SOLDIER HOLLOW NORDIC CENTER — There’s a reason that “Instagram” and “reality” are typically arrayed on opposite sides of a classical duality. I once calculated that every minute spent ski racing, for a high-level athlete, has from 50 to 100 minutes of training invested behind it; those brief moments in the sun are hard-won via a lot more hours spent grinding in the darkness. If you go into this sport expecting nothing but podium finishes under blue skies, you won’t last long in this sport.
That said, sometimes it all comes together, and, well, let’s let Sydney Palmer-Leger (USST/Utah) take it from here, and explain what it was like to win a national championship Tuesday morning in the women’s 10-kilometer interval-start classic, the opening race of 2024 U.S. National Cross-Country Championships.
“I grew up in Park City” said the now 21-year-old athlete, basking in the brilliant mid-morning sunshine post-race. “I have pictures of me racing at Soldier Hollow when I was like five years old, V1ing into the finish. So I know this course by heart.”
“I love just seeing everybody, all the volunteers I’ve grown up with,” Palmer-Leger continued. “And some of my coaches from Sun Valley. Rick Kapala was running up the hill, and instantly I saw him and a smile went across my face. So it’s really fun having my family here and everyone here that’s supporting, and they can see how I race, and doing well too. And they can see why I ski race, and why I love it, and all these people and the community that we have here.”
I should probably tell you, like, who won the race overall (hint: it was Tilde Bångman), but in the incredibly close-knit world of American nordic skiing, where U.S. Nationals is one part high-end race series and one part extended family reunion, Palmer-Leger’s thoughts here really summed up the mood on the day: A lot of people who support American skiing will all come together in one place, and 200+ women will go around a 3.3km oval three times, and a few hours later we will see who did it fastest.
But parents will also reconnect with parent friends, and coaches with coach friends, and athletes with athlete friends. I’m not trying to take anything away from Palmer-Leger’s performance on the course; it was, after all, a national championship–winning effort. But it was clear from the crowds out there Tuesday that there were plenty of people who were proud of her no matter what the results sheet said.
Turning now to the results sheet, it said, at the top: Tilde Bångman, of Montana State University, first; Sydney Palmer-Leger, of the University of Utah, second; Karianne Olsvik Dengerud, also of Utah, third. Bångman’s time for 10km was 27:13.3. Palmer-Leger was 19.2 seconds back. Dengerud was 41.4 seconds back.
The results sheet also says, accurately, that Bångman and Dengerud are both foreign nationals. They are from Østersund, Sweden, and (the suburbs of) Oslo, Norway, respectively. So your domestic podium, for an event that welcomed anyone with a valid USSS or FIS license but that also had to crown a national champion, was Palmer-Leger in first, Margie Freed (Craftsbury) in second, and Nina Schamberger (Utah) in third. The three Americans were second, fourth, and seventh, respectively, in the overall standings.
The athletes in the top ten were evenly split between Americans and foreign nationals. There are a lot of good skiers in RMISA.
“I had such a good feeling out there today,” said one such skier, Bångman of Montana State. “It was so much fun to race. So really, I just enjoyed it all, and afterwards I was just happy to have a good race and a great feeling. And the result is just a bonus for me today. But I’m glad I managed to win it.”
“I hated” racing at altitude last year, Bångman stated. But an additional year of living and training in Bozeman, which is also at altitude, helped bring her around.
“I didn’t really have a tactic,” said a chill and content Bångman of her race. “I was just going out there, trying to have fun, trying to keep a very stable pace throughout the race. Tried not to bonk.”
Podium finishers’ pace throughout the race was fairly stable, but snow conditions were not. Even for early starter Palmer-Leger (bib no. 21, on course by 9:05 a.m., athlete no. 21 of ca. 450 on the day), she noticed a difference across her three laps.
“It stayed the same for the first two laps,” the Utah skier recounted. “And then the third lap, going up to the Hollow” immediately after leaving the biathlon stadium, “the sun had hit it, and it was getting a lot slower. But then the rest of the course stayed a little bit colder, because the sun hadn’t gotten to it yet.”
Palmer-Leger was pleased with how she skied today. “I gave it all I could,” she said. “I have a race cough. I feel it. I’m pretty proud of how I skied; it was nice and relaxed. This course is pretty hard.”
So why is the course hard, asked the midpack citizen racer?
“We’re at altitude,” Palmer-Leger mused, “so that is hard in general. But all these hills are pretty tough. And there’s not a lot of downhills where you can relax and take a second to breathe, because I try pushing up and over and pushing all the places that I can. So a lot of people can tuck, but I try to push as much as I can. It goes by quick; I think every lap is around seven to eight minutes. So it’s tough out there.”
“I didn’t feel like I was alone out there,” said Margie Freed, the second-place American, of her day. Notably, Tuesday’s race sent athletes out at 15-second intervals, spacing typically reserved for a sprint qual (distance races normally use a 30-second interval start. I assume the change was made today due to the 200+ starters in the women’s field, and 250ish in the men’s field later. That’s a lot of skiers.) This timing, paired with the three-lap course, meant that there was a lot of traffic out there today.
“It seemed like there was somebody at every moment,” Freed said. “So that kept things interesting. … Having all the fans, too; it was just exciting out there. And I was glad to not get too in my head.”
Freed grew up in the Twin Cities, skied collegiately for Vermont/raced on the EISA Circuit, and then moved to Craftsbury Green Racing Project after graduating. Not a lot of altitude there. (Obviously Freed has previously raced at Soho in multiple national championships, finishing as high as fifth, as well as at Howelsen Hill in Steamboat; I’m setting up a point here.) So what approach has she developed to racing at slightly over 1,700 meters?
“So after many years of going up and down from altitude,” Freed reasoned, “I have realized that I have to just take it really chill in training and not push anything too hard. So I did that the first couple of days here, and then took the race out in kind of a fast L3 up the first Hollow [hill], just to kind of relax into it and get into a good rhythm. And by that point, then I could kind of just push the rest of the way and know that it’s at altitude, of course I’m gonna feel miserable.”
Racing is fun.
“I’m loving it here,” said Nina Schamberger when asked about her experience five months into her first year at the University of Utah. “It’s really nice to be able to come to Nationals on what feels like my home course. We rollerskied here quite a bit in the fall, and I’ve had a lot of races here in the past.”
Schamberger was all smiles after the race, but had a somewhat rocky path to getting there.
“I was a little bit unsure that I’d even be able to race today,” she recounted. “I had this kind of weird stint with tendonitis in Alaska that kept me from racing the last day. And so this has only been my third classic ski since then. And so I was a little bit nervous about that, and just kind of how it would go. And so I came up with a strategy to really push the doublepole sections and just try to get as many points as I could for Junior Worlds qualification, without aggravating my heel further, and I think I accomplished that goal. And so I’m happy with how that went, but I’m hungry for more.”
Schamberger did mention some certain races in Planica in February, and she is currently leading those rankings, but that’s not really her ultimate focus for an athlete already wise beyond her years (really though, read her thoughts on, well, Instagram vs. reality from the bottom of this article from last month’s SuperTour racing).
“I’m going for Junior Worlds and hopefully NCAAs,” she said, “but my biggest goals are just process, to keep having fun with it and just see what I can do.”
Final word here goes to Margie Freed, to underscore just how many people, most of them volunteering their time, it takes to let those athletes race around those ovals of manmade snow on a hillside in January:
“I just want to thank all the volunteers, all the support staff from Craftsbury that supported me and all the other athletes, as well as all the parents that are cheering on the athletes, and friends and family and volunteers. We couldn’t do it without them.”
Racing continues tomorrow afternoon with a sit ski sprint for the para athletes. The rest of the field next races a skate sprint on Thursday.
Results: 10km classic | sit ski (all races)
— Gavin Kentch
I’m writing this article from the cheapest area lodging I could find. I just made brown rice and vegetables for dinner on a hot plate, since that is a cheap form of carbohydrates and that is the “stove” available to me here. I am, so far as I can tell, the only media interviewing athletes at this year’s races, which are literally national championships. It is important to me that someone tell these stories, and I am proud that I am doing so.
This reporting is only happening because I paid my own way down here from Anchorage. And it happens on a site that made a grand total of $1,500 in profit last year — and that was with $3,000 in reader donations. If you’d like to support the second year of the site, you may do so here. This is still last year’s GoFundMe, sorry; I’ll get a new one up soon. I’ve been sort of busy singlehandedly covering U.S. domestic ski racing. All the money goes to the same place regardless. Thank you for your consideration, and thank you for reading.
Awesome article! Thank you 🙏
Aw, thanks. And thanks for reading.
— Gavin.
👍🏼🙏👊🏽