Viewing Guide for January 2–7: U.S. Nationals in Soldier Hollow

Let me put the results link here because that’s what everyone is searching for: here are live results for 2024 U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships. Also there is no formal livestreaming this year due to expense. Team Birkie may potentially once more host live video of the stadium (shows start and finish) but no audio if you’re desperate. Check out their Facebook page for more; no guarantees either way.

SOLDIER HOLLOW NORDIC CENTER, above Midway, Utah — 2024 is still just one day old, but already it is time for the biggest races of the year on the domestic race calendar: 2024 U.S. National Cross-Country Championships. This year’s races kick off tomorrow, and will feature four days of racing between now and Sunday (the final race is, strictly speaking, a SuperTour race, rather than a national championship race).

There is essentially no snow on the ground here at present, but legacy Olympic venue Soldier Hollow knows how to operate snowmaking equipment, and has done so efficiently and expertly over the past week. Conditions at the venue are currently superb, firm and fast despite the bright sun and daytime temperatures into the 40s. (Source: I skied here Monday afternoon starting shortly after 2 p.m., when the trails had experienced the maximum amount of baking for the day. They were fantastic.) Expect a change to the weather pattern and likely snow for, of course, classic sprint day, but the first part of the week should be pretty straightforward.

Some brief preview thoughts follow below, but probably the single most helpful thing I can tell you is when the races will be and where to find results. So: Here is when the races will be (local time at venue = Mountain Time):

Where can you find results?

Here, at my.raceresult.com. At least most of the time.

Will there be livestreaming?

No, unfortunately. “Due to the expense of production, there will not be livestreaming of this year’s U.S. National Championships,” Adam St. Pierre wrote on behalf of USSS last week. You can try this Facebook Live from Team Birkie for video of the stadium with no sound.

Wait, really? How much expense are we talking about here anyway?

Really, sad to say. No one is happy about this, I promise. And the expense is… a lot more than I was expecting. I’ll have a standalone article on this later this week, probably on Wednesday when there’s no races happening, but it really is a fair amount. And that’s with most if not all of the people involved donating their time for this for free, as happens with many aspects of nordic skiing in this country.

Who is racing?

A lot of skiers, and a lot of good skiers. There are 212 women entered in tomorrow’s 10km classic, and 251 men. Both of them, unusually, have 15-second interval starts for a distance race, so things will go, well, roughly twice as quickly as if the standard 30-second interval were used.

There are an additional 13 athletes total entered in the 5km classic sit ski, at various LW (“Locomotor Winter”) classification levels.

With all respect to the athletes in the day’s first two races, the sit ski race has by far the highest proportion of Olympians of any contest on tap here. I didn’t run stats for the whole field, but Oksana Masters alone has 17 Paralympic medals to her name, Dan Cnossen has seven, and Kendall Gretsch has six, so tomorrow afternoon’s start list averages somewhere well north of two Paralympic medals per athlete.

U.S. Ski Team athletes entered in the first race of the day, the women’s 10km classic, include Sydney Palmer-Leger, Haley Brewster, and Ava Thurston. National team athletes entered in the next race, the men’s 10km classic, include John Steel Hagenbuch, Walker Hall, Michael Earnhart, Buster Richardson, Luke Jager, Brian Bushey, Max Kluck, and Will Koch.

Every current national team athlete save two is racing either on the Tour de Ski or here this week. JC Schoonmaker was slated to start in Toblach but withdrew due to illness, and Zak Ketterson is not entered in either race series. Ketterson’s last public posts on both Instagram and Strava show him celebrating the holidays in Norway with his family a few days ago.

Full teams from the country’s top ski clubs, and from even more strong college ski programs, will give the handful of athletes mentioned by name above ample competition. Foreign nationals racing for American colleges are not eligible for national championships, note well.

What are athletes racing for?

National championships on three days this week, as noted, plus, uh, a SuperTour victory on Sunday. (The classic sprint national championship will be held in Duluth in March as part of Spring Series. “The World Cup will be over, and many U.S. Ski Team athletes will race in Duluth!” USSS tells us.)

In addition to titles earned this week, athletes are also racing for selection to a number of international competitions later this season. Here’s USSS again, with an overview of which races are used for which trips:

“The first 3 races at U.S. Nationals (including the Junior 10km Mass Start) are used to select athletes to the World Junior Championships and NNF U18 Nordic Nations Cup Trip. All 4 races at SoHo will be used to select athletes to the World U23 Championships.”

Nordic Nations (also known as “Scando Cup”) will be held in Falun in mid-January. World Junior and U23 Championships will be held in Planica in early February.

Finally, athletes are also racing for selection to the American team for the two World Cups held on this continent this year, in Canmore, Alberta, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The U.S. will have an expanded Nation’s Group quota of twelves athletes per gender for each of these races. It is safe to say that racing on the World Cup at home is a season goal for just about every high-level domestic athlete in this country.

You can find points lists for the World Juniors, U23, and Nordic Nations trips here. You can find points list for the North American World Cup spots here, though the math with this one gets a little complicated.

Enjoy the races everyone. I’ll be reporting live from SoHo all week.

— Gavin Kentch