I’m going to save you all some time here and simply incorporate by reference the last two thousand words that I wrote about Rosie Brennan and the power of persistence: Below is a fine piece that I wrote about Rosie Brennan last December entitled, “Rosie Brennan and the Power of Persistence.”
TLDR, Brennan’s career has been one of near misses, of continuing to show up, of hitting fourth and fifth and sixth, and fourth again, at global championship after global championship. Oh, and U.S. Ski & Snowboard once kicked her off the national team at the start of the 2018/2019 season, after she had inadvertently raced with mono at the Pyeongchang Olympics. But U.S. Ski & Snowboard did give her an award for overcoming adversity at the end of the 2018/2019 season, so there you have it.
Since I wrote that article eleven months ago, Brennan has, off the course, put in another year of diligent training, showing up every day in the rain and the snow, the heat and the cold, to log the hours necessary to compete at the highest level in the world. On the course, she came away from 2023 World Championships in Planica with yet another set of what-ifs: fifth in the 30km classic, fifth in the relay, 19th in the skiathlon (was going to be much higher, but she suffered the freak accident of a broken binding at just the wrong time. Brennan, effectively, entered the skiathlon instead of the team sprint; Julia Kern and Jessie Diggins raced there instead, teaming up to take bronze.)
Embed from Getty ImagesYou can see Brennan in the background of the silver-medal finish photo from that 30km classic in Planica: Ebba Andersson ran away with the victory, but four athletes approached the stadium together, roughly a minute later, two medals still on the table. Anne Kjersti Kalvå ultimately took one of them, and Frida Karlsson the other. Brennan was 3.6 seconds out of bronze in fifth, 0.1 seconds out of the wooden medal. It was, well, much the same thing that had happened in the Olympic 30km skate a year earlier, except that that time Brennan finished 5.4 seconds out of third. Oh, and she had dragged around an uncooperative six-women chase pack for much of the preceding hour, while the eventual bronze medalist refused to do any of the work.
What I’m trying to say here is, Rosie Brennan is an easy person to root for. She shows up; she puts in the work; she does her best; she doesn’t make excuses when she comes really, really close; she puts her head down and goes back to work again. Lots to like there.
So when Brennan took her first career individual World Cup classic podium earlier Saturday (she had previously skied a classic leg on bronze-medal relay teams in December 2015 and February 2023), placing second in the 10-kilometer interval-start classic race in Ruka, Finland, there was much to celebrate.
Brennan claimed silver in a textbook display of pacing. Starting in bib no. 46, one minute behind Frida Karlsson in bib no. 44 — and, crucially, two minutes ahead of Ebba Andersson in bib no. 50 — she ranked ninth at the first time checkpoint, 1.1 kilometers into the 10-kilometer race. At 1.5km, she was in eighth. At 3.1km, she was in fifth. At 5km, she was in third, and again at 6.1km. By the 6.5km mark she was up to second, a position that she held both at the 8.1km mark and at the finish. She skied the final third of the race faster than anyone else in the entire field. Hard to pace much better than that.
Okay, Andersson of Sweden won the race, so arguably she paced it better than Brennan. But she was on course four bibs and two minutes behind Brennan, and so had the benefit of getting direct splits and pacing off of her American rival. Karlsson, for her part, was in either second or third at every single checkpoint, fading to third over the end of the race.
Andersson’s winning time was 26:46.7. Brennan was ultimately 4.9 seconds back at the finish, and 5 seconds ahead of Karlsson. Moa Ilar was fourth as Sweden put three women in the top four. The highest-placing Norwegian on Saturday was Astrid Øyre Slind in eighth, a fact that the Swedish papers did not hesitate to publicize.
“It’s great,” Brennan said after the race in audio provided by USSS. “It’s kind of been like one of those things I’ve been striving for, because I’ve always felt that a podium was possible. But — there’s just more elements with skis and all that sort of thing. And so to have it all come together is really exciting to know that I was right. It is possible.”
The strong result “gives me a lot of confidence that my preparation was good,” Brennan added, “that we can have good skis in the new fluoro-free environment, that my tech and I are working well together. And anything’s possible now, I think.”
In the mixed zone immediately after the race, Brennan said that she was “really happy with some of the improvements I have made in classic.” When asked about specifics of this, she explained, “I just kind of rethought how I think about it, and I spent some time over here this summer skiing with some other people and getting new ideas. Sometimes when you’ve been at it for a while you just need to, kind of, really go outside the box and find some new things. I think it worked.”
And by the way, Jessie Diggins was 11th (+51.3), in what would be a headline result many years if Brennan hadn’t crushed so hard. Diggins has been quick to proclaim her need to continue working on her classic striding over the past few seasons; it seems that that work is having an effect.
This is hardly the best interval-start classic race of Diggins’s long career; she was fourth in the 10km at World Cup Finals in Falun as recently as March of this year, and sixth in the 10km in Beitostølen last December. But it is still a notable race for someone who has long been identified as more of a skate specialist. (I don’t get to say how Diggins views herself, but the math does say that six of her 47 career individual podiums have come in classic races, for what it’s worth.)
“I was really proud of the techs” today, wrote Diggins in comments to multiple media outlets. “They have been on fire and working so, so hard especially with the fluro-free rules. I don’t think many people see or appreciate what is going on behind the scenes, but they work so hard and we’re all so grateful for that. I was so proud of Rosie and just seeing her ski with confidence and authority like that was so beautiful and it made me really happy.”
Novie McCabe, Sophia Laukli, and Julia Kern also raced Saturday for the American women. McCabe was 30th (+1:36.0), Laukli 44th (+2:25.6), and Kern 50th (+3:00.9).
“I felt strong on the doublepole today and that’s usually a weakness of mine, so I was happy with that!,” McCabe wrote in comments shared with multiple media outlets. “I think I could experiment with going out a bit harder, which definitely could have led to imploding today, but I guess you never know if you never try!”
On a final stats-dork note, let me note that Brennan, who turns 35 a week from today, was one of three athletes in the top 30 born in the 1980s: Brennan (second), Kerttu Niskanen (seventh), and Astrid Øyre Slind (eighth) were all born in 1988. There were equally as many women in the top 30 who were born in the 2000s: Margrethe Bergane of Norway (19th) was born in 2001, Kristin Austgulen Fosnæs of Norway (27th) was born in 2000, and Novie McCabe (30th) was born in 2001. Development in high-level cross-country skiing can take a long time, and there are a lot of different ways to the top.
Or, as Brennan put it in a February press conference, “look around, do that research yourself and look for those different stories,” other than just the prodigies claiming podiums in their teens. “Because they are out there and there’s a lot of different ways to get to the same place. And everyone’s a little different.”
Racing continues in Ruka tomorrow with the first skate race of this World Cup season, a 20km mass start. Six women are on the start list for the U.S.: Rosie Brennan (bib 3), Jessie Diggins (bib 11), Sophia Laukli (bib 27), Julia Kern (bib 29), Novie McCabe (bib 30), and Alayna Sonnesyn (bib 37). Sonnesyn skis for SMS T2; everyone else listed here is on the U.S. Ski Team.
— Gavin Kentch
Financial real talk: I worked my butt off for the first year of this website, and took home a net profit of all of $1,500. Inspiring stuff I know. And that was only thanks to the $3,000 that I took in from readers through my GoFundMe. On the one hand, I’m not going very hard on soliciting donations right now, because this is fundraising week for the NNF’s Drive for 25, deservedly so. On the other hand, the money from the GoFundMe is the only reason that I had a profit instead of a loss for the first year of Nordic Insights, and is in turn why there is a second year of Nordic Insights that you are currently reading — I was on board with doing this for very little money out of a love for American nordic skiing, but didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing this.
So. If you would like to support the second year of Nordic Insights, last year’s GoFundMe is still up here. I will update this with a new fundraiser soon/once Drive for 25 ends; for the time being, just mentally substitute in “World Cup” for “Houghton” (basically the same venue tbh). All the money still goes to the same place. Thank you for your support, and thank you, as always, for reading.
