From Östersund, Sweden, last weekend the World Cup circus traveled basically due west to Trondheim, Norway. Everyone loves the venue and the surrounding community. But there are also three races to contest here before Period 1 wraps up: a skate sprint, a skiathlon, and a 10km classic.
The World Cup was last in Trondheim in 2020, then before that all the way back in 2009. Petra Majdič swept those races for the women, if that helps you to date it. These athletes will not have to wait half that long to race here again after this weekend, as Trondheim hosts World Championships in February and March of 2025. I would recommend that you not play a drinking game revolving around announcers mentioning that Klæbo is from Trondheim and hopes to win at home next season; you will get soused with alacrity.
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 |
| Friday, Dec. 15 | W sprint qual | 12:00 a.m. | 4 a.m. | here |
| M sprint qual | 12:35 a.m. | 4:35 a.m. | here | |
| sprint finals | 2:30 a.m. | 6:30 a.m. | here | |
| Saturday, Dec. 16 | W skiathlon | 1:10 a.m. | 5:10 a.m. | here |
| M skiathlon | 3:15 a.m. | 7:15 a.m. | here | |
| Sunday, Dec. 17 | W 10km classic | 1 a.m. | 5 a.m. | here |
| M 10km classic | 3:15 a.m. | 7:15 a.m. | here |
Of note, this will be the first skate sprint contested in the 2023/2024 World Cup season. Several American athletes love to see it.
Who is racing for the U.S.?
Six athletes are starting for the women: Jessie Diggins, Rosie Brennan, Julia Kern, Alayna Sonnesyn, Lauren Jortberg, and Novie McCabe.
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. These are precisely the same seven athletes, in precisely the same seed order, as in last weekend’s sprint.
Start lists for the distance races are not yet available. You should expect them to be largely coterminous with the American starters in last weekend’s distance races, although n.b. that Zak Ketterson is recovering from Covid and as of earlier this week was uncertain whether he would be racing this weekend.
Who is currently leading the overall women’s World Cup standings?
Jessie Diggins first and Rosie Brennan second. Hells yeah. Oh and by the way last weekend’s heroes, Ben Ogden and JC Schoonmaker, are third and seventh in the men’s sprint standings.
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.
