Dan Meyer likes to innovate. So naturally, as he became more interested in Nordic skiing, that quality extended to the wax he put on his skis. In 1986 Meyer created the first iteration of Fast Wax, one of the only U.S. made nordic wax brands. Meyer, a chemist with a background in polymer science, continued to develop and grow Fast Wax from his home in Minnesota for the next 32 years.

In 2018, Fast Wax founders Dan and Rosie Meyer sold their operation to the Kirt family. Casey Kirt had spent 25 years working in information technology at a large mortgage company in the Midwest and he was ready for a career change. The sale closed in just ten days and Kirt immediately quit his full time job and started working on Fast Wax.

“I love making stuff,” Kirt said, “and what Dan developed is something special.” For Kirt and his wife Katie, their incentive for buying the company was spurred on by the exciting challenge of modernizing Fast Wax and expanding the brand. The Meyers kept the operation contained to fit within their garage and passed along the wax recipes on 3×5 note cards when they sold the business.

“They weren’t very sophisticated and they didn’t want to be,” Kirt said. “It was really just a part-time hobby business. They enjoyed working with each other, it was fun to see that.” Kirt has invested a lot of time and energy in making the business scalable while maintaining the tradition of family members working together to create wax.

When Kirt’s daughter began college at Montana State University in Bozeman, Casey and Katie Kirt relocated there, bringing the Fast Wax headquarters with them. Now they have a shop in the Belgrade area where wax manufacturing happens in the spring when the temperature is most ideal. The whole family chips in on the wax-making process. “We’ll sit Grandma at the table and she can start putting on labels,” Kirt said.

Kirt has taken advantage of his business’ proximity to the university, working with students and professors there in various ways. They use labs on campus for quality control testing, Kirt collaborated with the mechanical engineering program to make a wax-pouring robot and he is currently talking with faculty about the possibility of developing the first American-made kick wax.

In simplified terms, Kirt explained that the Fast Wax product is made up of different types of waxes blended together to create certain properties for specific hardness or temperature range. “Ski wax is a very inert process,” he said. “We want to make sure all the elements in that wax are melted and mixed.” Ensuring proper mixing and heating is crucial for the wax’s success.

In 2019, the International Ski Federation announced a ban on all fluorinated ski waxes in FIS competitions. Implementation of the ban has been delayed for the third year running, but Fast Wax is still taking steps to ensure their waxes will comply with the impending ban. Kirt said this was part of the reason the Meyers wanted to sell the company, because they didn’t want to deal with testing a lot of new additives.

When Kirt took ownership of the business, he hired a chemical engineer to start tests and build a catalog of stuff that showed promise. They built a 70-foot-long rain gutter, filled it with snow, waxed skis and measured the time it took for a ski to travel the distance. They’ve now isolated three additives from obscure industries that Kirt says they feel really excited about.

One is a by-product from the agriculture industry that is re-purposed for use in the Fast Wax “everyday consumer” wax. Another is very water repellent and is used in the race wax line. A third is created from super-fine ground up metal that Kirt says creates “crazy durability.”

In coming up with alternative additives Kirt said, “It’s gotta be safe for the environment and safe for the skier, next it’s got to be affordable for the skier.” He said he’s happy the industry has shifted towards using more friendly chemicals.

“This fluorocarbon transition has really reset the playing field for everybody,” Kirt said. “We’re here at the grassroots, having people try our product and convincing themselves that, yeah this is a solid fluorocarbon substitute.”

For Kirt, it all comes down to scalability. His goal is to extend Fast Wax’s reach from coast to coast. “We’re one of the only U.S. Nordic brands,” Kirt said, “We have the capacity to service large customers.” Given the brand’s Midwest origins, Fast Wax is more prevalent there.

The spring after the Kirts purchased Fast Wax from the Meyers, Casey and his wife were in the company van at a boat launch in a tiny town in Wisconsin when a man approached them to say, “I love Fast Wax, I’ve been skiing on it for five years.” Kirt was blown away.

“That’s who I want to be,” he said. “I don’t want to be the big flashy brand that’s got all these high end skiers that we’re paying millions of dollars, I’d rather keep my ski wax prices low and allow casual skiers or people just getting into the sport to have money leftover after buying all the gear to buy some Fast Wax and go have a fun time.”

Looking to the future, Kirt plans to do just that. He wants to keep customer costs low and enable skiers to spend time on the trails or the mountain, not in the wax room. Like Fast Wax’s founder, Dan Meyer, Kirt continues to innovate.

“We’re not just sitting on our haunches now that we found these new replacements for fluorocarbons,” he said. “We continue to investigate and research other materials that may be better for the environment, safer for the skier. We want to continue understanding what the marketplace has to offer and we will present that to customers.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diggins, along with teammate Julia Kern, and coach Jason Cork, made the trip “down under” for three weeks of snow skiing at the Falls Creek cross-country center. This August, the U.S. Ski Team has been operating with a bit of a divide-and-conquer strategy, as coaches Matt Whitcomb, Greta Anderson and Kristen Bourne took six athletes to Scandinavia, Kern and Diggins found skiing elsewhere. As Whitcomb explained, “We weren’t able to fit it into the budget to have a bunch of people go down to New Zealand or Australia,” thus the separate trips. 

Historically, the U.S. Ski Team has spent time on snow at the Snow Farm, in New Zealand, staying at a lodge just feet from the ski trails. But, as Diggins explained, the lodge shut down during COVID and has yet to reopen. “[That] makes it less desirable because it was going to be a long drive up,” Diggins said, “So we thought, we’ve never tried Australia and we’ve heard Falls Creek has amazing skiing… so we thought this would be a good year to try something new and I’m really glad we did. It’s really cool because it’s hard to get the feel for a place unless you get to actually go to a camp there. So this has been really neat.” 

In Australia, the crew is staying in the town of Bogong, about a 30 minute drive from the Falls Creek trails. “I want to say a huge thank you to the Australian National Team and Finn (described as the Chris Grover of Australia), between him and Cork, they found us a really nice cabin situation,” said Diggins. 

With something like 300 turns on the road between Bogong and Falls Creek, Diggins and Kern have been using the Birkebeiner Ski Club clubhouse to hang out in, between two-a-day ski sessions. “[They’ve] been super kind and gracious letting us hang out in the clubhouse,” said Diggins, “So we have a warm place to just chill for a couple hours.” 

For both Diggins and Kern, this is their first time visiting Australia and the Falls Creek trail system. “There’s a lot of corners, and I think they say about 60 k of skiing or so,” said Kern, “There’s a lot of terrain out there and in general, pretty gradual and rolling. There are some big loops- there’s like a 12 or 14 k loop that we skied this morning, then there’s some more steeper hills near the beginning. So we’ve been able to find terrain for just about everything.” 

The travlers have also experienced the full gamut of weather conditions. “We’ve had every bit of weather from sunshine to snow, to sleet, to wind gusts, and everything in between,” said Kern. “We’ve really gotten to experience about every condition to train in and do some intervals.” 

Diggins added to that, saying, “I think it’s really nice because you don’t want to get used to just one condition right? Like if you’re coming down to get some time on snow, it’s really nice to be able to touch on every different kind, so I think that’s really, really valuable.” 

Besides the general goal of spending time on-snow, both athletes had a specific focus for the camp. For Kern, it was an emphasis on classic skiing. “Roller skiing is great training,” she said, “But it’s not the equivalent of trying to kick a ski in a variety of conditions, and we’ve actually got a lot of zeros conditions here, so it’s been a really great time to practice skiing in zeros conditions.”

Additionally, Kern has been testing skis and getting a feel for them, having switched to Atomic this season. “So it’s been testing skis, classic skiing, and then just speed work and intervals,” she said. “Skiing is not the same as roller skiing, you can do all that but having the feel for snow and variable terrain and punchy or firm conditions, for me, I think it’s easier to commit to going all out in a speed when you know you can just fall on snow instead of pavement, so we’re working on that.” 

Diggins chimed in, saying, “As someone who has fallen on her face roller skiing, for me, it’s really nice to be able to, like today we’re practicing sprint finish lunges, and on roller skis you really just can’t do that.” 

Diggins has been prioritizing practicing the things that don’t work as well on roller skis, like start speeds, lunges and herringbone. “When you’re here for three weeks, you feel like, if I have a bad day, or I’m tired, I can afford to just be really smart and relaxed about it and still know that I’m going to get all the time I need to make these changes on snow,” she said. 

The first week was spent getting used to being on snow again, then in the second week the athletes can move on to making some changes and in the third week, “[We] try to make them stick,” said Diggins. 

An added bonus to the trip came in the form of the Kangaroo Hoppet Worldloppet race on August 27th. “It’s really cool to finally get to do another Worldloppet on a different continent that we otherwise don’t get to ski in very much,” said Diggins, “I also think it’s really a chance to practice fueling for long races because we don’t get an opportunity to do long races very often, and now we’re going to have a few more on the World Cup circuit.” 

After a two-year COVID hiatus, Saturday’s race was the 30th edition of the Kangaroo Hoppet. Diggins took gold, ahead of Kern, and Australian skier, Casey Wright finished third. It turned out to be a double victory for the U.S., as Peter Wolter of Sun Valley topped the men’s podium. Campbell Wright (NZ) took second place and Lars Young Vik (AUS) came in third. 

Following the conclusion of their three week camp, Diggins and Kern will be heading in separate directions. Kern plans to stay an extra week in the country, renting a campervan and exploring Australia. “I want to see a little bit, and traveling forces me to make sure I recover and don’t jump right into training right away,” she explained. After that trip, she will head back to Vermont for two weeks before traveling to Utah for the U.S. Ski Team Park City Camp in October. 

Diggins will head straight back to Stratton for a few weeks before flying to San Francisco for the Salomon Women Trail Half-Marathon at the end of September. “And then I come back, and then I go to Las Vegas with Toyota for a show, and then I go right from there to Park City Camp,” she explained, “So it’s a lot of travel this fall, but for some cool events that I’m excited about.” 

Summarizing their experience in Australia thus far, both Diggins and Kern emphasized how welcoming the community has been. “People are just friendly to a default,” said Kern. 

“Everyone has been so welcoming and super kind and helpful,” said Diggins, “It’s such a nice ski community here, it seems like everyone’s really close knit and looks out for each other and there’s all these kids out skiing, and it just seems like a really cool thing they’ve got going on here.” 

The GTWS combines a circuit of the best-known 21 to 42 kilometer races in the world and draws the best athletes to compete. In practical terms, the Golden Trail World Series could be considered a trail world cup. The man behind the vision, Gregory Vollet, sees the GTWS as a way for more professional athletes to be able to make a living from running, as broadcasting helps grow viewership and thus sponsor interest. In an interview earlier this summer, Vollet said, “currently the rate of athletes who have a real financial contract is very low. The Golden is designed to help them: them, the athletes, and the sport. This is its raison d’être and it will remain so.” With four GTWS completed this summer, the next two events will be happening in the U.S. in September before the five-stage series finale in Madeira at the end of October. 

Two athletes whose names will be familiar to the FasterSkier audience recently made debut appearances on this famous trail running circuit. Sophia Laukli (U.S. Ski Team & University of Utah) won the 25 k Stranda Fjord stage of the GTWS, just days after her rollerski victory on the Lysebotn Opp. Sam Hendry (University of Utah) finished 10th in the Stranda Fjord 25 k and a week later, came in 24th in a stacked field at the 31 k Sierre Zinal stage. 

In an email to FasterSkier, Laukli shared her thoughts on the GTWS experience, saying “the environment was very intense, but also fun and exciting all around, similar to ski races I would say.” Having never met or competed against the other women was initially a little daunting but Laukli said, also “made it a bit more exciting.” She remarked that, “All the runners ended up being very nice and stoked for each other which is always great. It stood out to me too that the top ten women were almost all from different countries, which was pretty sweet to see.” 

According to the race description, the Stranda Fjord 25 k “takes you on a wild ride in the Norwegian fjords. This course has everything from fast and flowy trails, steep climbs and technical downhill running.” With 1700m (5,577 ft) of climbing, there was plenty of vertical to be found as well. Laukli described the race as “crazy technical.” She wrote, “I had done part of the course a couple days before so I knew what was coming, and I was pretty terrified on the start line. There was a lot of discussion about the strong technical skills of the other runners before the race, so I knew there would be tough competition since I knew I struggled with technical terrain myself.” 

Knowing that about herself, Laukli made a plan to go hard out of the start in an effort to make up time on the climbing sections. The plan worked, “I had a pretty large gap at the final peak,” Laukli shared, “so I did everything in my power to stay on my feet and keep moving on the descent. The first boulder section was brutal and slippery but luckily I avoided any crashes. The course then moved along to basically a long mudslide, and then the hardest part for me ended up being the marsh for the last part of the course, which seemed to last forever.”

Nearing the finish, Laukli began to suffer, realizing that she hadn’t been eating or drinking enough throughout the race. She wrote, “I bonked pretty hard the last 45-ish minutes in the marsh, and that’s when I no longer stayed on my feet, but it was just face plants in the mud so no injuries involved. I was really just playing catch up until the finish and hoping none of the other women would come fly by me. I was absolutely exhausted at the finish, but managed to hold off the rest of the field, although many of them did make up some time on me on the whole descent. Once I crossed the line, I was honestly very shocked I had won, but it was a great feeling! It felt so rewarding to be done after probably the hardest race I had ever done.” 

When asked about maintaining a balance between ski training and trail racing, Laukli said that the two go well together. She wrote, “I haven’t changed much about my ski training this summer just because I have always incorporated quite a bit of trail running into my plan for skiing. In the week or so leading up to my running races, I do sometimes have a little more running focus at least for the intensity, just for some last prep, but the majority of my training is still a lot of roller skiing. It’s very helpful to have the roller skiing aspect to prevent running injuries and keep building a solid base, so I feel the two are very compatible and cross over well. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work initially, but so far it seems to be working well to combine the two.”

Originally, Laukli’s plan was to travel to Switzerland for the next stage of the GTWS at Sierre Zinal before heading to Sweden to join the U.S. Ski Team for a camp there. Unfortunately, she caught COVID just after the Stranda race, meaning that plan was out. Instead, Laukli will be traveling back to Utah in preparation for the start of the school semester at the end of August and competing in a couple more running races later in September.  

Laukli’s University of Utah teammate, Sam Hendry also shared some thoughts with FasterSkier about his recent racing experiences. Before traveling to Europe, Hendry won a stage of the U.S.-based Cirque Series, in Brighton, UT, which he described as a “good training race.” 

Heading across the Atlantic, Hendry touched down in Norway, ready for his GTWS debut. “The Golden Trail World Series is pretty cool,” said Hendry, “it is essentially the World Cup of trail running.” About his performance in the Stranda 25 k Hendry shared, “Stranda was a crazy technical and challenging course, but I was very happy to finish in the top ten.”

From there, Hendry moved with the rest of the GTWS circuit to Switzerland for the 50th edition of the famous Sierre Zinal race. Hendry wrote, “[Sierre Zinal] was much more straightforward but still super hard, being a 31 k with 2100m (6,890 ft) of vertical. I had a terrible climb but got into a rhythm at 11 k and managed to move up into 22nd. I’m pretty happy with the two weekends of racing here in Europe.” 

***

In other domestic running news, Scott Patterson held onto his title as victor of the Crow Pass Crossing, earning his 8th win (6th in a row). Patterson finished the 22.5 mile race in a time of 3:04:07, running in challenging weather conditions. His fellow APU teammate, Ari Endestad, finished in third place, +28:35 behind Patterson. 

In the Alyeska Cirque Series on July 30th, former U.S. Ski Team D-Team member and current UAF athlete, Kendall Kramer won the female division in a time of 1:24:26. On the men’s side, Patterson won (1:07:02) ahead of Micheal Earnhart (U.S. Ski Team D-team & APU) and David Norris (APU). Norris also competed in the Snowbird Cirque Series on August 6th and finished in sixth place, while continuing his recovery from a bruised heel that hinders his ability to run downhill quickly.

As the summer of training kicked off out east, it was primarily members of the SMS T2 Team for the first month or so. Thomas explained that the team had a couple of mini camps so far this summer, the first being at Green Woodlands in New Hampshire. In an email to FasterSkier, Thomas wrote, “we had a lot of great training including some long mountain bikes, rollerski intervals in Lyme, and a Presidential Traverse. It was somewhat “camping” style as many of us stayed in these rustic cabins on the water. We cooked great food, played a few games, and hung out on the water.” 

More recently, the team had a second mini camp in the Waitsfield/Warren area, north of Stratton. Highlights from this camp included a 5 k hill climb pace project on the Appalachian Gap, combining with the Eastern and Midwestern U16 camp, and Team Birkie who also held a camp in Vermont recently. About this activity Thomas shared, “the team had a great time chatting with the U16’s after App Gap, and we had a fun run/hike on part of the northern section of the Long Trail.” He extended his thanks to Justin Beckwith and NENSA as well as Colin Rogers and Green Mountain Valley School (GMVS) for their efforts in putting together some great events. 

Joining the SMS T2 Team for varying lengths of time this summer are a number of U.S. Ski Team and college athletes. This list includes: Sydney Palmer-Leger (new member of SMS T2 team, University of Utah (UU), U.S. Ski Team), Novie McCabe (UU, U.S. Ski Team), Sophia Laukli (UU, U.S. Ski Team), Weronika Kaleta (University of Colorado (CU), Polish National Team), John Hagenbuch (Dartmouth, U.S. Ski Team), Gus Schumacher (Alaska Winter Stars, U.S. Ski Team), Luke Jager (UU, U.S. Ski Team), Adam Witkowski (Michigan Tech University (MTU)), Zander Martin (Bates College), and Asa Chalmers (Dartmouth). 

Thomas, who took over as head coach of the SMS T2 Team this past spring, expressed his enthusiasm for the crew of athletes saying, “I feel very fortunate to be working with such an accomplished group of U.S. skiers. It has been fun and rewarding to say the least!” He’s had some assistance in the coaching department, U.S. Ski Team D-Team Coach Kristin Bourne, and Head Coach Matt Whitcomb have come through to work with the U.S. Ski Team athletes, but also help support everyone. Annika Martell and Steve Monsulick of Williams College have come to help at Thomas’ invitation, and with the additional support from the SMS junior coaches, Matt Boobar, Alex Jospe, and George Forbes, the coach to athlete ratio has been pretty good. Thomas also said, “I feel very fortunate to be able to work with Pat O’Brien, Jason Cork, Sverre Caldwell, and Matt Boobar this summer (among many other great coaches). Having such an excellent coaching staff to work with and learn from has been such a privilege.  Everyone is very open, hard working, great to get along with, and they are all massive resources for myself as well as the team.”

For many of the athletes, this summer has been their first time in Stratton. Thomas reflected, “I think many of the athletes that have never been to Stratton before, or maybe haven’t trained with the T2 team as much, have realized how great a place it is to train here. It seems like everyone has been really enjoying themselves, and we hope to continue having a strong summer training group in the future.”

One of those athletes is Sydney Palmer-Leger, who is not only spending her first summer in Vermont, but is also the newest member of the SMS T2 Team. When asked about her decision to come east this year, Palmer-Leger shared, “Last year I spent two months in Anchorage, Alaska. I had a lot of fun exploring a new beautiful place with the APU group and working with Erik Flora. I had never spent a period of time out East besides a couple bike and ski races. I had heard amazing things about the SMS T2 Team so I decided to try something new. I packed up my car not knowing what to expect and drove the three days out to Vermont.” 

Born and raised in Utah, Palmer-Leger said she is used to bigger mountains and a drier climate than you find in the East, but the SMS T2 Team was welcoming from the start and made her feel at home. She wrote, “I am used to working with many different coaches so that was an easy transition. I had been on a couple trips with Pat (O’Brien) and met Perry (Thomas) in Bend, so I wasn’t super uncomfortable joining a new team. I felt I belonged in this group from the beginning and loved training in Vermont so I decided to join the SMS T2 Team.”

Palmer-Leger pointed to a number of highlights from the summer, including the mini camps in Craftsbury, Warren, and Greens. She reflected, “[the] camps were fun ways to get a lot of training while exploring new parts of the East. I have also loved being close to water where we have gone paddleboarding and waterskiing with the Ogdens. I am very fortunate to have this group to come back to every summer. In addition to running and rollerskiing, I have been able to explore more bike trails. Biking used to be my other sport so I have loved going out with the team every week. I went to Burke the other weekend and helped with the Little Bellas. It is inspirational to see these young girls out on the trails shredding.” 

Gus Schumacher also made his way east this summer, though for a few weeks rather than the whole summer. Initially, the motivation for this change in scenery was a way to break up the jet lag on the way to Norway for the U.S. Team camp happening next week. But when Schumacher decided not to go to Norway he realized he still wanted to train with Ben Ogden and SMS to “return the favor” of him coming to Alaska last summer. Schumacher said, “I also wanted to hopefully get some rollerski racing and rollerski track skiing in but I didn’t really do my research on when/where to come.” 

The summer climate in southern Vermont is typically different from that of Alaska where Schumacher spends most of his summer. “[It’s] definitely a little hot and humid but it’s kind of nice to get a little sweaty,” wrote Schumacher, “the biggest issue is that our dryer doesn’t really work so there’s not a great way to dry washed or wet clothes.” (A problem which anyone who has spent a summer in the East can identify with). 

For his time in Vermont, Schumacher had a couple of goals he was focused on. The first, to stick to his general progression/training layout. This meant getting good group sessions, but not losing focus of his own process. The second was to keep up good daily habits like consistent bedtime, morning mobility, healthy meals and recovery stuff. Third, to take care of some body stuff that was acting up recently. And finally, to generally make use of being around a strong team and use them to push himself whenever possible. Schumacher concluded by saying that he is “very thankful to SMS and southern VT for taking us in and helping us figure out lodging and training, as well as getting us exposure to some races and cool mentoring opportunities.” 

Approaching the final few weeks of August, as the summer winds down, athletes and coaches alike will be going their separate ways. Schumacher is headed back to Anchorage next week when the team goes to Norway. He said, “In sticking with my plan, I felt like it made more sense to take a recovery week and get back into my swing in Anchorage.” 

Palmer-Leger, who has spent two and a half months in Stratton with the SMS T2 Team, is heading back to Utah for school. After having finished summer school this past weekend, she has a little break before going back to classes in Salt Lake. 

Thomas reflected that the summer has flown by, saying “it’s crazy how fast time goes by when you’re training hard and having fun.” With many of the summer athletes heading back to school or back to their main club, the crew in Stratton will be dwindling.

A couple athletes will be traveling to Scandinavia for the U.S. Ski Team camp in the Torsby ski tunnel and competing in the Toppidrettsveka rollerski races. Jessie Diggins, Julia Kern, and Jason Cork are headed to Australia for a three week on-snow camp there. Thomas will be headed to Oberhof, Germany with SMS T2 athletes Lina Sutro, Lauren Jortberg, and Alayna Sonnesyn for a ten day camp in the Oberhof ski tunnel. Eventually, the core T2 team will reconvene back in Stratton in early September before heading to the U.S. Ski Team camp in Park City in early October. 

In partnership with the National Nordic Foundation, the Trail to Gold Fellowship will provide funding to the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team (USST)  for the cost of bringing women ski coaches on World Cup trips. Once there, the Fellowship coaches will learn and participate in coaching and ski service internships with mentorship from the U.S. Ski Team staff. Fellowship recipients are also expected to complete a professional development plan for the experience and write a final report upon conclusion, with guidance from the Women Ski Coaches Association (WSCA) and USST mentors. 

A recently adopted proposal by the International Ski Federation (FIS) will aid the process of getting the fellowship coaches out on course, and hopefully incentivize other countries to invest in the development of female staff members. Brought forward by the U.S. Ski & Snowboard, the proposal adds a number of course access bibs per team for female service staff only. 

Current U.S. Ski Team D-Team coach, Kristen Bourne, participated in a similar program to the one proposed by the Trail to Gold Fellowship, though with funding for her trip to the World Cup coming from the Women’s Sports Foundation VanDerveer Fellowship. Bourne spent two weeks as an intern on the World Cup, gaining invaluable international level experience and knowledge. In an email to FasterSkier about Bourne’s time on the World Cup, USST Program Director Chris Grover wrote, “We have a U.S. Ski & Snowboard program-wide goal, and a cross-country specific goal, to drastically improve gender equity in our coaching and technician staff, so this opportunity was perfectly aligned with this mission.” The Trail to Gold Fellowship also fits squarely within that mission and both Grover and WSCA’s Maria Stuber are working to help make the program a successful reality. 

While initial funding for the Trail to Gold Fellowship will come from the Olympic Women’s Cross-Country Book Project, the committee is working with the National Nordic Foundation (NNF) to expand the size and life of the fellowship. Led by a commitment of NNF Board members Kikkan Randall and Matt Whitcomb, NNF will work to gain donations that add to the Fellowship, increasing both the number of internships that can be awarded and the number of years that the program can exist. 

The Women’s Ski Coaching Association is also involved in this collaboration. Having helped with the funding to send Bourne to the World Cup last winter, the WSCA will have a representative on the Fellowship selection committee. The committee will also have representatives from the Trail to Gold book committee and the U.S. Ski Team. This committee will be in charge of selecting the Fellowship recipients.

Sue Long Wemyss, head of the Trail to Gold book committee, wrote to FasterSkier, “We, the book committee, look forward to more American women ski coaches and ski technicians having a very similar experience [to Bourne’s] of interning with the U.S. Ski Team at the World Cup this winter, and in winters to come. We are incredibly grateful to the USST leadership for their willingness to bring and mentor the selected women with them on a World Cup trip. We are also very appreciative for NNF’s support and help in making this program happen.” 

Applications for the Fellowship are open now and will close September 1st. The application can be found here or on the NNF website. 

The push for equal distance, within the U.S., began in earnest in 2020 when the lack of racing due to the pandemic gave Vermont’s St. Michael’s College coach, Molly Peters, more time to focus on the issue. “I’ve always been sort of bringing it up,” said Peters, “through the EISA,  I’ve tried to get it changed at the NCAA level before, but I put in a proposal, and slowly I was getting more and more support. But then when the pandemic hit, I finally sort of had the time to really put a lot of time into it.”

With the help and support of fellow EISA coaches, Peters started the Equal Distance Group and in May of 2021 the Ski Equal Group sent a letter to the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Cross Country Sport Committee urging them to adopt equal distance racing. The letter was signed by 23 prominent members of the nordic ski community, including Jessie Diggins and Bill Koch. 

Reflecting back, U.S. Ski Team Head Coach, Matt Whitcomb shared, “The first time Molly Peters brought this to my inbox I felt ambivalent. This was only two years ago. I’m embarrassed that I can’t claim to be an early adopter. However, the more it sat with me over the next months, and the more I reread Molly’s reasons, the more I warmed to it.” Whitcomb said he wasn’t sure exactly what sparked the movement at the FIS level but shared, “it was a popular topic of conversation last year on the World Cup, and in a FIS competitions format working group. It didn’t all just happen this spring, but I applaud FIS for having the spine to make a big change.”

On her part, Peters gives credit to both Whitcomb and U.S. Ski Team Program Director, Chris Grover, for their efforts to advance the proposal, saying, “I spoke to them both, numerous times and they kept me updated, which was amazing. And they’re the ones that really pushed it at the higher level.” 

For those not closely following the issue, the decision announced by FIS this spring might have come as a bit of a shock. Even to Peters, it came as a surprise. “It kind of came out of nowhere,” she said. “I mean, I knew that the U.S. had been pushing for it, on the domestic level. I’ve spoken at the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Congress twice and I’ve been talking to a lot of people within U.S. Ski and Snowboard about sort of how to get it moving up the chain. But I had no idea.” 

Peters said she knew that a FIS committee had formed to talk about the issue and then, “all of a sudden, I got an email or call maybe from Chris Grover like, ‘Hey, this is happening. You know, we’re pushing this hard. It’s looking like it’s gonna pass’ and I was kind of floored by that just because, I knew it had slowly, over the past year and a half, more and more races were equal and I’ve been pushing hard at every level I could possibly push at. But yeah, to go all the way for it to jump to the FIS level was a complete surprise and pretty amazing.”

U.S. Ski Team A-Team member, Julia Kern, wrote in an email to FasterSkier that she too was surprised by the seemingly sudden decision but through conversation with others she came to realize that, “if these decisions were tested first or implemented more slowly, it would take time and potentially not be as adopted. Instead, the decision was made and carried out across the board in all World Cups for the coming season.”

In a recent interview, FIS’s Cross-Country Race Director, Pierre Mignerey, spoke about the reaction to this decision. Mignerey said, “as expected, it created quite some discussions among the cross-country community. Some people were very happy and some were strictly against racing equal distances.” (FasterSkier’s Nat Herz wrote about the various perspectives on this issue during the 2022 Winter Olympics).

Mignerey expressed understanding for the opposition, saying, “It is understandable to see some resistance from athletes or coaches because it is a decision which may disturb their routines, their habits and pushes them to adapt their training plans and develop new strategies. But I’m convinced that it will be seen – or maybe is already seen – as a very logical and meaningful decision.” 

Whitcomb shared a similar sentiment, “That’s just how change goes; most humans don’t do it easily or well. But it’s going to be okay. And to those who say they are going to miss the five or 15 kilometer distances, I hear you. I will too. But we’re not forever locked into what distances we do, so much as the idea that we’ll be doing them together.”

In the same meeting that passed the proposal, the CCC decided on the race formats for the World Cup, U23 World Championships and Junior World Championships, as well as Youth Olympic Games. FIS has shared the 2022/23 World Cup race calendar which can be found here. 

Speaking from a coaching standpoint, Whitcomb talked about what this change will mean for the athletes. He started by saying, “to simplify things, you can look at the changes each gender will experience; women will be racing longer, and men will be racing shorter.” To prepare for this shift, “we’ll see some longer threshold sessions and time trials that women adopt, and the men will be navigating the demand for slightly higher race speeds, by working on finishing tactics.” 

He was also quick to point out that these changes have nothing to do with the athletes physiology, “the reason this change is happening is because we’re eliminating sexist programming, and not because anything has changed with physiology,” he said. “It began in the late 60’s or early 70’s because it was thought that women couldn’t handle the demands of such long efforts. The day this was discovered to be untrue became the first day this should’ve changed. To put the change in perspective, I think athletes who have done well on the World Cup will continue to do well. The change feels crazy, but I bet we’ll discover it isn’t.” 

As an athlete who will be racing these new distances, Kern shared, “It is definitely a big change I think for the women, because we go from racing 10 k to doubling the distance to 20 k, whereas the men only change by 5 k up or down in length. I think it will be interesting to see if this decision creates more specialization on the women’s side.”

Anticipating how she might navigate this shift, Kern reflected, “I personally think it will change how I approach the race schedule potentially, because a 20 k race can have much a larger toll on the body than a 10 k, so I could see myself having to pick and choose races more, especially with the full World Cup schedule this year.”

She added, “of course for me, as someone who prefers sprinting, a 20 k seems quite long, but on the flip side, I have really enjoyed racing 30 k races, so I am not sure how a 20 k will go, but I am excited to find out.”

From the FIS perspective, according to Mignerey, the debate was not about the capability of female cross-country skiers, but rather what the realization of equal distance racing would look like. He said, “In 2022, we should not have to discuss anymore if women are capable of racing the same distances, having the same rules and using the same courses as men. The discussion in the CCC was never about IF women are capable of racing the same distances and course profiles, but about how to implement it, for example into our sports community or into a TV product.”

Mignergy continued by saying, “from a global standpoint, I have the feeling that this decision is very well perceived by most people which are not directly or personally involved in cross-country skiing. And if you put things into perspective, the fact that this decision was so much discussed and named a ‘historical decision’ shows that this move was long overdue.”

At the domestic level, Peters felt that some of the resistance to the idea came from the fact that races at the World Cup level weren’t contested at equal distances between genders. With this decision from FIS, that no longer becomes a sticking point. U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s Cross-country Sport Coordinator, Adam St. Pierre, explained that, “the recently finalized Super Tour calendar had men and women racing the same distance in each race. This includes the races at U.S. Nationals in Houghton.”

At the time of writing, a decision about NCAA races had not yet been made but St. Pierre thought it was “likely” that they would also be run as equal distance. At the junior level, he explained, “The Junior Working Group has also discussed having boys and girls race equal distances, but hasn’t settled on what those distances should be for each age group (u16, u18, u20).” Based on a schedule for Midwestern junior national qualifier races, it appears that they have opted to adopt equal distance between genders, with a few 7.5 k events for all age groups and mostly 5 k for u16 skiers and 10 k for u18/u20.

Peters reflected, “it’s pretty amazing how fast that [came about] and I knew that would happen. I knew it would just be like a light switch. Like as soon as they did it up at the higher levels, it would just trickle down to everyone doing it.”

For Peters, this means her work is done. At least in regards to the Ski Equal push. “Really with skiing I’m kind of done,” she paused, “I mean, I would love to see The World University Games, (hosted in Lake Placid this year) and for some reason, they’re not going to be equal races. So, I have a few ideas on that.” But mostly, Peters is now switching her focus to cross-country running. “Cross country running for NCAA is also not equal,” she explained, “skiing was pretty much [unequal for] the whole world and, and it’s kind of crazy that running is actually equal at the world level but has not changed at the NCAA level. So I have a few proposals. I’ve written so many proposals, I can’t even tell you.”

Most of all Peters hopes this change within the ski racing world can be viewed through the lens of inclusivity. She concluded by saying, “I hope that we continue to move forward as a sport and I think that this is a huge part of [that]. You know, we want people to love skiing. We want them to see the sport as being inclusive. And I think that this is a huge step forward in that process.” 

Aware that this is a cross-country skiing publication, I should point out that this famous bike race is not totally without connection to our sport of focus here at FasterSkier. The event that ski fans might refer to as “the Tour” (the Tour de Ski) is the result of an idea allegedly generated in a Norwegian sauna by then International Ski Federation (FIS) cross-country race director, Jürg Capol and ski legend, Vegard Ulvang. Following the germination of this idea, Capol visited the Tour de France in 2006 before the first edition of the Tour de Ski. According to an FIS press release, “the goal of the trip was to gain valuable insight into the logistics, marketing implementation, television and internet production and accreditation services that are part of the organization of any world-class sports event consisting of multiple stages.” 

After his visit Capol remarked, “the logistical accomplishments of the local organizing committees at the Tour de France are truly remarkable… I am convinced that the organizers of the FIS World Cup Cross-Country could all learn a lot by reaching out to other sports and events in the future.” 

The logistics are just one of the many impressive things about the Tour de France, which saw its 109th edition start in Copenhagen on the first of the month. The spectators are another. Without having witnessed either race in person, I imagine the atmosphere at the Tour de France being somewhat akin to the Holmenkollen World Cup, only lasting three weeks as opposed to two days. 

To gain some insight on the roadside spectating experience, I reached out to a few people who made it there in person. 

Anna Gibson grew up watching the Tour de France annually with her family from their home in Wyoming. Gibson said, “even on TV, I could tell how physically and emotionally intense the Tour was. It has always impressed me. But getting to watch the Tour in person made me realize that the race is even more athletically impressive than I ever thought.” 

Consisting of 21 stages stretched over three weeks, bikers race a total distance of 3,328 kilometers (2,068 miles) with just two rest days. Though each stage varies in distance and elevation gain, even the ‘easiest’ of days look challenging on paper.

Sophie Stuber was on her own multi-day bike adventure with a friend, and planned a route overlap with the Tour in a few places. “It definitely gives you such an appreciation for what they do because our tour days were basically half or a third of the length of a stage and the [pros] climb up 11% grades literally twice as fast. And our days felt hard,” she added. 

Aside from appreciating the overwhelming physical performances of the riders and the obvious excitement of watching the athletes ride by, spectating at the Tour is a fully immersive experience. As Gibson explained, “What you don’t see on TV is everything that happens before and after the riders pass through… The entire day is a party for everyone involved, whether they watch in town, or camp on the side of the mountain the previous night and picnic all day beforehand, or ride up the climb earlier in the day to find a spot to spectate.”

Gibson chose the latter option for Stage 11 (which turned out to be a pivotal race day as two-time Tour winner Tadej Pogačar from Slovenia lost nearly three minutes to his rival Jonas Vingegaard of Denmark who currently wears the yellow jersey). The portion of the stage that Gibson rode included 30 miles and 7,700 feet of climbing from Saint Jean de Marienne to the summit of the Col du Galibier. Gibson said, “although this segment was just the middle section of the stage for the pros, this was amongst the most challenging rides of my life, and unquestionably the most fun.” 

The racers aren’t the only ones getting encouragement from the crowds, Gibson said, “I even got small tastes of what it must be like to be in competition, as some of the crowd hollered ‘allez’ or ‘femme’ or ‘bravo’ as I laboriously pedaled onward. People waved flags for me and made tunnels. The energy was infectious, and by the time I reached the top and gently laid my bike down on the rocks, exhausted and exhilarated, I was doing the same for the other random people reaching the summit.” 

Waiting for the riders to arrive, Gibson talked to fellow fans from all over the world. With no cell service available, anticipation was high to see how the race was unfolding. Gibson said, “It turned out to be a very exciting stage, with small groups of riders separated by several minutes. People (including me) went absolutely berserk watching the race unfold before their eyes. A few of my idols rode through, crusted in salt from the afternoon heat. Seeing them do their thing in person was legendary!”

With the racers through, the crowds also had to make their descent, which Gibson described as “epic.” She said, “I assumed a position in what was essentially a civilian peloton, ripping down turn after turn. Returning to Valloire at the base of the climb, I came across a big screen broadcasting the end of the stage in the cobbled center plaza. The pace was packed and the party went on.” 

Though she only watched three of the twenty-one stages, Gibson said, “I can imagine the party goes on in this same manner for the whole three weeks of the Tour. It is a production. And seriously one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.” 

After such a testimony, I’m ready to add in-person Tour de France viewing to my bucket list. For the time being however, the screen experience will have to suffice. 

With 76 hours, 33 minutes and 57 seconds on the cumulative race clock for leader Jonas Vingegaard, only one stage remains before the 2022 Tour de France comes to an end- on the Champs Élysées in Paris on Sunday. Lucky for me, the race watching opportunities don’t end there as the first edition of the Tour de France Femmes kicks off the same day.

Coinciding with the Eastern Regional Elite Group (REG) camp, around 40 top Eastern juniors boosted the race attendance numbers. NENSA’s Competitive Program Director, Justin Beckwith, explained that this year’s edition was the third open event they’ve co-hosted with Craftsbury and it was the best attended. Beckwith said, “It’s exciting to see the community out cheering and of course to have elites from CGRP (Craftsbury Green Racing Project) and SMST2 (Stratton Mountain T2), with three [U.S.] Ski Teamers in the mix, Ben [Ogden], Will [Koch] and Sydney [Palmer-Leger].” As Lost Nation Roll was the first race out of the seven in the NENSA series, it was also the debut moment for the podium cheese provided by Cabot, which was certainly a highlight. 

On the men’s side, Ogden (SMST2) topped the podium, finishing in a time of 23:25.3. Brian Bushey (University of Utah) came in second, +11.9 seconds behind Ogden. Finn Sweet (Craftsbury Ski Club/UVM) completed the podium, in third place (+13). The 6 k U16 boys competition was won by Micah Bruner of SMS (13:04.9).

For the women, Margie Freed of CGRP took top honors, with a finish time of 26:29.6. Behind her, Evelina Sutro of SMST2 finished second (26:55). In third position, Kelsey Dickinson, also of CGRP, finished in 27:04.7. Ruth Krebs, skiing for Craftsbury Ski Club, won the U16 girls race in 15:39.3. 

Beckwith extended thanks to the race hosts, saying, “Craftsbury’s track and their amazing community / race crew make hosting a race easy and fun.” 

Up next in the series is the first of three hill climbs, the Rollins Roll up Mt. Kearsarge in Warner, New Hampshire on August 21st. About the upcoming event Beckwith said, “While we know we will have a strong junior showing we are really hoping to boost masters participation in our three hill climbs throughout the series (Rollins, Climb to the Castle, and Mt. Greylock).” As incentive, Beckwith explained that there will be a special overall prize for the best two of three placements for masters from Allagash Brewing. 

Taking place the same day as the Lost Nation Roll, was NENSA’s second Learn-to-Roll event of the 2022 summer season. Spearheaded by NENSA Youth & Introductory Program Director, Kait Miller, the clinic provided an opportunity for any skier looking to try their hand at rollerskiing for the first time. 

Miller explained that over the course of the summer she hopes to add a few more Learn-to-Roll opportunities in combination with scheduled rollerski races. She said, “So far the Lost Nation Roll is the only event we’ve done this with and it seems to be a good format with some clinic participants showing up early to watch the races.” 

Capping off an action-packed day, skiers headed to Craftsbury village for a little time on natural snow. Emerging from Craftsbury’s summer snow storage, the strip was fashioned into a jump course which saw some great aerial moves. 

Full results from the Lost Nation Roll race can be found here. More information on upcoming NENSA rollerski events are available here.

Occurring annually on the 4th of July, and touted as the toughest 5 k on the planet, the 94th edition of the Mount Marathon race took place this past Monday in Seward, AK. Needless to say, the race is a storied tradition, beginning with its first “official” running in 1915. Over the years, participation has increased to such an extent that these days there are a number of complex ways for race entrants to register, including selection through a lottery system, petition for a race spot, or even buying a bib at a last-minute live auction. 

There is no set course up the mountain itself. Racers start on city streets, at sea level, and run through town for half a mile before starting the climb and heading straight up the mountain. During the climb, athletes cover roughly 2,675 vertical feet of climbing in less than a mile (0.9 to be exact). Once they’ve crossed the timing mat around the false summit at Race Point, they turn around and descend that same steep slope via a slightly different route. A junior boys and girls race is also run, in which the participants only ascend partway up the mountain before turning around.

This steep and challenging course has seen a number of nordic skiers succeed, including current men’s record holder, David Norris (41:26). Norris has won the race all three times he entered and took the record from mountain master, Kílian Jornet (41:48). Four-time Olympian, Nina Kemppel, holds the record for most race wins at an impressive nine victories. And until this year, three-time Olympian, Todd Boonstra was the oldest victor at age 41. However, at the conclusion of the 2022 edition of Mount Marathon, that crown went to a new champion. 

The men set off at 11 a.m. local time and Max King of Bend, Oregon, took this year’s victory in a time of 43:37. At the age of 42, he became the oldest winner in the race’s long history. 

Behind King, APU skier Thomas O’Harra placed second in his Mount Marathon debut. “I really didn’t expect to do as well as I did,” shared O’Harra. “It’s such a strong field, even without David [Norris] racing this year.” 

Just a few weeks before O’Harra took top spot in the Bird Ridge Hill Climb, so he had confidence heading into the uphill section of Mount Marathon. “I knew that I was in good shape for the climb at least, after Bird Ridge, so I figured that I could be in the top three to the top and then the downhill was a total unknown to me. I practiced it once, a week before the race, but I’ve never raced a downhill like that before so I had no idea what to expect.”

Plummeting down the scree slope, O’Harra said his main goal was to stay on his feet and not get hurt. “I was shocked that I was still in second coming off the mountain and suffered my way down the road to the finish, where I managed to sneak under 45 minutes, which was a kind of secondary, if-it-goes-well goal,” said O’Harra. “[It was a] super fun time though, the closest running race I’ve ever done to the Birkie, and I’m stoked to come back and race again next year!”

Canadian skier and current Ute (athlete at the University of Utah), Sam Hendry, finished second behind Norris in 2021. This year, Hendry placed 7th with a time of 47:39. Hendry shared that this year’s Mount Marathon “was a bit of a disappointment.” He continued, “I finished second last year and was really hoping for a strong result again. With some busy travel getting up to Alaska, I didn’t have the best preparation and my legs were just a little off.” Hendry raced both the Vertical Kilometer (VK) and 26 k at the Broken Arrow Skyrace mid-June and placed fourth in both, besting King by nearly a minute in the 26 k. Hendry said, “I had some good results there, and plan to add some more running competitions to the calendar for later in the summer. I really enjoy getting some competitions in during the summer and getting to feel stressed and nervous.” 

New U.S. D-Team member and APU skier, Micheal Earnhart, finished his day in 15th (49:45). He wrote to FasterSkier, “I wasn’t stoked with my results by any means but I am happy that I’m at a point in my career where top-15 at Mount Marathon can be a bad day.” Earnhart was quick to praise his teammate’s success saying, “My main takeaway was how impressive it was to see my APU teammate, and race rookie, Thomas O’Harra get second place. Definitely a strong day for APU and skiers in general which is always fun to see.”

Fellow U.S. Ski Team athlete Luke Jager was shortly behind Earnhart in 18th.

With the men’s race concluded, the focus turned to the women, who started at 2 p.m. local time. (The men and women now race in the flagship afternoon slot in alternate years.) Breaking the seven-year-old women’s record, Allie McLaughlin of Colorado earned the victory in a time of 47:09. Previously held by Swedish runner, Emelie Forsberg, with a time of 47:48, McLaughlin created a margin of 39 seconds in her favor. 

Rosie Frankowski, who finished 4th in 2021, and is perhaps one of the fastest climbers out there, came in sixth this year (53:19). Racing Mount Marathon for the first time, newly named U.S. Ski Team A-Team member, Novie McCabe placed 8th (56:27). About her race, McCabe shared, “Mount Marathon was crazy! So hard, but a very cool experience for sure. I’m pretty happy with it. I was nervous about the downhill and was honestly pretty happy with myself for just doing something a bit out of my comfort zone.” 

Kendall Kramer of UAF finished just outside the top-ten in 11th position (57:12). Kramer finished 9th last year (56:50) and was the junior girl’s race champion in 2018 (34:05). 

Full race results of all the Mount Marathon events can be found here. 

In other racing news, U.S.A. Track and Field Mountain Running Championships (USATF) in Wilmington, NY at the beginning of June saw two 2022 Beijing Olympians competing. Sophia Laukli finished third in a time of 1:29:03., and Caitlin Patterson came in sixth (1:35:52.3). Results for that event can be found here. 

The Loon Mountain Race hosted Vertical U.S. Mountain Championships on July 10th, which a number of nordic and biathlon athletes attended. Alex Lawson representing Craftsbury Green Racing Project finished third, and posted the second fastest time on the “Upper Walking Boss,” a 40% grade ski hill for a half-mile at the end of the race.

Jake Brown (also of CGRP) had the second fastest time on the “Upper Walking Boss” and finished 9th overall. Full results for the event can be found here.

The Cirque Series mountain race circuit kicks off this coming Saturday (July 16th) at Brighton, UT. With a schedule of six U.S. based races taking place over the next few months nordic ski fans should keep an eye out for familiar names near the top of the results sheet.

To help fans get to know these new(er) faces, FasterSkier is doing a series of interviews, providing insights into the factors that have contributed to development, progress, and growth for these athletes last season. In this installment, we talk with Will Koch following his nomination to the U.S. Ski Team on its D-Team. 

Koch grew up in Vermont and is now a member of the University of Colorado Ski Team, where he will be entering his junior year this coming fall. Son of Olympic Silver-Medalist, Bill Koch, Will began his racing career in the New England program named after his father (the Bill Koch League) and attended high school at Stratton Mountain School. 

During the 2019/20 ski season, Koch qualified to compete at the Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne, Switzerland where he earned a bronze medal in the 10 k classic. In 2022, racing at World Juniors in Lygna, Norway Koch finished 13th in the 10 k classic, 15th in the skate sprint, and anchored the 4×5 k relay team, helping to secure bronze for Team USA.

Ella Hall/Faster Skier: Can you give us a little introduction, where are you from? When did you start skiing? What was your relationship with skiing growing up?

Will Koch: I’m from Peru, Vermont, which is a tiny little town in Southern Vermont, just like 80 people as a population. And I’ve been living there since I was two years old. I got into skiing when I was super young, because my dad was a professional ski racer, Bill Koch. So I actually started skiing before I was even able to walk – nine months old on a beach in Hawaii was my first time on skis. Since then, I’ve just been pretty much training.

I grew up in a really vibrant ski community: starting as a youth, then Stratton Mountain School for my high school years, and now I’m at University of Colorado at Boulder. And this is my first year on the [U.S. Ski Team]. So that’s super exciting. 

FS: As the daughter of a three-time Olympian I can maybe relate to the potential challenges of being the child of a successful ski racer… so acknowledging that, can you talk a little bit about your dad’s role in your skiing career? 

WK:  I definitely get that question quite a bit about like, you know, is it stressful or pressure to have your dad being like, Olympian and everything. Honestly, I think that my dad does a really good job of not having expectations for me, which is really nice. My dad totally recognizes that skiing is awesome and everything, but that there’s a lot more to life than skiing at the same time. He’s very much left the coaching to my actual coaches, but at the same time, he’s always there to give advice when I want it.

He’s obviously like, been there, done that with everything that I’m given going through in terms of skiing, so I think it’s really inspiring to have a person like that always around when I need it, but it’s really awesome that it doesn’t feel like a burden. It’s really an opportunity.

FS: How was the transition from high school at Stratton Mountain School (SMS) to college skiing at the University of Colorado (CU)? Both in terms of training but also general life changes? What drew you to CU?

WK: One of the biggest reasons that I wanted to go out west for college was that I loved the mountains out west. And I also really liked the people out there. I think they’re super open and fun. I also think that being at a PAC 12 conference school comes with certain advantages as far the resources available in the athletic departments. On top of that, I think CU had a really top level nordic team compared to certain schools that I was looking at. So those were all factors that made me want to go out there, and I definitely never regretted that choice once I was up there. I’ve been loving it for my two years, it’s a lot of fun. [There’s] a really good mix on the ski team, I think,  of having fun, but also being serious about training. 

I’d say, as far as training, transitioning from high school to college one difference was the altitude. When I first went up to altitude in Boulder, and was training up there, I really thought that I could just keep doing exactly the same volume and workouts that I was doing in Stratton. But I put myself in a little bit of a hole when I first got out there, and then learned from that and realized that it’s a little more taxing on the body. But once I dialed it back, training wise, I was able to get some real fitness benefits from the altitude. Now that I’ve been out there for two years, I was able to have a really good fitness year this past season and [make] kind of a breakthrough in my skiing. I think part of that is being in altitude and building fitness with a really strong team. 

In general, I found that the college schedule allowed me to have more flexibility in terms of when I trained and it’s easier to do two sessions a day in college compared to high school, just because you spend a little bit less time in the classroom. You have a little more flexibility in how you structure your day.

FS: By my count you’ve been on five different international racing trips, including the Youth Olympic Games (YOG). What were some of the highlights from those experiences, particularly in terms of how they supported your development and goals? 

WK: Yeah, of all the international trips I’ve been on, definitely the Youth Olympics stands out as the coolest one and the most memorable. YOG is pretty different from World Juniors, in terms of it’s a fair amount less intense, I would say and more about having fun. And yet, even though it’s less intense, it’s the same level of competition, either way, you’re up against the best people in the world.

I think that’s what I really loved about the Youth Olympics, it was fun to win the medal there and everything, but it was also mainly just a really cool experience. That was my first time meeting people from a lot of different countriesI still have my friends from Kazakhstan and Australia from the Youth Olympics, which I love. And, of course, that was also before COVID was really a thing, that was also a time when we were able to do a little bit more socializing on international trips. 

I think that those [international] trips are really crucial in development, just to really see  that next level of competition that you’re going to be up against, and to really see that every second counts. In the Youth Olympics race where I got my bronze, it was two seconds between me and second place, and I was about five seconds from being back in eighth place. It was just ridiculous how tight it was. That just kind of goes to show how you really need to be thinking about getting those small gains where you can, and that the rest of the competition in the world is out there doing the same thing.

FS: So you’ve just been named to the U.S. Ski Team D-Team, can you reflect on how that feels and maybe what is most exciting to you about this opportunity?

WK: It’s definitely pretty validating to be named after being kind of on the edge for a few years now. It’s exciting. At the same time, though, it’s also basically almost the same training group that I’ve been training with for years, now that me, Walker [Hall] and Michael [Earnhart] are all on there.

Being at my first US Ski Team camp (in Bend), I was kind of looking around, and I was like, Hey, this is really not that different from NTG, three years ago, when we all first made that. So it’s really cool to see how we all progress together. I’d say, making the team, it’s nice and everything, but it’s also really just one more step in development that we’re all taking together, which is really fun. 

FS: What are some of your goals for the upcoming ski season?

WK: I would love to make a debut on the World Cup if that worked out. It’s obviously a really competitive scene right now for Team USA to make it there, and getting picked is by no means guaranteed. I think that’d be a really good next level experience to have. I’d also like to get on the podium at NCAA’s. 

FS: Sounds like you made it out to Bend for the annual spring U.S. Ski Team camp there, and now are you back with SMS. What does the rest of your summer/fall look like?

WK: For the rest of the summer, I will be in Stratton training with the SMS T2 team. It’s pretty exciting, because we should have a lot of really fast guys on the US Ski Team coming out here to join our training group, which I think will be awesome, having grown up in Vermont, to get to show a bunch of people how we do it over here. I’ll be here until mid-August and then go back to Colorado and start school and training with the CU Ski Team.

The camp’s attendees earned a spot on this trip after selection by the U.S. Ski & Snowboard (USSS) based on their performances at last year’s Senior Nationals in Soldier Hollow, UT and/or other USSS sanctioned races. Hailing from all over the country, 13 athletes made their way to Canada for a week of training and exploration. 

Six years after Junior World Championships were last held on North American soil (Soldier Hollow, UT 2017) – an event which resulted in a historic bronze medal from Katharine Ogden in the 5/5 k skiathlon and bronze in the women’s 4 x 3.3 k relay – the upcoming races in Canada offer an exciting opportunity. Additionally, the 2023 World University Games will be taking place in the U.S. this year, in Lake Placid, NY in January.

U.S. Ski & Snowboard Cross-Country Sport Development Manager Bryan Fish, explained in an email what this might mean for the American juniors. “Our teams have become very good at traveling well and executing overseas, however our first Junior World Ski Championship medals became a reality in 2017 when Park City, UT hosted Jr Worlds. Those home-field championships helped spark the successful trajectory of USA cross-country skiing. We are trying to build a similar positive environment for these 2023 Championships.” 

In addition to Fish, the camp’s coaching staff was comprised of U.S. Development Team Coach Greta Anderson, Alex Jospe from Stratton Mountain School, and Naomi Kiekintveld from Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center.

After the recent conclusion of the NTG camp, Fish felt that the camp’s objectives had been achieved. He wrote, “the camp successfully achieved the goals of familiarizing ourselves with all aspects of the venue, the race courses, and the living arrangements. It was a great group of athletes which made for positive and motivating training sessions. The Whistler rollerski track is on a portion of the Jr World race courses, so we spent a great deal of time getting comfortable on the track at speed to understand how the course flows.” 

Through collaboration with Nordiq Canada, the joint U.S./Canadian Spring National cross-country Championships were also held in Whistler in March, which Fish explained, “provide[d] our athletes with true on-snow race experience on these courses.”

As for the athletes’ perspective, in a blog post written for NNF, Midwest junior Cooper Camp reflected that for him, “one of the most valuable parts about this camp was being able to ski with the best juniors in the nation. Not only being able to get quality training in with each other, but also skiing behind others and learning from what they do, is one of the biggest benefits from camps like these.” 

Although the athletes have returned home to their respective clubs, there may be more opportunities for them to train together before the summer is over with both Regional and National Elite Group camps still to come. As to who will be returning to Whistler to represent the U.S. at the Jr/U23 World Ski Championships starting January 27th, 2023, both athletes and fans will have to wait until the conclusion of Senior Nationals (Houghton, MI) at the beginning of January before the team will be announced. 

For an on-the-ground look at the recent camp, a recap video made by coach Alex Jospe, can be found here. 

The first woman cross-country skier to receive this honor was Martha Rockwell, who was inducted in 1986. Thirty-four years later, Rockwell’s teammate and a trailblazer in the sport, Alison Owen-Bradley was admitted to the Hall of Fame as a member of the Class of 2020.  

The list of Owen-Bradley’s accomplishments is lengthy. A brief glance at her race results highlights her prowess as an athlete, beginning around 1970 when she competed at World Championships in Czechoslovakia at the age of sixteen. Speaking to this formative experience, Owen-Bradley said, “I was so involved in sport and loved the sports that are now pretty common for girls, but there wasn’t really a place for it [yet], and so we made our own places. I got to go to the national team camp with the U.S. Ski Team and then Europe and see these women racing, and really fit, and loving their sports and it was like, yeah I want this life…

“It heightened my world view of what was possible for a young girl from Washington to pursue.” 

Owen-Bradley went on to represent the United States at two Olympics (Sapporo 1972 and Lake Placid 1980). In 1978 in Telemark, WI she won the first-ever women’s World Cup cross-country race (although FIS categorizes this race as a “test” event). At the conclusion of the 1978/79 race season, Owen-Bradley finished seventh in the FIS World Cup standings, the highest ranking for a U.S. woman for the next 33 years. The following season, she finished second in the Holmenkollen 10k in Oslo, Norway. “We had tremendous results [in that era] that I think sometimes aren’t known, or they’re overlooked,” reflected Owen-Bradley. 

But numbers on a page are only half of the story. Owen-Bradley’s contribution to skiing, particularly to women’s skiing, goes far beyond her race results. Growing up in Wenatchee, WA as a member of an active family, Owen-Bradley started nordic skiing after her father saw an ad in the paper for the local cross-country ski team. “He said, ‘Hey, let’s go try that because we love running and hiking and [other outdoor sports],’ so we started that and it was all new,” explained Owen-Bradley. Not long after, Owen-Bradley became the first girl to compete at Junior Nationals. She relayed the story of how at the pre-race meeting the organizers wouldn’t let her compete, stating that “this is a race for boys.”

A team leader from the Pacific Northwest (PNSA) delegation responded, “show me that rule.” Since that rule couldn’t be found in writing, Owen-Bradley was allowed to compete. “I raced and then, the next year, and from then on, they had a place for girls,” she explained. “It was a fun time because women weren’t racing marathons, they weren’t really allowed or incorporated into the endurance sports world, and it was just fun to watch it [explode] like popcorn, it was happening everywhere,” she said, speaking to the rise of women competing in sports. “It was really fun to be there [at Junior Nationals] as the first girl, I think I was like 13 or 14 or something and almost everything you’re doing is new in your life, so that was just one more new thing.”

Owen-Bradley’s coach at the time was Herb Thomas, and it was he who presented Owen-Bradley her medal at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Thomas came from Middlebury to start the ski program in Wenatchee which she joined. “He let me do it. You know, he encouraged me. He broke open the door for me to do it,” said Owen-Bradley. In the years that followed, there were other men who played an integral role in Owen-Bradley’s success.

“At the beginning, for me, not having a lot of opportunity in sport, I can say that the opportunities I did have came from men,” she explained. “There were no women breaking trail for me, you know, I didn’t have them as coaches, I didn’t have women cheering me on.” 

In particular, Owen-Bradley singled out Marty Hall in her acceptance speech, saying he was perhaps the most important person to thank in regards to her success. She shared an example of how when they traveled to Europe to compete, the first U.S. women’s national team coach was given the runaround by the European coaches with wrong addresses, no translator, and the more. It soon became clear that something needed to change and so Hall headed to Europe to take over. “He really made a place for us,” Owen-Bradley explained, “They didn’t hire him in the first place, because he was a bit strong and maybe not sensitive and everything, but he was strong in the coaches meetings. He read the rule books, he knew what was going on, legally, and he made them speak English.”

At a time when women’s racing was just being established this was more important than ever. “He kept a place for us,” said Owen-Bradley, “that we had a possibility to get good and we weren’t on the sidelines, we were right in the middle of it all, he knew what was going on and he made a place for us on the world stage.”

For his part, Hall corroborated this story and added, “my athletes meant everything to me. I would fight to the death for them.” When asked about Owen-Bradley specifically, Hall described her as “a woman before her time.” He said that she “had all the components.”

“Some of the things that she got pushed into or taken to go way beyond when she should have been ready, but it didn’t bother her,” he reflected. “She didn’t crack, never had any problems doing what she was supposed to do.” Hall shared that it is great to coach an athlete like this. “She understands movement real well, she was good at anything she did as an athlete,” he said. 

When asked about important elements in the progress of women’s skiing, Owen-Bradley responded, “I really appreciate the men who said ‘no, come on women do this. It’s really fun. There’s no reason women can’t do this stuff.’” She emphasized the important role these men played saying,  “I really appreciate the men in my life, who opened the door, kept them open, kept the naysayers away- and then as things have evolved and grown, obviously, naturally, women are taking more of a role in allowance in helping other girls and women do that.” She went on to say, “and that’s awesome. That’s, you know, the natural progression, and I love to see that. And that’s why, with US NOW, the Olympic women’s group, taking initiative, giving awards, leading the way for other women and showing that we are a leader in sport and with each other. So that’s the natural evolution of it that I see.”

In her acceptance speech at the Hall of Fame ceremony, Owen-Bradley reflected on how much progress there has been in women’s skiing since she first began saying, “where are we going to be in another 50 years?…[it’s] so exciting to think of the barriers we break.” Particularly in light of the recent Olympic results from the U.S. women’s team, Owen- Bradley said, “even now, it makes me so teary eyed, to think about that in in one lifetime, my lifetime, to go from girls not having sports, not having a place, to being a shining star on the world stage of a sport that that was there was no place for girls. It’s so fulfilling.” She gave a shout-out to Kikkan Randall as well, saying, “and the icing on the cake of that was Kikkan doing the absolute best coverage, covering her teammates… She brought so much understanding and furthered everyone’s knowledge.” 

Having witnessed the sport achieve these major milestones, Owen-Bradley pondered the future of cross-country skiing, “You know, it just feels like my life journey of being in sport, and being in cross-country especially, where will we be in the next year? That’s for this generation to lead now. And where are we going and what’s next for the women, but also the men, of our nordic community and sports community?”

She continued by saying:

“It’s not an easy road ever, but you know, that’s why we’re in it because we challenge ourselves and if we didn’t want challenge, we wouldn’t be in sport. And what you do is you come up against your weaknesses and you figure out how to get through them or you don’t get better… I mean, that’s the cool thing about sport is you test yourself and then you get better.” 

When asked what it means to both her and to the cross-country sport community, to receive recognition for her achievements and to be the second female cross-country skier inducted to the Hall of Fame, Owen-Bradley replied, “Well, it is interesting that I’m getting the recognition now.” She explained that they give the award for different categories and said, “maybe part of the recognition comes from, you know, a lifetime involvement in skiing. I think maybe I cross over a little bit, you know, my life has been very influenced by and I participate in a lot of ways in cross-country skiing.” She continued by saying, “I think it’s important because it shows where we’ve been, and hopefully, where we’re going. So, it’s fun to get the award.” Owen-Bradley acknowledged that her “life has moved on.”

Though skiing still occupies much of her time, “I’m focused on a lot of things,” she explained, “ I didn’t wait for [the award] to happen to make my life good or anything. I’m doing a lot of really great things that I enjoy.” 

These days, Owen-Bradley can be found near Boise, Idaho on a small farm she calls her “sanctuary”. Still quite active, she is an engaged participant in a program called, Starting Strength. “It’s a weightlifting program that I have found a lot of benefits for myself,” she explained. Additionally, Owen-Bradley is very involved with her family; she has three grandkids and a daughter who coaches skiing in Bozeman, Montana. “It’s really fun to have that continuity,” she said, referring to generations of skiing families. “I think it really helps to have grown up in it, and [to have] parents that know about it and can pass it on and build it generation to generation.” 

Speaking more broadly to the growth of a cross-country ski community and culture in the U.S., Owen-Bradley emphasized the importance of recognizing the contributions of those who have encouraged and shaped this growth. “There’s a lot of people that have [put] their life-force energy on building the ski culture in our country, and that’s why I like to see more awards given.” She explained that she is working on nominating another woman for the Hall of Fame to “shine the light that the women’s lives have been growing the sport and yet [we] only have two women in the Hall of Fame after sixty years.” Given the numerous different categories that you can be nominated for, Owen-Bradley has a list of ideas and possibilities.

“There’s a lot of women that deserve a lot of credit for where the women’s program is now. Men too, but I’m focused on the women.” 

To help fans get to know these new(er) faces, FasterSkier is doing a series of interviews, providing insights into the factors that have contributed to development, progress, and growth for these athletes last season. In this installment, we talk to Sammy Smith about her participation and success in numerous sports, the charity she and her siblings founded during COVID, and her nomination to the U.S. Ski Team D-Team. 

At Junior World Championships in Lygna Norway this past February, Smith finished 5th in the skate sprint and 11th in the 15k skate. She also finished 10th in the skate sprint at Senior Nationals in Soldier Hollow in January 2022 racing amongst the senior women’s field. 

Not only is Smith a successful cross-country skier, but she has also achieved impressive results in running, soccer and freestyle skiing. During her freshman year of high school Smith won the 1,600 and 3,200 meter events at the Class 5A Idaho state meet, leading her to be a finalist for the USA TODAY High School Sports Awards. 

Ella Hall/FasterSkier: You’re sixteen, does that mean you’re a junior in high school?

Sammy Smith: I actually just finished my Sophomore year of high school (our school got out last week), so I will be a junior in the fall.

FS: And do you live part of the year in Boise and spend the winters in Sun Valley?

SS: Yes, I live in Boise for the fall, spring, and summer. Although during the summer I am often gone a lot, and we frequently go up to Sun Valley. I go to Boise High School for the fall and spring, then I move to Sun Valley for skiing for the winters and while I’m there, I go to the (Sun Valley) Community School.

FS: From what I’ve gathered you’re involved in quite a lot of sports, can you tell me which sports you competed in this year?

SS: Currently I cross-country ski, play soccer, run track and cross-country, and freestyle ski. This year, I competed in all of the above, except freestyle skiing. Unfortunately, I sustained an injury in the late fall that prohibited me from jumping so I was unable to compete in freestyle. My track season was also cut short because of an injury but I’m healthy now.

Soccer and nordic are definitely my two primary sports. For soccer, I am actually in the US U17 Women’s Youth National Team training pool. I was selected as an alternate for the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) tournament this spring. That meant I only participated in the pre-camp, then returned home prior to the tournament kicking off. I aspire to compete for the full US Women’s National Team (WNT) one day, and hopefully will have the opportunity to represent my country in two different sports.

FS: How and when did you start nordic skiing?

SS: I initially got involved in nordic skiing because of my older sister. When I was five, my parents had signed my sister up for SVSEF’s devo program, and naturally I wanted to do everything she was doing, so I began to pick up the sport as well.

FS: I read that you and your siblings started a charity during the pandemic, can you tell me a little about that?

SS: My siblings and I founded GO BIG, a 501 (c3) certified charity, during the spring of 2020. GO BIG stands for Giving Opportunity By Inspiring Gratitude. Through the charity we aim to make a positive impact on less privileged youth in our area. We have been so fortunate to grow up the way we have, we want to help those who haven’t. We work to provide these kids with mentorship, as well as resources to help them – like books and other educational tools, and sporting equipment. 

Our goal is to inspire a sense of gratitude in these youth because science has shown that those who experience a sense of gratitude are more likely to feel good about themselves and pass that feeling along to others, thus helping spread good through the community and beyond.

FS: You had some pretty exciting results at World Juniors in Lygna Norway this winter, can you talk a bit about the contributing factors/support system that helped you achieve those results?

SS: I owe a huge thank you to my coaches in Sun Valley, especially Rick Kapala, because he and I made a really thorough and thoughtful training plan going into the Championships. I think having such a detailed plan allowed me to come in more prepared, and in better form than I could have imagined. 

I was fortunate enough to have Paul Smith as my wax tech who worked a lot with me on ski selection, and taught me what to look for in a pair of skis throughout the season, and how to decide between them when it seems like the glide is comparable. 

Going into World Juniors, I had a lot of new skis from Salomon, and I didn’t really know a lot about them, but fortunately Paul was incredibly helpful. I relied on him heavily to help me test and decide how to organize my fleet before I left. And once we were in Norway, he made sure I was testing the appropriate skis, and helped me choose which pair I was racing on each day. I’m incredibly grateful for Paul’s help, and the support from Salomon. 

In addition, the U.S. Ski Team support system was unlike anything I had ever been part of before. Our pre-camp was designed perfectly to help us peak for our races, and once we arrived in Lygna, we had access to even more resources. It truly was a trip designed to help young skiers have the best races of their lives.

FS: What excites you most about being named to the U.S. Ski Team?

SS: I’m most excited about the incredible opportunities that come with being named to the U.S. Ski Team. Being able to train with the best skiers in the country, and some of the best in the world, is an unparalleled opportunity for growth and development. I think when you are put in an environment where you are surrounded by people who share a common passion and common goals, naturally you improve. I can already feel the great sense of community and support from the more experienced skiers and it makes me so excited to train and race alongside them in the future. 

I also think the U.S. Ski Team has invaluable resources and tools to help all the athletes become the best version of themselves, and I love to compete and am always looking to improve, so that’s really exciting to me.

FS: What are some of your goals for the upcoming season?

SS:  I was really fortunate to have some great results at last year’s World Juniors, and I want to continue to build off of that for next season. So, my primary goal for the season is to finish top three at World Juniors.

FS: ​​Will you be able to join any upcoming USST camps this summer/fall or will you be primarily focused on your other sports until winter rolls around?

SS: It is certainly a priority of mine to get to some of the upcoming camps, but it’s always a balance, so right now I’m trying to figure out scheduling for both soccer and skiing.

I had the privilege of overlapping with Ogden for two years as teammates on the Dartmouth Women’s Ski Team, during which time I was undergoing my own personal, though distinctly less significant, reckoning with ski racing. Thus, when Ogden announced her retirement at the end of last month, I asked to be the one to write this piece, hoping to do justice to the story of a career that is as important in its low moments as it is at its heights. Ogden herself wrote an eloquently expressed reflection of her career on the SMS T2 blog which can – and should – be read here. 

Ogden began skiing at the tender age of two, after her family moved from Seattle to Vermont. Shortly thereafter her brother Ben was born and as Ogden explained it, “I was now living in Vermont, no longer an only child, and so I spent a lot of time with my dad, while my mom was having, you know, the baby. And my dad, once we moved back to Vermont, kind of re-engaged with the Nordic ski community and started coaching the local ski program.” Ogden’s father, John, has long been an active member in the Eastern ski community, most recently through his work with the timing company, Bullitt Timing, which he runs with a colleague. “Pretty much since I can remember, my dad has been coaching for [West River Sports] my childhood club, and bringing me to practices and he would also go to the local races and bring me along,” said Ogden. 

These early memories of ski racing instilled a strong sense of ski community within Ogden and given the high level of participation in Nordic skiing among her elementary school peers, Ogden explained that this was a big reason why she stuck with ski racing. “And, of course, my dad coaching the team,” she added, “Definitely he encouraged us to do it.” Racing with her best friends throughout elementary school and middle school, while participating in events like the Bill Koch Festival, played a big part in growing Ogden’s love for the sport. 

Entering high school, Ogden attended Stratton Mountain School in southern Vermont, the well-known private school which, according to its website, “provides a unique environment that offers each student the opportunity to pursue excellence in competitive winter sports and college preparatory academics.” Around the same time, Ogden was earning her first international starts, as she participated in the U18 Scandinavian Cup trips in 2013 and 2014. “That was kind of a cool progression up to World Juniors,” shared Ogden, “I think it’s very important, and honestly sometimes underrated in my opinion, to build up your international experience in that way.”

For at least one, if not both of the years, Ogden had also qualified for World Juniors but she explained that her coaches encouraged her to choose the U18 trip instead. “Sometimes there are really young kids who got to World Juniors and I think that it’s a bit of a missed opportunity, because those U18 team trips are still a really high level of competition,” Ogden said, “And a good way to be like with people your own age, which really improves the experience.” 

After having built some international racing experience, Ogden attended her first FIS World Junior Ski Championship in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 2015. “At that point, I had made a lot of good friends in the ski world,” shared Ogden, “I knew Julia Kern and Hailey Swirbul really well, so that was a blessing for me to have people that I knew and cared about and relied on in that type of situation being there for support. [It] makes the whole experience a lot more enjoyable and it takes a little bit of the pressure off to just be able to treat it as a fun trip.” 

This approach seemed to pay off as Ogden placed 11th and 6th in the individual races, besting some familiar names such as this year’s Tour de Ski winner, Natalia Neprayeava. “[It] was fun to go to a crazy country that I wouldn’t normally go to and be able to experience that, while also getting to focus on some higher level racing,” explained Ogden. Her second World Juniors appearance came in Rasnov, Romania the following year where she placed 13th in both individual races. 

In June of 2016, Ogden graduated from Stratton, and having applied to college but deferred her acceptance to Middlebury College – her father’s alma mater – she embarked on a gap year. Remaining at SMS, she began training more with the pro team (SMS T2) and focusing a little more seriously on ski racing. “That was definitely an interesting experience for me, it was a pretty mentally difficult year,” said Ogden, “it felt like a convergence of a lot of things in my life that were difficult for me to emotionally handle.” 

For one, the 2017 World Junior Championships would be held at Soldier Hollow in the US, an exciting prospect that simultaneously created pressure to perform for the American young athletes who would be in attendance. “There was a lot of hype about it being in the US, which was cool, don’t get me wrong, but I felt that – not by anyone else’s fault other than mine – but that I was putting a lot of pressure on myself because of that.”

Self-aware and reflective, Ogden was open about the difficulty of this time, “Because I’d had previous success at the other two World Juniors that I went to, it kind of felt like it was a lot of pressure on me for those races. On top of that, I didn’t have school to focus on anymore, so I was really not doing much other than skiing, which is not something I would recommend to anyone, even if you’re a professional skier.” Ogden stressed the importance of having something else to balance your attention, “whether it’s a job or school, or even just working on your self-marketing or whatever – something that takes some brain power that is not just directly related to training.” 

In addition to these pressures, Ogden’s father, who earlier had been diagnosed with cancer, was in worsening condition. “So that was also kind of weighing on me,” explained Ogden, “all of those things culminated into me not having a good time.” She shared that she has struggled with anxiety since she was young, but in 2017 it morphed into something that became unmanageable at times. (Read Ogden’s January 2020 narrative on her experience with severe anxiety here.)

“I couldn’t functionally live with it anymore,” said Ogden, “So at that point, I was really struggling to eat because the manifestation of my anxiety disorder was that it really caused me to have a lot of gastrointestinal distress and a really upset stomach, so it was difficult for me to fuel myself enough to train and I didn’t have a lot of energy, partly from not eating and partly from just being stressed all the time.” 

In Ogden’s own words it was “against all odds” that she made it through the week of racing at World Juniors in Soldier Hollow. However, to simply say she completed the races is a massive understatement. In the skiathlon event, Ogden became the first American to podium in an individual race at World Juniors, earning a bronze medal. Days later, Ogden helped propel the US relay team to a historic bronze medal performance in the 4 x 3.3 k event, setting a precedent for the many successful US junior performances in the ensuing years. 

Reflecting on this achievement, Ogden shared, “Because I haven’t really had a ton of podium results since then, on an international scale, that is something that my ski career often gets boiled down to. It’s really bittersweet for me because it was a really incredible achievement, especially the relay day, when I was able to work with three of my best friends to accomplish something pretty cool. I still have a lot of pride and such about that experience, but on the other hand, it’s really hard for me to remember that without remembering how awful I was feeling, and how that was really honestly one of the hardest parts of my life to date.”

Returning home to Vermont in early February, Ogden started just one other ski race that season, “I think I did one random Eastern Cup ski race that I ended up actually dropping out of,” she explained. “[After] that race I didn’t put on my skis or anything… I did not go for a ski or a run or do anything for the rest of that year, basically up until May.” At this point, Ogden thought her ski racing career might be over. However, the idea of collegiate skiing started to bring her back around. 

Rewind to early December 2016, before World Juniors, and Ogden and the SMS team were in Silver Star, BC for the season-opening Nor-Am events. “My dad was on that trip, because he was helping SMS with some waxing and logistics, and we talked about how I wasn’t very happy, how I wasn’t feeling well, and I was struggling to want to ski and ski race,” said Ogden. While she had accepted a spot at Middlebury, she explained that “no part of me really thought I would go to college.” Examining this feeling, she reflected, “I think part of SMS is that, it’s an interesting environment where sort of everyone’s expected to got to college, but on the other hand, the people who are having a lot of success in their respective sport are almost really expected not to go to college.”

Referring to the infamous US Ski Team “pipeline” and expectations for members of the national team at that time, Ogden said, “I honestly didn’t think a ton about going to college. From pretty early in my high school experience I was like, ‘I’m not gonna do that, I’m gonna be like Liz [Stephen] and Kikkan [Randall] and Andy [Newell],’ and I have so much respect for their ability to focus on skiing that much,” she added, “Like Jessie [Diggins], those people who are really emotionally and mentally healthy and ready enough to be able to accomplish what they did in the ski racing world, without distractions, it’s amazing to me.” 

As the race season was about to get underway, Ogden was reexamining her priorities. Among the many skiers and teams present for these Nor-Am races was the Dartmouth Women’s Ski Team (DWST), who were wrapping up their annual Thanksgiving camp at Silver Star. “I was kind of watching the Dartmouth team from afar,” said Ogden, “they were always smiling, and they were nor-pining (alpine skiing on nordic skis), and they were going on long skis together. And something about seeing that, I was like, ‘That seems like something I want.’” 

Recognizing this, though still not ready to fully commit, Ogden met with long-time Dartmouth coach Cami Thompson-Graves. Like many of the US Ski Team athletes, both alpine and nordic, who chose to attend Dartmouth, Ogden was drawn to the flexibility of the Dartmouth “D-plan”, and thought that perhaps she would take classes in the spring but continue ski racing full time in the winter. Breaking some rules with Middlebury, to whom she had already committed attendance, Ogden applied to Dartmouth that winter. When her acceptance letter arrived in the spring following World Juniors, she talked to Thompson-Graves again. “I was like, ‘I don’t really know what’s going to be the case by the time September comes around. I want to try to ski, but I’m going to ski for Dartmouth, I’m not going to ski for SMS or the national team.’” 

With this new plan in place, Ogden started to re-engage with training and the ski world. “That summer, I was back to training with Stratton some. I also worked at a preschool that summer, which I loved. I generally went on a bit of an upward trend,” she said. When fall rolled around, she showed up in Hanover unsure of what to expect. “When I got to Dartmouth, it was honestly life changing,” she said, “The team was incredible, full of inspiring and interesting and passionate women, people who were passionate about ski racing, yeah, but also a million other things, which was not something I’d really been exposed to. Stratton Mountain School is incredible in a ton of ways, and was instrumental in facilitating my ski career and getting me to where I got to, but that being said, there’s not a lot of diversity of opportunity there. Because it really is, as advertised, very focused on skiing and ski success.” 

Ogden explained that arriving at Dartmouth opened her eyes to the many possibilities that existed beyond the realm of ski racing. “When I got to Dartmouth, it was kind of the first time I’d been able to be like, holy cow, there’s so much else out there that I could be passionate about, not just skiing.” She detailed how the team of women her freshman year displayed the many ways in which one could be both an amazing ski racer and also completely invested in an opposite pursuit. “Lydia [Blanchet] for example, to be so excited about skiing and so talented as a ski racer, but then also sometimes, she would prioritize whitewater kayaking. Or, Taryn [Hunt-Smith] who was casually one of the best skiers on the team but also getting citations in every class and being pre-med… I think that was really eye opening to me.” 

With these role models and examples, Ogden allowed herself to pursue other things outside of skiing. She also devoted herself wholeheartedly to the team and racing collegiately and didn’t compete in any international races for those first two years of school. “My freshman year that was kind of on purpose,” she explained, “I just needed a break, and I just wanted to focus on college skiing.” In November of the following year, as she was warming up to the idea of returning to international racing, Ogden broke her hand. “I was like, man, I don’t need to do that, I’ll just ease into the season and get my hand healed. But in the process of not going to the U23 [Championships], I also got booted off the national team, because I didn’t do any international racing for two years at this point.” 

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Ogden. “I think in the moment I was sad about it, I had been on the development team for three years at that point, and I was a little bummed to lose that,” she shard, “But also, I wasn’t as sad about it as I expected to be and that next season, when I wasn’t on the national team, it was like a huge sigh of relief, if anything, because I felt a lot less pressure to perform.” 

However, the lack of international racing didn’t stop Ogden from achieving outstanding results. In 2018, as a freshman named to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) team for Dartmouth, she took the win in both events at the championships by astonishing margins. In addition she earned seven collegiate victories that season, landed on the podium ten times, and never finished lower than fourth place. The next year, recovering from a broken hand, Ogden finished on the podium in every collegiate race she entered, save for one fourth place finish at NCAAs. 

Moving into her junior year of college, Ogden found herself back on the international stage for the Tour de Ski (2019/2020) as well as for the Scandinavian Ski Tour. “It was kind of a perfect system for a college student because it was a ton of World Cup racing, but really condensed, into just two weeks of missed school,” she explained. In this way, Ogden was able to accrue eight and six World Cup starts from each event series respectively, making for fourteen international appearances after several seasons away. “That year, I got pretty inspired to pursue that a little bit more fully. So throughout the winter, I started making the decision that I wanted to ski more for the national team and for Stratton again, instead of Dartmouth, the next year, after my three years of skiing for Dartmouth, so that I could take the winter term off from school and try to do a few more World Cups because I was feeling really excited about that, and had some success, especially in the Tour de Ski.” 

Ogden finished in the top-thirty in her first attempt at the challenging multi-stage event, ending up 28th overall. “I was feeling confident in my ski racing, and excited and passionate about it again, so I wanted to pursue it,” explained Ogden. 

If you’ve been following the timeline of this story, you will know what happens next. Enter COVID-19. 

At the end of the 2019/2020 season, the World Cup finals scheduled to take place in Minneapolis, Minnesota were canceled and everyone headed home. For Ogden, the timing of the global pandemic happened to work in her favor. The following race season, 2020/2021 was virtually non-existent for the eastern collegiate circuit and with college classes moved online, Ogden was able to keep up with her studies no matter where in the world she was. “When COVID hit, no one was skiing for Dartmouth, it turned out, so I got really lucky on that one, and I was able to take some online terms and continue training with Stratton. So, it was really a year where I was skiing professionally, even though I was still in college.” Ogden reflected that she got “weirdly lucky” with the COVID, “because otherwise, I think I probably would have graduated late if I hadn’t been able to take those remote terms.” 

As it was, Ogden graduated from Dartmouth in June of 2021, having completed school in just four years, and the 2020/2021 race season became the first season that she was fully on the World Cup circuit. Ogden wasn’t guaranteed a full season of World Cup racing to begin with but she had starts for Period I, and if she raced well there she could stay for Period II, and so on. Racing in Davos before Christmas break, Ogden finished 22nd in the 10 k skate, securing her ticket to later season races. “That worked out great for me, partly because of COVID, it meant that some of the World Cups were a bit poorly attended, so it was pretty easy to score points and keep on racing, whereas in a normally year it’s a little tougher to score points in Period One,” she explained. 

Although, there were other, less desirable outcomes from COVID. “I really enjoyed being on the road longer in the fact that I was able to get to know the team really well and feel like I was really a part of it, and feel really accepted in that environment and that group, but parts of it were also, really, really hard for me,” she said. 

For one, as a COVID precaution, the US Ski Team implemented “bubbles” and athletes stayed with the same roommate all season, limiting interactions even among teammates. “One thing that was really tough was, because of the COVID travel restrictions, it was very claustrophobic because we weren’t really supposed to leave to go home at all, or leave the bubble,” Ogden explained. “And even if we could, like if we wanted to, for me it was hard because I was really worried about my parents.” At this point, Ogden’s father, John, was undergoing another round of chemotherapy for cancer, putting him in a high-risk category if he were to catch COVID. “So I didn’t want to travel home and get him sick, but I was feeling very stuck. I couldn’t leave, and I’m definitely a homebody, so being on the road for that long was really tough for me.” 

These feelings were building, particularly as Christmas break approached, “right before Christmas, I was definitely overwhelmingly homesick, where I was just like, I don’t even know what to do,” said Ogden. “I was feeling stuck, I couldn’t go home, the coaches didn’t want me to go home, and I didn’t really want to put my parents in any sort of danger because I was worried about that.” Thankfully, around this time, John became eligible for a vaccine which took some of the worry off his daughter’s plate. “[That] was one of the most exciting things, I was just thrilled about that because I had to worry a bit less about him, but also because it meant I could feel okay about going home.” 

Ogden stayed in Europe to race the Tour de Ski, her second showing at the event. She finished 23rd overall, having posted two top-twenty finishes over the course of the Tour and several more top-thirties. After completing the Tour, Ogden returned home to Vermont for two weeks before the World Championships in Oberstdorf, Germany. 

At the 2021 World Championships, Ogden was joined by her brother Ben, who made an impressive championship debut, qualifying 11th in the sprint and ultimately finishing in 17th. Regarding having her brother around, Ogden shared, “Having Ben on the World Cup was great. He’s an entertaining kid. It has also been really fun to watch him finding success and navigating the World Cup in his own unique way. I am really proud of the way that he approaches training and racing, he doesn’t let anyone tell him what he can and can’t do, and makes sure he prioritizes school and jobs and his teammates, even when it appears on the surface to be the detriment of a perfect training/racing plan.”

Ogden finished out the 2021/2022 World Cup season with the rest of her teammates in Engadin, Switzerland before returning home. “I was pretty excited to go home at the end of the season, but a little bit less desperate at that point.” In spite of this, Ogden had realized that being on the road for such a long time was a significant challenge and said it was “hard for me to rationalize doing it again.” Surrounded by older teammates who had been navigating this challenge for many seasons, Ogden asked for advice. “They [told me] this year has been really different than every other year, because of COVID, and you can’t judge the experience based on a COVID year.” Hearing this, Ogden decided to give it another year. 

At the same time, she was wrapping up her time at Dartmouth. Given her gap year experience, Ogden was nervous about losing the balance and distraction that school provided from skiing. “I actually, that winter, started applying to grad schools with remote programs for social work,” explained Ogden, “I wanted to have something to do the next year and also, because I was kind of thinking maybe this [skiing] wouldn’t last that much longer for me, because I just really was not enjoying myself that much.” Ogden also pointed out that, perhaps an oft-underrated part of professional skiing is the challenge of earning money from it. “It’s pretty tough to do,” said Ogden, “and involves either being very fast, or extremely good at Instagram marketing… so [that] made it a little bit less sustainable for me, on top of the homesickness and not really enjoying the traveling too much.” 

Recognizing this, Ogden started graduate school online in September (2021) through the Columbia School of Social Work. Having committed to these studies, Ogden would soon have to make another decision, given that part of the program requires a practical, internship component. “At the end of the winter, I had to decide if I would not be ski racing next winter so that I could do my practical, and I had pushed that off for a year, so that I could just do the online classes and some ski racing.” With this knowledge, Ogden entered the 2021/2022 season with an open mind, asking herself the questions, “is this sustainable? Is it something I want to do for longer? In which case I will apply for  a leave of absence from school? Or is it something that I’m not really that excited about anymore and I will instead start the process of getting myself placed for that internship?”

An added boon to keep racing this season was the fact that it was an Olympic year. In the end, Ogden was not named to the 2022 Olympic team but she was quick to make it clear that this did not factor into her decision to retire at the end of the season. “I wanted to put my best foot forward, to see if I could qualify for the Olympics. Which obviously, I didn’t. But I would like to clarify that was not why I wanted to stop… I was thinking about it before that.”

That being said, Ogden shared candidly that it was difficult not to make the team. “[I] can’t understate the fact that it was really hard emotionally to not qualify, to put that much effort and training and goals and everything into trying, and then fall short. That was definitely hard, emotionally.” But putting on a positive spin, Ogden noted, “I got really lucky, because when I was home, instead of going to the Olympics, I was in Vermont and I love it in Vermont.” 

Taking a bit of a mid-season break, Ogden lifted a little pressure off herself for training and skied for enjoyment, rather than in pursuit of a goal. She also did some volunteer coaching for the local ski club, Ford Sayre Nordic. “I really loved doing that, and it got me really excited about that aspect of the ski world,” explained Ogden. “During that month of the Olympics, I was kind of sad from not qualifying but also kind of happy because I got to do this stuff where I was hanging out with kids and going skiing with different people, and skiing for fun and going to the eastern SuperTours… I sort of forgot how much it’s like a blast. The eastern ski community is pretty cool.” 

Through these various outlets, Ogden was coming to a realization. “Showing up to a race where I knew so many people there and a community where I felt really valued for myself and not for how I ended up doing in the races, or that type of thing – it was just really amazing to see people and re-engage with that community in a way that reminded me that I’m a part of it because of who I am, and not because of any results I had.” The weeks that she spent in New England showed Ogden a path to fulfillment and engagement with the ski community outside of competitive racing, “I think over those few weeks, when I was home and racing in the east and really enjoying that, I started being ready to be done with skiing, in part because I was like, I’m really happy right now,” she explained. 

For someone whose life and identity has been so integrally tied to ski racing, making the decision to step away can be a frightening prospect. “Part of me was scared of losing the ski community,” reflected Ogden, “It’s been such a huge part of my life that I was really scared of not having it anymore, and part of that experience reminded me that I’m not going to lose it. It’s not ever going to be something that goes away, I’m going to be a part of this community and with these people forever. I think it hadn’t really occurred to me that that was the case. I’d never been a part of the ski community as anything other than an athlete.” 

With this decision “figured out,” Ogden was ready to return to the World Cup season to get some closure and to go race for fun. She rejoined the US team abroad in Lahti, Finland and was able to race the legendary Holmenkollen 30 k event where she finished 37th, before a positive COVID test took her out of contention. “So I didn’t end up actually doing my last World Cups,” laughed Ogden, “But I still had a great time being quarantined with Hailey [Swirbul] (who also tested positive). We were kind of suffering, but once we were feeling a little better we got to explore Oslo. And Hailey is one of my best friends and a really important part of my ski career, so it was kind of fun, honestly, [to have] a little impromptu vacation with just Hailey at the end of the season.” 

Wanting to close out her career with her SMS T2 teammates, Ogden traveled to Whistler, BC for the combined Canadian Nationals/Super Tour Finals event once she was no longer contagious. Unfortunately, an untimely ear infection meant that she spent most of the week watching Netflix and taking antibiotics. “By the end of the week, [I] was finally able to rally for some races, where I truly had no expectations. I had literally not trained in the past month and still kind of had an ear infection and a cough from COVID, so not thriving, but it was pretty fun. It was nice to be able to celebrate the end of my career with my Stratton teammates who’ve been there, especially Julia [Kern] and Jessie [Diggins], since day one. So I was lucky to be able to do that, even though they were not the most enjoyable races of my life, per se,” she concluded. 

Asked to reflect on her career highlights, Ogden mentioned the World Junior performances in Soldier Hollow, but added quickly, “I don’t like that to be my career highlight because I was not happy then. But I would say the 2019/2020 Tour de Ski was one of the real highs of my career. That was something that was a hard thing to do and I was really excited that I’d accomplished it.” 

She also noted her first World Cup starts during the 2016 Canadian Ski Tour when she was a senior in high school were a high point. “I think it was an eight-stage tour, and the first World Cup I’d ever done, and that was really gratifying and exciting. Putting on my World Cup bib for the first time was a moment that I will not forget. I got to give my dad a hug on the side of the course when I was warming up, and he was crying. Very cute,” smiled Ogden. 

Her collegiate races were another notable experience for Ogden, “Almost all the races I did for Dartmouth were really up there,” she said, “but going to NCAA my freshman year was a pretty incredible experience. I had never really had the experience of racing on a team until college. I absolutely loved being able to go into races and know that my result was going towards something bigger and that I was working with a bunch of people to accomplish a goal.” 

Offering advice to the next generation, Ogden said “my advice to younger skiers would be to make sure you’re thinking about what makes skiing fun and making sure you prioritize that the whole time. And also, not trying to be just a skier — trying to focus on everything that makes you a complete person, because if you focus on being 100% skier, sometimes it can make this game a little harder.” 

Though she is stepping away from competitive racing, Ogden fully intends to remain involved in the ski community. She applied to be on the NENSA board and says, “I’m going to really throw myself into this community, but in a way that’s a little bit more sustainable for me and feels more fulfilling and exciting.” She is continuing to work her way towards a master’s degree in social work, in the specific track of clinical social work with a focus on working with children and families. The current plan is to start her internship for the program in September and eventually graduate in the spring of 2024. “After that I hope to get a job, but as to what job, I’m not sure!” Ogden said, “Hopefully by that point I will have more clarity on that.”

Four athletes from the Swiss team have announced that they will be moving on, chief among them – the king of the 15 k, Dario Cologna. At the age of 36, Cologna released his decision before the 2021/22 season even began, saying, “the decision came within the last months and after the Olympics, it will be the perfect timing for me. I have achieved everything I ever dreamed of in the sport.”

Cologna had his World Cup debut in 2006 and his first Olympic start came in 2010 in the 15 k skate event, where he finished first. This victory crowned him as the first Swiss cross-country skier to earn an Olympic gold medal. He went on to win three additional golds, in the 2014 Sochi Games he won both the skiathlon and the the 15 k classic, and in 2018 in PyeongChang added a gold in the 15 k skate. All told, Colgona had eighteen Olympic starts at four different games.

In between Olympic years, he was equally successful. He won the Overall World Cup globe four times, first in the  2007/08 season, again in 2010/11 and 2011/12 and a few years later in 2014/15. In the 2007/08 season he also earned his first Tour de Ski victory, in spite of the fact that he never took a stage win that year. He won the grueling event three more times, in 2010/11, 2011/12 and again in 2017/18. 

After his final outing in the legendary Holmenkollen 50 k, Cologna wrote on Instagram, “I look back on a beautiful and successful career. 15 years ago I never dared to dream that one day I would be a four-time Olympic champion, World Champion, multiple Tour de Ski- and overall World Cup winner. In addition, I was privileged to travel to places I would never have seen and met great people, who became good friends.” 

Cologna’s teammate, Jovian Hediger, also announced his retirement prior to the start of this season. Hediger was known as a sprint specialist and has 107 World Cup starts to his name, having made his debut in 2009. His first and only podium appearance came in 2021 during the team sprint event in Ulricehamn, Sweden, where he and Roman Furger finished second. Hediger represented Switzerland at three Olympic games, beginning with Sochi in 2014 and ending most recently in Beijing (2022). 

Ueli Schnider of Switzerland is also stepping away from elite competition. Schnider has 62 World Cup starts and made two Olympic appearances, both in 2018 in PyeongChang where he finished 37th in the classic sprint and 41st in the 50 k classic mass start. 

On the women’s side, Laurien Van Der Graaff of Switzerland is moving on. Van Der Graaff has long been a staple in women’s sprinting, beginning in 2011 with her first World Cup podium in Duesseldorf, Germany. In doing so, Van Der Graaff became the second Swiss female athlete ever to reach the podium and over the years she continued to pave the way for young Swiss female athletes. Her first victory came in 2017 in a skate sprint Tour de Ski stage race on home ground in Lenzerheide, Switzerland. 

Van Der Graaff partnered up many times with Nadine Fähndrich in team sprint events, resulting in four World Cup podium finishes. At the World Championships in Oberstdorf, Germany (2021), Van Der Graaff and Fähndrich teammed up again, earning a silver medal when they finished just hundreths of a second behind team Sweden. 

Van Der Graaff shared with FIS, “for some time I was convinced that I would not continue skiing until Beijing 2022, but I made it and I am very proud of what I have achieved. However, now my time has come and I am excited for everything that is coming my way in this new chapter.”

While some athletes knew from the outset of the season that this would be their last, others only recently came to the decision. Such was the case for Swedish star, Charlotte Kalla, who just announced her intentions within the last month. The 34-year said, “the curiosity about life outside of elite sports weighs heavier than what a continued investment would entail.”

Kalla burst onto the World Cup scene at the age of eighteen. She earned her first victory in the next season, taking a stage win in Nove Mesto (2007) in the 10 k skate pursuit. In her first individual World Championships appearances, coming in Sapporo, Japan in 2007, Kalla finished 7th and 5th. To give you a sense of her consistency from then on, of the 34 World Championship events Kalla completed spanning 2007-2021, she finished in the top ten in 30 of those appearances with the exceptions being three 11th place finishes and one 18th. 

Kalla represented Sweden at four different Olympic Games, Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014, PyeongChang 2018, and Beijing 2022. She came away from these events with five individual podiums, including two gold medals and three team medals including her jaw-dropping relay performance in the relay in 2014 when she made up a 25 second deficit to bring the Swedish women their first Olympic relay gold since 1960. 

Since then, the Swedish women’s team has come to dominate the World Cup circuit and Kalla has taken on a mentorship role within the team. “It’s an inspiring team to be a part of and many girls who have the right mindset to do their very best every day,” said Kalla in 2020. On March 22, 2022, Kalla announced on Instagram that the Swedish national competitions would be her last as an elite athlete. She wrote, “here I took my first [steps] as a seven-year old and it feels nice to end my career here.” 

Elisa Brocard of Italy is ending her ski-racing career at the age of 37. Brocard had her first World Cup start in 2006 and went on to contest 162 World Cup events. She represented Italy in three Olympic Games, beginning in Vancouver 2010, through PyeongChang in 2018. Her best season came in 2018 when she finished in the top-30 distance World Cup rankings and 38th overall. 

Nadine Herrmann of Germany is leaving elite competition as well. She is the younger sister of Denise Herrmann who raced the cross-country World Cup circuit until she transitioned to biathlon in 2017 where she went on to win gold in the individual event at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Nadine Herrmann finished in the top-thirty in her maiden World Cup appearance in 2018 in the Dresden city sprints. She went on to earn a number of top-thirty finishes, including a personal best individual finish of 18th in Dresden in 2020. At the age of 26, Herrmann has decided to move on, she wrote “My active sporting career is coming to an end. The last 14 years of performance sports have shaped me into the person who today can say in the best of my conscience, I gave it my all.” 

Adrien Backsheider of France has also announced his retirement. Backsheider began racing on the World Cup circuit in 2013. He earned six World Championships starts and helped propel team France to a bronze medal in the men’s 4 x 10 relay in Falun in 2015 and again in Seefeld in 2019. Backsheider also has four Olympic starts, as he represented France in Sochi 2014, PyeongChang 2018, and Beijing 2022. He was a member of the bronze medal relay team in PyeongChang when the French again earned a podium spot in the 4 x 10 relay. Backsheider’s personal best individual World Cup finish came in Östersund, Sweden in 2020 when he finished 7th in the 15 k skate stage race during the Tour de Scandinavia. 

Cendrine Browne of Canada is saying goodbye to professional ski racing as well, having concluded her career with a national title in the 45 k skate in Whistler, Canada. Browne made her World Cup debut in 2012 and went on to start 76 World Cup races. She made the Canadian Olympic team in 2018 and 2022 and also posted thirteen World Championships starts. Browne finished 16th in the 30 k skate mass start in Beijing, a personal best individual finish for her. In a statement to Nordiq Canada after the 45 k race, Browne said, “thank you to everyone in the ski community who has believed in me and cheered for me over the last ten years.” 

The notable retirement of the extremely successful, Therese Johaug of Norway has not been missed but will be receiving its own feature from FasterSkier in the coming weeks. Additionally, US Ski Team members Katharine Ogden, Hannah Halvorsen, and Caitlin Patterson have all shared news of their retirement, in addition to top SuperTour athletes Ian Torchia and Adam Martin. (Read Torchia’s retirement story here.)

Stay tuned for more in-depth reporting on those athletes from FasterSkier.

We’ve arrived at the final act, the culmination of a week of racing in Canada and a season of international racing before that. Piloting a gender-equal distance, both men and women raced a 45 k mass start skate on Sunday, completing six laps of a 7.5 k loop at the Whistler Olympic Park. Continuing a pattern of challenging weather conditions, the day started with temperatures around 37° F with rain, making for soft and wet skiing. 

Open Men

The open men went first, with a field of 99 starters heading off the line at 8:30 local time. With 107 on the start list, some notable names among the athletes who did not start include Gus Schumacher (Alaska Winter Stars), Tyler Kornfield (APU) and Xavier McKeever (Foothills Nordic), who took his first national title in the sprint race earlier this week. 

Relying on live-timing to provide a picture as the race unfolded, it appeared that the first three laps saw steady skiing with a big pack together at the front. Between 22.5 – 30 k that group splintered with ten athletes breaking +31 seconds or more clear of the rest of the field. Among those ten, the Canadians were represented by Russell Kennedy (Canmore Nordic), Rémi Drolet (Team Black Jack), Philippe Boucher (CNEPH), Antoine Cyr (CNEPH), Graham Ritchie (Thunder Bay Nordic) and Olivier Léveillé (CNEPH). Up front for the Americans was Luke Jager (University of Utah), Scott Patterson (APU), Adam Martin (CRGP) and Finn O’Connell (BSF Pro). 

Beginning the final lap, that group of ten lost a member as Léveillé (CNEPH) dropped off the pace, drifting into no-man’s land, still a minute clear of chaser Johnny Hagenbuch (Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation). At the next split, Boucher (CNEPH) too had dropped, leaving eight men at the front, all within 5.5 seconds. With just a few kilometers to go, the fight was on. 

Creating a gap in the final stages, Graham Ritchie (Thunder Bay Nordic) claimed the victory and earned his first national title. Ritchie finished in a time of 1:40:32.5. 

“I’m not sure how this happened,” said Ritchie to Nordiq Canada, “I haven’t raced this long of a race in a couple of years, so I had no game plan going into it. I just said I’m going to stick with the lead pack as long as I can.” This strategy worked in his favor. 

“I was able to stick with the lead pack and being in the top three with one kilometer left,” continued Ritchie, “I knew I had a little jam left to go for it in the last few hundred meters. I had a good day and really fast skis. The techs killed the boards so I’m super stoked.”

Concluding a strong week of racing, Jager (University of Utah) topped the American podium, coming in +6.8 seconds behind Ritchie. Speaking to the conditions, Jager said, “it was good, the news that they were salting last night was music to my ears because it would have been so different if they hadn’t. It was really firm and fast and even where it was getting mushy it was pretty firm underneath so it was fast out there.”

Displaying consistency, Jager has been on the Super Tour podium in every event this past week. He was the first American in the 10 k interval skate, the third American in the 15 k interval classic, the first American in the classic sprint, and he and his teammate Noel Keeffe finished first overall in Friday’s team sprint event. Asked about how the tactics played out within the group, Jager said, “it was kind of going back and forth, I mean Russ [Kennedy] was pushing a little bit and so was Scott but there wasn’t quite enough work from the bottom of the stadium to the top to get rid of everyone, so it would string out and then come back together on the downhills a little bit which was playing to my advantage for sure.”

Coming down to a sprint finish, Ritchie made an early move to gain the advantage. “I didn’t even know who was in the group anymore,” said Jager, “I was kind of in the front going into the last climb and [Ritchie] came ripping by me and he was really strong so even if I had the foresight of that coming I don’t know if I would have been able to hold him off because he was so strong coming into that hill.”

Cyr (CNEPH) finished third overall and was the second Canadian (+7.8). Completing the Canadian podium, Kennedy (Canmore Nordic) finished fourth overall (+8.1). 

Patterson (APU) was the second American finisher, coming in fifth overall (+9.6), while Martin (CRGP) was the third American and sixth overall (+12.6). 

Open Women

Following the conclusion of the men’s race, the open women got underway at 10:30 local time. At the crack of the gun, fifty-six racers set off to complete their six laps. Although there were 72 athletes registered, sixteen did not start, including Rosie Brennan (APU), Katherine Stewart-Jones (Nakkertok Nordique), Novie McCabe (University of Utah) and Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt (Foundeurs-Laurentides).

This is the first time the women raced 45 k at a national championship event, a new event stemming from the push for equal distance racing. When asked about this distance after the race, Julia Kern (SMS T2) told Nordiq Canada, “I think it’s a really interesting format. For me personally I like the shorter distance but recently I’ve had really good experiences with 30 k and today was a great day so, I think whatever makes ski racing exciting for both men and women should be what pushes the sport forward.”

Regarding whether this should become a permanent feature, or be introduced to the World Cup, Kern said, “potentially, or just shortening the men’s race so that everything is short and exciting because there are marathon circuits out there as well.”

With the race under way, the first 7.5 k saw the pack at the front was a slightly strung-out group of twelve. Just a few kilometers later, that number was cut in half as six athletes pulled twenty seconds clear. Of that group, Cendrine Browne (Foundeurs-Laurentides) was the lone Canadian, skiing with Sophia Laukli (University of Utah), Kern (SMS T2), Rosie Frankowski (APU), Caitlin Patterson (CGRP), and Sydney Palmer-Leger (University of Utah). 

For the next four laps, those first six women skied together, alternating leads and staying within ~5 seconds at each split. As they set out for the final lap, Browne (Foundeurs-Laurentides) dropped slightly, +10 seconds behind the pack. “I just wanted to be in the lead pack today and I was until the last lap, I bonked. It was tough conditions today, but it was a really fun way to go out,” said Browne. 

From there, the splinters in the group became larger cracks as Kern (SMS T2) applied pressure at the front. Next to drop was Palmer-Leger (UU) who was +6 seconds back at the first split on the final lap. A few moments later, Kern had made a full break. 

“My tactic was just hang on, conserve energy for as long as possible,” shared Kern, “I didn’t really want to suffer for 45 k and it was fun to ski in a pack and work together. So for me it was just being patient and seeing how I was feeling and evaluating my plan from there. What I ended up doing was skiing with the pack, alternating leads and in the last lap I was feeling good so I decided to send it. 7.5 k to suffer isn’t too hard.”

At the final time split before the finish, Kern was 27.5 seconds ahead of runner-up Patterson (CGRP). Reaching the finish line, she had widened this lead to 34 seconds, finishing in a time of 1:58:55.6. This victory was Kern’s fourth of the week, having topped every race save for the 5 k individual skate where she finished second behind teammate Jessie Diggins (SMS T2). Commenting on the conditions Kern said, “the first few laps held up pretty well and the last few laps got really deep and slushy, you just had to make sure you didn’t catch a tip or fall and look for the less skied in areas. But it made it exciting, good spring skiing, classic slush conditions.”

Patterson (CGRP) finished second overall, +34 seconds back. Behind her came Laukli (UU), completing the American podium and finishing third overall (+1:00.9). 

Browne (Foundeurs-Laurentides), for whom this race was her final as a professional athlete, held sixth position overall, and was the first Canadian (+2:41.5). “It feels really good to end my career this way. I love distance racing and it is a great way to go out as National Champ,” said Browne to Nordiq Canada. “Thank you to everyone in the ski community who has believed in me and cheered for me over the last 10 years.”

Dahria Beatty (Whitehorse Ski Club) was the next Canadian in twelfth overall, +9:39.8 behind Kern. Completing the Canadian podium, Laura Leclair (Club Chelsea Nordiq) came in sixteenth overall (+12:08.8). 

This race concludes the 2022 Canadian Ski Championships and US SuperTour Finals as the athletes now get to enjoy a break after a long season. 

Complete Results

For the past six seasons, men’s World Cup sprinting has been almost entirely about one athlete. Johannes Høsflot Klæbo has raced in 28 World Cup, Championship, or Olympic sprint events since November 2018, and remarkably, has won all but three of them. Incidentally, all three of those times have occurred in Ruka, Finland, and he has ended up a mere second place each time. In his first year on the circuit (2017), Klæbo took home the crystal sprint globe, starting a streak he continued for the next four seasons. In the 2020/2021 season the Norwegian team skipped many of the World Cups due to the coronavirus pandemic and Klæbo finished eighth in the sprint rankings. 

This year the globe was delivered to a new nation as Richard Jouve topped the sprint rankings, earning France its first ever World Cup sprint globe. 

A positive COVID test for Klæbo at the beginning of March took him out of the running for the remainder of the season, meaning he missed out on the final two individual sprints. Sitting in second place at a deficit of 210 World Cup sprint points, this window of opportunity was all that Jouve needed to step into the lead. With back-to-back victories in Drammen and Falun, Jouve secured the crystal globe with 568 points, just six ahead of Klæbo. 

Jouve was born in south-eastern France in the town of Briançon to a Djiboutian mother and an alpine-ski racing French father. He opted to pursue nordic skiing instead of alpine and has represented the Club de Sports à Méribel domestically since 2020. 

Jouve made his World Cup debut in Otepää, Estonia in 2015 where he finished 49th. His first podium finish came just months later when he finished third in Lahti, Finland. Since then Jouve has earned another thirteen podium finishes on the World Cup circuit, though his first victory came just a few weeks ago in Drammen, Norway. 

Like most highly-ranked athletes this season, Jouve had his sights set on an Olympic medal in Beijing. However, during the individual freestyle sprint, his stronger suit, he missed out on a lucky loser spot by 0.08 seconds, after placing third in a stacked and tactical semi-final heat. Jouve ended his day in 7th position. He did, however, support the French team to a bronze medal in the 4 x 10 k relay, adding to an Olympic medal collection that began with a team sprint bronze medal in 2018, where he raced with Maurice Magnificat. 

Despite missing out on Olympic hardware, the 2021/22 season marked a jump in Jouve’s results, as he finished on the podium in five of eight individual World Cup sprints. He missed just two final heats, finishing seventh on both occasions. This consistency is what set him up to win the World Cup sprint title, marking significant improvement from last season when he finished a previous personal-best of sixth place overall. 

In earning this sprint globe, Jouve became the first ever French athlete to end the season on top of the World Cup rankings, in overall, distance or sprint. Speaking to what this accomplishment meant to him, Jouve shared the following words (in French) with the publication ski-nordique.net “It’s a huge satisfaction, to be first for the duration of a season is an incredible thing. For that one must be consistent in all the competitions and this year I succeeded at doing that. Klæbo wasn’t there for the last two races and I succeeded in doing what I needed to take home the globe. 

“This little globe is very important for me. It’s the objective of a career, it’s a satisfaction for the whole team and also a particular emotion. We have a great team of sprinters with Lucas [Chanavat], with the others, and it’s a group that pushes each other to be the best [version] of ourselves. This week, I felt the pressure because I absolutely needed to win today in Falun to get this globe. This morning I was very nervous and I was scared in the quarter-final. Finally, I wanted to ski in front and I really succeeded. I am so content, so satisfied.”

Jouve’s long-time coach, Cyril Burdet told the French ski federation, “I think it’s something really strong with him. He has trained with me for years, we’ve had both good and bad moments together, that is part of all relationships with a coach. I really want to tell him thank you because what happened today is one of the great moments, clearly. It’s something incredible.”

Burdet continued, saying, “In fact, there is nothing but sport that can give us these types of emotions. For some weeks, we collapsed after the Games. Because the goal in the life of an athlete or a coach is an Olympic medal. It’s something that made us all sad that we didn’t get there. But today, to realize this opportunity, it’s something exceptional. So, thanks to you Richard [Jouve], it was huge.”

At the age of twenty-seven, Jouve has many seasons of racing still ahead of him. As for  the remainder of this winter, Jouve says, “I will focus on the French club championships with Méribel, and maybe the French Championships in Prémanon. We’ll see.”

Sunday kicked off a week of racing at the combined Canadian Cross-Country National Championship and U.S. Super Tour Finals event held in Whistler, British Columbia. Hosted by the Black Tusk Nordic Events Society (BTNES) on the Whistler Olympic Park courses, this event also offers junior and U23 skiers a preview of the courses for next year’s Junior and U23 World Championships. With Paranordic, Nordic Combined, and both junior and senior cross-country events, it looks to be a busy week of racing. 

After a morning of Paranordic and junior events, the senior women got underway with a 5 k interval skate. This meant a single lap of the “Blue A” course, which features two major climbs, one almost right out of the start. Despite a wintery mix of precipitation forecasted throughout the week, and light snow accumulating on top of the corduroy, times were fast as athletes took to the course.

Swapping stars and stripes for her red and blue SMS T2 team suit, Jessie Diggins won the women’s 5 k event in 11:47.9, with her club teammate Julia Kern in second (+7.7). Craftsbury’s Caitlin Patterson took third (+29.8), ahead of Katherine Stewart-Jones who was the top Canadian racer in fourth (+33.1). Dahria Beatty was second for the Canadian women in eighth overall (+56.1), with Cendrine Browne just behind as third for Canada and ninth overall (+1:00.6). 

In an interview with Nordiq Canada after the race, Diggins first spoke to the experience of racing amongst a field of over 180 women and girls from across Canada and the U.S. 

“This is super cool,” Diggins said emphatically. “I mean, I’m half-Canadian, so this is really very special for me any time I can come be in Canada. I really love it, and with COVID, it’s been a while.”

She also spoke to the change of pace and pressure, in transitioning away from the high-stakes environment of the World Cup where the team operated under strict COVID precautions to ensure the season would not be derailed by an outbreak within the team.

“The biggest draw for me was to be here with my club, to have fun. There’s all these really awesome kids racing. And, yeah, it’s really nice to have a little more relaxed, not quite as high pressure, [especially] after the Olympics. It’s nice to just get back to racing because it is super fun. So I’ve really enjoyed being here.”

Diggins described watching the field of rising junior athletes race as “super cool” and spoke optimistically of what this means for the long term health and success of the sport at all levels.

“It’s so fun to see how invested in the sport, overall, that they are — because they love it, and they want to work hard, and they’re having fun. It’s just really cool to see how our sport’s been growing and expanding, and how great this next generation is looking.”

Finally, on her own race, Diggins shared it was a “shock to the system.” Following the World Cup finals last weekend in Falun, Sweden, Diggins spent the week in Annecy, France, where she visited the Salomon design center, participated in a live Q&A with a Salomon representative, and even snuck in a guided mountaineering experience in nearby Chamonix.

She then hopped aboard a flight to Western Canada, finding herself once more on a start line soon after. 

“I got off the plane from France like 40 hours before the start,” Diggins laughed. “So it was one way to kick the jet lag, and it was highly effective. It was a bit of a bit of a shock, but it was really fun to just get out there and work hard, and really enjoy these — I mean, it’s fun. They’re Olympic courses. They’re really, really nice, they have great flow. So I really enjoyed being out there.”

As the top Canadian woman, Katherine Stewart-Jones spoke with Nordiq Canada about the tough competition, “It was really exciting to race today and having the Americans here I knew it was going to be a competitive race, and I definitely wanted to perform because, you know, you want to show that Canadians are also competitive,” she said.

“Overall, I was happy with my result. I didn’t think it was my best race. It was the type of race where the conditions are brutal, and nobody feels technically great, but you had to keep going. In warm-up I could tell it was hard conditions to ski in, so I gave myself a few technical cues during the race, making sure I reminded myself it was like this for everyone. I’m really happy with my effort.”

Sydney Palmer-Leger (University of Utah) earned the top spot in the women’s U20 ranking with a time of 12:36.8. She finished seventh overall.

With the women’s race wrapped up, the competition turned to the men who skied 2 x 5 k. In a reverse of the women’s results, it was the Canadians who took the top three spots led by Rémi Drolet (Team Black Jack) in a time of 22:50.2. Russell Kennedy (Canmore Nordic) finished second, +19.8 behind Drolet, while Antoine Cyr (Skinouk QC) rounded out the podium in third (+29.7). 

Luke Jager (University of Utah) was the first American of the day in fourth (+37.4). Jager was followed by two fellow collegiate athletes, Kjetil Bånerud of Northern Michigan University, and Sam Hendry of the University. Bånerud is a native of Norway, while Hendry was also racing on behalf of Canmore Nordic, his home club. This leaves BSF Pro Team athlete Finn O’Connell as the next on the US SuperTour podium in seventh overall (+49.7), with Craftsbury’s Adam Martin third for the US in eighth overall (+50.1).

Like many of the top athletes, Drolet just recently returned from Europe after the conclusion of the World Cup circuit. He spoke with Nordiq Canada after the race saying, “I really went into the race today with zero expectations. I was thinking in my head that if I execute well and push hard, then I’ll be happy with the race, and the result just came so that was just a bonus for me.” 

In soft and sloppy conditions there were a number of mishaps out on the race course and Drolet said, “I think with conditions like that it can be really easy to kind of sketch yourself out. I think a lot of people were doing that. But I think you can just kind of stay focused on skiing and not worry too much about the conditions, then everything will be okay.”

“You need to stay focused on skiing and not on the conditions. When you overthink it, things happen. I was really happy I was able to put together a great race today. This is where I strive to be, and it feels really good.”

Prior to traveling to Canada, Jager was competing at NCAAs in Soldier Hollow Utah where he and the rest of the Utes earned their third consecutive national victory. 

The U20 men’s race was won by Tom Stephen (Foothills Nordic) in a time of 23:33.3. Stephen finished sixth overall. 

Racing continues today, Monday March 21st, with a 10/15 k classic, followed on Wednesday March 23rd by an individual classic sprint. The sprint heats will be livestreamed; these be viewed here. 

Full Results

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We’ve arrived at the final event of the 2021/22 World Cup Season and the second new event of the day. It was a fast and furious mixed team sprint in Falun, Sweden, happening just hours after the mixed team relay which ran in the morning. In the first iteration of this event, teams composed of one woman and one man raced six laps of a 1 k course each, making for 12 k of skiing total.

To keep things spicy, the last two teams in the exchange after the even-numbered laps 2 -10 were eliminated. So although seventeen teams started the competition, only seven made it to the finish. In order to limit the chaos, given the number of teams, there was no tagging in the exchange, just a finish line and a start line for the athletes to gauge themselves. 

The atmosphere in the Lugnet Ski Stadium was festive as fans enjoyed the 45°F degree weather and sunshine. “I think this is very nice to be together with the men,” said Nadine Fähndrich of Switzerland, “it makes more team spirit between the men and the women.” She alluded to the feeling of both the athletes and the spectators during the mixed team relay in which Team USA I took the gold in an exciting race. “I’m excited for the [race] and to [enjoy] the atmosphere here,” she concluded. 

With Team USA I taking the victory and Team USA II coming in 14th, the Americans did not enter a team in the mixed sprint event. Out of the seventeen teams that started, twelve nations were represented in the start list and only five nations made it to the finish. 

The women started and as would be expected, Jonna Sundling skiing for Sweden I, was at the front. She was paired with Calle Halfvarsson who earned his first podium finish since 2018 in the 15 k freestyle on Saturday. 

The first round of eliminations at 2 k took Estonia and France II out of the running. As Sundling concluded her second lap, she had created a +2.1 second gap and Halfvarsson seized this opportunity. Instead of waiting around for the rest of the field, he pushed hard and grew the gap to +3.84 seconds on his next 1 k lap. This same lap saw Benjamin Moser of Austria fly off the course on the corner descending into the stadium, taking himself and his teammate Teresa Stadlober out of the race. Latvia was also eliminated in that round. 

Once Sweden I had made their move, it stuck. At 5 k they were +9.61 seconds ahead, at 7 k they were +22.2 ahead, at 11 k the gap was up to +26.84. After 23:05.91 of cumulative race time, Halfvarsson crossed the finish line waving a Swedish flag.

“It’s easy when I go with Jonna [Sundling],” he said to FIS after the race, “she is so fast, it’s no match.” For her part, Sundling said, “It was a little bit exciting before the race, how to ski, how should our tactic be… but it felt like we did a really good race and ended up first so it’s really fun.” 

Rewinding a bit, the women’s third lap saw Fähndrich shoot off the course in the same fashion as Moser. Minutes later, Joni Maki of Finland I and Harald Østberg Amundsen of Norway I both went down on the corner entering the exchange area. A quick recovery by Amundsen ensured that his team stayed in the race but Maki and his partner Jasmi Joensuu were eliminated, along with Fähndrich and Janik Riebli for Switzerland. 

The fourth round of elimination took out Slovenia and Finland II, though due to the tight nature of the eliminations, the women were starting unless it was clearly evident that they were one of the last two. Thus we saw Anamarija Lampic (SLO) battling Tiril Undes Weng of Norway II for second, even though Slovenia had already been eliminated. 

Entering the 10th exchange and the fifth elimination, Sweden I was 19 seconds ahead, with Norway I and II duking it out behind. This meant that it was the twins, Tiril and Lotta Udnes Weng battling each other for their final lap.

With Canada II and France I eliminated, the men took off for their sixth and final lap. Amundsen of Norway I was just ahead of Martin Nyenget of Norway II, though entering the stadium Nyenget used the slip stream to move in front of his compatriot. With Sweden I well across the line in gold medal position, a tight sprint between the two Norwegians ultimately went to Nyenget, meaning Norway II earned silver and Norway I came away with the bronze. 

Italy with Nicole Monsorno and Federico Pelligrino finished fourth. Sweden II ended up fifth, and Germany I came in sixth. Canada I (Dahria Beatty and Graham Ritchie) were the last team to avoid elimination and finish in seventh. 

With the last race of the day complete, the World Cup season has come to a close. For North-American ski fans, Canadian Nationals will be combining with US Super Tour Finals for a culminating event series in Whistler, Canada. The racing begins March 20th and you can find more details about the event here. 

Results: Mixed Team Sprint