This website has previously featured a 5,000-word profile on APU coach Erik Flora, a 3,000-word interview with a young Gus Schumacher, and, so help me, a full 10,000 words across two parts of a Kikkan Randall career retrospective.
This article is not like those articles. This article is instead a listicle of cross-country skiers and their cats. My research for this piece was fairly sporadic, and mostly consisted of a lot of time scrolling through pro skiersā Instagram (like, even more so than normal) looking for posts of cats. I also searched for ācatsā in the archives of DailySkier, which provided links for a few of these.
Happy Caturday! Enjoy.
Athlete: Jason Cork, longtime U.S. Ski Team coach
Cat: Ozzy Bean
Athlete: Susan Dunklee, retired U.S. biathlete
Cat: Ashley
Athlete: Andy Newell, retired U.S. skier and current head coach for BSF Pro Team
Cat: Finn (possibly now deceased; this post is from eight years ago, and Finn has not featured recently)
Athlete: Yana Kirpichenko, Russian skier
Cats: I read through every single comment on both posts, and sadly cannot discern from this the catsā names. Alas. Highlights from comments (auto-translated): āMy kitten also goes to training (eats a lot).ā And, āIt is unclear, either Yana is small or the cats are big.ā
Athlete: Vilma Nissinen, Finnish skier
Cat: Mirri, in above post from 2017. Possibly now a different cat, per this story from earlier today:

Athlete: Zanden McMullen, U.S. Ski Team skier, and partner Sophia Mazzoni
Cats: Lumi (photo three) and Guinness (photo four). Hereās McMullen, via message to Nordic Insights, with some onomastic background: āLumi (means snow in Finnish) is the white and gray one, and Guinness (yes the beer) is the black one.ā
Cat: Kuzco (āMy name is Kuzco after my mamaās favorite movie The Emperorās New Groove.ā)
Athlete: Logan Diekmann, American skier, and fiancƩe Grayson Murphy, American pro mountain runner


Cat: Skaưi (the Norse goddess of skiing)
Athlete: My friend and APU Masters training partner, Anna Engel

Cat: Marit (the other Norse goddess of skiing)
Athlete: This reporter, who before leaving his last post eulogized his contributions to legacy ski media in this country as follows:

This concludes the inaugural Caturday post. KateÅina JanatovĆ”, in the vanishingly unlikely chance that youāre reading this, please consider posting photos of your two cats (mentioned here) on your public Instagram some time. Thank you.
ā Gavin Kentch
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