There are a lot of good skiers in Norway. If it isn’t a young Iver Tildheim Andersen showing up on short notice to claim a nation’s group start that leads to a surprising win in Lillehammer last year, it’s Matz William Jenssen making the sprint final, in his fourth career World Cup start, to open this season. Sunday in Ruka brought more of the same, as little-heralded Norwegian Jan Thomas Jenssen took a surprise win in the 20-kilometer mass start skate race to close out the first weekend of racing in the 2023/2024 World Cup season.
I’ll be honest: I hadn’t really heard of Jenssen before today. You probably hadn’t, either. He is hardly a bad skier; career highlights coming into the weekend had included multiple World Cup top-tens. But there are only so many start rights per nation, and if that nation is Norway it can be hard to get a word in edgewise.
Jenssen got the chance on Sunday — he was racing in place of Sjur Røthe, who is out due to what FIS calls “an illness” and I would call “recovering from Covid” — and immediately delivered. He skied smart throughout the day, typically near the front but seldom in the lead, as Mika Vermeulen of Austria did a lot of the heavy lifting throughout the race.
But then, suddenly, the sprint-hill climb was approaching for the eighth and final time on the 2.5km course, and there was Jenssen in the right place at the right time, battling Michal Novák of the Czech Republic for the lead. He came around the final curve to the finish, looked up, and saw nothing but daylight between him and a first career World Cup podium win.
What was Jenssen thinking at this moment?
“When I was first around the corner I was oh, so relieved,” Jenssen told FIS afterwards. “Oh my god.”
Jenssen has 12 World Cup starts to his name, counting today, seven of them coming within a nine-day period in the 2020 Tour de Ski. His last World Cup start before today had been at Holmenkollen, in early March 2020 (he finished 22nd); I’m not saying that was a long time ago, but the 2020 Minneapolis World Cup was still scheduled to occur as of race day, shortly before the whole world shut down for Covid.
Jenssen had previously logged three top-eight finishes in the 2019/2020 World Cup season. As an American man, this would instantly establish him as one of the best athletes on the team. As a Norwegian man? His FIS profile shows a steady diet of Scandinavian Cup races, and he only got the start on Sunday due to Røthe’s illness.
“A boy dream that came true,” Jenssen posted on Instagram earlier today, according to an auto-translation. Jenssen currently has 2,883 followers on Instagram (and this after he literally won a World Cup race), roughly 1.4 percent of Jessie Diggins’s Instagram count. He skis domestically for Team Elon Midt-Norge, which you have probably only heard of if you are a large nordork like me.
Other, more prominent skiers whom Jenssen bested on Sunday included Harald Østberg Amundsen (third), Simen Hegstad Krüger (fifth), Pål Golberg (sixth), Didrik Tønseth (seventh), Andrew Musgrave (eighth), and Iivo Niskanen (13th), among many others. Oh, and also Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (21st), but he is (a) continuing his return from Covid and (b) known to ski at something less than full strength when he is out of contention for the overall victory.
“We know he was a bit nervous today and we saw that in him. I really wish him this,” Klæbo told NRK, according to an auto-translation.
Behind the leaders, Gus Schumacher came out near the front of his chase pack to finish in 16th overall (+39.6), continuing his strong start to the young season. Schumacher has now been 16th and 22nd in the year’s first two distance races; in the 2022/2023 season, that mark was 36th and 48th.
Be it the summer’s change in domestic clubs (disclosure: I ski with the Masters version of the APU program that Schumacher has recently joined; that said I also have no idea to what extent his training is overseen or influenced by APU coach Erik Flora as opposed to USST coach Kristen Bourne), a shift that is letting him better absorb his training, or something else altogether out of the hundreds of different things that go into high-level athletic performance, something is working well for the young Alaskan through the first weekend of the 2023/2024 season.
I asked Schumacher what his race sensations were like today, as he basically doubled the number of days he had been in race mode this winter. Here’s Schumacher, in writing to Nordic Insights:
“Today definitely felt a bit different. It was much easier to lock in mentally because there was always so much going on around me to focus on. It was also more time feeling tired haha, which was also tough, but also the kind of feeling that makes racing next weekend feel easier. It’s fun how being tossed into that mass start environment really brings the race head right back! Like riding a bike.”
Schumacher was followed on Sunday by a half-dozen additional American men. Scott Patterson was 20th (+47.4), Zanden McMullen 28th (+1:22.5) (a career-best World Cup finish), John Steel Hagenbuch 45th (+2:34.9) (also a career best), Zak Ketterson 52nd (+2:44.5), Luke Jager 68th (+4:02.7), and Ben Ogden 71st (+4:18.5).
This was Patterson’s first time racing this course in a mass start format. Here’s Patterson on what that is like, in writing to Nordic Insights:
“I’ve done the race several years from a large wave in the pursuit so I kind of knew what to expect. It’s a fun course with steep climbs but also some power sections and fast downhills. It’s a good one for early season as there are some nice recovery sections and good opportunities to hang with others that are maybe slightly stronger on the day.”
This weekend was not the World Cup debut for John Steel Hagenbuch, nor for anyone else on the American squad; Steel Hagenbuch had two starts in Engadin in March 2021. But this does mark the first time in Steel Hagenbuch’s career that he will be on the World Cup for a number of weeks and multiple race weekends. I asked him how that feels, and what his goals are for Period 1, particularly knowing that he has a number of races to work with. Here’s Steel Hagenbuch, in writing to NI:
“It’s nice to have a block of time to get more settled on the World Cup. This weekend was pretty tough, and it feels like I still haven’t quite found that race gear. Despite how I felt this weekend, I think I’m in a good place to build through Period One and the rest of the season. I don’t really have any expectations for Period One, but I’d like to have just one race where everything goes well. If I can have one race where my body, race execution, and skis are firing together, I’ll be satisfied when I return stateside.”
Before that happens, Steel Hagenbuch is off next for Gällivare, Sweden, where World Cup racing continues next weekend with a 10km interval-start skate race on Saturday, then men’s and women’s relays (4 x 7.5km, classic/classic/skate/skate) on Sunday.
I feel very comfortable assuming that every athlete who started today has a start in Saturday’s distance race if they want it (someone like David Norris, who was a discretionary pick for these races, is very unlikely to be flying over for a single start), but that is just my well-informed sense rather than sourced reporting per se. I haven’t asked Matt Whitcomb about relay team starters, but I am sure that those will not be chosen until after Saturday’s 10km skate, on the basis of recent results but also athlete feedback and overall team strength. Also look for some strategic resting there, potentially, as athletes weigh a long season against the World Cup points available, or not, for a team event.
— 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.
