ANCHORAGE, Alaska — I often say here, as a sort of joking shorthand, that an athlete employs the simple strategy of “just skiing away from everyone else as fast as they can.” The joke, of course, is that high-level sport is typically more complicated than that; this approach worked for Timothy Cheruiyot in the 1,500 at 2019 Worlds, but not for Jakob Ingebrigtsen at either of his last two global championships. Endurance sport is hard, and you have to be really, really good to make this work.
Sammy Smith (USST/Sun Valley) pulled off this approach earlier Tuesday at a snowy Kincaid Park, winning the women’s skate sprint, the opening race of the 2023/2024 SuperTour season, with seeming ease. She set the fastest time in the qual, by over three seconds. She won her quarterfinal, her semifinal, and the final; the margins were smaller than three seconds in the heats, but she did win all these as well.
Front running like that all day in slow conditions was “objectively not the smartest move” for today, Smith said after the race. (All quotes in today’s reporting are in person to Nordic Insights at the finish.)
But she had a reason for doing this.
“I wanted to ski hard consistently throughout the day to hopefully put myself in a better position for some of the international races that I hope to race in later in the year,” Smith explained.
Sammy Smith has a poise that belies her 18 years of age, or the fact that she has not yet graduated high school; when I suggested that she had destroyed the field all day, she graciously demurred, “I mean, it was super competitive racing.” So take any suggestion that she was the strongest athlete out there today and could basically do what she wanted to as coming from me rather than from her, is what I’m trying to say.
But Smith did note that she has had limited time on snow so far this year, and wanted to use today “to get used to skiing fast again. … And hopefully just ski hard consistently. So if I do get the opportunity to race internationally later in the year, then I’m putting my best foot forward at those races.”
Smith is, as noted, currently 18. I don’t want to obsess about this fact, but it is relevant to her options for her racing schedule in the 2023/2024 season: If the results continue to be there, she could potentially race at all of World Juniors in Planica, the Canmore and/or Wirth World Cups, and maybe even spring European World Cups as well. The latter would not be a first for her; she logged a full eight starts in Period 4 of the 2022/2023 seasons, including making the heats in two of her four sprints.
So I asked her, if she has the dream season she’s hoping for, and she logs the results that she wants, where does she hope to race this winter?
“Definitely World Juniors,” Smith answered immediately. “I’ve been close a few times to get to that top-three mark, so I’m definitely hoping to get on the podium there this year. There’s a skate sprint [in Planica], which I’m super excited about. And the opportunity to race a World Cup on home soil is pretty surreal. So Minneapolis and World Juniors are the two goals for the season, for sure.”
Back to this race early in the season, it was snowy out there. Like, snowing pretty hard. Like, the course was groomed, and groomed well, during the night, but there were two or three or four inches of fresh snow on top of it by the time athletes were skiing the course, especially as the day wore on and the last heats went off shortly before 3 p.m.
“When you have everyone pretty much skiing in the same track,” Smith explained, “when you get to rounds and it gets congested, you’ve got people who are trying to get by so they can go wide. But then they’re in a couple inches of thick snow and it’s kind of 50–50 win or lose, maybe you can get around or maybe you get stuck out there and you’re better off to tuck in behind.”
“So definitely a lot of tactical things out there,” Smith continued. “That was another reason why I tried to go hard from the beginning. I mean, that was my plan regardless, but I think just still trying to avoid any potential conflict during the race.”
Show crash? Show crash. This happened during the second quarterfinal. Thanks to Graeme Williams for the superb photo; do follow him @oneskatephotos on Instagram.
That’s Hannah Rudd at far left, Sonjaa Schmidt in bib four, Renae Anderson going way wide in bib 17 on the far right, and all of Sarah Goble, Katie Weaver, and Karianne Olsvik Dengerud unfortunately on the ground.
Schmidt, a Canadian who skis for Whitehorse Ski Club, kept her feet and advanced out of what was by far the day’s fastest semifinal, the first, courtesy of Smith towing everyone around once again. She was joined in the final by the multinational crew of fellow Canadians Liliane Gagnon (CNEPH) and Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt (Fondeurs–Laurentides), Anna-Maria Dietze (University of Colorado) of Germany, and Erin Bianco (BSF) of the U.S.
Smith, as noted, won the final, in 3:47.34. Gagnon was second, 1.10 seconds back, and Dietze third (+1.80). It potentially reads as jingoistic that I only talked with the sole American on the podium, but it was truly rather the case that it was cold and snowy, the sun was setting, and everyone wanted to go home before the 10km classic tomorrow. (And to clarify several of these athletes specifically waited for me but I was unable to catch up to them; I’m bending over backwards here to clarify that no one blew me off.) I’ll see who I can catch tomorrow.
— 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.
