SOLDIER HOLLOW NORDIC CENTER — Alex Lawson has had a self-proclaimed slow start to this race season. Haley Brewster is a college skier who last contested a sprint heat many months ago. Alayna Sonnesyn didn’t know what to expect on the day, because of the altitude and a recent break from sprinting.
Roughly four minutes later — or maybe more like five hours, if you measure from when athletes arrive at the venue in the morning, and stop measuring before you get to drives home and eating and showers and shakeout jogs and stretching and more eating and so on — all three athletes were standing on the domestic national podium in the women’s 1.6-kilometer skate sprint at 2024 U.S. National Cross-Country Championships.
Karianne Olsvik Dengerud of the University of Denver was first overall on the day, with a winning time of 3:52.00 [all times in this paragraph are based off of a screenshot of unofficial results, so big grain of salt here FYI]. Alayna Sonnesyn (SMS T2) was second (+.55), Brewster (USST/Vermont) third (+.89), and Lawson (Craftsbury) fourth (+4.67). Tilde Bångman of Montana State University (+6.03) and Mariel Merlii Pulles of Alaska Fairbanks (+15.36) rounded out the overall podium.
The domestic podium for this national championship was Sonnesyn first, then Brewster and Lawson. It is Sonnesyn’s second national championship, following a win in the skate sprint at Craftsbury in 2023 Spring Series. Because Sonnesyn skis for SMS T2, and I am going to be talking about her a lot in this article, I should disclose here that the mother of a current SMS junior athlete has taken pity on my money-saving self and has brought me some meals this week. Sonnesyn was the first American in this national championship so I would be talking about her regardless, but I should admit to that connection.
Speaking of Sonnesyn, what did she think about her race?
“It was a great day,” she said. “It was really hard. The course is really interesting. [Refer to the article on today’s men’s race for a lot of background on this sprint course.] I’ve never actually raced this course before, so it was a first for me. And I didn’t really know what to expect going into it just because it’s at altitude, and I haven’t done a sprint in a while. And so I went in with an open mind, but ready to just go for it. I’m really happy with the way I handled everything tactically throughout all the heats, and with the final outcome. So really pleased with it.”
Sonnesyn’s tactics clearly worked — she was second in the final — but there was a moment in her semifinal when it looked like maybe she was being a little too tactical. The results page for today currently is entirely blank save for a message stating, “TECHNICAL ISSUES WITH RESULTS. WORKING ON IT…” So I don’t have times for you. But my recollection is that she came into the stadium in a four-up sprint, ultimately finishing second (?), 0.05 seconds out of first but also closer than one might like to not advancing at all.
“On the one hand, I was able to conserve quite a bit of energy throughout the heat” by skiing tactically, Sonnesyn recounted. “But on the other hand, I brought it down to the line, and definitely had to really charge at the finish line. I’d say with 100 meters to the finish, I think I was in fourth or fifth. But training with Jessie Diggins and Julia Kern all summer [with her SMS T2 team] definitely gives me some sprint and power to rely on, so I just kind of leaned into that and went for it. And it was a very close finish, but I’m happy that it paid off.”
Sonnesyn mentioned two club teammates of hers who have been achieving World Cup success, and indeed Sonnesyn spent Period 1 of this season racing alongside them in Europe. Her two sprint quals there saw her finish 39th and 43rd; her distance results were all in the 30s or 40s.
I seldom miss a chance here to say how much I respect this. It is, I would imagine, “easy” (I mean ski racing is never easy, but I’m making a larger point here about development and sense of belonging) to be a consistent top-20 World Cup skier, at least when it comes to expectations and identity. And it also seems like it would be “easy,” again with a lot of qualifications, to be a consistent podium threat on the SuperTour.
I have so. much. respect. for athletes who are somewhere in the awkward middle, training and grinding and working as hard as everyone else, with results that might look like just missing the World Cup sprint heats, or finishing outside the top 30 by just a few seconds. And who nonetheless get back out there the next day and do that again.
So I asked Sonnesyn what she has learned from being in that position. If you’ve ever raced, or will ever race, at pretty much any level of skiing, you’ll want to pay attention to this:
“You just have to believe every single day,” Sonnesyn said, “and that’s something I’m still continuously working on. But you never know what’s going to happen. And there have been so many sprints where — well, I have qualified for a sprint, but I’ve also been one second out of qualifying for a sprint. And it’s definitely challenging to be in that position. But all you can really do is believe in yourself and tell yourself that you never know what’s gonna happen, and keep believing. And that’s what I have just been trying to carry with me throughout last season and this season as well.”
The second-place American today, Haley Brewster, is slightly back of Sonnesyn on the development curve. Sonnesyn is 27; Brewster is 20. Sonnesyn graduated from the University of Vermont in 2018; Brewster is on track to do so in 2026. But they also reached the finish line only a fraction of a second apart from one another on Thursday afternoon.
“It was a bit of a long day,” Brewster said of her race day today. “It was exciting. Every heat was a bit different, which kept it interesting. I kind of just went through the day getting to ski with a lot of fast ladies.”
Brewster joined all other athletes I spoke with in appreciating the changes to the sprint course.
“I like the additional flat part that they added,” she said. “It made it a bit more interesting. … It was more tactical, rather than just being in a good position at the top of the hill. A lot of stuff can happen after that, which kept a lot of people in it.”
Brewster achieved all this despite currently skiing in the NCAA, which does not have sprints as part of its canonical program. She literally won the qualifier, so she’s not bad at this. But that said, was this a challenge for her?
“I think it’s more of an adjustment in your head,” she said, “not really relearning how to do it, more just like a mindset thing. But we did a lot of prep this fall for it, so it really felt more natural than in past years, I’d say.”
The final step on the American podium was claimed by Alex Lawson of Craftsbury. Lawson also had some mental recentering to do today, after what she described as “a little bit of a slow start to the season.”
I asked Lawson about this dynamic, and how she moves from “these are the biggest races of the year and I don’t feel great yet” to “hey, I can do this.” Along with Sonnesyn’s answer flagged above, this is pretty much required reading for pretty much everyone who’s had a rough patch in a season, if not an entire season worth of rough patch.
“I think you have to remember that every day is a new day,” Lawson mused. “And, you know, you could feel terrible one day and then wake up the next morning and feel great. And I think, for me, it’s just going into it and reminding myself how lucky I am to be able to do this. And just what a cool experience it is. And when you ski fast, that’s amazing, and makes everything like icing on the cake. But I think bad days you learn more than the good days sometimes. So taking each day as a lesson is always good.”
There’s been a lot of process in this article, so let me go back to results for a second to end things. Does Lawson like these results? “I’m stoked. This is my best sprint race in years probably.”
And finally, and I asked this as nicely as possible, was she surprised with the result?
“Yeah,” Lawson said, laughing. “Yeah. But that’s okay.”
Racing continues tomorrow with the women’s 20km mass start skate at 9 a.m.
Results?
Awkwardly, the results site has been down all afternoon. Here is a screenshot that I presciently took earlier today, because this is what you do in ski reporting. I cannot stress enough that this hours-old screenshot of a mobile website labeled as “UNOFFICIAL RESULTS” in capital red letters is just that, but also this corresponds to the podium ceremony that I witnessed and photographed, so here it is:
Photos? Here are some photos from Tryg Solberg.
— Gavin Kentch
So far as I can tell, I am the only media outlet interviewing athletes at this year’s national championships. This coverage is happening only because I paid my way down here. If you would like to support these efforts, you can find my GoFundMe here. (This is still last year’s fundraiser, sorry, because I’ve been busy; the money all goes to the same place.) Thank you for your consideration, and thanks for reading.
