base of Stowe to take the chairlift up to the top again after completing the skate, and hoping to arrive before their classic wave started at noon.

Banks was there for the development, and recounts the asinine seriousness of it all:  “[You had] to bundle up for the chairlift ride to the start, strip down at the last second trying to stay warm, deliver your warmups to the snow cat that went to the finish, and then start race one. Then it was cross the finish line and immediately jump in the car, change clothes and boots, run the chairlift, and just hope it arrived at the top before your bib was called to the line. You skied out the rigor mortis through the first few turns. Skiing fast on skate gear is one thing, and then doing it moments later with kick wax on takes some adjusting.”

The Meister though, in retrospect, seems like a natural extension of the event, rather than a new era.

Sooner or later, someone would’ve taken the sheer joy of trying to reign your energy and movement on snow into forward motion found on the slopes of Mt. Mansfield, then experienced the self-affirming grind of the ski into town, found a whole group of people who loved it too at the finish line, and said “we should do that again!”

As the Derby has gone on, that has been its mantra: “We should do that again.” First it was Strom and Ruschp repeating it, then a chorus through its first heyday (who’s brightest tenor was surely Murray Banks), and last Sunday, it was the intrepid voices of a new generation of Derby-goers and Derby-Meisters, ready to go from Point A to Point B via US skiing’s oldest, and most thrilling, route.

The Derby Runs Again

After the past few years in skiing, where pandemic and climate change have upended race calendars and race venues, the Derby that was held last Sunday felt like nothing short of a sign of hope.

It’s impetus was in the hard-work of Sarah Sterner, race director, who was responding to a simple concern: “My kids said, ‘Mom, there has to be a Derby!’”

Her vision for the Stowe Derby in 2022, though, quickly became one that was concerned with matching the full sweep of its spirit, “So much of this is about understanding the history and culture of the event – what did people love about the Derby before, what can we do to reboot the Derby in a sustainable way. Of all the Derby legends and lore, what do we need to scoop out the corners to make this go again and make it awesome.”

That included building around the event’s edges while keeping to the traditional long and short course. There was a revival of the legendary Derby afterparty, which Murray Banks recounted was “one of the best afterparties in ski racing!”

The prizes this year showed just how invested the Vermont ski community was in its oldest event. The winner of the Skate and Classic races received a full-on tuning setup from Caldwell Sports including sizing, grind, hot box, and hardening. For Juniors under 18, Pinnacle Ski and Sport in Stowe donated a new pair of Rossignol skis and poles. This version of the Derby also awarded prizes to those who could make the downhill run before town the fastest. The prime: a pair of winteralls from Ripton & Co.

The careful planning yielded the first successful run of the Derby in half a decade. Between all short and long courses across classic and skate disciplines, there were over two-hundred skiers that successfully navigated the course. That included five Derby-Meisters, who all came out of Sunday adding a little bit to their own personal legends.

There were no doubt spills and wipeouts that will still be talked about years from now, and a sense that after a New England winter that saw a foot of snow fall a week before this Derby, there is winter fun and spirit in droves that will sustain the Derby for years to come.

Full Results

The final races of the top-level World Cup are scheduled to be held in Tyumen, Russia, in an oil-rich area in Siberia — about 1,000 miles away from the border with Ukraine, where American officials are warning that Russia could invade.

In an interview at the Beijing Olympic cross-country ski venue, an official from the federation, known as FIS, said that if conditions remain unchanged, the World Cup finals will happen as planned.

“But of course, we need to see what will go on in the upcoming days,” said Pierre Mignerey, FIS’s cross-country race director. “We will start to prepare some backup solutions, in case.”

Mignerey said he’s had conversations in the past few days with organizers in Sweden and Norway, which could be convenient backups since the World Cup circuit will be racing in Scandinavia before it’s scheduled to head to Russia. The coronavirus pandemic also forced cancelations of races in Slovenia and France last month, so those countries could also be potential replacements, Mignerey said.

The U.S. Ski Team is still planning on attending the races in Russia and is excited to see the new venue in Tyumen, said Head Coach Matt Whitcomb. But he also said the team is monitoring the situation.

“There’s never any guarantee, particularly with the political climate, currently, but also with COVID,” Whitcomb said. “We’re only going to go places we feel like will be safe.”

Officials working with Tyumen’s race organizing committee didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Russia is one of the world’s leading nations in cross-country skiing, with its athletes winning gold medals in both the men’s and women’s distance relay events at the Olympics. 

The World Cup finals are the first events set to held in Russia in several years, a consequence of doping-related sanctions.

Creating a Generation of Skiers

China, pursuing Olympic medals on home snow, signed deals in 2018 to train Chinese skiers in Norway and Finland. The first hurdle would be filling these programs with potential skiers.

To that end, a talent building program was initiated and young professional athletes in the second tier of rowing, kayaking, and running were assessed. Favorable candidates were given the opportunity to switch to cross country skiing, and with it a chance at making the 2022 Beijing Olympics. 

The search was also on for hidden talents, and the public was invited to join the pool of athletes being considered for intensive training as cross country skiers. 

When Kristian Bjune Sveen arrived in Xinjiang Province in 2017 he thought he was going to an interview. Instead, he found 100 candidates lined up to be tested for the Swix China team he was hired to create. Next it was onto schools, where Sveen would find his diamonds in the rough. 

Also traveling to China to find skiers was Tor-Arne Hetland, coach of the Meråker contingent, who was invited to Beijing in the fall of 2018 to identify future skiers. He told the South China Morning Post that he was asked to seek out “athletes that could run well and had strong physical endurance.” 

Zhang Yuanyuan was one such athlete. The eighteen year old kayaker from Sichuan Province had never seen snow and yet was selected to move to Norway to train for biathlon. 

Throughout the Chinese endurance world, promising athletes were funneled into skiing. One such athlete was Yeersen Shiwohen. An ultrarunner, he won a 168k marathon and  impressed a businessman who introduced him to the local sports management. Despite having never skied before, and believing that it was “impossible” to ski uphill, Shiwohen was soon on his way to Finland to become part of China’s skiing generation. 

The new skiers were enticed with more than Olympic glory, they were also offered competitive salaries. Veikko Halonen, the CEO of Vuokatti Sport said to Yle, “With that money, the whole family will probably live in their home country. Motivation is high, even though they do not know when they will be able to visit home.”

Shiwohen was one of 134 Chinese athletes sent in 2018 to Vuokatti to learn skiing. Of them, only twenty had ever skied before. Many were from subtropical Shanghai. The government officials in charge of identifying talents back in China had only a loose understanding of the qualities they should be looking for, and believing that upper body strength was paramount, leaned heavily on selecting rowers. 

From the start, the Chinese project in Vuokatti—called “Zero to Hero”—was enormously ambitious. One of China’s primary snow sports coaches, Glenn Lindholm of Finland, recounted to Swiss news outlet Tages-Anzeiger that in the beginning, “It was difficult for them to just stand on cross-country skis.”

In Norway, apart from the Trondheim group, the situation was much the same. “The first time I saw them on rollerskis, I thought ‘this is not possible,’ Anita Moen told NRK of the early days at the Trysil camp.

“I was skeptical, scared,” said Moen in the report. “They struggled to control the speed. There were abrasions on the legs and arms even though we used protective equipment.”

In Vuokatti, coaches chafed at the insistence of Chinese officials that the skiers be outfitted with the finest equipment on the market, which only made their work harder. “Only the best is good enough for the project,” Lindholm said. “Money doesn’t matter.” 

The Philip Boit Connection

The Chinese skiing project recalled an earlier effort in the mid-90s by Nike to introduce elite Kenyan runners to cross country skiing prior to the 1998 Nagano Olympics. 

At its core, the idea was little more than a marketing gimmick dreamed up by Nike executives in Portland, Oregon as a means to help promote their venture into winter wear. As Mark Bossardet, then Nike’s Director of Global Athletics put it to the New York Times, “We were sitting around the office one day and we said, ‘What if we took Kenyan runners and transferred their skills to cross country skiing?’”

Philip Boit at the time was trying to make it in the ultra competitive Kenyan running scene and believing that “cross country” must have something to do with running, he signed up. 

Before long, he was on a plane to Finland with a compatriot. Boit did not consider his task to be a marketing ploy, and he took his ski training seriously. He would end up spending the next two years there training for Nagano, supported by Nike. 

Ultimately, the Nike project was an experiment: If you take a talented Kenyan runner and give him a coach and two years in Finland to learn skiing, what will happen?

The result proved that two years was not enough. In the 10 k classic at Nagano, Boit finished last, some twenty minutes behind Bjørn Dælhe. Though Boit was a talented runner—he could run 1,500m in 3:46.5—that prowess proved not to be a predictor of success. As Bossardet conceded, “As it turned out, the most important aspect is technique.”

The Study

Unlike the anecdotal knowledge from the Nike experiment, the large and well funded Team China project in Meråker offered a unique opportunity for research: that of talent transfer from other sports to nordic skiing. The study was conducted by the Norwegian Institute of Science and technology (NTNU), and researchers included Øyvind Sandbakk and Rune Talsnes. It was the first systematic and scientific study of talent transfer ever written about, in any sport. 

The researchers followed the journey of 24 Chinese athletes aged between 17 and 21 years old that had been selected from a pool of middle distance runners, rowers, and kayakers.

After a few months of introductory ski lessons, the athletes were subjected to a battery of tests in the beginning, middle, and end of a six month period of time. VO2max, double poling power, and rollerskiing efficiency on a treadmill, were among the many tests used to assess the athletes. 

The end result was clear: the runners improved far more than the rowers, and the men improved more than the women. 

The runners did best, it was surmised, because they adapted more easily to the endurance training and were injured less often. While the physiology tests told a clear story of improving strength, capacity, and efficiency, they obscured the point of the whole endeavor: how fast they could ski. 

In an email to FasterSkier, Talsnes confirmed the validity of using specific markers to assess the progress of the new skiers as athletes, writing, “I would say most of the performance and physiological indices that were assessed in the monitoring of these athletes are valid indicators of [cross country] skiing performance. In fact, we have recently published a study on the validity of such tests in a group of Norwegian junior/senior [cross country] skiers.”

Because the study was conducted over the winter months, Talsnes wrote that a rollerskiing time trial was not possible, and that a ski event would have been subject to shifting conditions. 

The study also assessed the coaches’ perspectives. With their names removed for anonymity, the researchers managed to gather some interesting insights. 

There was general consensus among the coaches that those who were self motivated did best. The Chinese athletes did improve remarkably, both in Meråker and elsewhere. 

In Trysil, Anita Moen was impressed with the results, telling NRK “I did not think it would be possible to get [the athletes] to learn the technique. And that they should ski fast already for the winter. It was such a short time. But there I was wrong.” 

Yet as much as the athletes improved, they were still not at a level to compete on the biggest stage. As a coach said in the NTNU study , “Many of them have physical capacities better than their Norwegian peers in cross country skiing, without this reflecting… in a competition. It’s the ski feeling, how to go on skis. They still miss this feeling.” 

To the researchers, the coaches expressed their skepticism that the project would bear fruit. “…regarding talent transfer and [nordic] skiing, it’s something I wouldn’t recommend.”

They also felt that their efforts were hampered by expectations of speedy results, a lack of control over selecting athletes, and uncertainty over how long the program would last. 

“This was a short time period with [cross country] ski-specific training,” Talsnes wrote,  “and although the most responding athletes had large development in sport-specific performance, there is a long way to a World Cup and Olympic level. However, I think it might work with the right potential [athletes] and a sufficient time perspective.”

Although there were questions about whether the athletes would be ready by Beijing, results have ultimately proved a degree of success for the Meråker program. “Interestingly,” wrote Talsnes, “the best Chinese athlete during [the] skiathlon for men in the Olympics was a part of this project. He [Liu Rongsheng] first started skiing in February 2019 and is a previous runner. He became 38th and actually beat Klæbo which I think is a bit funny…”

***

In Vuokatti, the athletes came with an entourage of Chinese staff: fifteen coaches, along with translators and government minders. The contingent was so large that a “Chinese village” was created, replete with a restaurant. 

Occasionally, there were culture clashes, though the misunderstandings were mainly between the Norwegian and Finnish coaches and Chinese officials. 

Tor-Arne Hetland outlined an episode of discord between himself and Chinese officials when he vetoed a requested 10k time trial to compare his athletes with those in China for placement on the elite team. “It was nonsense!” Hetland told the South China Morning Post. “The snow would have been different from place to place, and they would be [skiing] on completely different tracks.”

A larger controversy at the Meråker public library overshadowed coaching disagreements, and brought the fragility of ski diplomacy to the fore. 

Meråker is a small municipality with a population of just over 1000 residents in the Trøndeleg region east of Trondheim. To ease the stay of the around 40 Chinese athletes, the library had a shipment of books in Mandarin sent from the Oslo public library system. 

Included in the titles sent were a few on subjects that were banned in China, including one on the Falun Gong — an outlawed Chinese religious movement. Chinese officials with the team repeatedly insisted that the books be removed. Anne Marken, the librarian in Meråker told Andresseavisen “They have said that if any of the Chinese skiers are taken with these books, they are afraid that they risk a labor camp or prison in China.”

Marken refused. The matter made headlines in Norway and helped to reignite the public debate over whether Norway was complicit in human rights abuses in China. Beyond the squabble over a few forbidden books in Meråker was the larger shadow that the salmon-for-skiing agreement had cast. 

The philosophical differences between Norwegian and Finnish coaches and those of China stemmed in part from China’s contrasting sporting model that was built in the image of the Soviet system and has retained much of its flavor—a focus on authoritarian, sport specific development that begins at an early age. 

Much like the Russian ski team, which is separated into four separate training groups, the Chinese Ski Team was equally diffused. Confusingly, there were two separate entities competing with each other to create skiers. The Winter Sports Group had the Chinese Ski Association under its umbrella, and oversaw some of the more elite programs. Competing with the Chinese Ski Association was Team China, which was unrelated other than that its funding also came from the State. 

To further muddy the waters, Taiwan and Hong Kong have their own ski associations, and teams. Both compete as separate nations in the Olympics despite being, by varying degrees, part of the same country.

It was Team China that signed most of the contracts to train new skiers. The result was that hundreds of skiers, ranging from barely able to ski, to competing on the World Cup, were all somewhat on the national team. 

“I do not know how many teams the Chinese have called ‘national team’,” said Bernhard Rønning who ran the Trondheim based group. He clarified to Aftenposten, “We are the ones… going to the World Cup.”

Chinese sporting officials did not take an entirely hands off approach when their athletes were abroad. At the end of every week, Lindholm was required to send a report back to Beijing outlining the progress of the skiers. As a result, much focus was placed on physiological tests.  “We could work more efficiently if we were only allowed to,” said Lindholm. 

But other Russian cross-country skiers are still competing here, under the flag of their country’s Olympic committee.

And on Sunday, in their first race of the Games, Russian men took the top two places. Star Alexander Bolshunov was so far ahead that he slowed to wave a Russian Olympic Committee flag before the finish line, and still beat third-placed Iivo Niskanen of Finland by two minutes.

In spite of the huge winning margin, U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Matt Whitcomb said he wasn’t skeptical.

“We were all cheering for him in the coaching zone. And I don’t think all of us coaches, if we suspected any foul play, would be clapping for him,” Whitcomb said in an interview after the race. “I trust the World Anti-Doping Agency for helping keep the sport clean. I really do feel like overall, cross-country skiing is quite clean these days, compared to where we’ve come from.”

But other veteran American observers couldn’t watch Bolshunov and second-placed Denis Spitsov without asking questions. And the fact that Bolshunov will take home a gold medal when his country is still under international sanctions for doping-related offenses underscores the need for tougher penalties, critics said.

“I watched that race, and I was sad. Not because I’m 100% convinced that Bolshunov’s guilty, but because I watched it and I had a lot of doubt,” said Kris Freeman, a retired American cross-country skier who competed at the 2014 Games. “I’m angry at all the corrupt sporting bodies out there that let Russia come to these Games. They shouldn’t be there.”

Freeman’s comments came a few days before Russian media reported that a star women’s figure skater, Kamila Valieva, had tested positive for a banned drug before the Beijing Games started. A Kremlin spokesman said wait Wednesday said he was waiting for an explanation from the International Olympic Committee or Russian sports officials.

Another time, another team

Bolshunov is a decorated athlete who’s never failed a drug test. At a post-race news conference, asked by FasterSkier/the Daily News about the suspicions surrounding his performance, he emphatically rejected them.

Bolshunov said Russian athletes are under intense scrutiny, with drug testing “almost every day,” and have to constantly report their whereabouts to testing agencies.

“This should have nothing to do with sports. We have clean sportsmen, clean athletes here at the Olympics,” Bolshunov said, calling the question “irrelevant.” He added: “After you see how we train, I believe that you and your audience will never have these questions again.”

In a subsequent interview, Markus Cramer, a German coach who works for the Russians, said he’s “100% sure” there’s no doping on his team. He’s been affiliated with the team for seven years, and if doping was happening, he would have been able to tell.

“It’s totally another time now, and another team, and other athletes,” he said.

Reactions inside Russia, meanwhile, underscored how differently followers of the sport there viewed Bolshunov’s result. They also hinted at the ongoing geopolitical tensions between Russia and the U.S.

Russian politicians and sports commentators sharply dismissed any doubts, with one saying that the Anchorage Daily News/FasterSkier reporter who questioned Bolshunov was a “provocateur” and should have his Olympic press credential revoked.

“He could also ask what (Bolshunov) thinks about the alleged movements of military personnel,” sports journalist Dmitry Guberniev was quoted as saying, referring to the controversy about Russian troops massing near the Ukrainian border.

Scandinavian journalists at the post-race news conference said followers of cross-country skiing in those nations are less inclined to doubt the current generation of Russian athletes after growing more familiar with them. 

The Russian team, in an effort to build trust after the Sochi scandal, invited Norwegian media to a training camp near Lillehammer a few years ago, Cramer said.

“Especially with the Norwegian media, we have a good contact,” he added. “And I think they understand, most of them.”

Cramer noted that no similar questions were lobbed at Norwegian superstar Therese Johaug, after she won the women’s opening cross-country event in similarly dominating fashion.

Johaug missed the 2018 Games while serving an 18-month ban for using an anabolic steroid, clostebol. She said she accidentally took it while trying to treat a sunburn with lip balm — which turned out to have a “doping” warning label on the package.

At a news conference Thursday after winning her second race of the Games, Johaug said she’d finished her ban and had been training “so hard, so much.”

“People can (say) what they want, but I don’t care,” she said. “I know who I am and what I’m doing.”

Questions of accountability

Bolshunov’s result Sunday did not surprise followers of the sport, even if the size of his winning margin made an impression.

The 25-year-old, who grew being up coached by his father in a town near the Ukrainian border, won four medals at the 2018 Games.

He’s also topped the overall rankings of the World Cup circuit — generally accepted as a barometer for the globe’s best all-around skier — for the past two winters. And he’s known to his peers for his work ethic and impeccable technique.

“The thing about Bolshunov is he’s a beautiful skier,” said Freeman, the retired American racer. “And I have no doubt that he works his ass off.”

One of the questions about Bolshunov’s performance is how much he should be held accountable for transgressions committed by others at a time when he was 17 years old.

Noah Hoffman, another retired American skier and anti-doping advocate, said he gives Bolshunov the benefit of the doubt.

“You can’t prove that you’re clean,” Hoffman said. “And so I refuse to assume that anybody is doping without evidence.”

On the other hand, Hoffman remains frustrated by the absence of stiffer penalties against the entire Russian team in the aftermath of the 2014 scandal.

“To the extent that a flag is making us question an athlete, that’s tragic,” he said. “And it’s because we haven’t put in place adequate deterrence to stop state-sponsored doping.”

A year ago, a European appeals court halved Russia’s four-year ban from global sports originally imposed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, in a ruling blasted by some anti-doping advocates. 

That proposed four-year penalty was not in direct response to the Sochi scheme. Instead, it was imposed after subsequent accusations by WADA that Russia had covered up positive tests in data that the nation was required to disclose in the wake of the 2014 scandal.

The result is that Russian athletes are still competing in Beijing — as they did at last year’s Games in Tokyo and in 2018 in Pyeonchang — even as Russian leaders can complain that they’re being unfairly targeted, said Hoffman.

“In both Pyeongchang and here in Beijing, they get to claim to be the victims of a Western plot while still celebrating the success of their athletes,” Hoffman said. “This is like everything Putin dreams of.”

A “big political game”

Bolshunov’s personal coach is Yuri Borodavko, who works with several other star Russian athletes.

In 2010, Russian Ski Federation leaders suspended Borodavko from working with the country’s national team for two years after Evgeny Dementiev, a skier he worked with, tested positive for blood-boosting drugs.

But Borodavko denied any wrongdoing, and he told the Associated Press in 2018 that Dementiev had been tricked into doping.

Today, Borodavko has a good reputation in Russia, and most fans see him and his athletes as “absolutely clean,” said Artem Kuznetsov, a journalist with the government-owned Russian news agency Tass. 

Bolshunov and his teammates would be “crazy to try to cheat right now,” given the intense scrutiny on them, Kuznetsov added.

Freeman said he doesn’t lend too much credibility to Bolshunov’s history of negative tests: Lance Armstrong, he pointed out, never failed a drug test, either.

He said he was especially offended by the way Bolshunov celebrated Sunday’s win with the Russian Olympic Committee flag, and by his “defiant” response to the questions about him.

“I think he should be more aware of where his country is coming from — what they have been caught red-handed doing — and understand where the questions were coming from,” Freeman said. “Coming at it defiantly like that just makes you seem like a villain.”

Cramer, the Russian team coach, said Bolshunov is a young athlete who doesn’t understand why, given his clean personal record, he’s facing questions. 

He also said Bolshunov has been criticized in the past for looking too serious when he crosses the finish line.

“What can he do?” Cramer said. He added: “We have a lot of (doping) controls. So, when he is not clean, of course, we will see.”

Salmon for Skiing

Over the last four years China has undertaken perhaps the grandest experiment in cross country skiing history: can hundreds of athletes cherry picked from other sports and given seemingly unlimited resources be turned into Olympic medalists in nordic events? 

Chinese athletes have never medaled in any of the nordic disciplines, and their teams head into the Olympics as the darkest of dark horses. Success, in the form of medals, is key to their aims of climbing up the medal table and becoming the protagonists of their own winter Games. 

The Chinese nordic programs have aimed to rapidly become competitive with the best in the world. The urgency of the task was made clear at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics where China finished fourteenth in the medal count, capturing a single gold medal, and just nine in total. 

Despite this history, not everyone is dismissive of their chances. 

“I said four years ago that I predict these guys will medal in Beijing,” said US biathlete Clare Egan in a call, “because I know that medals are important to China and that they basically will put any resources possible into making things happen like that. So nothing would surprise me.”

Even so, Egan conceded that, “It’s going to be hard for them, because they aren’t fast enough.”

The project of building a culture of skiing in China began in 2015 when Beijing was awarded the 2022 Winter Games. The government spurred into action: it would make 120 million of its citizens into recreational skiers by building 800 new ski areas, among them the world’s largest indoor center in Harbin that cost $4.5 billion.

Cross country skiing also benefited from the investment rush, with an 1.3 k indoor ski tunnel built in Beishan, a joint Finnish-China project that cost $148 million. Another cross country ski tunnel is planned to be placed inside an unused coal mine shaft on the outskirts of Beijing. Liu Bo, a former ski coach, told Reuters in 2018 that he was investing $318 million in the project. 

Bo explained in the interview that the goal for Chinese skiing, aimed at the Olympics, was clear: “China spends big money setting up the stage, and the performers are all foreigners,” said Bo. “President Xi will not allow this to happen. We have to be the leading actor in 2022.”

While the ski resort boom was mainly aimed at creating a ski culture in China, taking on a starring role in Beijing meant that expertise would be needed from abroad. For guidance, officials looked to the top of the medal table: Norway.

Initially, it was impossible for China to work with Norway. When the Olympics were awarded to Beijing in 2015 the two countries were still embroiled in a diplomatic crisis that had severed official contact between the nations and frozen trade negotiations. The rupture occurred in 2010 when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in Oslo to Li Xiaobo, a Chinese human rights activist who was then imprisoned in China. At the Nobel ceremony, Xiaobo was evocatively symbolized by an empty chair on the stage. 

In response, China all but severed diplomatic ties with Norway, despite the government’s lack of control over the Nobel committee. Two months later China halted the importation of fresh Norwegian salmon – a significant industry – over what was generally regarded as a politically motivated concern over a fish-borne virus. 

The ban, as well as other restrictions, are believed to have cost Norway between $780 million to $1.3 billion between 2010 and 2017. At the time of the contentious Nobel ceremony, Norway had enjoyed a virtual monopoly over the Chinese salmon market, and the country’s fisheries had to watch as Chinese demand for salmon increased by thirty percent, while their share plummeted by two thirds. 

Years of cautious steps by the Norwegian government followed, including its first ever refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama during his 2014 visit to Norway. Norway’s socialist left party leader Audun Lysbakken criticized this move in The Guardian, saying, “We can’t be dictated to by China in the sense of exchanging human rights for salmon.”

That fall, Oslo – the favorite for the 2022 Games – dropped out, paving the way for Beijing to win the bid the following summer. With the Games in hand, the calculus changed, and the rift with Norway became an awkward obstacle to their objectives. 

A subtle indication of rapprochement came in an unusual way: Gerhard Heiberg, a Norwegian businessman headed the IOC’s Marketing Commission, and was offered a meeting on a 2016 trip to Beijing with the Chinese Minister of Sport, Gou Zhongwen. 

The minister marveled at Norway’s success in skiing, Heiberg recounted to NRK, “He said that those at the top in China had agreed that they would like an agreement with Norway on a sports collaboration. And from the Chinese side, there was a desire to use Norwegian leaders, coaches, universities and so on who worked with winter sports.”

Heiberg recognized the moment. “I saw that here we have a fantastic opportunity to approach China.” Not wanting to waste the favorable winds, Heiberg left the meeting and “went straight to [Ambassador] Svein Sæther. And he lit positively on all the plugs.”

With some quiet maneuvering, relations thawed, and Norway and China signed a bilateral agreement to resume diplomatic relations in December 2016. The agreement conceded that Norway would not challenge China on its “core interests and major concerns”​​ — a diplomatic term for avoiding involvement in sensitive issues, including human rights. 

That winter the Norwegian Ski Association was asked to help look for coaches to work in China and offered salaries of 1.1 million kroner (equivalent to $120,000) per year. China also wanted to send its athletes to Norway, but to do so, it would need to put to rest their feud. 

In April 2017, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg visited Beijing, officially ending the freeze. Solberg reestablished the relationship in part by signing an agreement with China to support their sporting endeavors, particularly in nordic sports, through to the Beijing Olympics. The agreement would provide China with Norwegian ski coaches, training opportunities, as well as sporting development and snow making expertise. In return, Norway received the opportunity to optimize “Norwegian preparations for the Olympics.”

This deft piece of ski diplomacy helped to seal a seafood trade agreement with China the following month that planned to see Norway export $1.4 billion worth of salmon alone to China by 2025. The long awaited reentry to the Chinese market had arrived, and if there were any lingering questions about human rights, Per Sandberg, Norway’s Minister of Fisheries wasn’t having it. He told Aftenposten that “Norway addresses human rights in very many contexts… this time it’s fish.”

Ski diplomacy started with Stolberg’s agreement with China, and was reaffirmed the following year when King Harald visited China, signifying the complete normalization of relations while taking in a rollerskiing race at Beijing’s Olympic Park. 

Despite the apparent connection between the sporting pact and the trade deals, the Norwegian Prime Minister denied the two items were related. In any case, the agreement caught the Norwegian Sports Confederation by surprise. Oddvar Jenssen, the former VP of the organization, said in an interview with Aftenposten that the decision “…came terribly fast, and a lot was in place before we knew anything. When the agreement came up, we had no choice.”

Misgivings aside, for Norwegian ski coaches, wax techs, and sport scientists, the Chinese agreement would turn into a major employment opportunity, with around 40 coaches and techs working for Chinese training groups, and around 60 more occasionally hired for short stints. No longer were the job opportunities going to be contingent on moving to China, the athletes would now be coming to Norway.  

Arrival in Norway

The sporting agreement between Norway and China took on new force after China’s dismal performance in the 2018 Olympics. Afterward, the Chinese Ministry of Sport went looking for coaching help abroad. Many nations vied for contracts, but Norway was the first stop for Gou Zhongwen.

In May of 2018, Zhongwen met with Johannes Klæbo on his tour of Trøndelag – the region that has won more Olympic medals than any other – and solidified the agreement to bring athletes to Norway. 

In July, ten of China’s core World Cup athletes arrived in Trondheim, Norway to begin training for the World Cup with former Montana State University skier Bernhard Rønning. 

It was the prelude to an influx of more than 200 young Chinese athletes to Norway in the late summer and fall of 2018. 

In addition to the Trondheim group, another was set up in Meråker, under the leadership of former Canadian National Team Coach Tor-Arne Hetland. In Lillehammer a group was led by Kristen Størmer Steira (wife of FasterSkier podcaster Devon Kershaw) and finally one in Trysil led by the mother/daughter combo of Anita Moen and Karoline Moen Guidon. 

Anita Moen’s experience illustrates the slapdash nature of the project. In mid July of 2018 she was on vacationing on a beach when her phone rang. It was an offer to coach Chinese skiers until the 2022 Games. 

“It was only two weeks until they were to arrive,” Moen told NRK “… I did not quite know who was coming, but I was told they had never skied before, never seen snow.”

While China mobilized to send loads of athletes to Norway, their plans didn’t stop there. After Minister Zhongwen left Norway, he flew with his entourage directly to Finland. Waiting for him at the airport was Veiko Hallonen, the CEO of the Vuokatti Sports College. 

Vuokatti offered excellent training opportunities: a long winter, a ski tunnel, knowledgeable coaches, and sophisticated technology that impressed the officials. Perhaps Zhongwen was also mindful of the warmer diplomatic climes in Finland. Ni Huizong, the Director of the Winter Sports Administrative Center told Yle, “Relations between Finland and China have a long and warm history.”

Chinese athletes had been training in Vuokatti since 2016, but the agreement established a permanent Chinese presence at the Vuokatti center and increased the total number of athletes that would stay in Finland. 

The head cross country coach in Vuokatti at that time was Glenn Lindholm, who met with the Chinese delegation and was asked directly whether four years were enough to turn novices into Olympic champions. Lindholm’s response was neither yes nor no. 

Lindholm must have understood the unlikely prospect of delivering medals by the next Olympics. Still, the project may have seemed crazy enough to work. Vuokatti was about to get more than 130 hand picked Chinese athletes, an almost unlimited pot of money to work with, and just under four years to produce a medalist. 

It was audacious, and too bold to resist. As Lindholm and others would learn, realism, a pandemic, and decisions made in the halls of power of Beijing would frustrate their plans. 

To be continued in Part 2.

Take a moment to visualize some iconic head-to-head finishes from recent global championships: Klæbo vs. Bolshunov in the 50 k, Oberstdorf, 2021; Nilsson vs. Johaug in the relay, Seefeld, 2019; Schumacher vs. Terentev in the relay, Lahti, 2019; Diggins vs. history in, well, you know, PyeongChang, 2018.

What do these races have in common, besides drama, high-level skiing, and triumph and tragedy in equal measure? All of them feature a final downhill back into the stadium.

The Zhangjiakou courses that will be used for all distance races, by contrast, starting tonight with the women’s skiathlon, do not have such an approach to the stadium. Instead, here is a course profile of the final kilometer of all the distance courses at Kuyangshu Nordic Center and Biathlon Center in Zhangjiakou, China:

Specifically, note that there is an uphill in this final kilometer. There is a B-Climb with a 14-meter gain, starting roughly 440 meters from the finish, then an effectively flat approach through a hairpin turn and into the finishing strait.

While it is tough to make sweeping statements about what “most” courses “typically” do, a review of homologation certificates and course profiles suggests that Zhangjiakou will present the first global championship (that is, Olympics or World Ski Championships) with a comparable profile for the final kilometer since Sochi in 2014, and the first championship without a downhill into the stadium in at least 11 years. This conclusion is based on a somewhat unscientific survey of the final kilometer of the “main” five-kilometer course at all global championship venues since Holmenkollen in 2011. (Course profiles and methodology may be found at the bottom of this article.)

Here’s a look back, including the final kilometer, at the 30k men’s skiathlon during the PyeongChang Olympics in 2018. Spoiler alert, it was won by Simen Hegstad Krüger, who is currently quarantined after contracting COVID-19 last week, leaving him unable to travel to Beijing to defend his title.

 So does this this final uphill matter? If you’ll forgive the lawyer answer, it depends.

On the one hand, if athletes are skiing together in the final kilometer of a race, a course with an uphill approach to the finish may play out differently than one with a downhill approach. Everything else being equal, you might expect a pure climber to have an edge on the final stretch of the Zhangjiakou courses, while this profile could negate the advantage of greater mass that a larger skier would use to gain more speed coming off a final downhill.

On the other hand, the shortest mass-start race at these Games is the 15 k skiathlon (honorable mention: the women’s relay, which is 4 x 5 kilometers and could very well feature a final leg that is much more of a head-to-head 5 k, not to mention that the sprint/team sprint course also has this profile for its final 500 meters). So there exist roughly 14.5 kilometers in which athletes may make a move before this final uphill. More broadly, while this article chose to focus on the final kilometer of each distance course as an arbitrary cutoff for purposes of taking analogous screenshots of course profiles (that is, while clearly the entire course is relevant for how the final kilometer skis, I had to set my parameters somewhere), note that the 800 meters immediately preceding the final Zhangjiakou uphill are nearly all downhill, with a substantial drop of roughly 50 vertical meters, so heavier skiers or better descenders could gain an insurmountable advantage on the flyweight athletes before this climb.

And more broadly still, it may be misleadingly reductive to focus on only the final half-kilometer of a 15-, 30-, or 50-kilometer mass-start race, when we’re talking about the world’s best athletes here, and they will all have a plan to use preceding sections of the course to their advantage, lessening if not obviating the implications of this one final uphill.

One commentator consulted by FasterSkier, Lex Treinen, took an “all of the above” approach when asked for his analysis of the implications of this course profile. Treinen is a former pro skier for APU who reached a national championship podium and multiple SuperTour podia during his racing career, was top American in the 2015 Birkie, and has provided commentary for both domestic and World Cup races, but now describes himself as a “substitute Polar Cubs coach [for the Anchorage Junior Nordic League youth skiing program] and amateur watercolorist.” (Treinen also has a day job as a reporter for Alaska Public Media; disclosure, he was a colleague of FasterSkier reporter Nat Herz until about a month ago.)

“It’s gonna be a tactical finish but not a crapshoot,” Treinen wrote to FasterSkier earlier this week. “There’s something for everyone in the last kilometer – a descent to bunch the group up, a kicker of an uphill for the fitness freaks, and then a grind for the drag racers into the finish chute.

“It’s hard to say what sort of racers it would favor,” Treinen continued. “I think there will be a lot of different ways you’ll see the last 500 meters play out, come-from-behinds, scuffles in the downhill, and grinders who wear out the field in the last stretch.”

So, well, it depends.

Another expert, course designer John Aalberg, acknowledges the differences between the approach to the finish in Zhangjiakou and that in Soldier Hollow, which he also designed: “I was able to design an even better finish for these 2022 courses, with both a long uphill (similar to Hermod’s Hill), an exciting downhill right above the stadium, and a small uphill coming into the stadium (the high speed coming into the Soldier Hollow stadium is not optimal),” Aalberg wrote to FasterSkier. Aalberg also described the final downhill in Zhangjiakou as featuring a “‘velodrome’ downhill corner.”

Bottom line – and apologies for the joyful indeterminacy here – these courses have never hosted a FIS race before; no one knows for sure how they will ski under race conditions. Again, it depends. But as a spectator watching at home, you should get ready for two weeks’ worth of athletes coming off a final uphill into the stadium. And if you’ve ever raced at Birch Hill in Fairbanks (19-meter climb starting 360 meters out), Government Peak in Palmer (19-meter climb starting 270 meters out), or Craftsbury in Vermont (17-meter climb starting 730 meters out), brace yourself for some flashbacks.

Methodology and footnotes

Immediately below are thumbnails of the final kilometer of the 5-kilometer distance course for all global championships since Holmenkollen in 2011. Below that are comparable thumbnails from all domestic championship venues (U.S. Nationals or Spring Series) from this country in the past decade that have homologation certificates currently available. All images are screenshots from the course profile contained in the official homologation certificate, which may be found here. They have been arranged in a wholly holistic manner, according to my sense of which ones would ski most like the Zhangjiakou distance course, sorted by descending order of similarity. Your sense of this may certainly differ.

This is an unscientific endeavor that is more art than science. Indeed, note that each venue has multiple different homologated courses; a 10-kilometer race may be three laps of a 3.3 k course, for example, while a 50-kilometer race is often six laps of an 8.3 k course, neither of which uses the 5 k course at all. I chose the 5 k course distance as a common denominator that all venues in this survey have. I think it is likely that most distance courses will typically have the same final-kilometer approach to the stadium, no matter the overall distance of the course, but this is not always the case, cf. the mass start vs. interval start 5 k homologated courses at Birch Hill in Fairbanks, which follow different routes to the same finish line in the same stadium at the same venue for two courses of the same length, and so have different elevation profiles.

I also acknowledge that the homologation certificates currently available may differ from the course used at the time of a given championship. Historical homologation certificates are not generally available on the FIS site. Again, these are presented as examples for comparison, not as gospel truth.

As one final caveat, I am painfully aware of the risk of confirmation bias here. I train and race in Alaska… and I ranked a Fairbanks course first among domestic courses. That’s convenient. (I really think it’s a tossup between Birch Hill and Craftsbury South; I slotted the Birch Hill mass start course ahead because the final uphill there starts closer to the finish, but reasonable people may clearly differ.) I have raced at one European venue in my life… and would you look at that, Beitostølen has a 15-meter climb back to the stadium, better list it as an honorable mention course.

Bottom line, I would be very open to being told why your home course is in fact a better analog for Zhangjiakou; there are hundreds of courses in the global homologation database, and I did not survey most of them. Please take this article as an illustrative sampling of what’s out there rather than as a comprehensive roundup, and feel free to suggest better matches in the comments. And enjoy the races.

Global championship courses

Zhangjiakou (2022 OWG)

Sochi 5 k left (2014 OWG)

Holmenkollen (2011 WSC)

Oberstdorf (2021 WSC)

Seefeld (2019 WSC)

Pyeongchang (2018 OWG)

Val di Fiemme (2013 WSC)

Lahti blue (2017 WSC)

Falun blue (2015 WSC)

Falun red (2015 WSC)

Lahti red (2017 WSC)

Domestic championship courses

Zhangjiakou (2022 OWG)

Birch Hill 5k mass start

Craftsbury 5k south

Birch Hill 5k interval start

Houghton 5k B

Kincaid JNs 5k

Soldier Hollow Olympic 5k

Sun Valley 5k

Truckee 5k B

Sun Valley 5k

Truckee 5k A

Honorable mention

Zhangjiakou

Rikert Nordic Center, Vermont (hat tip Bill McKibben)

Ruka, Finland

Beitostølen, Norway

Government Peak Recreation Area, Palmer, Alaska

Related reading:

The Enigma of Zhangjiakou and the Kuyangshu Nordic Center (February 2022)

Olympics Preview: What We Know About the Courses and Venue (January 2022)

ZHANGJIAKOU, CHINA — After months of headlines about coronavirus tests, travel logistics and geopolitics, Beijing’s Olympic cross-country skiing venue, on the eve of its first competition Saturday, has emphatically changed the subject.

To the winds of Zhangjiakou.

Icy gusts billowed athletes’ training bibs, filled the resort town’s immaculately groomed ski tracks with dry, squeaky powder and generally consumed everyone’s attention Friday — from the team members who shielded their faces with buffs and layers of tape to the course workers who used leaf blowers in an effort to restore a section of the course to presentable shape.

“This makes Fairbanks seem nice,” a slightly defeated sounding Luke Jager, the Alaska-born American sprint racer, said in a message after braving Zhangjiakou’s trails Friday, amid 25 mph gusts and a high of 5 degrees. “It’s kind of brutal though: All the spots on the sprint course where you want to carry speed into the climb, you just get blasted with wind and come to a halt.”

Athletes’ early impressions of the Beijing Winter Olympics have centered on China’s intense coronavirus mitigation measures, from daily testing to volunteers wrapped in layers of personal protective equipment.

But finally, after dodging the hyper-contagious omicron variant in the lead-up to the Games, athletes and coaches are finally able to narrow their focus on competitions — thanks in part to those protective measures.

That’s the thing about the Beijing Olympic bubble: Once you’re inside it, it’s a much more comfortable place for an elite athlete to be during a pandemic than outside.

“I would say China’s policy on COVID matches our team policy on COVID,” said Matt Whitcomb, one of the U.S. Ski Team coaches. “Even though athletes made the team, we weren’t sure they were actually going to make it to the Olympics.”

Positive tests sidelined other contenders ranging from Norwegian cross-country skiing stars to star U.S. bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor to Alaska-based figure skater Keegan Messing. 

But the entire U.S. nordic skiing squad has made it to Zhangjiakou, in the mountains some 100 miles northwest of Beijing, unscathed so far. 

And while athletes and coaches said they’re still being vigilant, each day without news of many positives inside the Olympic bubble lends to the sense of security.

“Since we’ve all gotten here and settled in, we’re like, ‘All right, we made it.’ We’re still testing negative. We haven’t heard of people testing positive. So I think we’re feeling pretty good about it — and not thinking about it quite so much,” said Gus Schumacher, another Alaskan competing at the Games. “I think this is probably the COVID-safest I’ve been in a long time.”

That’s allowed athletes to think, and talk, about other things — namely the conditions on Zhangjiakou’s courses in advance of the Olympics’ first cross-country ski races. 

Women will race 15 kilometers Saturday afternoon in the pursuit format, with the first half in classical technique and the second half skating. Men race the same format Sunday, skiing 30 kilometers.

Athletes spent Friday testing skis, practicing the changeover in gear — which happens while the clock is running — and fine-tuning both their bodies and cold-weather coping techniques.

“Trying to figure out how to keep our faces warm,” Jager said.

Schumacher skied with patriotic red and blue patches of tape on his cheeks, plus a striped red and white neck warmer. Other athletes trained wearing masks designed to shield their lungs from the cold air. Norwegian superstar Therese Johaug at one point skied through the stadium area with her neck warmer pulled over her mouth.

“Everybody has really fine-tuned what long underwear tops they’re going to need to wear, heated socks, heated vests for training,” Whitcomb said. “What puts the cold into an extreme sort of level is just the incessant wind — and it is really bitter. There’s one or two spots on the course where you can find a little respite from the wind, and it feels like the tropics when you step into it.”

Beyond devising ways to keep their bodies warm, athletes were also scheming with coaches about the fastest way to navigate Zhangjiakou’s wide, challenging trails, given the challenge of the windblown snow filling the tracks.

Skiing outside the tracks appears to be faster. But doing so invites the potential for disqualification, as athletes are required to follow strict rules about cornering when using the classic technique, Whitcomb said.

Aside from the cold, though, athletes and coaches said they’ve had a warm welcome to China. The food is good, the logistics are uncomplicated and the Chinese volunteers have been warm.

“They’re doing an amazing job,” Jager said. “Everyone’s super friendly, and everything is pretty seamless.”

The coronavirus prevention measures also make sense, Schumacher said, given China’s low rates of illness and the much higher rates in countries that athletes, coaches and journalists are traveling from.

“It honestly seems like China’s probably one of the few places that can really pull this off well, right now,” he said.