If you’re reading this website, you probably already know what happened in Östersund last weekend: JC Schoonmaker was third in the classic sprint, with teammate Ben Ogden fourth. It was the single best day for American men’s skiing in 17 years, and the first time in both men’s career that either sprint phenom had made a World Cup sprint final. To see the breakthrough happen for both men on the same day felt almost scripted, but also like the only possible outcome for this team.
I could valorize this result a lot more, but I already did that for far too many words on race day. So instead let me take you back to late October of this year, a mere six weeks before Schoonmaker was standing on that podium, and tell you, honestly, how he was feeling at this time.
He had been dealing with some sort of low-grade virus for four weeks, he tells host Jon “Fast Big Dog” Schafer in this episode. He had a sore throat that just wouldn’t go away. He was missing a ton of training. He already felt like “maybe this season’s not the one,” and was thinking ahead to summer training for next year.
“I feel like the best thing you can do in those situations is try to focus on the day to day,” Schoonmaker says, “do normal life stuff and not think too much about skiing.” And then when he finally made it back to training and could think about skiing, maybe he still didn’t want to think too much about the feelings he was having in training, “because they weren’t super good. And not think about getting my ass kicked in the intervals and time trials we did.”
Again, this was a man six weeks removed from stomping the first American men’s World Cup podium in nearly seven years (Simi Hamilton, Toblach, January 2017). Any thoughts on this, JC?
“It’s kind of crazy how fast things can switch, and you just have to remember that. Even though it’s insanely hard when you’re in one of those tough times.”
* * *
There’s more, much more, in this candid chat with the emergent star of American men’s skiing. Schoonmaker covers the topics you would expect, how he got into skiing and how he grew to love it. But he also speaks candidly about the difficulties of first making it onto the World Cup, then racing like you belong there. About his race highlights for the rest of the season (World Cup skate sprint at Wirth, of course, but also the Birkie is on the list). And about, yes, what it’s like to be dating Emma Ribom, but also some more candid perspective on why the American men’s team currently has it much easier than the women’s team.
Plus there’s a great story about going on a group man date with Ogden and Klæbo. “We all went down to Klæbo’s HUFS factory,” Schoonmaker recounts, “and I got this fresh haircut from his personal barber. He hooked us all up with some shampoo, because he probably thinks we’re just like dirty Americans.”
That is more than enough of an excuse for me to embed this image:
But there’s also this image, from Östersund, in which Schoonmaker crosses the line first in his semifinal to secure his passage to his first World Cup final, a potentially career-defining moment. And in that moment is thinking of nothing but his teammate, turning to his left to point to Ogden as the Vermonter crosses the line in second. Here it is:
I got choked up writing about this moment on race day. Fast Big Dog got choked up asking about it in this podcast. You can’t hear Schoonmaker as well when this comes up, but he was affected, too. People care about this team, and care deeply.
And speaking of team, what do you think about this result, JC?
Last weekend’s final “doesn’t belong to me and Ben; it belongs to the whole of U.S. skiing. So we can all celebrate it, and keep aiming for more.”
Bring it.
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I want to extend our deep thanks to an extremely generous listener, who wishes to remain anonymous, who has donated some quality recording equipment to the cause. And also to our audio engineer, Nathan Shuttleworth. If you can actually hear what’s going on in this episode, it is almost completely because of those two individuals.
Thanks for listening. We have some exciting guests coming up after this, and are excited to now claim a semblance of professionalism on the recording side.
— 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 haven’t been going very hard on soliciting donations yet, out of deference to the NNF’s Drive for 25, which is more important than this website. 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.
