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 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)

Friday at 2022 FIS Junior World Ski Championships in Lygna, Norway, marked the phase that Steve Fuller, on site to take photographs qua Flying Point Road, calls “the ‘groundhog’s day’ stage” of the championships. “Things are happening so fast that you’re not quite able to get caught up with each day before you get up and do it all over again,” Fuller wrote on Instagram.

Undeterred, the Americans headed out on course Friday morning for their seventh and eighth races in four days. The coaches and wax techs (see the back row in the lead picture of the relay story) prepped skis for their eighth championship race within less than 72 hours. At the end of the day, Russia took a combined four out of six podium spots; Canadian skiers Xavier McKeever and Jasmine Drolet placed sixth and eighth, respectively; and Will Koch and Sydney Palmer-Leger led the way for the Americans in 13th and 19th.

Women’s 5 k Classic

Let’s back up. The women again had the day’s first race, a 5-kilometer interval-start classic. The first starter headed out on course, over a single lap of yesterday’s 5 k course, at 11 a.m. The official results describe conditions as somewhere between moderate and perfect: air temp of -2 C, snow temp of -3 C. Skies were overcast for the women’s race, but the sun came out for the men; as USST Development Team Coach Greta Anderson told FasterSkier later Friday, conditions sped up noticeably by the afternoon.

82 starters later, Dariya Nepryaeva, who started at the sharp end of the field in bib no. 80, had logged the day’s fastest time, crossing the line in 14:30.1. She was closely followed by her compatriot, Elizabeta Bekisheva, in second, 2.9 seconds back. Emma Kirkeberg Mørk of Norway was close behind for third, 4.0 seconds back.

The day’s fastest North American finisher, and fastest Jasmine in the field, was Jasmine Drolet of Revelstoke, B.C., in eighth, 21.5 seconds back. She was followed in the North American standings by American Sydney Palmer-Leger (University of Utah/Park City, Utah) in 19th (+51.3), and Canadian Jasmine Lyons in 26th (+1:03.3).

“I felt pretty good. I really like classic skiing and my goal was to give it all I had,” said Drolet in a press release from Nordiq Canada. “You only ski the lap once, so the key was to just go hard the whole time. We had amazing conditions, perfect for classic skiing so it was a good day.”

Behind Lyons were the two Ninas, Nina Schamberger (Summit Nordic Ski Club/Leadville, Colorado) in 31st (+1:14.2) and Nina Seemann (Dartmouth Ski Team/Craftsbury, Vermont) in 36th (+1:23.0). Annie McColgan (University of Vermont/Bend, Oregon) was 40th (+1:27.3). Canadian athletes Sarah Cullinan (44th, +1:34.2) and Tory Audet (59th, +2:08.2) followed.

McColgan radiated enthusiasm when she talked with FasterSkier following her first race at these championships. “It was nice to have everyone cheering out there, and my parents were here so it was really, really fun. It was really cool,” McColgan said.

McColgan also provided insights on the course, describing it as “a really interesting 5k” with plenty of rolling terrain, but not many opportunities for recovery. “There’s a lot of steep little hills that you just have to be really good at… But it also is 16 minutes long. So you kind of have to make that balance [with energy expenditure]. And then the final climb was so brutal.”

Men’s 10 k Classic

The men again had the day’s second race, starting a two-lap, 10 k interval-start classic race at 1 p.m. local time. Taking athletes’ distance points as an informal form chart, in a field with 101 athletes the podium finishes came, relatively unsurprisingly, from bibs no. 90, no. 100, and no. 101. The gold medal on Friday went to Russian Saveliy Korostelev, the penultimate athlete on the course. Korostelev posted the fastest split time at 3 kilometers, at 5 kilometers, and at 8 kilometers, crossing the finish line in 26:15.8.

Korostelev enjoyed a hefty advantage over silver-medal finisher Niko Anttola of Finland, who finished 21.4 seconds back. Anttola ranked one to eight seconds behind Alexander Ivshin of Russia at all intermediate checkpoints, but skied the final two kilometers just barely faster. When Ivshin, the day’s final starter, crossed the line, he had fallen 0.8 seconds behind Anttola and had to settle for third.

Put another way, Russia came within a second of going 1–2 in both the men’s and women’s races. They instead had to settle for first and second in the women’s race, and first and third in the men’s.

Shortly behind the podium, Xavier McKeever of Canmore, Alberta, skied a strong race to finish sixth, 52.4 seconds back of Korostelev and roughly 30 seconds off the podium. It was McKeever’s best international result since, well, Tuesday, when he was fifth in the men’s 30 k mass start skate. McKeever’s sixth today tied Palmer-Leger’s sixth, from Tuesday’s women’s 15 k skate, for the second-best North American individual result of these championships.

“I am stoked to be in the top-10 again,” McKeever told Nordiq Canada in a press release. “I was getting splits that I was close to the podium in the first lap, but I just couldn’t keep the high pace that I started with. Honestly, I feel like the podium is still a fair bit away, but today just motivates me more to make the steps toward being able to contend for a medal. … I have been able to build my confidence over the course of this season. After last year, it was instrumental for me to refocus on putting in the hard work each and every day, which I think has helped me race with more confidence than ever before.”

McKeever was followed by his countrymen Max Hollman (Thunder Bay) in 17th (+1:28.8), Derek Deuling (Whitehorse) in 19th (+1:31.5), and Thomas Stephen (Calgary) in a tie for 26th (+1:40.0).

Will Koch (University of Colorado/Peru, Vermont) led the way for the Americans, finishing in 13th (+1:23.4). He was followed by Alex Maurer (University of Colorado/Anchorage, Alaska), also 26th (+1:40.0); Brian Bushey (University of Utah/Waitsfield, Vermont) in 36th (+2:00.2); and Finn Sweet (University of Vermont/Waterbury, Vermont) in 47th (+2:11.3).

Thoughts from the coach

Greta Anderson is in Lygna at her third World Juniors as a coach or tech, her first since assuming her current coaching position with the U.S. Ski Team. (Disclosure, Anderson was this reporter’s coach in APU Masters in 2014–15, and has remained a close personal friend ever since.)

Asked what she saw about today’s races, Anderson noted, “They were really fun to watch. Between FIS live timing and back split, the radios were pretty lively. One thing I did learn this year, and this is more than I’ve seen in the past, is that our athletes – every single one has the raw speed to compete at this level. We’re working on the durability portion of it. I think the top athletes in these races often are running negative splits in a big way; I would have to sit down and look at percentages. I’m sure we’ll do that at some point in time. But you know, the speed is there early on, we have very good placement, and then we need to figure out how to speed up just a little bit more. But that’s, you know, that’s been a big step for us as a country.

“Will Koch, obviously very, very strong today. Brian Bushey came out on the top end of ten places being within four seconds, or eight places within four seconds maybe. So you know, really phenomenal. … Annie McColgan had her first ever World Juniors race today. And that’s always really fun and special to watch. I think often athletes come away seeing like, ‘wow, there’s another level,’ and it can be really motivating for the following year.”

Turning to Schamberger, Anderson observed that the 16-year-old has “had a pretty heavy week of racing so far. She’s had three starts, and the first day was not what she wanted. And the second day she had the gift of getting redemption the very next day, which I think is one of the best things athletes can have. And she was really happy with how she skied the relay, a big smile on her face. And then a really good race today. It’s fun to watch athletes – the moment that they realize they’re skiing at that level. Because we know they can do it, and we watch it, but that aha moment of ‘Oh, okay, in the world, this is where I am.’ That moment is really cool. It’s one of my favorite parts of my job for sure.”

Anderson also described the environment at the venue more broadly, highlighting the effects of vocal parental support. “There’s quite a few parents here from the U.S.,” she said.

“And Americans are really loud compared to other countries, and it’s probably taken as obnoxious, but I really appreciate it. We can always hear the Americans. It’s fun to stand by them and listen to them get all excited. Next to the parents during the relay is one of my favorite places to stand.”

In that vein, Anderson concluded, “I look around, and I’m so proud to be an American coach. I’m so proud of the American skiers; there’s not a single other nation I would – I’m really glad that I work for our staff. And I think our athletes are really glad that they ski for the U.S.A. I don’t think they look around and think, like, ‘I wish I was on that team,’ or, ‘I wonder what that team is up to.’ We’re definitely in that, ‘We’re Americans and we’re here to beat you. Or at least die trying’ mode. And that’s pretty fun.”

Racing continues tomorrow with skate sprints for U23 athletes, both genders, before wrapping up Sunday with both men’s and women’s U20 skate sprints and the U23 mixed relay, sending athletes and techs out with three races, two techniques, and a combined sixteen sprint heats on the final day of racing. Groundhog’s Day, indeed.

Today’s results: women | men

World Juniors links and information:

Home page and general info | race program | results and live timing (all races) | streaming (only for Thursday through Sunday’s races, purchase required)

Thursday marked the third day of 2022 FIS Junior World Ski Championships in Lygna, Norway, but the first day of competition for U23 athletes, following individual and relay races for the juniors on Tuesday and Wednesday. The U23 athletes saw a 10-kilometer interval start classic for women, and a 15 k interval start for the men.

The top American finishers today were Zanden McMullen for the men in 14th, and Abigail Jarzin for the women in 36th. The overall podium was all Nordic countries, for the men, and all non–Nordic countries, for the women.

Women’s 10 k Classic

The women had the day’s first race, going out at 1 p.m. local time over two laps of a 5 k course with a relatively humane 145m of total climb per lap.

Anja Weber of Switzerland had the day’s second-fastest split at the 3-kilometer timing checkpoint, behind early leader Anastasiya Faleeva of Russia… had the day’s second-fastest split at the halfway mark, behind Faleeva… and had the day’s second-fastest split at the 8-kilometer mark, behind Patricija Eiduka of Latvia.

But the race was 10 kilometers long. Weber held her speed over the end of the second lap slightly better than Eiduka, ultimately taking the win in 29:59.8. Eiduka was second, a scant 1.3 seconds back. Veronika Stepanova of Russia, last seen anchoring the gold-medal Russian Olympic Committee women’s relay team in Zhangjiakou, was third, 13.1 seconds back, skiing a steady race that saw her rank twelfth, eighth, and fifth at the intermediate timing checkpoints.

Stepanova recently posted to social media, explaining that she skipped the Olympics 30 k to prepare for World Juniors, adding that she wanted to do fewer races at her relatively young age. (Stepanova turned 21 last month.)

Abigail Jarzin (University of Utah/Salt Lake City, UT) was the fastest of the four Americans in the race, finishing 36th (+2:42.8) in a well-paced effort that saw her move up considerably after ranking 45th at the 5 k split. She was followed by Anabel Needham (Michigan Tech University/Houghton, MI) in 47th (+3:47.5), Rena Schwartz (Dartmouth Ski Team/Middlesex, VT) in 50th (+4:14), and Lucinda Anderson (University of New Hampshire/Golden Valley, MN) in 56th (+4:50.8).

Among the Canadians, Anna Parent (Canmore, AB) was the top female in 17th (+1:45.8). Next for Canada was Beth Granstrom (Revelstoke, B.C.) was 37th (+2:42.9), followed by Anna Pryce (Calgary, AB) in 40th (+2:48), and Ontario’s Bronwyn Williams in 49th (+3:51.9). 

Other names potentially recognizable to North American readers include Poland’s Weronika Kaleta, who skis collegiately for UC Boulder, in 21st (+2:03.1), and Australia’s Tuva Bygrave, who skis collegiately for UAA, in 57th (+4:52.8).

Men’s 15 k Classic 

The men went out second, undertaking three laps of the same 5-kilometer course starting at 3 p.m. local time.

The starting list was reverse seeded: The athletes with the highest distance points (on paper, the lowest ranked) went out first; the athletes with the lowest distance points (on paper, those highest ranked) went out last. There were 64 athletes in the field, and the athletes with bib no. 62 and bib no. 64 made the podium; sometimes FIS points have strong predictive value.

But sometimes first place overall goes to an athlete wearing bib no. 31. And that, as the saying has it, is why you play the games.

Arsi Ruuskanen of Finland skied his first lap in 12:58.1, a split time that ranked sixth overall after all the athletes had come through. Ruuskanen’s relatively early bib number meant that he lapped through the stadium just as eventual eighth-place finisher Iver Andersen of Norway was going out on course. Perhaps due to the chance to work with Andersen for much of his second lap, perhaps due to just his own strong race, Ruuskanen would go on to set the day’s fastest times at 10 kilometers, 13 kilometers, and, notably, the finish.

The 22-year-old Finn took the victory in a time of 40:23.0. He was closely followed by Leo Johansson of Sweden, 6.7 seconds back, who had more of a gap to third, Håvard Moseby of Norway, 28.1 seconds back.

The top American on the day was Zanden McMullen (Montana State University/Anchorage, AK), in his first year racing as a U23 athlete after three years of racing at World Juniors. Racing internationally at the senior level, McMullen also had four World Cup starts in Period 1 of this season, then placed sixth in both distance races at 2022 U.S. Nationals.

McMullen started the 15 k out hot, registering the day’s 3rd-fastest time through the 5 k checkpoint. He slowed slightly from there, though not too much, coming through other intermediate checkpoints in 9th and 15th. He was ultimately 14th overall at the finish, 57.8 seconds back from Ruuskanen.

Among the Americans, McMullen was followed by Johnny Hagenbuch (Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation/Ketchum, ID) in 41st (+2:59.8) and Noel Keeffe (University of Utah/Steamboat Springs, CO) in 47th (+3:39.5). In a nod to a certain race being held in Wisconsin on Saturday, it should be noted that Hagenbuch is the youngest-ever winner of the American Birkebeiner.

Turning to Canada, Léo Grandbois set the pace with the day’s only top-10 finish for North America, crossing the line in 9th (+44.3). He was followed by Sam Hendry (Canmore, AB.), who skis collegiately for the University of Utah, in 18th (+1:14.1), Ottawa’s Pierre Grall-Johnson in 29th (+1:51.0), and Joe Davies (Pemberton, B.C.), who skis collegiately for UAF, in 35th (+2:16.5).

Racing continues tomorrow with interval-start classic races for the U20 athletes, 5 k for the women and 10 k for the men.

Today’s results: women | men

World Juniors links and information:

Home page and general info | race program | results and live timing (all races) | streaming (only for Thursday through Sunday’s races, purchase required)

We recently brought you a roundup of Olympic race suits from some more traditional nordic powers, focusing on those nations that had at least four men on site in Zhangjiakou and so were able to field a team in the men’s 4 x 10-kilometer relay. This article now turns its attention to athletes from some countries that you might not initially think of when you think of nordic skiing, as well as more traditional ski countries (Poland, Ukraine) that did not field a team in the men’s relay.

These photos, all of which are copyright NordicFocus, are from the qualification round of the women’s freestyle sprint, early in the Olympic Games on February 8.

Argentina

Armenia

Australia

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Brazil

Croatia

Greece

Iceland

Kazakhstan

Latvia

Lithuania

Mongolia

Poland

Romania

Slovakia (ft. alt. national-team race suit)

South Korea

Thailand

Turkey

Ukraine

FasterSkier previously surveyed the national-team uniforms from last year’s World Cup fashion season, starting with more traditional nordic powers (Norway, Russia, et al.) but also taking a look at some more outré ski countries (Brazil, Nigeria, Thailand). We didn’t run a comparable article at the start of this season, as there was relatively little change in most nations’ World Cup kit from last year to this year.

But when the Olympics arrive, however, all bets are off. Sponsor logos are out. Direct evocation of a nation’s flag is typically in. Unless you’re Norway, or Russia, albeit for different reasons.

There are lots of countries that sent cross-country skiers to this year’s Winter Olympic Games (54, in fact). Compiling photos of all of them would make for a very long article. Instead, this article surveys those countries that entered a team in the men’s 4 x 10-kilometer relay, using relay participation as a general proxy for international competitiveness. A follow-up article will focus on the women and on some less traditional nordic nations, by means of surveying finishers from the bottom half of the women’s skate sprint results sheet.

This article undertakes to rank the men’s relay race suits in, roughly, descending order of vexillological evocativeness, that is, how much does each race suit look like that country’s flag. This is a necessarily subjective inquiry; your own rundown may differ. No offense is intended toward countries in the bottom half of this list: A lower ranking does not mean that a suit is “bad,” just that it is less readily flag-like.

Note well, a handful of photos in this article come from races earlier in the Games, not from Sunday’s relay; it appears that there were no relay photos for these nations in the typically comprehensive NordicFocus library. Relatedly, all shots in this article are copyright NordicFocus, which has been doing an amazing job throughout the Olympics.

Finland

The Finnish flag looks like this: . Iivo Niskanen’s suit looks effectively the same. If one were, hypothetically, a Finnish athlete putting down an all-time relay performance to drag one’s team back up toward the front of a splintered men’s 4 x 10 k relay, there would be little doubt what nation you represented while you did so. This suit has the two colors of the Finnish flag, the dominant design element of the Nordic cross, and little more. It sure looks like the flag of Finland.

United States of America

The American flag, you are likely aware, looks like this: . There are two main elements in the American flag, the stars and the stripes; both are represented here. (Added points for the relay socks, an after-market add-on that further emphasize the “stripes” aspect.) America should arguably be ranked below Sweden, for the dominant use of a color, black, not present in the nation’s flag, but has been slotted in here in second because the stars and stripes for America seem more flag-like than the evocation of a Nordic cross does for Sweden. You can find much more about historical American uniforms, both Olympics and World Cup styles, here.

Sweden

The Swedish flag looks like this: . This uniform does not really depict the Nordic cross per se, but the consistent use of yellow and blue, augmented by only the neutral white, means that the overall evocation of a flag is quite strong.

Czech Republic

The flag of the Czech Republic looks like this: . This suit does not precisely portray the flag outline, but otherwise ranks high for featuring only the three colors from the flag, and nothing else. Could conceivably be pressed into service as a U.S.A. alternate suit, or maybe the current American biathlon suit.

Estonia

The flag of Estonia looks like this: . Much as with the Czech flag, Kilp’s ensemble does well by using only the relevant three colors from the national flag. The overall effect is aided by the coincidental use of blue and white in this race bib from the skate sprint, which differs from those used for three legs of the four-leg relay.

Switzerland

The flag of Switzerland looks like this: . This suit does well in that it uses only the relevant two colors. It does less well in that the instantly recognizable visual element of the flag, the Swiss cross, is not present here. (In Switzerland’s defense, it has the rare square national flag, so translating this to race-suit format may be difficult.) Also, the red–white ombre through the legs is trippy; cf. France, infra, which does much the same with blue and white.

Italy

The flag of Italy looks like this: . The dominant hue in this uniform, blue, evokes “the traditional paint of the royal House of Savoy, which reigned over the Kingdom of Italy from 1860 to 1946,” per Wikipedia, and is characteristic of Italy’s international sports teams, such as the national football team known as gli Azzurri. The tricolor bands on both upper legs, mirrored on the right shoulder, do a surprisingly successful job of typing this uniform as Italian against this blue background.

Japan

The flag of Japan looks like this: . This uniform falls into roughly the same category as Switzerland’s: instantly recognizable design element (the flag is “more commonly known in Japan as the Hinomaru (日の丸, ‘circle of the sun,'” per Wikipedia) that is not really present in the suit. Ranked below Switzerland due to the use of additional colors beyond just red and white; there is a sense of gold accents along the lower left leg, which works well aesthetically but falls outside of the flag palette.

People’s Republic of China

The flag of China looks like this: . This uniform is ranked relatively low, when it comes to evoking a country’s flag, because the distinctive five stars (“the five stars and their relationships to each other represent the unity of the Chinese people under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party,” Wikipedia advises) do not seem to be present. Zooming in on the hi-res version of this image suggests that the detailing on the torso and lower legs is variegated and visually compelling, but also does not look like stars. It is a fine suit, but ranks low on the specific axis of flag–suit evocation.

Canada

The flag of Canada looks like this: . It is universally known as the Maple Leaf (note Léveillé’s headband, for example, or the Canadian World Cup suit that literally features flannel-patterned maple leaves on the lower legs). This suit is ranked low here because the presence of a maple leaf is subtle at best, and for the dominating use of black, a non–flag color, through the torso.

France

The flag of France looks like this: . It is also known as the Tricolore, or, well, “three colors.” The suit is ranked low, in this compilation, because only two of the three colors are present here. That said, the coordination with the blue and white Salomon skis and boots is sublime, though the suit overall looks suspiciously like it came from the same template as Switzerland’s, q.v., supra.

Germany

The flag of Germany looks like this: . Much like France, the German flag has three colors, in this case the national colors of black, red, and gold. The suit is scored low in this compilation because of the extent to which the first of these colors overpowers the other two (indeed, it is not clear that red is apparent anywhere within the suit itself, as opposed to on the hat). It is a stark and imposing suit, it just does not look very much like the Flagge Deutschlands.

Slovenia

The flag of Slovenia looks like this: . This suit is imho amazing, and I frankly love it, but I had to rank it this low because it does not exactly evoke a red, white, and blue flag. (For purposes of comparison, here is last season’s Slovenian World Cup suit, which is notably more flag-like.) If you are from Slovenia and can explain to me why these colors and this design showed up in this year’s Olympic suit, please let me know: gavin (at) fasterskier.com. I am not making fun; I am just sincerely curious. Also, I honestly love this suit, even if at first glance I thought it was the suit of Ukraine or Australia.

Norway

This is… certainly a look. This suit puts the “illogical” in “vexillological.” This is the flag of Norway: . This suit is notably memorable, and has occasioned strong reactions throughout the Olympics. It does not, however, whatever else you may say about it, look particularly much like the Norwegian flag.

Russian Olympic Committee

The Russian flag looks like this: . Russia is not officially competing in these Games, just athletes representing the “Russian Olympic Committee.” It’s complicated. One result of these complications is that “Russian” athletes are racing in a suit that does not really resemble the flag of Russia. Again, it is a fine suit, just not particularly Russian flag–like.

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)

The Olympics start soon. Really soon. Here’s your one-stop shop to help you figure out what to watch, and when.

When are the races?

In the late afternoon to evening, if you’re in Zhangjiakou competing in them, in a nod to the lucrative European viewing market. In the late evening the night before, if like half of this year’s U.S. Olympic nordic team you live or train in Alaska. Squarely in the middle of the night, if like most of the rest of the team you live or train in Vermont (or anywhere else in the Eastern Time Zone).

There’s a schedule of all this year’s cross-country races below. If you’re in different time zones than those listed, or just like to do math, China Standard Time (there is one time zone for the entire country) is eight hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time. UTC is another five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, which is itself four hours ahead of Alaska Time. Put all those together, and China is currently 13 hours ahead of the East Coast, 17 hours ahead of Alaska. Our friends in the Hawaii–Aleutian, Pacific, Mountain, or Central time zones can do the math accordingly.

How can I watch the races?

NBC’s PeacockTV and the Olympic Channel are the primary networks that will feature live Olympic coverage, broadcasts, and event replays. Peacock currently has all cross-country events in their “Live & Upcoming” list, along with a section dedicated to “Jessie Diggins Highlights,” which sits above this season’s World Cup event replays, and another section of “Road to Beijing Highlights.”

Each event will be streamed live, presumably with a full replay available shortly thereafter, and also broadcast with commentary later in the day. A streaming and broadcast schedule for both Peacock and the Olympic Channel can be found here on the U.S. Ski & Snowboard website.

As for the commentators whose voices you’ll be hearing on air, NBC advises, “Steve Schlanger reprises his role as a play-by-play commentator for cross-country skiing, his sixth Olympics assignment. In addition to his work on biathlon, Chad Salmela will work as the cross-country analyst along with gold medalist Kikkan Randall, who makes her Olympic debut as an analyst. Naoko Funayama, in her second NBC Olympics assignment, is the reporter.”

How can I read in-depth coverage of these races?

Nat Herz will be on the ground in Zhangjiakou throughout the Games, supporting coverage on FasterSkier and the Anchorage Daily News, and providing insights from inside the Olympic bubble. The rest of the FasterSkier staff will be working hard to provide timely and quality race coverage, per usual. Don’t touch that dial, as they say.

Who’s going to win the races?

This was the topic of much enthusiastic speculation on the final pre-Olympic episode of the Devon Kershaw Show. Here are the compiled podium picks from Kershaw and special guest Alex Harvey, based on what was known about Covid presences and absences as of last Sunday (as host Nat Herz will be on the ground reporting, he remained professionally agnostic on the question of predictions during this show). Picks are listed in medal order, i.e., gold–silver–bronze.

Women’s skiathlon:

• Therese Johaug, Ebba Andersson, Frida Karlsson (Harvey)
• Johaug, Karlsson, Natalya Nepryayeva (Kershaw)

Men’s skiathlon:

• Johannes Klæbo, Alexander Bolshunov, Hans Christer Holund (Harvey)
• Bolshunov, Holund, Sjur Røthe (Kershaw)

Women’s skate sprint:

• Maja Dahlqvist, Nadine Fähndrich, Jessie Diggins (Harvey)
• Dahlqvist, Diggins, Jonna Sundling (Kershaw)

Men’s skate sprint:

• Klæbo, Richard Jouve, Sergey Ustiugov (Harvey)
• Klæbo, Jouve, Erik Valnes (Kershaw)

Women’s 10 k classic:

• Johaug, Karlsson, Krista Pärmäkoski (Harvey)
• Johaug, Karlsson, Andersson (Kershaw)

Men’s 15 k classic:

• Iivo Niskanen, Bolshunov, Holund (Harvey)
• Klæbo, Niskanen, Bolshunov (Kershaw)

Women’s relay:

• Sweden, Norway, Russia (Harvey)
• “U.S. is winning gold,” Sweden, Russia (Kershaw)

Men’s relay:

• Norway, Russia, France (Harvey)
• Norway, Russia, France (Kershaw)

Men’s team sprint:

• Norway, Russia, Finland (Harvey)
• Norway, Russia, Finland (Kershaw)

Women’s team sprint:

• Sweden, Russia, Norway (Harvey)
• Sweden, Russia, Norway (Kershaw)

Men’s 50 k skate:

• Holund, Bolshunov, Røthe (Harvey)
• Holund, Røthe, Bolshunov (Kershaw)

Women’s 30 k skate:

• Johaug, Diggins, Andersson (Harvey)
• Johaug, Karlsson, Diggins (Kershaw)

Who else is in these races?

You can find the American roster for cross-country skiing here. The American biathletes are here, and nordic combined athletes are here. Here are the Canadian teams for cross-country skiing, biathlon, and nordic combined. International cross-country rosters can be found on the FIS website.

What are the race courses like?

Great question. You can find a general overview of the courses and venue here, a more substantive roundup of on-the-ground reactions to the courses here, and a deep dive into the implications of the final uphill into the stadium coming on this site tomorrow.

What else is going on in world politics around these races?

Not very good things. Here’s a representative roundup of non-sports Olympics coverage from just this past week:

Vail Daily News, “Two-time Olympian Noah Hoffman advises athletes to remain silent at Beijing Olympics”

New York Times, “For Olympic Sponsors, ‘China is an Exception'”

Globe and Mail, “Beijing’s Olympic plans are already mired in politics and threatened by COVID-19. Will it all be worth it?”

The New Yorker, “How Beijing Is Playing the Olympics”

Inside the Games, “Beijing 2022 confirms 11 hospitalised with COVID as further cases reported”

This humble website went live twenty years ago today. (How long ago was that? Pretty long, judging from this recent Buzzfeed listicle.) As a later retrospective on this site would explain, “FasterSkier was founded in January 2002 by Torbjœrn Karlsen, Cory Smith and Erik Stange. FasterSkier.com was launched on February 1, 2002 and quickly grew to become one of the most trusted sources for Cross-Country skiing information in the United States … .”

The ur-articles from February 1, 2002, have sadly been lost to the ravages of time; the switch to the “modern” CMS interface has not been kind to content from the site’s first year. Early coverage presumably included a “Hello, World!” introduction, while the substantive focus was likely on the 2002 Winter Olympics, which began in Salt Lake City one week later.

Happily enough, the site’s Olympics coverage is preserved in its entirety, thanks to the intercession of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. You can find a roundup of all 2002 Olympics coverage here, and a link to all compiled Olympic race reports here.

The articles are, collectively, a heck of a period piece, and are worth your time, particularly if you have been reading this site for years and would like to see how far the technology has come. You may also be interested in the gear reviews, of, for example, the new, all-gray Salomon Carbon Pro. “I think that they are a real improvement over the Pilot Racing Skate 9,” our reviewer wrote, in a comparison to the product better and more universally known as “bumblebee boots.”

It was tough to choose just one article from an embarrassment of historical riches to reprint for today, but this piece, a race recap of the men’s 4 x 10-kilometer relay, feels appropriate. Thomas Alsgaard; Cristian Zorzi; Anders Aukland; John Bauer; Kris Freeman. This was a long time ago.

(The writeup of the women’s relay, from four days later, may be found here; it ends, “The Americans finished a disappointing 13th,” and says little more than that about the American team composed of Wendy Wagner, Nina Kemppel, Barbara Jones, and Aelin Peterson.)

This article was written by site co-founder Cory Smith, and was originally published on February 17, 2002. Photos and captions, both also by Smith, are reprinted as they originally appeared. A few bonus race photos are appended at the bottom, thanks to Smith’s impressive archives.

Norway Beats Italy in Sprint to Finish (again), US Men’s Relay Team Posts Best Result Ever

By Cory Smith

By the length of one ski, Thomas Alsgaard brought order back to the cross country ski world. In today’s Men’s Cross Country 4 x 10K Relay race, the Norwegian team proved that even without an individual gold medalist in these games, they are still the best team in the world. Thomas Alsgaard outsprinted Cristian Zorzi in the final 100 meters to take home the gold for Norway. 

In a week that has seen more men’s gold medals for Estonia and Spain* than for Norway, and even a Canadian woman winning a medal, Sunday’s race was also extremely memorable, but with a more familiar outcome. The entire country of Norway was able to breathe a sigh of relief after their relay team put them back on top of the nordic world. 

Meanwhile, the US men’s team, in the top five for most of the race, posted their top Olympic relay result by finishing a very impressive 5th. All four US skiers skied very fast and very smart to come within seconds of a medal for the first time ever.

Norway showed their dominance of the classic technique right from the start. After letting Belarus’s Roman Virolainen lead for much of the first lap, Norway’s Anders Aukland took control on his second 5K loop and opened a 10 second lead. Meanwhile, John Bauer, after a slow start that had him in last place out of the stadium, had moved up to the front of the pack and was actually leading the chase of Aukland. Bauer lost a few places gliding through the stadium, but he finished his excellent scramble leg in 5th place, right with Italy, Kazahkstan, and Germany, only 13 seconds off the lead.

On the second leg, Norway’s Frode Estil build the lead up to a maximum of 24 seconds while Kris Freeman (USA) jumped in behind Germany, Italy and Kazahkstan in the pursuing pack. As the leg went on, Estonia’s Andrus Veerpalu bridged up to the pursuing pack, as did Russia’s Mikhail Ivanov and Austria’s Mikhail Botvinov. This pack of six strong skiers started to cut into Estil’s lead, but as the leg came to an end, the pack began to break up. At the end of the second leg, Norway had an 11 second lead over Russia and Estonia. Kris Freeman skied an amazing strong race to stay in the thick of it, coming in right behind Italy’s Giorgio di Centa, in 5th place only 25 seconds off the lead. Halfway through the relay and the US men were only 14 seconds from a medal!

The clear standout on the third leg was Italy’s Pietro Piller Cottrer. He started his leg in 4th place, then quickly passed the Russian and the Estonian and after about 5K, he was right with Norway’s Kristen Skjeldal fighting for the lead. The two of them skied together the rest of the leg, setting up yet another epic final duel between Italy and Norway. Justin Wadsworth looked to finally be over the head cold that had hindered him all week. He was smart enough to not try to stay with Piller Cottrer, but instead skied a very solid leg all on his own, until he was caught by Austria’s Gerhard Urain, whom he latched onto and followed until blowing by him near the end of the leg to finish in 5th place. In between the leaders and Wadsworth, Germany and Estonia came in together in 3rd and 4th.

On the final leg, it became obvious that Alsgaard’s strategy was to try and shake Italy’s Zorzi, one of the best sprinters in the world, early. Alsgaard led most of the leg, but Zorzi held tight. Meanwhile, Germany’s Rene Sommerfeldt had pulled away from Estonia to assure a bronze medal. Carl Swenson jumped in behind Russia’s Nikolaj Bolchakov and Austria’s Christian Hoffman and they quickly passed the Estonian team. With the top three significantly ahead, Swenson was skiing strong and relaxed, as is his trademark, and was clearly gearing up for the finish. Along the way, they dropped the Russian, setting up a duel between Hoffman, who outsprinted Alsgaard in the 1999 Relay to win the World Championship, and Swenson.

Speaking of duels, Alsgaard and Zorzi were putting on a tactical clinic. Going up the last big climb at 9K, Alsgaard had the lead and tried on a couple of occasions to put on a kick and lose the Italian. But Zorzi held tight and made a pass just before the top of the hill. Just before the downhill, Zorzi dropped into a tuck and slowed way down, obviously trying to get Alsgaard to pass, so that he could draft. 

Alsgaard wanted nothing to do with that plan and instead of passing, he pushed on the back of Zorzi’s ski with his pole to speed him up. Then Zorzi pulled over and nearly stopped. Alsgaard did the same. They were a kilometer from the finish and they were standing still arguing about who was going to lead! 

Alsgaard eventually took the lead reluctantly. They went stride for stride up the short hill by the stadium and then dropped down to prepare for the sprint. On the gradual downhill, Zorzi freeskated hard to take the lead, and had about 5 meters on Alsgaard as they rounded the turn. Alsgaard then kicked it in and began gaining on Zorzi. With 50 meters to go, they were dead even, but it was clear that Alsgaard had greater speed. Alsgaard got a slight lead and held it. It was a very close finish, but there was no doubt that Norway had won. 

Germany’s Sommerfeldt finished all alone in a surprising 3rd, and was mobbed by his bronze-winning teammates as he crossed the line. The battle was now for 4th. Swenson was up against formidable competition in Hoffman, but if any American could outsprint him, it would be Swenson and that’s why he was in the anchor position. Hoffman had the lead around the corner and they went toe to toe down the line. 

For a moment it looked like Swenson would catch him, but there just wasn’t enough distance left. Another 20 meters and he would have had it. But instead Austria took 4th and the US maintained its 5th place on all four legs to post its best relay result ever. 

The US skiers skied very, very well, both physically and tactically. But none of them skied unbelievably well, they all simply skied strong like they have all week. What I am trying to say is that this was no fluke. They finished right where they belong. They have been one of the top five teams on these trails all week and today they certified that. What is even more amazing is that there were two other American skiers, Pat Weaver and Andrew Johnson, who could have filled in and skied just as well. The US now has at least six World Class skiers. Don’t look now, but the United States is a force to be reckoned with.

Just as amazing as the race itself, was the crowd. Soldier Hollow was sold out for the first time ever, with 20,000 people watching a cross country ski race in this country for the first time ever. The crowd was loud and energetic. It was a sight that warmed the hearts of all Nordic die-hards on hand. Today, our little sport took a huge step forward in many ways.

Results

[* Modern-day footnote: This statement, while accurate at the time, was ultimately belied by history, as the three gold medals that Johann Mühlegg won for Spain at these Olympics (in the 30-kilometer skate, 50-kilometer classic, and 2 x 10-kilometer pursuit) were subsequently rescinded following his disqualification for a positive darbepoetin test.]

Some additional photos from this race:

The following opinion article was originally published on FasterSkier on June 20, 2015. It was written by Chelsea Little, who contributed sterling ski reporting to this site for nearly a decade before ultimately retiring from nordic ski journalism, though not from nordic skiing. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Simon Fraser University outside of Vancouver, B.C., where her research interests focus on community and meta-ecosystem ecology.

The article was published roughly a month before the IOC, as expected, selected Beijing as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics. Although it was originally published over six years ago, much of its criticism proved prescient.

For example, the first two problems that Little noted were “snow” and “water.” Here is a photo from the cross-country venue at Zhangjiakou taken on January 19 of this year. Bare hillsides are visible in the background. The endemic issues with the use of limited available water for snowmaking, as analyzed by someone who at the time had three scientific degrees (Little would earn her Ph.D. in Ecology four years later), seem unlikely to have substantially improved.

As for air quality, as of the writing of this intro (Friday afternoon in Anchorage, Saturday afternoon in Zhangjiakou), air quality at the venue was an “unhealthy” 161 micrograms per cubic meter of PM2.5 particulates, though that can clearly change from day to day and it is unclear where this reading was taken relative to the precise location of the ski trails. The longstanding seasonal weather patterns that can bring in pollutants from elsewhere seem to still be an issue, as was discussed roughly a week ago.

The physical distances between clusters have remained unchanged, though a pandemic-induced near-total lack of spectators means that this may be less of an issue in practice: It may indeed take longer than anticipated to travel between venues, but virtually no fans will be attempting to do so.

And finally, what about human rights? This recent op-ed from the Washington Post, headline: “The Beijing Olympics has become an exercise in genocide denial,” expresses the view that things have not improved since Little’s article six years ago. (If you prefer your political opinions from a news site somewhat to the right of the Post, here’s a Laura Ingraham segment on Fox News, also from last week: “Ingraham encourages Americans to boycott watching Beijing Olympics over China’s human rights violations.”) Or here’s The Guardian: “Protesting Winter Olympics athletes ‘face punishment’, suggests Beijing official.” Or here’s Politico: “‘Checking a box’: Biden’s Beijing diplomatic boycott flop,” in an article quoting one Noah Hoffman.

As Little wrote six-plus years ago, “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity,” citing the second point of the Olympic Charter. She was at the time dubious that awarding the Olympics to China would support these goals.

Six Big Problems with the Beijing 2022 Olympic Bid (June 2015): by Chelsea Little

In just over a month, the International Olympic Committee members will vote in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on the site of the 2022 Winter Olympics. Their two choices: Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Beijing, China.

Only these two candidates remain after other bids from regions like Bavaria, Germany (centered in Munich), Graubunden, Switzerland (centered in Davos and St Moritz), Stockholm, Sweden, and Oslo, Norway, were felled by referendums.

That’s not a good sign for the IOC. Both bids have some problematic features, and are almost certainly not the ideal locations the organization was looking for.

While there are problems with the Almaty bid, to almost any reasonable person there appear to be far more, and more serious, problems with Beijing. Despite all of this, Beijing is the frontrunner.

That’s because it has the force of the Chinese government behind it. The IOC knows that the Chinese can deliver a Games. A Beijing Olympics would happen, without any major cost to the IOC except for bad publicity and a continued slide down from any moral high ground they might have left.

The Almaty bid closed part of its gap at the candidate city presentations in Lausanne, Switzerland, last week. But in the event that Beijing still comes out on top when voting is over, here’s an overview of six major issues that the Olympics would face – and examples of some of the misrepresentation and lies the bid committee says publicly when questions are brought up.

First, there’s the snow. As skiers, it is probably one of our main concerns. Will there be enough? Where will it come from? Zhangjiakou boasts about a meter, total, of snowfall each year.

The answer is, snow will come from water. But that leads to another question. What effect will that have on the regional water dynamics of a drought-prone region?

Then there’s air quality. It’s known to be terrible in Beijing. But organizers assert that air quality is great at the mountain venues. The problem is, that’s just not true.

Next up, how will spectators get to the mountain venues? At almost 200 k north of Beijing, travel times could be long. The bid committee touts a high-speed train connecting the clusters, but it’s becoming clear that this won’t solve all problems and could even be dangerous.

After the 2008 Olympics, it was clear that China followed through on few of their promises to improve human rights. Is there any reason to think that this time around will be different?

And finally, thinking long-term, what is the point of hosting a Games where winter sports are not popular and where snowmaking is so disruptive? Will the venues be used in the future?

Snow:

Quite honestly, there isn’t much.

The weather is cold and it’s enough to blow snow, however, at least for alpine skiing. The Chongli area outside of Zhangjiakou has four alpine ski resorts which host, according to the bid committee, 1.5 million visitors annually. Nordic facilities have not yet been built.

On the ground, the area isn’t always teeming with skiers.

“The chairlifts are somewhat slow, but queues are rare and the slopes are mostly empty,” a review of the Wanlong resort, one of the biggest in the area, notes.

By comparison, the state of Vermont gets about 4.5 million ski visits per year, although that is based on ticket sales and it is unclear whether the Chongli numbers are from all tourists or just those who buy a lift ticket.

Looking at meteorological data, it’s hard to imagine the region becoming a real winter sports mecca without snowmaking.

“The total annual snowfall here can reach more than one meter,” Liu Jianjun of Chongli’s weather bureau told the press.

One meter!?

And yet:

“We have a 20-year history of hosting skiing events… Each year there is a 25% increase in the population taking part in skiing in Zhangjiakou,” Hou Lang, the mayor of the city, said in a press conference in Lausanne. “The temperature, wind speed, and mountain situations are ideal for hosting a Games.”

The bid committee’s strategy is to make and hoard snow. Already, resorts feature snow on the trails but brown forests and dry, frozen ground beside them.

“In addition to natural snowfall we have a very comprehensive plan to ensure the quality and quantity of snow,” Zhang Li, the venue manager, said in the press conference. “This plan is based on the combination of appropriate temperature, abundant water supply, and reliable existing snowmaking facilities.”

The IOC Evaluation Commission noted in their report that the resorts are already situated on the highest mountains in the region, so there would be no way to haul in snow from other locations. And as was shown in Vancouver 2010, temperatures can unpredictably rise during warm snaps and prevent snowmaking.

During discussions about the two candidate cities, experts reportedly testified that a 50-50 mix of manmade and natural snow was ideal, and that this was attainable with the Beijing bid. Two problems: most athletes would argue that actually a zero-manmade, all-natural snow base would be ideal, and secondly, it’s not clear that 50% natural is even realistic.

Siting an Olympic Games in a place with essentially zero natural snow seems like a big risk. Yet the IOC does not seem overly worried with this issue compared to others.

Water:

On top of all of that, it appears that the bid committee does not fully understand just how big an undertaking it would be to make all of that snow. 16 million cubic feet of snow were reportedly stockpiled before the 2014 Sochi Olympics, where there was more natural snow to use as a base anyway.

It took over 140 gallons of water to make just one of those cubic meters of snow.

“The Commission considers Beijing 2022 has underestimated the amount of water that would be needed for snowmaking for the Games,” the Evaluation Commission wrote.

Zhangjiakou is in a notoriously arid region. There simply isn’t a lot of water available: just 383 millimeters per year, or 15 inches. The winter is the dry season, and Zhangjiakou receives less than five millimeters per month then.

The New York Times reported earlier this year that the region is home to water conflicts, which those in the western U.S. might find familiar.

“We can’t use it,” a farmer said of the scant rainfall. “It’s for others, not us.”

The small amount of water available is often sent south to Beijing, a major city which has priority over rural areas. It is now being used for snowmaking as well, and should Beijing win the 2022 bid the amount needed for snowmaking will only increase.

“The total amount of water used for the entire Games duration for snowmaking represents only 1% of annual available water supply in this area,” Zhang Li said in the press conference.

However, the Evaluation Committee had already made clear that they believed this estimate was incorrect. And in a region with barely any water, one percent can still make a big difference – just ask California.

Because of China’s controlling government and human rights problems, those suffering from further declines in water resources would certainly be the least affluent residents of the Zhangjiakou region. Pouring more effort into snowmaking would represent a further shift to focusing on an affluence tourist market instead of local dynamics.

Yet the bid committee insists that there’s nothing to worry about.

“To ensure an abundant the water supply, we have three sources of water,” Zhang Li said in the press conference. “One is the surface runoff which has been the sole source for the existing resorts for the last 20 years. The second source is large capacity reservoirs in 6 kilometers of the venues. The third source is that we will benefit from the already almost-completed National Water Transport plan, which is transferring an enormous amount of water from southern China to the north.”

That transport plan has reportedly cost as much as $80 billion, although detailed estimates are hard to pin down.

The bid committee also plans to recapture snowmelt and use it to blow more snow, but the Evaluation Commission wrote that the ability to do this had been greatly overestimated.

Air Quality:

Beijing currently faces some of the worst air quality in the world. During the 2014 Beijing marathon, particulate pollution was at 400 micrograms per cubic meter; the World Health Organization’s maximum for healthy outdoor activity is 25. Most participants wore masks and many did not finish the race.

“In Beijing, the ice sports will all be in indoor venues,” Wang Anshun, the mayor of Beijing and the head of the bid committee, helpfully noted in a press conference.

Beijing is in the midst of a five-year action plan to clean up air quality, which is costing about $130 billion and features 84 specific action points.

“At present, the action plan is already achieving excellent results,” Wang said. “Major pollutants in this period have dropped by 17.7 percent as compared to last year.”

After the plan ends in 2017, there are already plans in the works for another five-year agenda leading up to the 2022 Games.

In fact, the bid committee used the prospect of improving air quality in a not-so-subtle attempt to guilt people into supporting the bid.

“This also will be a form of permanent legacy that will benefit the local people of the city and the region,” Wang noted.

In other words: how could you turn this bid down when it will improve quality of life for millions of people, and make the air that they breathe no longer able to kill them?

However, it’s worth noting that an IOC mandate to fix pollution problems has not always in the past led to pristine conditions. Air quality was still a problem at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, even after much-publicized attempts to solve it by closing factories limiting the amount of vehicles in use. While vast improvements were made, pollution was still worse than in all but the most polluted U.S. cities and about six times higher than at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Immediately after the 2008 Olympics, air quality worsened again, now to those levels seen during the 2014 Beijing Marathon. Improving air quality during the Games did not have lasting effects.

Another case of the IOC struggling to mandate pollution cleanup is in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Just a year before the 2016 summer Games, organizers are still struggling to clean up the water in the city. Last summer the IOC brushed off concerns, saying there was still time to clean up, but they now seem more alarmed, and at the recent Executive Board meetings in Lausanne demanded to see progress by the end of July.

Part of the Rio bid was a promise to reduce the flow of raw sewage into the sailing venue by 80%, but officials now acknowledge that will never happen. (More alarmingly, they say that the failure to clean up is irrelevant because the sewage poses no health risks to sailors.)

In other words, if the host city promises in a bid to clean up, the IOC has no real way to hold them to that promise. Statements by the bid committee about air quality do not mean that athletes won’t see significant health risks when they arrive in Beijing in 2022.

Finally, the bid committee says that at the two mountain clusters, air quality is ideal. However, while Zhangjiakou does have the best air quality in its region, it is still not good. In the next two days, for example, air quality is forecasted to dip into the “unhealthy” zone, with the definition “Everyone may begin to experience health effects; members of sensitive groups may experience more serious health effects.”

And local regulations cannot completely solve air pollution problems, anyway.

“Increased energy demand in winter coupled with seasonal weather patterns that can bring pollutants from other regions could create air quality issues across the Games zones,” the Evaluation Commission wrote.

Distances Between Clusters:

The Beijing bid will feature three clusters for sports: arena ice sports will be held in Beijing; nordic sports, freestyle skiing, and snowboarding in Zhangjiakou; and alpine skiing and sliding sports in Yanqing.

The bid committee promoted this three-zone idea as a benefit to athletes, who will not have to travel far to reach their venues or deal with the more general hubbub of a compact Olympic Games.

“To ensure the athlete experience, I know from my experience as an athlete that the most important thing is the performance in the Olympics,” said Yang Yang, a gold medalist in short-track speedskating and now an IOC member. “So to minimize the travel times would bring much benefit to the athletes. Having three zones will help the athletes with short distance to travel from the venues to the villages. It will be about 15 minutes, which is a very good benefit to the athletes.”

Aside from athletes, travel times for spectators could be quite long. The bid committee has proposed building a high-speed train system which it says would cut the time needed to travel roughly 200 k from Beijing to Zhangjiakou to 50 minutes.

There’s several problems with this. First of all, the bid committee left the expenses associated with building the network off the books, claiming that it would have built the railway anyway. That’s false, and cut the bid’s budget down to better compete against Almaty. Officials still refuse to reveal the actual cost of the railway.

Secondly, only when pushed did officials admit that actually, it would take longer than 50 minutes to travel between the venues. They admitted that 10 minutes should be added for waiting times to board the trains.

IOC members pointed out that that’s not all; after all, they have to get from hotels to the train stations, and then from the stations to the venues. Members complained that it would likely take them 90 minutes.

And for regular spectators who don’t receive the special treatment of IOC members, it’s likely to be a lot longer. This, along with the lack of a snow sports culture in China, contributes to the strong possibility to sports in the mountains facing empty stadiums. That doesn’t exactly make for the best athlete experience.

Already in 2014 in Sochi, Russia – a country where cross-country skiing and biathlon are successful and popular – seats were empty in the stadiums. This was likely due in part to the sale of multi-sport ticket bundles. A non-ski fan might go check out a sport they had a ticket to if it’s close; if it takes hours of travel each way, they might decide to stay in Beijing.

Lastly, with well-documented catastrophic train disasters and high levels of corruption hindering safety measures in China’s railway construction (you can find an incredible piece from The New Yorker here), does anyone really want to be on a high-speed train system where a crash, or even just a decrease in speed, by a train that departed just five minutes earlier could lead to a pile-up?

Human Rights:

One of the biggest problems will provide nothing more than a repeat show from the 2008 Olympics. When Beijing won the bid for the 2008 Games, China boldly proclaimed that this was an opportunity for the country to improve their human rights record before they showed off to the world.

That certainly did not happen.

Hundreds of thousands of residents were evicted in the leadup to the 2008 summer Games in order to build new stadiums and infrastructure. The 2022 Games will use some of that infrastructure, so evictions should not be as numerous. But the Evaluation Commission report still estimates that thousands of people will have to be relocated.

And relocation is not something that China handles well. Houses were demolished and when residents tried to protest their evictions or appeal through the legal process, they were arrested, jailed, and sometimes beaten. Citizens have no choice in the matter, and are not provided the means necessary to re-make their life somewhere else.

“Compensation rates have rarely enabled affected people to relocate while retaining the same standard of living,” the Geneva-based charity Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions noted in a 2008 report. “Instead, residents have been forced to move further from sources of employment, community networks, and decent schools and health care facilities.”

Journalists who covered these issues did not fare well, with dozens of members of the media detained in the leadup to Beijing 2008. The Foreign Correspondents Club of China reported that 40% of foreign journalists covering the 2008 Games had experienced some sort of governmental interference, and that since then, conditions for foreign journalists have declined substantially.

Even while reporting on the bid for the 2022 Games there have been incidents. When two foreign journalists tried to visit the site of the mountain cluster and interview locals, government “minders” scared people away from speaking to them and inhibited them from visiting parts of the sites.

Those outside the media fared much worse. Before the 2008 Games, citizens who spoke to foreign media were sometimes beaten by police in retaliation. According to Human Rights Watch, Chinese who spoke out on a variety of issues, from human rights to the environment or corruption, were often arrested. In some cases activists were kept in prison for longer than the actual term they were sentenced to.

Then there’s the athletes. According to The Guardian, China forbid athletes with any history of dissidence or activism from participating in the 2008 Olympic or Paralympic Games. For instance, Fang Zheng, whose legs were crushed by a tank in Tiananmen Square in the 1989 massacre, was not allowed to compete despite having two national records in the discus.

There’s many other human rights issues in the country. Tibetan activists, for instance, infiltrated the candidate city presentation room in Lausanne last week to stage a protest of China’s occupation of the region. Before 2008, the Olympics were seen as providing a platform for Tibetans to speak out about their oppression. But nothing changed for the better.

If the 2022 bid is successful, that means seven more years of Free Tibet protests. That’s seven more years of the world being reminded that the IOC has chosen to host the largest, most lucrative sporting event in the world in a country that does not support the basic tenets of the Olympic movement.

“The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity,” the second point of the Olympic Charter reads.

Legacy:

One of the main points of the Beijing bid is that should they win, they will bring winter sports to “hundreds of millions” of people and provide a lasting legacy. This is how the bid committee appeals to IOC President Thomas Bach’s “Olympic Agenda 2020” plan.

Frankly, this seems unlikely. Even in countries which already have a strong winter sports culture, building new venues in places which are only moderately accessible to the general population has rarely been successful in building lasting legacies.

Let’s look back at Sochi, 2014. The snow and sliding sports venues will certainly never be used again for World Cup competition, and it’s not clear that they are seeing significant use from Russian athletes either. $51 billion were spent to build this Olympics and the mountain cluster is eerily empty. Resorts were operating at losses and renting luxury rooms for as little as $17 per night.

What about Vancouver, four years earlier? Canada has strong nordic, alpine, and freestyle ski programs. But the cross-country and biathlon teams no longer base training groups in the Callaghan Valley, a venue which sees little traffic. Canadian ski jumping and nordic combined struggle to even remain funded. Whistler Sport Legacies has more costs than profits, although some venues, such as the luge and bobsled runs, see a lot of use.

British Columbia and the Canadian Rockies have plenty of alpine skiing opportunities, which is perhaps the reason that the Whistler Creekside venue, which hosted alpine racing for the Olympics, has not seen any FIS-level competition since 2010. Lake Louise, Alberta, beckons instead.

Pragelato, the site of nordic racing at the 2006 Torino Games, has not hosted a FIS-sanctioned cross-country ski race since the World University Games 2007. The luge track has been dismantled for economic reasons, but the hockey and speedskating arenas have hosted other sports events as well as plenty of concerts.

Sestriere, where the alpine racing was held, is still a popular venue for Europeans, but hasn’t hosted a World Cup since 2009. And unlike most other snow sports venues used in 2006-2014, Sestriere was already a high-profile destination for both tourists and elite racers; the Olympics likely did not significantly affect its future.

So even in countries where there are plenty of winter athletes, developing new venues for the Olympics hasn’t contributed much to sports programs. Reaching fans is a different story, but there’s still not much evidence that hosting an Olympics seriously shifts the support for winter sports within a country long-term, aside from a brief flush of enthusiasm surrounding the Games itself.

And considering the high water cost of running the snow sports venues, it’s not clear that they would even be maintained in the long run, especially as climate change progresses.

The bottom line, and the Almaty comparison:

Almaty faces some of the same issues that Beijing does.

Air quality is not great in the city, although it is of course nowhere near as bad as Beijing. Kazakhstan is not a model for human rights, and there is expected to be significant corruption should Almaty win the lucrative bid.

But on many points, Almaty comes out clearly ahead. For instance, many stadiums are already built and being used by both Kazakh athletes and to host international competitions like the 2011 Asian Winter Games or the upcoming 2017 World University Games. Almaty has snow, and it has winter athletes; it’s much more likely that the Games would have a lasting legacy improving sports opportunities for residents.

It is also a compact Games, with everything close together, and a relatively cheap one.

What Almaty lacks is the slick, powerful, marketing machine that Beijing has already put into place. Should Beijing win, it will be a clear message that money, financial stability, and glossy PR lines matter more to IOC members than the actual tenets of the Olympic charter.

Related reading:

Olympics Preview: Team Quotas, or, Why as Few as Five American Men Could be Going to Beijing (FasterSkier, December 2021)

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

The Courses

The races will be held at altitude. The stadium is located at an elevation of roughly 1,650 meters above sea level (appr. 5,400 feet), according to the homologation certificates, and the 8.3 k loop reaches an elevation of 1,721 meters. The last comparable global championship was the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the stadium in nearby Soldier Hollow is between those two heights. It is not coincidence that the presumptive American Olympic team is spending this month in some or all of Seefeld, AUT, Livigno, ITA or Park City, UT to log more time at altitude in advance of the Games.

You can find full homologation certificates for all of the Zhangjiakou courses here. Here are excerpts from some of the course profiles. Note the color key, which indicates that an A-Climb is highlighted in yellow, a B-Climb in orange, descents in blue, and undulating terrain in green. 

Going off of simple math alone, the sprint course features a maximum climb of 30 meters, the same as the sprint course in Falun, SWE. The distance courses feature roughly 39 meters of climbing per kilometer, at the high end of the allowable homologation range but very much in line with other championship courses. You can consult the homologation certificates for a more nuanced look at overall gradient, course flow, and associated statistics.

More holistically, the 14-meter climb back up to the stadium, in the final half-kilometer of all courses, is notable, at least in contrast to venues that feature a downhill into the stadium. A follow-up article in the next few weeks will compare this aspect of the Zhangjiakou courses to other recent championship courses.

A recent Instagram post from Rene Altenburger-Koch, a tech for the German biathlon team, provides a firsthand look at skiing some parts of the courses, including the stadium. Additional ephemera may be gleaned from other Instagram posts tagged as coming from Zhangjiakou.

Intriguingly, rumor has it that the warmup track at the venue is underground. This is perhaps less noteworthy in track and field, where major international stadia often have a small warmup track near the athletes’ call room, near bathrooms and out of view of spectators. It seems more notable when it appears to describe a ski tunnel–like environment.

Conditions

It is widely expected to be cold and dry. This was presaged in a research paper in the Journal of Science in Sport and Exercise blurbed on this site last May, which was summarized as stating, “The Beijing venue has a very high probability of temperatures near the lower limit permitted for FIS races (-20C). Combining cold with higher elevation and low humidity results in suggested pacing adjustments to ensure good lung function at the end of races.” Matt Whitcomb, in discussing the Period 1 races held near this temperature limit early in this World Cup season, similarly referred to these races as being good prep for the Olympics.

Expect entirely manmade snow throughout the venue; natural snowfall in the region is negligible, and two weeks ago the ground was bare everywhere outside the ski trails and stadium (see background of photo above, or background of this Instagram post). A comparable preview article published two weeks ago on SkiRacing.com and discussing the alpine venue at Xiaohaituo Mountain (A+ title: “What to expect when you’re inspecting”) unpacks some implications of this for waxing and ski performance. This is not to say that precisely the same conditions will be present in Zhangjiakou, dozens of miles away at a different venue, but rather to flag some relevant issues to consider here.

For the alpine runs, for example, that author foresaw “average annual snowfall of 5cm/2 inches, high winds, very low temperatures, sunny days and clear nights,” all of which also describes likely conditions in Zhangjiakou. She also noted the possibility of “sand blowing in from Mongolia and debris from the massive earthmoving during trail construction” being present in the snow. She described one wax manufacturer formulating a “special series of Beijing waxes for extreme cold temperatures, extremely aggressive snow and massive daily temperature swings due to sun exposure.” This is all likely broadly applicable to conditions at Zhangjiakou as well.

What about the waxing

To paint in very broad strokes here on a potentially touchy subject, the American skiers appear to have had “good” skis for some races in Pyeongchang, but, shall we say, “not as good” skis for some races in Seefeld and Oberstdorf. Given that euphemistic use of “not as good,” keep in mind as you read this section the norms that generally govern reporting on or public statements about the efficacy of wax jobs in this country: By the time an athlete is expressing polite concern about her wax job to the American press, it is probably the case that her skis were, objectively speaking, noticeably worse than other athletes’.

Regarding Pyeongchang, the 2018 Winter Olympics, if you’re reading this website you are probably familiar with a certain highlight that ends with Chad Salmela’s epochal cri de cœur (“Here comes Diggins!”). But rewind 56 seconds, to the descent off the top of the final downhill coming into the stadium, and you will see Diggins rocket into contention midway though the downhill. Her skis were, it appears from this video, at worst “competitive,” and at best “fastest in the field.” The air temperature for this race was -5.4 C and the snow temp was -10.1 C, according to the official results.

Regarding Seefeld, the 2019 World Championships, Sadie Maubet Bjornsen told this website, following the 30-kilometer freestyle at the end of two weeks of racing, that while she generally felt good on course, “It’s just so hard because you can’t control what you have on your feet a lot of the time.” She added, “At this level you have to have your skis at a level that can compete if you’re going to fight for a medal or even top 10, top 20. And there were some races this week that that was not the case.” Air temp for this race was +5.6 C and the snow temp was -0.3 C, according to the official results. (Disclosure: In this same article, teammate Jessie Diggins said, of the same race in the same conditions, “I had the best skis in the world.”)

Finally, regarding Oberstdorf, the 2021 World Championships, the ever-upbeat Diggins contemporaneously told this website, following a rough day in the skiathlon for the entire American women’s team, “I think that is so promising to see how well [my teammates] skied given the disadvantage that we had today. I think, to me, that is really impressive because it is easy to put together a good race when you have the fastest wax in the field. It is harder to just never give up and keep fighting [in less advantageous conditions], and to me, that is so much more impressive.” Air temp for this race was +3.2 C and the snow temp was -0.6 C.

Writing several months later in the Boulder Nordic Sport catalog (page 6 of this PDF), U.S. Ski Team coach and wax tech Jason Cork spoke more bluntly when discussing this race and the championships more broadly: “I thought Jessie should medal in the 10km, and she missed the bronze by 5.1 seconds. I thought she could medal in the skiathlon; I’ve never been more sick and angrier about screwing up skis as I did that afternoon. We’d hoped to finally get the women the championship relay podium they’ve been chasing since 2013, and we weren’t able to deliver skis competitive enough to make it a reality. It was warm and soft, course access was severely limited, we got outsmarted and outgunned. We stood in the way of a lot of dreams in Oberstdorf.”

Zach Caldwell, for his part, has voiced the opinion that the Americans’ relative lack of tech resources, specifically the lack of an on-site stonegrinder and a centralized grind system, has harmed them in the last two championships held in warm and sloppy conditions. If some of these premises are correct, then forecast waxing conditions in Zhangjiakou that are far more akin to those in Pyeongchang than to those in Seefeld or Oberstdorf could be beneficial for the American tech team. (Find more insights into the challenges ski technicians will likely face during the Games in the latest episode of The Devon Kershaw Show, featuring Caldwell. Spoiler alert: These dynamics are in fact a whole lot more complicated than just “cold = easy, warm = difficult,” and Caldwell knows a heck of a lot more about this area than this reporter, so you should probably listen to him.) 

The first cross-country race in this year’s 2022 Winter Olympic Games will be the women’s skiathlon, held on February 5.

Related reading:

Olympics Preview: Team Quotas, or, Why as Few as Five American Men Could be Going to Beijing (FasterSkier, December 2021)

By Gavin Kentch and Rachel Bachman Perkins

The 2022 U.S. Cross Country Championships began in Soldier Hollow, outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, on Sunday with skate sprints. JC Schoonmaker, recently returned from Europe, took his first national championship with relative ease for the men, while Caitlin Patterson, who was the first American in all four races at 2018 U.S. Nationals, returned to her Olympic-year winning ways by taking the victory for the women. Will Koch and Rosie Frankowski won the qualifiers, the race that matters for potential domestic Olympic qualification.

Men’s Race: JC Schoonmaker Wins First National Title with Tactics and Speed

JC Schoonmaker was born in August 2000. Eighteen months later, American skier and ski journalist Cory Smith, writing on a nascent website called FasterSkier.com, observed that race tactics were important on the sprint course being used for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and that it was generally disadvantageous to be leading into the final downhill as athletes approached the sweeping lefthand turn into the finishing stretch. He discussed Kateřina Neumannová’s quarterfinal heat as an example of the potential dangers of leading throughout, if that name gives you a sense for how long ago we’re talking about.

Twenty years later, in the opening race of 2022 U.S. Cross Country Championships, the names had changed but not the physics, as time and again it became apparent that athletes’ positioning on the final downhill was the single most important aspect of the course. Multiple heats saw athletes come back from fifth or even sixth to move up through the field and advance, and the one male athlete who tried to lead his heat from the gun paid for it in the end.

Schoonmaker, the U.S. Ski Team athlete who skis domestically for University of Alaska Anchorage, understood these tactics to perfection, using the experience gained from racing into 14th in the current World Cup sprint standings (despite missing two sprints in the Tour de Ski) to position himself exactly where he wanted to be throughout the afternoon. The result was his first national title, on a sunny, high-pressure, perfect day at Soldier Hollow.

We’re not going to survey every heat from Sunday’s races, on the first of four days of competition at Soldier Hollow, but it’s worth looking at the fastest qualifiers, and the day’s first quarterfinal, to set a tone for what followed.

In the qualifier, 19-year-old University of Colorado skier Will Koch may have turned some heads when he notched the day’s fastest time, 3:07.88. Schoonmaker had the day’s second-best mark, 0.47 seconds back, with Bridger Ski Foundation athlete Logan Diekmann third by over a second more. 

In the day’s first quarterfinal, Koch picked up where he had left off in the qualifier, blasting off the line to set a hot pace right from the start. He was probably the only athlete all day to V2 the entire first hill leading out of the stadium. He led up the first hill, down the first downhill, up the second and main climb on the course, and into the start of the final sweeping downhill into the stadium and the finishing lanes (see course map and profile below).

But then, for the first time on the day but not the last, the athlete who led into this descent was swallowed up by the rest of the field by the time they reached the final lefthand curve. Koch was caught up, gamely contested the group sprint that ensued, but barely ran out of gas after pushing hard for the entire heat.

Koch would finish fifth in a five-man heat – despite skiing faster than he had in qualifying. For his troubles, he towed the entire heat to the day’s fastest times by far, and both lucky loser spots; fifth in this heat would have won any other quarterfinal, semifinal, or final on the day. By nearly 5 seconds.

While the top qualifier was knocked out in the first quarterfinal, the effort is not to be diminished. Indeed, Koch chose a tactic, committed to it fully, executed it well, and came within 0.05 seconds of claiming fourth in his quarterfinal to advance as a lucky loser. With that in mind, this heat set the tone for the day, as a field of observant professional athletes noticed that there was maybe not a lot to gain by leading out the heat, and a lot to lose.

As Smith wrote of these dynamics on this course 20 years ago, “The ideal situation is to spend the first three-quarters of the race in the back, avoiding mayhem and drafting. Then move up to second coming into the final turn, and use the turn to shoot out and around the leader to win the sprint. But obviously that is easier said than done when everyone else is trying to do the same thing.”

In lieu of a play-by-play of the next six quarterfinal and semifinal heats on Sunday, let’s just survey some winning times: 3:06.09 (QF1, Koch’s heat); 3:15.31 (QF2); 3:13.97 (QF3); 3:16.83 (QF4); 3:10.99 (QF5); 3:13.16 (SF1); 3:20.04 (SF2). There’s a theme there: While the heat 1 lucky losers may see Koch’s reward for pushing the pace, no one else in the men’s field chose his approach. Racing was slower-paced, but it was hard to fault the results, at least for the athletes who advanced.

(The discrepancy is perhaps even greater than that, as local observers noted that the course got progressively faster throughout the day, as it warmed up from below-zero F temperatures the night before. On quiet moments in the livestream, the difference between notably squeaky snow (for the qualifiers) and not-squeaky snow (for the heats) was apparent.)

The other, related issue was falls at the bottom of the long runout, as trailing athletes accordioned back up to the leaders, and four, five, or even six men all sought to move from a narrow tuck to a wide V2 at the same time on the same stretch of trail. Through what consistently looked like incidental contact rather than malicious contact punishable by a yellow card or other formal sanction, Ian Torchia, Bill Harmeyer, Christopher Kalev, and Brian Bushey all hit the deck in their quarterfinals. The same thing happened in the semis, too, with Karl Schulz falling in the first semifinal and John Schwinghamer in the second. Again, it certainly appeared that it was not intentional, just the results of athletes all commencing a V2 at the same time at high speed.

After one fast heat and six slower heats, six men lined up for the final: JC Schoonmaker (UAA/USST), Noel Keeffe (University of Utah/USST), Logan Diekmann (BSF), Johnny Hagenbuch (SVSEF/USST), Magnus Bøe (University of Colorado), and Andreas Kirkeng (University of Denver).

Their average age was slightly less than 22; they had probably not read Smith’s coverage of the 2002 Olympic sprint when it was first published. But they had all successfully raced two heats on this course already, and they seemed disinclined to change what had got them there.

All of which is to say that Schoonmaker’s winning time for the final, 3:21.05, was the slowest of any men’s heat that day. (Indeed, this time would have placed him fourth in the first junior boys semifinal.) Diekmann led the pack out of the stadium in the final, closely tailed by the rest of the field. The men skied fairly leisurely up the first uphill, down the first downhill, and up the second uphill.

Finally, coming into the final downhill, Bøe moved, and Schoonmaker followed. The field started racing in earnest at this point, but there was still not much separation between six athletes traveling at high speeds: Here’s the men’s field, nearly three minutes into the final, about to come up out of their tucks, navigate the final lefthand turn, and sprint into the finish:

That’s Schoonmaker in the lead, Keeffe just off his right shoulder in second, Bøe (bib no. 30) in third, then Diekmann, Hagenbuch, and Kirkeng trailing slightly behind in fourth through sixth, respectively, from left to right. And, spoiler alert, these were not their final finishing positions; there was more movement yet to come.

While the camera work, free live broadcast, and Adam Verrier’s announcing were consistently superb, the limitations of the available camera angles meant that a portion of the final lefthand curve was obscured from view for a few seconds. (That curve can be seen in the video in the second half of this Instagram post from BSF.)

By the time the athletes came into view once more, Schoonmaker had positioned himself precisely where he wanted to be, on the inside of the curve, carrying a lead of multiple meters. His gap was small but consistent through the finish, which he approached with sufficient time and space to stand up and celebrate across the line.

Schoonmaker’s winning time was 3:21.05. Behind him, Diekmann (+0.83) outlunged Keeffe (+.91) for second by less than a ski. Hagenbuch was another 0.20 seconds back in fourth (+1.11) , followed by the two collegiate skiers, Bøe and Kirkeng, in fifth (+2.14) and sixth (+3.47).

“I’m feeling really good after a nice relaxing Christmas at home [in Tahoe City, CA],” Schoonmaker wrote to FasterSkier after the race. “It was great to have a mental break from racing and we got absolutely dumped on with snow so that was really fun too.”

Schoonmaker also spoke to his feelings in the sprint, after a successful, but potentially draining stint in Europe, where he skied into the semifinals three times, finishing as high as 7th in Ruka, Finland.

“Today I felt pretty good and felt like I was getting better throughout the day after a little break from racing. It’s a weird course with the last downhill being so tactical but I was happy with my positioning and how I skied it. I won’t race the 30k just to make sure I’m not overdoing it but I’m really looking forward to the 15k classic, almost more than the sprints since I haven’t been doing much distance racing. I’m also just super excited to be back racing in the US and seeing a ton of friends out there!”

It was Schoonmaker’s first national championship. His trajectory to the top of American sprinting has been quick, and recent; he finished 13th in the skate sprint at 2020 U.S. Nationals, and 14th in the classic sprint at 2019 U.S. Nationals. The last time he raced a national championship at Soldier Hollow, in 2017, he was 165th, albeit also age 16.

Women’s Race: Caitlin Patterson Times Her Move to Take the Victory

The tactical theme held fast through the women’s heats. Athletes stayed relaxed through the first two climbs of the course, using the sweeping downhill in the middle to establish position heading into a final shorter climb. Pushing over the top and into the downhill, athletes benefited from tucking into the slipstream of the leader rather than being first in the glideout, conserving energy for the final explosive push over the bridge and up through the finish lanes to the line. 

Perhaps the only skier breaking from this narrative was APU’s Rosie Frankowski. Though she was third in both Period 1 SuperTour sprint races this season, Frankowski has historically been better known for her distance chops. Perhaps recognizing she’d need a fast heat to ensure lucky loser opportunities, Frankowski took the first heat of the quarterfinal out hot, dropping the field on the opening climb only to be reeled back in on the subsequent descent. As the women left the critical descent and began to skate out of the subsequent glideout, Frankowski was within a group of four women. 

Powering into the final stretch, it was Frankowski matched by her teammate Becca Rorabaugh leading the way to the line, with Sun Valley’s Samantha Smith and Northern Michigan’s Katarina Hyncicova close behind. Rorabaugh took the heat in 3:43.67 with Frankowski in second. Though she qualified automatically, Frankowski’s fast start achieved the objective; it was the fastest heat of the quarters, allowing both Smith and Hyncicova to advance to the semis. 

In the semis, Frankowski repeated her approach, again pushing the pace early to establish a fast heat. Sydney Palmer-Leger (Univ. of Utah/USST) looked comfortable and content with her position as she trailed Frankowski into the sweeping downhill. Rorabaugh and Anna Bizyukova (UVM) also caught the leaders in the glideout, with Bizyukova sliding around the outside to head over the bridge alongside Palmer-Leger, setting the stage for a tight four-way spread at the finish with Frankowski and Rorabaugh on their tails. 

Finishing with what would be by far the fastest times of the day, Palmer-Leger took the win in 3:38.61, edging out Bizyukova by 0.14 seconds. Half a ski length behind, Frankowski crossed in third (+0.31), with Rorabaugh fourth (+0.46). Roughly seven seconds back, Hannah Rudd (BSF) was fifth in the semi, finishing just ahead of Hyncicova.

In the second semi, SMS T2 athlete Lina Sutro set a more conservative pace, leading Middlebury athlete Kate Oldham through the first two climbs. Sun Valley’s Samantha Smith made some aggressive hop-skate pushes to take the lead on climbs, but she was caught and passed on each of the subsequent descents. Sutro and Oldham charged hard over the top of the final climb, pushing into the downhill, but a strong move around the curve by Mariel Pulles (UAF) shot her to the front from fourth, while Caitlin Patterson also accelerated into the lead group. 

Coming into the final stretch, it was Pulles with a narrow advantage over Patterson, with Sutro and Oldham holding on for a fast time, but no longer within reach of automatic qualification. Pulles crossed the line in 3:45.15, well behind the previous heat’s benchmark, indicating that only she and Patterson, who crossed +0.10 behind, would advance to the final.

Sutro crossed the line just ahead of Oldham for third (+0.28), followed by Oldham in fourth (+0.74). Lucinda Anderson (UNH) and Smith rounded out the second semi in fifth (+1.04) and sixth (+2.72), respectively. 

In the final, a broken pole early on put Pulles at a significant disadvantage, though she held contact with the leaders. Frankowski again pulled ahead from the start, looking to be at the front, and set a pace that would not leave her opponents fresh for a fast and tactical final push.

After maintaining her position at the front through the meat of the course, Frankowski was once again swallowed up in the glideout as Patterson, Palmer-Leger, Rorabaugh, and Bizyukoga each caught and passed her. Frankowski wobbled as she found her position, looking as if some unintentional bumping of skis had taken place at the spot where we saw many crashes in the men’s quarterfinals and semifinals. 

Patterson led over the bridge with Rorabaugh on her tails and Palmer-Leger in a competitive position alongside. Creating a small gap ahead of the three women in pursuit in the final straightaway, Patterson, Rorabaugh, and Palmer-Leger skied three abreast, seemingly evenly matched in the closing meters. Palmer-Leger skied with the highest tempo, but Patterson’s smooth and powerful technique carried her through the finish with the advantage, stopping the clock at 3:42.60, with Rorabaugh half a ski length behind in second (+0.24), and Palmer-Leger spaced evenly behind in third (+0.57).

Bizyukova won the second-wave sprint to take fourth (+1.57), with Pulles, still racing with a dysfunctional pole, next over the line in fifth (+2.28), with Frankowski finally losing steam to finish sixth (+2.52).

Patterson was realistic after the race when she assessed her chances, while also revealing it was no secret that the final downhill was the crux of the course.

“The sprint today was really fun,” she wrote to FasterSkier late Sunday. “I went into it in no way expecting to win, but believed that it was within the realm of possibilities. The key would be to see how the final downhill played out in the heats and and try to play it well myself.”

Patterson added, “I do love downhills, but this Soldier Hollow sprint course perplexes me somewhat because it feels hard to control what’s going to happen in the race, with the way the draft might play out in those final hundred meters. I didn’t feel particularly in control during my heats, but I took advantage of whatever I could work with for positioning and made it work to move on through the quarterfinal and semifinal.  I felt better in the heats than during the qualifier, but in much of the heat race I felt that the packs moved around and stayed tight together in a way that I had to tap into surges here and there rather than a consistent effort throughout the whole course. There were a lot of really tight finishes today – my own and others – and I think there were a ton of super strong skiers out there who probably got edged out by the tiniest of margins, but so goes sprint racing.”

Turning to the final, Patterson recounted, “I was forced out wide to the right at the base of the final climb, and had to tuck in behind some people skiing up that steep hill. It wasn’t necessarily my plan to enter the downhill in 5th, but then when I pushed super hard over the top of the hill, I caught several drafts and executed good passes. When I found myself taking the lead going into the final corner, I pushed to the finish with everything I had even as I started to get a bit wobbly, and fortunately managed to hold off Becca and Sydney!”

The 30-something Patterson added, “Becca and I would like to note that no one should count us Master’s racers out of the game!”

Patterson noted that she is pleased to achieve sprint success domestically, but is seeking more international opportunities in distance races.

“Period 1 racing on the World Cup was ok for me, but not great, it felt like a bit of a slow start to wake up the distance race speed. Undoubtedly the whole World Cup field is extremely competitive right now, and the other US women are super strong which is awesome to see, but I want to get up there myself into contention! Without scoring any World Cup points in P1, it wasn’t really an option to stay and race the Tour this year, so I came back to the US to regroup and focus on Nationals racing. I believe that with strong Nationals distance race performances I may be able to earn more upcoming international racing starts, so that is my focus looking ahead.”

Juniors

A full field of juniors raced as well, going through a complete set of heats and finals after the senior athletes. Kendall Kramer (University of Alaska Fairbanks/USST) took the junior girls final over fellow Alaskan Marit Flora (APU), with Erica Laven (Täby IS Skidor) in third. Laven is from Sweden; Lauren McCollor (Northern Michigan University), fourth overall, rounded out the domestic national championship podium as the third American.

In the junior boys final, Finegan Bailey (SMS) took the win, with Trey Jones (Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club) in second. Aidan Burt (University of Vermont) was third.

More about the course

The Soldier Hollow sprint course has historical relevance looking back to the 2002 Olympics, as discussed above. It also has prospective relevance, to the 2022 Olympics that start in Beijing in roughly a month.

Notably, and speaking of this year’s Olympics, it is “only … qualification round finish placing” that is considered for the USSS 2022 Championship Selection List, i.e., Koch and Frankowski each received a full 45 points (30 points for first plus 15 points for the national championship bonus) for winning the qualifier, regardless of their final overall placing.

While it remains an open question how many domestic athletes will be selected to this year’s Olympic team off of these races, it would be hard to find a better course to use as a basis for comparison. As Rosie Brennan noted in explaining her decision to come back home during the Tour de Ski and experience an extended period of living and skiing at altitude, the two trail systems were even designed by the same person.

In addition to their more holistic similarities, their statistics are very comparable as well, particularly the overall elevation but also the more specific details of the course profiles:

If an athlete is indeed picked for the Olympic team based off of their performance in this week’s sprint races, it seems fair to say that they will have achieved success on the type of course they can expect to find in Zhangjiakou.

Results: men | women | junior girls | junior boys | men’s qualification | women’s qualification

Livestream replay

It’s always tough to make the Olympic team. It got tougher this year, due to smaller quotas for all nations interacting with some math that is disadvantageous to the American men.

If you just want the executive summary of this article, here it is: The maximum team size, for any nation’s nordic team for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, is eight athletes per gender. If the Games started tomorrow, the Americans would be able to send a total of eight women to Beijing, up to five of them sprinters. They would only be able to send five men, no more than four of them sprinters; it seems likely, but not guaranteed, that the latter figure will soon increase to six men total, with the same four-sprinter maximum. The eight-athlete quota for the American women will not decrease.

You would be justified in closing this tab now and heading off to start drafting form charts for the American Olympic squad and arguments for your favorite athletes. If you’d like an explanation behind the math, a brief history lesson, and/or some parameters for your speculation, then read on.

The quota system: Theory and practice

The system under which different nations may send different numbers of cross-country athletes to the 2022 Olympics is controlled by a dense, but logical, document promulgated by FIS, which may be found here. It has been interpreted in graphical form in this somewhat more user-friendly Wikipedia article.

Briefly put, the qualification system assigns one quota spot to any nation with at least one athlete racing at least year’s World Champs who met a minimum standard of international competitiveness. It then assigns the next tranche of quota spots in a manner consistent with how well a nation’s athletes did on the World Cup last year. Finally, remaining quota spots are allocated, in an iterative distribution, in a manner that similarly rewards nations with better performance in last year’s World Cup season.

The process proceeds independently for each gender, even within the same country, which is why the American women currently have the full eight spots, and the American men only five: The women ranked higher than the men in last year’s World Cup standings, which inures to their benefit in this year’s Olympic quota “standings.”

Step one: Each nation (or, most precisely, each National Olympic Committee, or NOC) that had at least one athlete notch a result below a specified FIS-point cutoff in at least one race at 2021 World Championships or U23 Championships gets one quota spot for this year’s Olympics. This standard is 300 FIS points, for men, or 330 FIS points, for women.

As a reminder, lower FIS scores indicate a more competitive race, and the lower an athlete’s FIS points the better their ranking relative to another athlete. For example, Jessie Diggins scored 8.17 FIS points for her second-place finish in the 10k skate in Davos, while winner Therese Johaug (NOR) scored 0.0.

Going back to the 300/330 standard, this is not a particularly rigorous standard to meet; this reporter could likely have obtained a result worth less than 300 points at the 2021 World Championships.* At the December 5th SuperTour in Duluth, MN, all but two athletes in the men’s 10k skate race earned fewer than 300 FIS points, despite finishing as much as +8:36 behind winner Zak Ketterson. The two athletes who earned over 300 points hailed from Israel and Venezuela, and were born in the 1970s; each finished more than 20 minutes behind the winner.

With that perspective, each of the professional athletes on the U.S. Ski Team has more than met this standard, to put it mildly. Log one quota spot each for the American men and women.

Step two: Each country gets an additional number of quota spots based on where its athletes ranked for their cumulative overall performance in last year’s World Cup (“Nation Ranking for OWG”). The American women were third in these standings last year; the American men were ninth.

Nations ranked 1–5 on this list get an additional four quota spots in step two; nations ranked 6–10 get three. So that’s now up to five spots for the women (1 + 4), and four for the men (1 + 3).

(Also in step two, nations ranked 11–20 get two quota spots, then nations ranked 21–30 for men, and 21–33 for women, get one quota spot.)

Step three: Now it gets slightly complicated. Take those spots previously allocated in steps one and two. Subtract that from the total of 148 quota spots per gender (less a guaranteed minimum of four per gender for the host country, China, as necessary). Allocate the remainder according to the following metric (screenshot from FIS quota document):

So, for example, the third-ranked American women got one quota spot in Round 1 (up to six total), then another in Round 2 (seven total), and another in Round 3 (eight total, the maximum possible).

The men were ranked ninth, so they got nothing in Round 1. They received an additional quota spot in Round 2, bringing them up to five total (1 + 3 + 1). And that’s… all for the time being. If the Olympics started tomorrow, the American women would have eight quota spots, and the American men would have five. Sorry, 165 out of 170 Olympics-eligible American men.

Step four: Not all nations fill all their start spots. The Americans in 2014 are one example of this, as discussed in the history section below. If a nation declines to fill all its quota spots, or wants to but is unable to do so with qualifying athletes (e.g., an athlete has more than 300 FIS points on the January 17, 2022, distance list, or incurs an anti-doping violation), then unused quota places will be reallocated to the next eligible nations, in accordance with the distribution list at the bottom of this page. The American men are currently first in line to receive the next spot that becomes available in the reallocation process. If substantial reshuffling occurs, the American men also have spot no. 16 on the reallocation list, which would bring them up to seven quota spots total.

Timing: FIS informs National Olympic Committees of their final quota numbers on January 17. NOCs must confirm how many allocated quota places they will use on January 17 or 18.

Over the next two days, January 19 and 20, a certain amount of expedient reshuffling occurs: “FIS to reallocate all unused quota places and NOCs to confirm within 12 hours,” the FIS quota document states.

Entries are due to Olympic race organizers on January 24. The first cross-country race at this year’s Olympics is the women’s skiathlon on February 5.

What about Canada?

Our neighbours to the east, if you live in Alaska, or to the north, if you live in the Lower 48, currently have four quota spots for women and three for men. They are currently in sixth position on the reallocation list, for the women, and fourth, for the men, for any new spots that become available. Canadian ski fans will be hoping to receive at least a quota spot for a fourth male athlete in Beijing so that they can field a relay team.

Some historical comparisons

The baseline quota size, and the number of athletes the U.S. Ski Team has taken relative to this quota, have varied over the years. Across the last three Olympiads, for example:

• In 2018 (Pyeongchang), the American nordic team had a total quota of 20 athletes. They filled this quota, taking nine men and 11 women.
• In 2014 (Sochi), the quota was 17 athletes. The U.S. Ski Team did not fill this quota, instead taking seven men and seven women, citing visa restrictions that limited the amount of staff available and a desire to take only competitive athletes to the Olympics. The Americans’ three unused quota spots were reallocated to other nations.
• In 2010 (Whistler), the American quota was initially seven athletes at the start of the 2009/2010 World Cup season, but was later expanded to eight, then ten, and ultimately to 11 athletes in the months leading up to the Olympics. A 22-year-old sprinter named Simi Hamilton was the 11th and final American athlete taken.

Team naming tends to evoke impassioned responses within the relatively insular American nordic skiing community, where many fans of the sport have a direct connection to athletes who were or were not named to the team, and where Olympian status is often widely valued above all else.

Ask supporters of, say, Eric Packer their thoughts on his not being named to the team in 2018, arguably due to Annie Hart being named instead. However, a spot on a team does not guarantee starting in an Olympic event. As Hart was selected as a sprinter on one of the world’s deepest sprint teams, she attended the first few days of the Pyeongchang Games, then flew home without starting any of the races. Meanwhile, the American men started two athletes primarily known as sprinters, Andy Newell and Reese Hanneman, in the 4 x 10-kilometer relay, and a third, Tyler Kornfield, in the 15 k and 50 k. 

Or ask supporters of Sylvan Ellefson/Matt Liebsch/Caitlin Gregg/Kate Fitzgerald/take your pick if they think “their” athlete should have filled one of those last three spots in Sochi instead of being left home. They’ll probably have thoughts on this. Indeed, the 31 reader comments preserved on the bottom of this 2014 FasterSkier article give a sense for the depth of this sentiment among American ski fans.

Some guidelines for speculation

Step one of team naming, discussed at length above, is how many spots are available to fill. Step two, previewed here, is which athletes are taken to fill those spots, and what criteria are used to choose them.

With regard to step two, the first version of the U.S. Olympic team will not be named until January 17 or 18, 2022, and is potentially subject to revision depending on results of the reallocation process, so take this entire section with a grain of salt. Also keep in mind that there are multiple World Cup races yet to come. 

Nonetheless it is possible to say, with reference to the selection criteria, that if the American Olympic team were named as of Monday of this week (December 27, one day before the start of the Tour de Ski), Rosie Brennan and Jessie Diggins would certainly be on it: Both have met the objective standard of qualification via a top-8 result in specified races. Julia Kern, Hailey Swirbul, Hannah Halvorsen, and Sophia Laukli would likely be on the team, for the women, and JC Schoonmaker, Ben Ogden, Kevin Bolger, Luke Jager, and Gus Schumacher, for the men: All are currently* (*as of December 27, before the Tour de Ski races began) in the top-50 sprint or distance World Cup standings, under a slightly modified USSS scoring list that discards points earned in relays, team sprints, or Dresden in accordance with the “excluded points” language of the criteria document.

Again, these standings are very much subject to change between now and January 17; this is just a snapshot from the start of this week. [One update: For example, Kern met the objective qualification standard with her fourth-place finish in Tuesday’s skate sprint in Lenzerheide.] There will be three scoring distance races during the Tour de Ski (the final climb does not count), and two more at the January World Cup weekend in Les Rousses, France, before Olympic selections are made. Plus some sprints. Not all athletes will contest all races. These things are definitely subject to change.

High-performing athletes from next week’s U.S. Nationals races, and other athletes not otherwise captured by the criteria, may also be named to the team, depending upon overall team size, quota spots available, and the exercise of discretion. Domestic athletes relying on their performance at U.S. Nationals for potential team naming are on the bottom of the totem pole for Olympic selection, in the sense that this selection method is number four out of four, and comes into play only “Should there be any remaining quota slot(s) after Selection Methods Nos. 1-3 above have been applied … .”

Turning to the Olympic races themselves, which could bear on the makeup for discretionary selections to fill any remaining quota spots, there are three pure distance events in Beijing: the 10/15 k interval-start classic, the 15/30 k mass start skiathlon, and the 30/50 k mass start freestyle. There is one pure sprint event, the, well, skate sprint.

The classic team sprint has “sprint” in its name, but it is seeded based on either an athlete’s sprint or distance points, depending on which is better. This seems telling, and U.S. global championship medalists in this event include the skilled generalists Diggins and Sadie Maubet Bjornsen, plus late-career Kikkan Randall was a top-10 World Cup distance skier, so, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The men’s relay, 4 x 10 k, certainly feels like a distance event, but the women’s relay is only 4 x 5 k, so maybe it’s a little less so. But putting a pure sprinter on the scramble leg in Pyeongchang didn’t lead to a medal on the day (though it still was the American women’s best Olympic finish in the relay), so maybe it’s a distance event after all? But maybe also the U.S. men are stronger in sprint than in distance right now, as witness the four athletes listed above who would qualify off of the sprint rankings (Schoonmaker, Ogden, Bolger, and Jager), versus only one for distance (Schumacher), so it looks like there’s going to be some “sprinters” on that men’s relay team regardless of how you classify it?

Bottom line, the U.S. has four start spots per race, six races over two weeks, a total of 24 start spots per gender. Bringing eight women, and assuming for the moment equal distribution, yields three starts per athlete. (This ignores the fact that someone like Diggins could, and likely will, start all six races and be a contender in each.) Bringing six men, mutatis mutandis, yields four starts per athlete, which is a higher workload.

The American women’s best distance skiers, Brennan and Diggins, are currently also their best sprinters. There may be less overlap for the men, though with an exquisitely young team athletes’ strengths are still being refined from week to week as their cumulative World Cup experience swiftly accrues. Do you strive for four starters in every race, across all races and genders, or do you aim to maximize your chances of medaling by putting more contenders in fewer races, potentially leaving some start spots unfilled as athletes tire over a high-stress two-week race period. You have only six athletes to pull this off for the men, maybe as few as five, and most of them may be only 21 years old. Start your speculation now.

Related reading:

U.S. Ski & Snowboard 2022 Olympic Winter Games selection criteria

Qualification system for XXIV Olympic Winter Games, Beijing 2022, cross-country skiing

Qualifying for the Olympics is hard. So is keeping it a secret. (Nat Herz, Anchorage Daily News, February 2018)

The Cross-Country Olympic Criteria, in the Context of U.S. Winter Sports (FasterSkier, June 2017)

The Other Side of U.S. Nordic Olympic Team Naming: Decisions, Emotions and Everything in Between (FasterSkier, January 2014)

* This isn’t just a throwaway remark. I’m typically around 25% back from World Cup skier Scott Patterson in local skate races. 25 percent back from Patterson in the 15 k skate in Oberstdorf would have yielded a time of 45:13.4 – dead last, unsurprisingly for a random 39-year-old in a global championship race, but also good for 270 FIS points. My point is not that I’m a particularly good skier – I’m not; ask me about fighting to avoid DFL in local Junior Nationals qualifying races – but rather that this is not a particularly stringent standard relative to what is generally viewed as the pinnacle of human athletic achievement.

For comparison’s sake, the infamous Dominican Olympic nordic skiers Gary di Silvestri and Angelica Morrone likewise notched sub–300 FIS point results in the run-up to the 2014 Olympics. Their ski results in Sochi were treated here; their coach, J.D. Downing, shared his side of the story here. Neither athlete finished a race in Sochi.

Editor’s note: This is the second essay in our new series, “Letters to my younger self.” Lauren Fleshman provided the modern locus classicus for this genre; Adam Verrier ably takes up the mantle here. While the first two essays, from Adam now and John Wood before him, have set a high bar, the general theme of this series is clear: If you were writing a letter to your younger self, what would you want to tell them about skiing, life, or skiing and life? Additional contributions from our readers are respectfully requested and gratefully accepted; see the bottom of this article for our contact info.

Adam grew up in New Hampshire, as he discusses in this memoir. He skied collegiately for the University of Wyoming, when it had an NCAA ski team, and was a nordic ski Olympian at the 1994 Lillehammer Games. He began dominating Anchorage endurance sports soon after, with wins in the Crow Pass Crossing, Lost Lake Run, and Tour of Anchorage among many other items on his local race résumé. He has the all-time record for podium finishes in the Tour of Anchorage 50k skate, the unofficial Alaska citizens championship contested by dozens of Olympians over the years, with eight. At 53, Verrier recently qualified for the classic sprint heats in a loaded Anchorage JNQ field, only to bow out so that a junior could race instead. He has announced numerous prominent American ski races. He founded the iconic Oosik Classic ski race now held in Talkeetna, Alaska. And he is a very, very nice guy.

But “None of these things define who Adam Verrier is,” current University of Alaska Anchorage head coach title Sparky Anderson wrote in a recent blog post. “Adam is a musician, a connoisseur of experience, deeply interested in anyone lucky enough to engage him in conversation, a rural Alaska home appraiser, and an avid clothing-optional motorcycle operator.” As Anderson also notes, Verrier has been a volunteer assistant coach for the UAA ski team since 2001. Verrier keeps a delightful, sometimes idiosyncratic blog about the UAA nordic team here.

By Adam Verrier

Dear Seventeen-Year-Old Adam,

I’ve been asked by FasterSkier.com to write a letter to my “younger self.” So this is your future 53-year-old self, with some advice and some insights based on the intervening 36 years’ worth of life experience between you and me. (By the way, FasterSkier.com is a “website” on the “internet.” Since it’s 1985, you’ve probably never heard these terms before, but that’s a topic for another conversation.)

Under normal circumstances, I’d never write to you from the future and spoil your suspense. After all, isn’t life all about finding your own way forward, being ignorant but curious, charting your own course, trying to make good decisions, and hoping for a little luck, too? To write to you from the future with the answers seems like a great way to deprive you of most of the excitement and joy that a life has to offer. So ordinarily, I would never agree to this. But since I don’t believe in time travel, I’ve agreed to participate.

As fate would have it, I had a conversation just last week about pretty much this same topic during ski practice with the women on the college team that I’ve been volunteer-assistant coaching for years. It was suggested, during our warm down after a set of intervals, that I use my little mobile recorder to tape conversations with them – our college skiers – about skiing, about life, about their hopes and dreams – and then we could listen to it 20 or 30 years in the future and see how differently things will turn out in reality, as compared with how we now think they will.

When I was their age, I had such a dramatically different set of goals and ambitions for myself from what has actually transpired over the years from then until now. I never would have imagined my life would follow the path that it has, and I’d have never imagined that I’d end up living in Alaska. And I expect they’ll feel the same way thirty years from now. Because, really, isn’t it that way for most people who are curious and open to new ideas and new experiences?

At this point in your young life, Adam, I know that things are looking and feeling pretty dark. High school is a struggle, and you hate it. It seems you’re spending all your time studying and doing homework, and trying so hard just to get C-minuses. No matter how hard you try to understand it, algebra doesn’t make any sense at all, chemistry is beyond your comprehension, and your English teacher thinks your writing sucks.

Cross-country skiing is your favorite sport, but you’ve never really been very good at it. I mean, yes, good locally against your friends, but you’re not remotely in the same league as the best skiers in the New England. You’ve been racing in all the New England qualifying races, trying to make Junior Nationals for years, but have never qualified. And you’ve never even been very close to making it. You want to go to college but there’s the question of how to pay for it. Joining the military and using the G.I. Bill to go to college like Uncle Tommy seems like the most likely route, but there’s also the chance that distance running could get you a Division 1 college athletic scholarship. Because running is the thing that you’re actually very good at. Problem is, while you love cross-country skiing, you dislike running. You find it jarring and uncomfortable, and you can’t imagine having to keep doing all that running, all the way through college. You feel like you’d probably rather join the military.

As I said earlier, I’m now a volunteer assistant ski coach for an NCAA ski team. Yeah, seems hard to imagine now, doesn’t it? I get to be the “team uncle” to this group of kids (older than you, I know, but I call them kids) who are talented and smart and ambitious. When I think back to when I was seventeen, it seems unimaginable that I’d go from being a frustrated high-school athlete with a strong work ethic but dim prospects, to being someone that they’d let hang out with a group of elite athletes like we have here on this college team. But somehow I went from there to here. And I’m going to tell you how I think it happened. I will tell you what your future has in store for you, and how I think you could do a lot better, with less frustration and misery than what I’ve put myself through.

In the very near future, you’re going to have some luck in one particular ski race – the New Hampshire state high school championship. Due to some inclement weather conditions (heavy snow and rain on race day) and because you’ll have extraordinarily fast skis on that day (due to pure luck with the weather – maybe all those rocks you’ve hit gave your bases lots of anti-suction structure to handle the soggy snow) you’ll win a race against skiers who are usually a lot faster than you. This one lucky result will open a door, which will lead to other opportunities, and your goals and ambitions will change with each new result and new opportunity.

I know that becoming a member of a college ski team doesn’t seem realistic now. It seems like either distance running or the military are the options for getting tuition paid for. Because you’re definitely not going to do it with an academic scholarship, the way things are going! But because of this one lucky race, you’re going to take the opportunity that’ll be offered to spend your senior year of high school at a ski academy. There, you’ll find out that you really don’t have very good skiing technique, and that this lack of technique is likely the reason your running is so much better than your skiing. You’ll also find out that, even though you train more, and far harder, than all your high school teammates now, you’re really not training very much at all, compared to the best in your age group. Finding out about this thing called a “training log,” and having teammates who are surprised you don’t know how to “V2-skate”… a lot is going to change in the near future.

One thing that’s going to keep changing is your goals and ambitions. I know what your goal is now: to find a way – any way – to escape rural northern New Hampshire and go west – anywhere west of the great plains – like your uncle Ronnie who escaped New England and became a cook at a restaurant in Lake Tahoe. Uncle Ronnie’s accomplishment – his escape from rural life – has been your ambition for as long as you can remember.

But you’ll find that just one year at the ski academy (Green Mountain Valley School), coached by one of most energetic and extraordinary women you’ll ever know, will change your thinking dramatically. Having never qualified for the New England Junior Nationals squad, you’ll finally qualify next year as an eighteen-year-old, and then actually win gold and silver at Junior Nationals, and it will seem very surreal and weird, like it’s not even you doing the skiing that week. Because everybody, especially you yourself, knows that you’ve never been fast enough to beat any of these other kids; they’ve always been much faster than you. But you’ll have to reconcile yourself with this new reality.

This result will provide the opportunity to be on a Division 1 college ski team. It will provide the opportunity to go west. To the University of Wyoming! As a high school senior, your goal will be, by the time you’re a senior in college, to get a few top-20 finishes in some western college races. If you can accomplish this, you’ll feel like you can legitimately call yourself an elite skier and a big success.

I know this is going to sound utterly unbelievable to your 17-year-old self, but one thing is going to lead to another, and there are actually going to be some college wins in your future. There’s even going to be some World Cup racing and an Olympics. I know that this isn’t even remotely on your radar at this time in your life, but you’ll be shocked at how your future reality will differ from the way you imagine it now, when your only goal is to escape from this dark, rural life in this little town where it feels like nothing has ever happened, and it seems nothing ever will.

One thing that’s going to be of use to you as you move upward and onward in this sport is your inclination toward angst and melancholy. The discomfort that’s endemic to this sport will be an opportunity to explore your tendency to gravitate toward the dark and difficult, and toward isolation and self-reflection. Your most memorable, most rich, most intense workouts will be the ones done alone, in driving snow, in the dark, and half-lost. And your most successful races will be those rare occasions when you can manage to manipulate your own reality, to convince yourself that discomfort is no longer part of the equation, and that the ski race performance is more important than life or death. That the immediate moment is everything – is the only thing. It’s quite a stretch. You’ll learn some real mental gymnastics to manipulate your perception of reality for the purposes of a good race performance. For now, this penchant for despair and darkness mostly manifests itself as raw angst. But you’ll find, when you learn to work with it, that it can be a powerful tool in a sport like cross-country ski racing.

But the coin has two sides, and you’re going to see your friends and teammates struggle with some of the same feelings of futility and desperation that you have now. Many of your friends, teammates, and competitors are not going to survive their twenties. You’re going to be left shocked and speechless every time you hear about another friend.

You’ve heard it said that your brain is your most important muscle in sports, and I know you think that’s nonsense – everyone can see that it’s your heart, lungs and muscles that are most important in this sport. But you’re going to find out as you get older that it’s actually true; your brain really is your most important organ. Without focus, without willpower, without problem-solving, we’re not going to accomplish much. My friend Roy, who was an all-star Division I college basketball player and went on to play a decade in the pros, told me recently, “When I was younger, I wanted to explore the limits of what my body could do, but as I got older I gradually became a lot more interested in exploring the limits of my mind.”

Now I have some advice for you. If you want to do better at this sport than I did, spend less time thoughtlessly bashing yourself through workouts than I did. Instead, find ways to train smarter. Don’t just take all your coaches’ advice and grind through the training on the presumption that if you just do the workouts prescribed by whomever your coach happens to be, the success will automatically follow. That’s not a given. The most successful athletes in any sport have always been the creative ones who found their own way to do things nobody had done before. Among skiers, Bill Koch, Gunde Svan, Marit Bjørgen, Kikkan Randall, Petter Northug, Bode Miller… all of these skiers did things their own way, and in so doing became the best, or among the best, in the world. And the most successful skiers I’ve known here at UAA have been the ones who haven’t always agreed with what their coaches have told them. They’ve had their own opinions and they’ve been pretty stubborn. The best skiers I’ve known here at UAA… coaching them has not always been a picnic.

The most important think that you should know, though, is that success in this sport is not going to turn you into something else; it’s not going to get you millions of dollars and a future in Hollywood. I know (because I remember) that you have this vague notion that there’s some kind of firm and defined dividing line between “success” and “not success” in this sport. I know that you have this foggy conceptualization that if you can achieve “success” by whatever criteria you’re defining it at the moment, then everything will be OK, you will have “made it” and you’ll be happy and satisfied and relaxed and proud of yourself. And I know that you don’t allow yourself to think about the consequences to your psyche if you don’t achieve “success,” whatever that means.

But I can tell you now, as your future 53-year-old self, that the reality is nothing like this. For example, my biggest regret in skiing is not quite ever winning an NCAA Championship. I came very close a couple of times, but never quite pulled it off. Nevertheless, the time I came closest was when I was beaten by my teammate in one of my best, most focused, and most excellent races ever. It was such a dramatic and fun day for me! Thus, as it turns out, my biggest regret in this sport is also one of my very favorite and most special moments.

You think that “success” and “not success” are defined by results, on paper. But I can tell you that, in hindsight, one of my proudest moments in this sport was a few years ago when my friend Ian told me that he used to call me “The Scrapper” because it was his impression that I would never give up, regardless of how well or how poorly I was doing. If there was going to be a battle for 467th place, I was going to fight hard to win that little battle. It made me feel so good to hear that from Ian, who is the same age as me but has always seemed to me like a role model, much more mature and a far better athlete than me, ever since we were young. Hearing Ian say that to me felt as much like “success” as I’ve ever felt.

“Success” and “not quite” are not nearly as defined and concrete as your young mind now conceives them to be. You’re going to find out, gradually over time, that your definition of success will morph and change in relation to, and in synch with, your goals. You’ll recalibrate to your successes and you’ll rationalize your failures. And you’ll also find out, because you’ll have friends with Olympic gold medals, that after the elite-level skiing is over, life goes on and these people do normal-people stuff just like you and me, with jobs and spouses and dinner parties and divorces and mortgages and everything else.

After the ski racing career is over, the most important and salient thing you’re going to be left with, contrary to this vague idea you have now, is not going to be a million dollars or a Hollywood acting career or free beers for life.

The most important and lasting thing you’re going to be left with is the memories of the good times you’ll have, and the friends you’re going to make.

As my friend Lucy, who was on another country’s national team, and about the same age as me, and whom I visited earlier this fall while on a motorcycle trip, said, “I can’t hardly remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but I remember all those crazy times racing in Europe like it was yesterday, and all the friends made along the way. And those good times and those good friends are the most special thing.”

So now, as I’m writing to you, they’re letting me be a volunteer assistant coach for a group of kids who are just a few years older than you are now. I hate to break it to you, but these kids seem much more mature and pleasant to be around than you will be when you go to college in a couple of years. Your college life will be a lot more pleasant for you and those around you if you could just dial down the intolerance and dismissal of your teammates’ goals which may be a little different or a little less all-consuming than your own. You could learn a thing or two from one of our current UAA kids, who is a lot better skier than you will be, who told me a few weeks ago that if he couldn’t be a personable and friendly guy for his friends and teammates to be around, he would quit the sport. Because it wouldn’t be worth compromising his humanity just to be a successful athlete. I found this statement shocking and profound, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. It occurred to me that when I was his age, I had pretty much the opposite point of view. And it probably showed.

Seventeen-year-old Adam, you have a lot to learn in the years ahead. But even now, I’m finding out that I have so much to learn from the young people I’m around. This volunteer coaching gig gives as much to me as I give to it. The energy and curiosity of our skiers goes back with me to my “day-job” office after ski practice and influences how I handle the rest of my day. Their optimism and vigor inspire me to try new things and take chances for myself. Their search for purpose and meaning nudges me out of my own complacency, both physically and mentally.

Ultimately, my advice to you, seventeen-year-old Adam, is to tone it down with the obsessing and worrying about the future, and about achieving success. Connecting with the experiences and the people around you won’t prevent you from training hard or training smart. Enjoying the journey won’t preclude success. The fire and brimstone stuff is great as a race-day tool to help you achieve a transcendent performance, but it has no place in the team van.

And ultimately, none of this matters as much as you think it does.

*  *  *

If you are interested in submitting a letter to your younger self, or know of someone with a compelling story that might be a good fit, please contact us at info@fasterskier.com with questions or for more information. Don’t be put off by Adam’s credentials; we’d love to hear from you even if you’re not a former Olympian.

Previously in this series:

Letters to My Younger Self: John Wood and Returning to a Lifelong Sport

By Gavin Kentch and Rachel Bachman Perkins

The SuperTour returned this weekend with races in Duluth, Minnesota, held on the new snowmaking courses at Grand Avenue Nordic Center. The weekend included all levels of racing, with green juniors lining up to race alongside the veterans racing on the SuperTour, and a strong sense of community and cross-country ski energy across the board. Skiers like to ski; athletes were glad to be back.

Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center (APU) athletes had a strong showing for the weekend, winning three out of four races. Rosie Frankowski (APU) and Alayna Sonnesyn (SMS T2) each made the podium twice. FasterSkier unofficially calculates the current SuperTour leaders as APU skiers Rosie Frankowski for the women, with 51 points after two races, and Tyler Kornfield for the men, with 42 points. The overall SuperTour leaders at the end of next weekend’s racing in Cable should receive start rights on the World Cup for Period 2, the Tour de Ski. Official USSS standings, here, have recently been updated, and accord with FasterSkier’s math.

Saturday: Freestyle sprint

Alayna Sonnesyn started out the qualifier in style, destroying the field to set the day’s fastest time for the two-lap, 1.3-kilometer course by a staggering ten-plus seconds. Several heats later, she was joined in the women’s final by a largely chalk field: Becca Rorabaugh (APU), Rosie Frankowski (APU), Julia Richter (University of Utah), and Sarah Goble (Sun Valley), who had the day’s second, third, fourth, and ninth fastest qualifying times, respectively. Katerina Hyncicova (NMU), who had been 23rd in qualifying, was the main outlier here.

Roughly three minutes later, the two women who had consistently been the top athletes in the field all day, Sonnesyn and Rorabaugh, found themselves at the top of the long descent for the second and last time in the women’s final. Sonnesyn led going into the descent, but Rorabaugh skied this segment aggressively to slingshot around Sonnesyn and was able to significantly out-glide her by the bottom of the hill. Sonnesyn made up some ground as the two of them made the lefthand turn into the stadium and the uphill finish, but Rorabaugh was never seriously threatened on her way to the line.

Rorabaugh took the win in 3:11.49, with Sonnesyn 0.47 seconds back.

Roughly four seconds later, the compact powerhouse Frankowski, traditionally identified as more of a distance skier, led Richter to the line by nearly 1.5 seconds to take third. Goble in fifth and Hyncicova in sixth made up the rest of the final.

It was Rorabaugh’s first SuperTour win since the skate sprint at Wirth Park in February 2020. It was Frankowski’s first SuperTour podium since she was first and second at West Yellowstone in a sprint and distance race in December 2018.

“The sprint went really well for me,” Rorabaugh wrote in a post-race email. “It was exciting to get to race at a Super Tour again!  I love icy conditions, I love speed, and I love head to head racing, so it was pretty ideal for me. It’s also good to know that I’m sharpening up; these results show that I can hammer when I need to which is a good sign for the season.”

Reflecting on racing at the national level after a year away, Rorabaugh continued, “It feels really good to be back and to get to race against some of the people that I haven’t seen since early 2020. It seemed like Alaska was quite separate during last season, like maybe people forgot we were up there, so it’s fun to remind everyone that we’re a force to be reckoned with.”

Few athletes were familiar with the new course in Duluth. Rorabaugh also reflected on the course and the event as a whole.

“The sprint course in Duluth is fun and it suits me incredibly well. Some might say it’s lacking a long, steep climb, but I think most would agree that the downhill and the finish stretch are exciting and fun. The finish stretch is pitched up enough that you have to have a good sprint. You can’t just carry speed all the way to the line, which keeps things spicy at the end.

“The energy in Duluth has also been great, everyone has been very welcoming and combining the Super Tour with junior races means it’s a huge event. I always enjoy getting to see the younger skiers giving it their all, and the organized chaos of big races is exciting!”

The men’s race featured more of the same: most top qualifiers making it through to the final, and an APU skier moving up from second to outglide a competitor on the final downhill into the finish. For the men, it was the first, second, third, eight, ninth, and outlier 27th-place qualifiers in the final: Tyler Kornfield (APU), Logan Diekmann (BSF), Bill Harmeyer (SMS), Adam Witkowski (Michigan Tech), Noel Keeffe (University of Utah/USST), and Kjetil Bånerud (NMU), respectively.

Two-plus minutes later, it was Keeffe leading Kornfield into the top of the final downhill. 15 seconds later, it was Kornfield leading Keeffe into the finish lanes, as APU’s skis were once again superior. Kornfield kept his lead through the stadium to take the win in 2:47.44, narrowly ahead of Keeffe (+0.23).

A few seconds later, Witkowski (+2.90) outdistanced Harmeyer (+3.36) for the final podium spot. Diekmann and Bånerud followed several seconds later.

“It feels great to get to racing again,” Kornfield wrote after the race. “Last season, I was able to race two sprint qualifiers, but I failed to qualify for the heats in both. I love racing head to head and it was difficult at times to find inspiration. Fortunately, I have a great team at APU along with Gus and JC being in Alaska, we have been able to do a few time trials to prepare for the season. That allowed me to come to the races feeling calm and prepared. Though I never know exactly how I will perform early in the season, I have been cautiously optimistic about how my body has been performing in training. I hope that I can continue the trend into next week and onto the rest of the season. My mantra for the season is to make every race count and I think I did that in the sprint.”

Earlier that day, Kornfield’s longtime partner and fellow APUNSC athlete, Rosie Brennan, had made the podium in Lillehammer in a World Cup race. USST coach Matt Whitcomb congratulated the APU program on its successful day, alongside a heartwarming photo of the World Cup crew watching the CXC Live feed of the SuperTour races in a conference room at the Scandic Lillehammer.

“It is also easy to be inspired to race well when Rosie finishes on the podium of the World Cup,” Kornfield continued in his comments on the sprint day. “I often need to be careful because it is hard to fall back asleep after checking her results at three in the morning, but this morning, it was worth it.”

Kornfield also spoke to the course and event in Duluth, praising its challenges and how they might prepare athlete to race at the World Cup level.

“The course in Duluth was great! I think it was a perfect combination of long enough working sections that were wide enough to maneuver, as well as technical/icy turns that would cost someone who might lose focus either leading into, during, or coming out of the turns. If we have more courses like this one, I believe we can keep pushing the momentum of domestic racing that will prepare us for racing in Europe. It was also great to see so many people out watching. That can be rare sometimes on the SuperTour, but there is an obvious sense of excitement and passion in Duluth that will hopefully turn into a regular SuperTour venue!”

Saturday Sprint Results: Qualifiers (all) | Women’s final | Men’s final | All heat results

Multimedia: sprint course preview video from Bill Harmeyer | livestream replay from CXC

Sunday: Freestyle distance

While athletes raced on a white ribbon with bare ground exposed on either side during the sprint, what one might call a “wintery mix” arrived in Duluth on Sunday morning. Over four inches of fresh snow fell overnight, which turned into wet icy flakes as the races began. APU coach and tech Galen Johnston shared photos of graupel-encrusted skis, which left us wondering what skiers might have looked like at the finish.

In the individual start freestyle events, senior men raced five laps of a roughly 2.2-kilometer course while senior women raced three laps.

Team Birkie’s Zak Ketterson eked out a win on the men’s side in a time of 26:33.4, beating Northern Michigan University (NMU) athlete Kjetil Bånerud by 3.4 seconds. Bånerud had started three bibs ahead and held the fastest splits until Ketterson came through. Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) athlete Adam Martin skied the third-fastest men’s time (+8.6) to round out the podium.

“10 kilometers is a tricky distance because while it seems short compared to our normal 15k distance, it’s definitely still long enough to require some good pacing,” wrote Ketterson after the race. “I was fortunate to receive a lot of splits from my coaches, as well as my old NMU coaches and others.”

Originally from Bloomington, MN, on the south side of Minneapolis, Ketterson is an NMU alumnus. While other athletes on the podium, like Frankowski and Sonnesyn, are also originally from the Midwest, Ketterson has spent his entire ski career in the region, and he felt the community support during the race.

“It was a really great atmosphere at the Grand Ave Nordic center. I really like Duluth and have very fond memories from when I raced there last year with NMU at some NCAA qualifier races. My favorite part of racing in the Midwest is that there are so many friends that cheer for me. It really feels like a ‘home’ race.”

Commenting on the season ahead, Ketterson shared, “My goals for this season are to just take it one race at a time, trying to do my best in every opportunity I get. We will see where that gets me! For now, I’m just happy to be a part of such an amazing team (Team Birkie) and to be racing again.”

Frankowski shared the following reflections on her weekend in Duluth via email:

“Before heading down to Duluth, I was pretty nervous about this weekend and tried to have realistic expectations since these races were a short, relatively flat sprint and 5k—both events that I honestly don’t typically perform that well in. However, I have been focusing on speed work, downhills and carrying speed a lot this summer behind my speedy APU teammates so yesterday’s results on a very fast course was a great surprise that boosted my confidence for today’s 5k. Today out on the course was a whirlwind. We actually raced 3 laps of a bit over 2 kilometer lap so I lucked out that it was a bit longer and the snowfall from the night before and during the race made it slower than yesterday. The course held up surprisingly well and was really not that choppy or soft except the one V-1 hill.

“I went out as hard as I could since honestly my 5k race pace often accidentally is my 10k pace and I knew that I needed to be snappy. I did slow down throughout the laps, but I honestly think most of that slowdown was on the downhill section which was where I questioned whether I should free skate, tuck, V-2, etc. I was very early in the seeded group so I didn’t really have the chance to rely on splits back or watching my competitors to determine what seemed to work best. All in all, I am super excited to walk away with the win and I am hoping this weekend of racing gives me more confidence about my short race skiing abilities, and I have to give a hats off to our APU wax techs and all of the volunteers from Duluth that made this weekend possible.”

On returning to racing with a widespread field of high-level athletes, Frankowski echoed her teammate Rorabaugh’s sentiments on feeling isolated as she stayed put in Anchorage. Her words embody the many challenges we have all faced in the calculus of travel and risk-assessment during the pandemic.

“It’s nice to be back racing on a national level circuit. Last season was really challenging since us Alaskans didn’t have much opportunity to race people from out of state (due to avoiding unnecessary air travel). We had a crazy strong early season circuit with Sadie Bjornsen, Jess Yeaton and Becca all in our races, but it felt like we were just not connected with the rest of the country. I personally really struggled with turning down Period 1 World Cup starts after a teammate contracted COVID and the financial implications that COVID created with race uncertainty. Then in January, I contracted COVID and it felt like it ended my opportunities to gain World Cup starts.

“I am just thankful that this year we have more certainty about what races will happen and what the road to opportunity looks like. I also feel that as I have gotten older, I have realized that while good results are fun and exciting, the true value in racing a circuit is the relationships you create with your competitors, other coaches, officials, etc. Returning to the Supertour and Duluth (as Minnesota is my home state), I found so much joy in chatting with my fellow racers, longtime club coaches, friends from NMU [Frankowski is also an alumna], Southwest High School and LNR, and just being part of a community that wants to spend their weekend working hard out in the cold. I’m hoping that no matter where my results fall this season, and whether I make the lofty goals I’ve laid out, I can appreciate the people and connections as the true value of ski racing.”

Sunday Distance Results: Women | Men

Multimedia: livestream replay from CXC

It’s been a while. This country’s last races on the SuperTour, the highest level of domestic competition, occurred in Cable, Wisconsin, in February 2020 in connection with that year’s American Birkebeiner. Classic sprints were held on the Wednesday before Birkie weekend. (SuperTour points were likely also awarded for the Birkie marathon races a few days later.) Gus Schumacher won the men’s final; Nichole Bathe and Kaitlynn Miller were on the podium for the women. Schumacher is now a full-time World Cup skier, and one of the top U23 athletes in the world; Bathe, who hails from Great Britain, hasn’t raced in this country since; Miller has been retired for a year and a half.

Those races were, measured literally and chronologically, roughly 21 months ago. Depending upon how the pandemic has treated you, it may feel more like 21 years. Multiple high-level FIS races were held in this country last season, but equally as many were cancelled; there’s a lot of red on this schedule, and last year’s domestic racing preview was presciently entitled, “Fluoros, FIS Races, and Foiled Plans.” While races in Anchorage or Soldier Hollow, among others, drew strong regional fields, and NCAA Championships in New Hampshire featured college skiers from most but not all of the country, there has not been a FIS race with a truly nationwide field in this country for two seasons now.

That changes this weekend. The start list for the first race in Duluth shows athletes hailing from all six main American pro ski clubs. Plus the University of Utah. Plus Canada. Plus basically every college team, high school team, or club within a few hours’ drive. Organizers report roughly 380 athletes total registered across all classes. They’ll race a skate sprint on Saturday, and an interval-start 5/10-kilometer skate race on Sunday. Racing continues in Cable the following weekend, before taking a three-week break until U.S. Nationals, at Soldier Hollow the first week in January.

Here’s a simple version of the eight race weekends (counting both U.S. Nationals and Spring Series as a “weekend”) comprising this year’s SuperTour schedule. When multiple distances are listed, the women race the first, shorter distance, and the men the second, longer distance:

• Dec. 4–5, Duluth: skate sprint; 5/10 k interval start skate
• Dec. 10–12, Cable: 15 k mass start skate; classic sprint; 10/15 k interval start classic
• Jan. 2–7, Soldier Hollow (U.S. Nationals): skate sprint; 20/30 k mass start skate; 10/15 k interval start classic; classic sprint
• Jan. 15–16, Sun Valley: 5/10 k interval start skate; 10/15 k mass start classic
• Jan. 29–30, Lake Placid: classic sprint; 10 k mass start skate
• Feb. 4–6, Craftsbury: skate sprint; 10 k interval start classic; 7.5 k skate pursuit
• [Feb. 5–20, 2022 Winter Olympics, Beijing]
• Feb. 26, Cable–Hayward: American Birkebeiner, 52 k mass start skate marathon
• March 20–27, Whistler (Canadian Nationals and SuperTour Finals): skate and classic interval start, distance TBD; classic sprint; skate team sprint; 42 k mass start skate

Two things to note about the race schedule in this Olympic year. For one, the January Sun Valley race weekend will, if current plans hold, be the swan song for the licit use of fluorinated ski wax in FIS nordic races in this country. The Monday after those races, the qualification window for the 2022 U.S. Olympic Team will have closed, and, USSS Cross Country Program Director Chris Grover wrote this fall, “fluorocarbon waxes will be banned at all FIS Cross Country races in the USA.” Grover added, “testing will often support that ban.”

So if you’re racing or teching in Sun Valley next month, smoke ’em while you got ’em (but use a respirator, work in a ventilated space, and turn your iron down if your fluoros are actually smoking).

Second, you may have heard that this is an Olympic year. So will winning all the Midwestern races in December guarantee a non–World Cup athlete selection to the American squad for Beijing?

Well, not exactly. The selection criteria for the 2022 Winter Olympics team generally prioritize World Cup performance over domestic SuperTour performance. And when it comes to domestic racing, they explicitly prioritize performance at next month’s U.S. Nationals over any other December or January race occurring within the Olympic qualifying window.

In practice, under a system that (a) counts an athlete’s two best SuperTour finishes in a single discipline (sprint or distance) between the start of the season and January 16 and (b) awards significant bonus SuperTour points for podium finishes at U.S. Nationals, an athlete who finishes first and fourth in Soldier Hollow (same discipline) would have more SuperTour points than an athlete who wins every single race in Duluth, Cable, and Sun Valley. Second and third at U.S. Nationals also ranks an athlete ahead of two firsts in non-Nationals races.

That said, the hypothetical athlete who dominated everywhere other than Soldier Hollow would likely have a strong case for discretionary selection to the Olympic team, and would be assured (“will be selected”) start rights to multiple World Cup races in the 2021/2022 season as the domestic SuperTour leader at various relevant points in time.

This math, and the implications of bonus points for podium performances at U.S. Nationals, have been in place for some time. In September 2016, a green FasterSkier reporter named Gavin Kentch wrote, “American cross-country skiing does not have a trials system,” in the sense that everyone shows up at one race on one day, top x athletes across the line make the team – think the U.S. Olympic Trials for swimming or track and field, say, or, for ski fans of a certain age, the one-day Gold Cup pursuit race at Soldier Hollow in December 2001 that qualified the winner for the Salt Lake City games two months later. To which an older athlete named Kris Freeman wrote, in a Facebook comment preserved here, “the allocation of bonus points to Nationals essentially makes the remainder of the SuperTours irrelevant. Nationals is now World Champ and Olympic Trials, which is fine, but let’s call them what they are.”

This reporter was technically correct, but in terms of athlete experiences and the implications of the domestic race season, Freeman, who at the time had been selected to 12 senior U.S. Olympic or World Championships teams and knew what he was talking about, was probably more practically correct. The math remains unchanged this season.

Results and logistics

How to find results from and otherwise track this season’s races? Good question. Hopefully this site, the main USSS SuperTour page, will have links to results (clicking through to each individual SuperTour sub-page should get you there), but no guarantees. Searching on Facebook for the ski club hosting each race weekend may be your best bet if the USSS site is unavailing. In general, MyRaceResults most frequently has start lists, detailed results, and live timing for most races in this country, augmented by some or all of Superior Timing for, generally, the Midwest, Bullitt Timing for the Northeast, and Zone4 for Canada.

Race organizers of this weekend’s stop in Duluth advised FasterSkier late Wednesday that entry lists will be available at Superior Timing on Thursday. Results should be findable here throughout the weekend.

In practice, FasterSkier will keep you abreast of each SuperTour stop, with a brief recap including results and quotes from some of the top athletes appearing on Monday or Tuesday of the following week. 

Who’s racing

We have recently previewed six prominent American domestic ski clubs. These clubs, to be sure, are not going to make up 100% of the entrants in this season’s SuperTour races, and U.S. Nationals will draw skiers even more broadly from across the country, including junior athletes from a wide range of clubs. But if you’d like to review six hotbeds for professional domestic skiing, take a look back at the following team previews:

Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center

Bridger Ski Foundation Nordic Pro Team

Craftsbury Green Racing Project

Stratton Mountain School

Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation XC Gold Team

Team Birkie

General SuperTour information from U.S. Ski & Snowboard

U.S. Ski & Snowboard SuperTour overview page

USSS SuperTour detailed calendar

USSS SuperTour standings: men | women

Want to know how to follow all the action this weekend, domestically and abroad? We’ve got you covered. Times for World Cup races are listed in local time and Eastern Standard Time, to help you calculate the time change.

(We will of course publish articles on the races after they finish; this is just to help you get your fix of live coverage.)

Broadcast links for the World Cup races are as follows. Both of these require a subscription, sorry.

Peacock (raw feed, no commentary) | Ski and Snowboard Live (English language commentary)

World Cup, Lillehammer

Friday, December 3: skate sprints. 10 a.m. local time (qualifiers), 12:30 p.m. local time (heats). Broadcast (heats only): 6:30 a.m. Eastern.

Saturday, December 4: 10/15 k skate. 10 a.m./12 p.m. local time. Broadcast: 4/6 a.m. Eastern.

Sunday, December 5: relays! (4 x 7.5 k men, 4 x 5 k women) 9:20 a.m./11:45 a.m. local time. Broadcast: 3:15/5:45 a.m. Eastern.

Results and start lists

SuperTour, Duluth

Saturday, December 4: skate sprints. 9:30 a.m. local time (qualifiers), 12 p.m. (senior heats), 1:45 p.m. (U18/U20 heats), 3:20 p.m. (U16 heats). Duluth is in the Central Time Zone, so add one hour for the East Coast or subtract three hours for Alaska.

Sunday, December 5: 5/10 k skate. 10 a.m. local time, women and U16 boys; 12:30 p.m. local time, U18 and up men.

Detailed schedule and results/start lists

Streaming? Sounds like it. Race organizers state, “Races will be live streamed by CXC and will have live announcements.” Try checking here or here over the weekend for broadcast options.