The World Cup has traveled roughly 400 miles south within Sweden, from Gällivare to Östersund, since we last checked in. On the one hand, Östersund is still at 63° N latitude, which puts it well north of, say, Oslo, or somewhere between Anchorage and Fairbanks (Broad Pass, basically) for the benefit of my Alaskan readers. On the other hand, there are, by a very narrow margin, over five hours of daylight there today, so it’s basically the tropics.
I have recently learned from Wikipedia that Östersund is, quote, “the only Swedish city founded and chartered in the 18th century. Östersund was founded in order to create a trade monopoly over Jämtland, whose inhabitants’ lucrative trade annoyed the Swedish Crown.” There you have it.
Here is the Östersund coat of arms. As civic symbols go, this one, as the youths say, goes hard.
Anyway. This weekend brings a classic sprint on Saturday, and a 10km skate interval start, for the second weekend in a row, on Sunday.
Notably, one Johannes Høsflot Klæbo is back on the entry list for the sprint, though maybe hold off on presumptively handing him the victory until it becomes apparent how well he has recovered from Covid. He did beat Lucas Chanavat in a skate sprint last weekend, so he’s not doing too badly. Frida Karlsson is back for the women, after missing Gällivare while navigating her own Covid symptoms. Ebba Andersson gets the sprint start denied her in Ruka (where, to be fair, Sweden had fewer start rights to go around), which should be of help to her as she aims to contend for the World Cup overall this season.
Speaking of which: Your current World Cup leaders are Jessie Diggins, first, and Rosie Brennan, second. No I am not tired of saying this yet. Diggins and Brennan are currently third and fourth in the distance standings. The Swedish women do not occupy literally every other place in the women’s top 10 overall, but they do claim a majority of them.
Norway currently has six men in the top ten overall standings, led by Harald Østberg Amundsen in first and Pål Golberg in second. But Michal Novák of the Czech Republic is third. Okay then two more Norwegians. And Andrew Musgrave. And Klæbo is probably not going to finish the season in his current position of tenth overall. There are a lot of good skiers in Norway.
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.)
| date | race | time (AK) | time (EST) | results |
| Saturday, Dec. 9 | W sprint qual | 12:30 a.m. | 4:30 a.m. | here |
| M sprint qual | 1:05 a.m. | 5:05 a.m. | here | |
| W sprint final | 3 a.m. | 7 a.m. | here | |
| M sprint final | 3:30 a.m. | 7:30 a.m. | here | |
| Sunday, Dec. 10 | W 10km skate | 12:15 a.m. | 4:15 a.m. | here |
| M 10km skate | 2:45 a.m. | 6:45 a.m. | here |
Who is racing for the U.S.?
Five athletes are starting for the women: Jessie Diggins, Rosie Brennan, Julia Kern, Alayna Sonnesyn, and Lauren Jortberg (listed in start order for the qual).
The American men send seven athletes to the start line: Ben Ogden, JC Schoonmaker, Kevin Bolger, Luke Jager, Will Koch, Zanden McMullen, and Gus Schumacher. It will be Koch’s first World Cup start this season, and fourth career World Cup sprint start. He raced three sprints, a team sprint, and a 10km skate in Period 3 last season. Everyone else listed here has already raced in Period 1 of this season.
Start lists for Sunday’s 10km are not currently available. You should expect them to be largely coterminous with the American starters in last weekend’s distance races. America and Sweden are a long ways apart; while someone like David Norris earned starts for these races, he is presumptively not flying across eight time zones for a single race.
Who is favored?
Klæbo, Erik Valnes, and Richard Jouve, in that order, are your betting favorites for the men’s sprint. For the women, it’s Kristine Skistad of Norway, then Emma Ribom, Maja Dahlqvist, and Linn Svahn of Sweden. The fact that they are still so bullish on Klæbo (Covid) and Dahlqvist (rough start to the season by her own high standards) suggests that I may pay more attention to this than the oddsmakers do. Then again, they precisely called last weekend’s women’s podium, in order, so maybe I should keep my day job.
The books have installed precisely the same women’s podium as last week for the 10km: Diggins, Andersson, and Moa Ilar. Diggins is in an even greater favorite this time. The bookies see Iver Tildheim Andersen, Amundsen, and Simen Hegstad Krüger as the men’s podium. As I said in this space before, I of course do not bet on the races I cover, but I find that the betting lines have a pretty good track record and so am sharing them here.
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.
