Welcome back to the first viewing guide of the second year of Nordic Insights. This viewing guide will reoccur throughout the season in advance of each race weekend. It will always have the World Cup schedule, and will also have the SuperTour schedule when relevant, plus maybe also a few other races at other levels that you should know about.
The SuperTour doesn’t start for a few more weeks, so for now it’s just the Ruka Triple (i.e., the opening three-race series of the World Cup season). It is dark and cold at 66° N latitude, and the sun will set in Ruka tomorrow at 2:10 p.m., and that final hill on the sprint course makes Ruka probably the hardest classic sprint on the entire circuit. Ski racing is fun.
Hype video from FIS heavily featuring Jessie Diggins? Hype video from FIS heavily featuring Jessie Diggins.
Hype video from USSS media heavily featuring Jessie Diggins? Hype video from USSS media heavily featuring Jessie Diggins.
Anyway. Here is when the races will be this weekend.
World Cup (local time at venue: GMT +2. This is 7 hours ahead of the East Coast and 11 hours ahead of Alaska, just to make viewing easy for you.)
| date | race | time (AK) | time (EST) | results |
| Friday, Nov. 24 | classic sprint qual | midnight | 4 a.m. | here |
| classic sprint heats | 2:30 a.m. | 6:30 a.m. | here | |
| Saturday, Nov. 25 | W 10km classic | midnight | 4 a.m. | here |
| M 10km classic | 2:15 a.m. | 6:15 a.m. | here | |
| Sunday, Nov. 26 | W 20km skate mass start | midnight | 4 a.m. | here |
| M 20km skate mass start | 2:35 a.m. | 6:35 a.m. | here |
How can I watch the races?
I have thoughts on this. TLDR, pay Ski & Snowboard Live (link) $8 to $9 per month throughout the season if you would like to be assured of being able to watch the races, with good quality, and English audio commentary, and so on. Either test the waters of using a VPN to watch a live feed from another country (potentially for free, depending on how much monthly data you can get in a VPN trial), or take your chances with what gets uploaded to YouTube after the fact, if you would like to save some money on this. Find out far more about both these options, including some VPN how-tos, in this article:
Who will be racing?
Good question. American starters for Friday’s sprint are, officially, JC Schoonmaker, Ben Ogden, Kevin Bolger, Zak Ketterson, Luke Jager, Zanden McMullen, and Gus Schumacher for the men, and Rosie Brennan, Jessie Diggins, Julia Kern, Lauren Jortberg, and Novie McCabe for the women. Expect some or all of Scott Patterson, John Steel Hagenbuch, Sophia Laukli, and Alayna Sonnesyn to also feature in the ensuing distance races (distance starters are just my strong sense/prediction rather than sourced reporting per se). Start lists go up on FIS (available through the results link above) 24 hours in advance of each race.
Who are these people anyway?
Another good question. Everyone racing for the U.S. this weekend trains with and competes domestically for one of six main American ski clubs (save for Sophia Laukli, who has a Norwegian father and dual American–Norwegian citizenship, speaks fluent Norwegian, and trains with Oslo-based superteam Team Aker Dæhlie).
You can find out more about most of these clubs here: Team Birkie | Bridger Ski Foundation | SMS T2 Team | Sun Valley. (APU or Craftsbury profiles to follow once additional information is received from these clubs.)
How can you support these athletes?
A superb question. I would suspect that, with a few high-profile exceptions (Jessie Diggins certainly, likely also Rosie Brennan and Ben Ogden, truly not sure after that), almost no athlete in this country is making money off of cross-country skiing. You can support the athletes’ teams through the club links given above. You can support American skiing development more broadly through the National Nordic Foundation’s Drive for 25, which is going on right now. Find out more about that initiative here, or just donate directly here.
How can you support this website?
A pretty self-interested question tbh. I worked my butt off all last year out of a love for American skiing, destroyed most winter weekends to cover the World Cup in inconvenient time zones, stood courseside for a lot of very cold hours of in-person reporting, and took home a net profit of roughly $1,500 to show for it. Impressive stuff.
I’m not going to stump for donations too hard this week, because this is really NNF/Drive for 25 time. That said, if you are still inspired to support this site, last year’s GoFundMe is still up, and the money all goes to the same place (just insert “World Cup” for “Houghton,” etc.). You can find that page here. I will start making a stronger case next week for the value of supporting American ski journalism. But if you are only going to give money to one skiing cause this week it should unambiguously be NNF, and I really mean that.
Thanks for reading. Go team.
— Gavin Kentch
