By Gavin Kentch
CANMORE NORDIC CENTRE, Canmore, Alberta — The sun rises, the sun sets, and Johannes Høsflot Klæbo wins World Cup sprint races. Sometimes he wins them off the front. Sometimes he wins them from the back. Sometimes Lucas Chanavat is in the final, and Klæbo has to put in the appearance of effort on his way to the win. More frequently he wins by such a margin that he has time to unstrap his pink Leki poles before the finish, or alternatively to twirl one of them over his head if he is permitting himself to seem particularly demonstrative that day.
The whole thing would be almost boring, if it were not a thrill to watch an all-time master of his craft continue to refine that craft in a manner sufficient to stave off nearly all comers nearly all the time. It doesn’t hurt that Klæbo is by all accounts a truly gracious human being; as just one example, he apologized for being late to circle back through the mixed zone today. He did not mention that the delay was because he had taken the time to sign so many autographs and pose for so many photos with fans. After speaking with everyone left in the mixed zone, he signed more autographs before heading home. He had to have been one of the last athletes to leave the venue today.
Anyway, Klæbo is a good person, and also a good skier. Good tactician, too, to put it very mildly.
Here is video of the close of the men’s final (second slide above). The six athletes in the field are… not moving very fast as they approach the final downhill. No one wants to lead, and everyone knows this, but Klæbo still finds a way to take the lead and win anyway, letting the rest of the field scrub just enough speed through the crux of the final curve that he can gain a lead that he keeps to the finish. Klæbo is very good at this.
“It’s really difficult,” said Klæbo in the mixed zone afterwards, “especially with this long part of the downhill before the finish here. And it kind of makes it a really tactical race.
“I feel like everyone kind of has the same tactics; no one wants to be first in the downhill. And it kind of ends up that we go really, really slow before we jump into the last part here. I hope there was entertainment enough for people to watch.”
“To be honest,” continued a candid Klæbo, “I feel like it’s really, really hard mentally to kind of try to race these races. But it’s a lot of fun when you kind of end up being on the top of the podium.”
Behind Klæbo in the final came Erik Valnes in second and young Edvin Anger in third. Even Northug was fourth. U23 athlete Elia Barp in fifth carried the flag for Italian skate sprinters after Federico Pellegrino fell earlier in the day and did not advance out of his quarterfinal. Janik Riebli of Switzerland was sixth.
(We didn’t catch up with Barp today, but we did talk with Pellegrino. “I decided to not do yesterday’s race to be in the best shape today,” Pellegrino said. “After qualification it seems that it was, and I’m really disappointed about this opportunity that I missed to be again fighting for the top positions.” Pellegrino explained that he lost control of his skis on the same icy downhill that broke teammate Simone Mocellini’s leg in a crash earlier this week, then fell on purpose rather than risk a potentially more injurious crash.)
“It’s a good day” said Anger, of Sweden, following his third-place finish today. “Not the best qualifier, but better and better.”
“It’s a really special sprint track,” Anger continued. “It’s hard to go first in the downhill — but Klæbo showed in the final that everything is possible. So it’s a fun track.”
A dozen Americans started today. A full six of them made the heats, which is likely a record for American men in a single race; I’ll have to check in with Statistical Skier for confirmation on that. Ben Ogden advanced into the semis, finishing the day in seventh overall. Logan Diekmann was 16th, Kevin Bolger 18th, Gus Schumacher 19th, JC Schoonmaker 22nd, and Jack Young 23rd.
In just Diekmann’s second time ever making the heats, he improved on his previous World Cup career best of 27th by a healthy margin. Bolger continued his bounceback season by making the heats yet again. Young, who is, well, young — he is 21 years old, and his collegiate ski team bio page at Colby still lists a JNs podium among his career highlights — turned heads by qualifying in 11th. In his World Cup debut. There was a lot to celebrate for the American men today.
Just on the wrong side of the top-30 line, Will Koch was 35th. The other five Americans in the race today finished in a near-line on the qual results sheet: Murphy Kimball 41st, Michael Earnhart 43rd, Zak Ketterson 44th, Luke Jager 46th, and Zanden McMullen 47th.
Today marked the World Cup debut for both Young and Kimball, and the World Cup sprint debut for Earnhart, now a seasoned veteran of two (2) career World Cup races.
When Kimball, 17, broke through the start wand at 11:16:45 a.m. this morning, he became the youngest American male World Cup starter of all time. I saw Kimball on his cooldown while I was sneaking in a ski between the qual and the heats. He was wearing his Team Alaska warmup pants from last year’s Junior Nationals team. He looked very happy.
Okay, here are some thoughts from athletes. Gus Schumacher was leading his heat into the finish for an awfully long time, until suddenly, and brutally decisively, he was not.
What does it feel like to suddenly experience many pounds of Norwegian men come past you very, very quickly, I asked.
“It was only one Norwegian man,” Schumacher gently corrected. “Let’s not give him that much credit.”
“I mean, I was expecting it,” Schumacher continued. “Especially for me, who’s not, like, a lights-out finish sprinter — I think it’s gotten better — for me, that was really good. That was kind of how that course tends to play out for anyone.”
That anyone today included Kevin Bolger, who termed today “as to be expected,” citing the “antics” that this course tends to incentivize.
What do those antics look like?
“Just as you get to the top,” he said, “it’s pretty common knowledge that no one wants to lead. And even trying to put a big move in, it’s tough, but it’s fun. I think it’s fun to have a course that’s tactical.”
Bolger contrasted this with his experience in the qualifier, which he characterized as “f–king brutal. Just a leg-burner and not as much of a lung-burner as you think it would be. But the heats are fun. You know that the qualifier was going to be the hardest part of the day, and that these heats would be a little bit more relaxed and it just comes down to the last little bit. So yeah, it’s fun.”
JC Schoonmaker was his preternaturally gracious self, today as always, but that said he likely had less fun in the sprint than Bolger did.
His heat was “not super good,” Schoonmaker said. He broke a pole immediately off the start, but was unwilling to blame that for the final result in a slow-starting heat, saying that the pole “honestly didn’t do too much to me. I was just off the back, and then wasn’t really close enough when we got to the last downhill.”
“I feel good that I had a solid finish,” Schoonmaker said of his day, “but I would have definitely liked to have made it through.”
Finally, by many accounts the race of the day went to Jack Young, the 21-year-old Colby junior. Jessie Diggins shouted out his performance in her post-race remarks. Gus Schumacher, still just 23 years old but also suddenly become something of a veteran, said of his teammate’s World Cup debut, “Jack Young is crazy. So sick to see a truly legit sprint result — can’t argue with eleventh place and four seconds back [of Klæbo]. That’s cool to see. And he’s gonna get a bunch more World Cup starts; it’s gonna be fun to see him bring that over to Europe. And it’s also cool because I know the other nations see a new American name pop up, and they’re like, Damn! I think that’s definitely a sign of strength.”
I owe the charismatic and interesting Young an entire profile, which should come at some point when I’m not writing two long race articles a day. But for now, let me leave you with this simple koan, which I feel says a lot about the energy on the American team right now:
So Jack, were you expecting to qualify eleventh in your first World Cup?!
“I wasn’t expecting it, but I knew I could do it.”
Scene.
Racing continues here tomorrow with a 20-kilometre mass start classic. Presumptive American starters are Michael Earnhart, Ben Ogden, Gus Schumacher, Scott Patterson, Zanden McMullen, Luke Jager, Peter Wolter, Hunter Wonders, David Norris, Reid Goble, Braden Becker, and Graham Houtsma.
— Gerry Furseth contributed reporting
There are more reporters at these races than in Soldier Hollow for U.S. Nationals, but not that many, and I am probably the only one reliant on a GoFundMe to get here. Travel for in-person reporting is not cheap, and travel to anywhere from Alaska is particularly not cheap.
Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, this season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
