The World Cup circus travels to Gällivare, Sweden, this weekend for a pair of races. There will be a 10-kilometer interval-start skate race on Saturday, then relays on Sunday. The relays will be traditional in the sense that they will be single-gender relays, and will be in the classic–classic–skate–skate format that has been familiar for decades now. They will be less traditional in the sense that first the women’s relay and then the men’s relay will both be 4 x 7.5 kilometers, as opposed to 4 x 10km for the men and 4 x 5km for the women.
Speaking of relays in Gällivare: The last time the World Cup was here, in November 2012, a 21-year-old Jessie Diggins anchored the American women to a breakthrough bronze medal in the relay, the first ever women’s relay podium for this country and later the narrative hook for Peggy Shinn’s study of the U.S. women’s team, World Class. Other athletes on that relay team were Holly Brooks, Kikkan Randall, and Liz Stephen, with Ida Sargent as the most enthusiastic cheerleader. Diggins narrowly beat out Norway II anchor Marthe Kristoffersen for the final podium spot. Kristoffersen last raced on the World Cup in 2017. It’s been a while.
Back in the present day, here is when the races will be this weekend:
World Cup (local time at venue: Central European Time. This is 6 hours ahead of the East Coast and 10 hours ahead of Alaska. I’m not saying that I live in an isolated frozen colony on the extreme western edge of the continent, but the women’s races will literally start shortly before midnight on the day before.)
| date | race | time (AK) | time (EST) | results |
| Saturday, Dec. 1 | W 10km skate | 11:45 p.m. Fri. | 3:45 a.m. | here |
| M 10km skate | 2 a.m. | 6 a.m. | here | |
| Sunday, Dec. 2 | women’s relay | 11:50 p.m. Sat. | 3:50 a.m. | here |
| men’s relay | 2 a.m. | 6 a.m. | here |
Who is racing for the U.S.?
Alayna Sonnesyn (bib no. 4), Novie McCabe (12), Julia Kern (15), Sophia Laukli (17), Jessie Diggins (34), and Rosie Brennan (42) will be starting for the women.
Luke Jager (bib no. 8), Zanden McMullen (13), Zak Ketterson (14), John Steel Hagenbuch (27), Ben Ogden (33), Scott Patterson (36), and Gus Schumacher (60) will be starting for the men. Not sure if World Cup race or APU men’s team practice.
There were three 10km interval-start skate races held on the World Cup last year. Diggins was on the podium for all three of them, finishing a neat first, second, and third in total. She also, you just may be aware, became the first American to win an individual World Championships gold when she won this race in Planica in February.
Who else is racing?
The other podium finishers in that Planica race were Frida Karlsson and Ebba Andersson. Karlsson is out for this weekend due to Covid; Andersson will be starting two bibs and one minute ahead of Diggins on Saturday.
Oddsmakers have installed Diggins as the favorite for the 10km, then Andersson, followed by Moa Ilar and Rosie Brennan. I don’t know if this ranking accounts for the fact that Saturday is Brennan’s birthday.
For the men, the books have Simen Hegstad Krüger as their top pick, followed by Iver Tildheim Andersen (who won this race in Lillehammer last December as a surprise last-minute starter), Harald Østberg Amundsen, Jan Thomas Jenssen, and Pål Golberg, in that order. Andrew Musgrave is the top non-Norwegian pick, though if you’ve ever heard him conduct post-race interviews in fluent, albeit accented, Norwegian you can decide for yourself if there should be an asterisk there.
It should go without saying that I do not wager on the races that I cover, but the betting lines can be a useful way to get a sense of the vox populi here.
Bibs one and two to start off the men’s race are Joe Davies of Great Britain and phenom Alvar Myhlback of Sweden. Chad Salmela has thoughts on this.
Davies is 22; Myhlback is (not a typo) 17. Davies made two World Cup starts in Period 1 of the 2022/2023 season; he finished 43rd in the 10km skate in Lillehammer. It will be the World Cup debut for young Myhlback, an athlete whom Petter Northug has called “perhaps the greatest talent he has ever seen.” And what were you doing your senior year of high school?
At the other end of the chronological field, Riitta-Liisa Roponen will start for the women. Roponen was born in 1978, and is 45 years old. She made her World Cup debut in 1998. She should become the oldest World Cup skier of all time when she trips the starting wand; Giorgio di Centa was, by my math, a spritely 44 when he did his last World Cup race in January 2017.
Who is not racing?
Multiple athletes, unfortunately, particularly much of the Swedish women’s team. Find out more here:
What about the relay?
Relay teams will be announced roughly 24 hours before that race. Expect some load management.
How can you 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:
Enjoy the races.
— 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.
