Earlier Thursday, U.S. Ski & Snowboard announced the eight men and six women nominated to race on the World Cup in Period 2 of the 2023/2024 SuperTour season, i.e., the Tour de Ski.
For the men, the athletes are: Michael Earnhart, Ben Ogden, JC Schoonmaker, Gus Schumacher, Kevin Bolger, Zanden McMullen, John Steel Hagenbuch, and Scott Patterson.
For the women, the athletes are: Sammy Smith, Jessie Diggins, Rosie Brennan, Julia Kern, Sophia Laukli, and Novie McCabe.
Notably, these are the athletes who have been nominated to race the Tour de Ski for the U.S., not necessarily those athletes who have accepted the nomination and will race. Among the men, Michael Earnhart has already stated that he will be declining these starts in favor of racing at U.S. Nationals in Soldier Hollow. Sammy Smith told me in Anchorage last week that she would have to have a serious conversation with her coaches about whether or not to accept these starts. Earnhart is 21 years old. Smith is three months past her eighteenth birthday.
Update: “Can confirm that Sammy Smith will race,” Leann Bentley, the USSS press officer for the nordic team, wrote to me on Friday, December 22.
Of the six female athletes named here, Sammy Smith was nominated because she is the women’s overall SuperTour leader after the first week of racing in Anchorage. The other five women were named because they met objective criteria tied to their World Cup performance, i.e., they were ranked in the top 30 of either the sprint or distance standings based on their performance in Period 1.
Of the eight male athletes named here, one of them, Michael Earnhart, was nominated because he is the men’s overall SuperTour leader after the first week of racing in Anchorage. The next five names listed above (Ben Ogden, JC Schoonmaker, Gus Schumacher, Kevin Bolger, Zanden McMullen) were named because they met objective criteria tied to their World Cup performance — same time frame and rankings list as for the women, except that a top-40 ranking is required on the men’s side.
The final two names for the men (John Steel Hagenbuch and Scott Patterson) were named on the basis of discretion, with the relevant working group noting Steel Hagenbuch’s 13th in the Östersund 10km skate and Patterson’s 20th in the Ruka 20km skate as indicia of their potential for World Cup success.
You will likely note, and I mean this in the absolute nicest way possible, that the teams named here are not coterminous with those athletes who raced on the World Cup in Period 1 (i.e., some athletes raced in Europe to start this year, but did not achieve results that met the performance standards that would let them continue racing in Europe next week. Which is okay! Skiing is hard and takes time!) I’ve embedded Lauren Jortberg’s recent post above because it felt to me like a nice take on this dynamic at this point in the season.
The relevant USSS working group, through Program Director Chris Grover, spoke to the overall team size as follows in its written statement:
“The Working Group decided not to nominate additional athletes to the Tour de Ski due to the logistic, support demand, and health concerns surrounding the Tour, as well as to create a balanced and fair selection platform at the U.S. Nationals, where athletes currently performing at comparable levels can demonstrate their abilities. The ski service demands of the Tour alone are massive, with each athlete competing 7 times in 9 days and requiring world-class skis each day to compete for podiums. The Working Group views the Tour de Ski as platform for elite performance and not a primary development opportunity. Individual World Cups are much better designed for developing athletes and we intend to populate starts much more generously in the remainder of the World Cup season.”
You can find additional information on the selection process, including the makeup of the working group (TLDR: four coaches from USSS, six coaches from this country’s main clubs, five other recognizable names), here. You can find this year’s World Cup selection criteria document here. Athletes will be selected for World Cup Period 3 on “TBD,” USSS currently states online.
This year’s Tour de Ski starts with a skate sprint in Toblach on December 30, 2023, and ends with the climb up Alpe Cermis on January 7, 2024. There will be five other races held in between.
— 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.
