By Gavin Kentch
As the dust settles from the roaring success that was last weekend’s Loppet Cup, the attention of the ski world, and especially of the Midwestern ski world, turns to the one true ski race, the American Birkebeiner.
This year’s flagship 50-kilometer skate race will be held on a Saturday in late February, the same as it always is. But there will be some differences after that. The Elite Wave skiers, men and women, will race 50km, but no one else will. The en dash in “Cable–Hayward” in this year’s official race poster has, shall we say, aged poorly; “Cable to Cable on a loop course” would be more accurate, but less succinct. But I really like the poster!
(Seriously, though, can we all take a moment to appreciate that the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation pushed out enough snow to cover an additional six kilometers of trail with manmade snow to make a 10km loop, building off of the 4km of trail already on the snowmaking loops? Damn, guys, just, wow. Course map is below.)
Oh, and you just may possibly have heard that Jessie Diggins is racing this year. Gus Schumacher, too, is on the entry list, among other suddenly famous luminaries.
Full lists of SuperTour and seeded athletes are below. Before I get to that, though, another difference this year is that, to mark the race’s 50th anniversary, there is even more prize money available. The Birkie has always put its money where the top American skiers are; this year, it has upped the ante even more. Again, nice job guys.
According to emails from race organizers, here is the prize money structure for the 2024 50km skate race. Same amounts for men and women.
Overall placing per gender:
First place: $15,000
Second: $7,500
Third: $5,000
Fourth: $4,000
Fifth: $2,000
Sixth: $1,000
Tony Wise award for first American man and woman:
$2,500 each
Madshus sprint primes (man and woman):
$500 to the first athlete across the bonus line on both lap one and lap three. This is located at roughly the 5km mark of the lap.
Prize money here is cumulative; if, say, Jessie Diggins wins the women’s race, and both intermediate sprint primes en route to doing so, she would take home a total of $18,500. Not bad for a day’s work. Diggins, ish, is pictured above after such a hypothetical windfall.
(For perspective, through Minneapolis Diggins has earned a healthy 210,600 CHF in prize money this year, over one-third of which comes from 80,000 CHF for her overall win in the Tour de Ski. She won 15,000 CHF for each of her four standalone (i.e., non-stage) World Cup wins this season. Multiply these figures by 1.13 to convert from Swiss Francs (CHF) to U.S. dollars; that is, Diggins has earned over $239,000 in prize money this year, including roughly $17,000 for each of four World Cup wins.
From my formal and informal reporting on top domestic athletes I can promise that very few people in this country are making real money off of cross-country skiing — but at the top, they clearly are. But also like Julia Kern is ranked 14th in the Sprint Cup right now and has won all of 9,400 CHF this season, so, grain of salt for pretty much everyone in this country after Diggins. Note that Sophia Laukli candidly said that one reason she enjoys trail running is that she can actually make money off of it, and this is someone with four top-eight finishes this World Cup season talking.)
And speaking of Diggins, here’s who is racing in the elite and seeded field this year, or at least who is scheduled to. Reports of the entire World Cup field traveling up to Birkieland after the Loppet Cup may have been, shall we say, somewhat optimistic, but that said there is a not small amount of quality in this field.
As for handicapping the field, Alayna Sonnesyn has never lost this race, but I don’t think she would be offended if I tab Diggins as the presumptive favorite in the women’s field until proven otherwise. Diggins was, famously, third in the inaugural women’s World Cup 50km at Holmenkollen last season, and neither of the two women marginally ahead of her there, Ragnhild Haga or Astrid Øyre Slind, will be toeing the line in Cable on Saturday. Plus Diggins has experience here, having won the Kortelopet in both 2008 and 2009. Although also Sonnesyn then won it three years in a row, 2012–2014.
I’m going to dodge the question on the men’s side, because I race in the same club suit (APU) as a lot of these guys, and I don’t want to offend anyone or play favorites. If a foreign national wins, I want it to be Mika Vermeulen, just so I can hear his finish-line interview, because he’s hilarious.
Anyway, here are the announced elite fields as of earlier this week:
Women
- Jessie Diggins, bib 0
- Alayna Sonnesyn, bib 501
- Jessica Yeaton, bib 502
- Caitlin Gregg, bib 503
- Sophia Laukli, bib 504
- Flora Dolci, bib 505
- Novie McCabe, bib 506
- Coralie Bentz, bib 507
- Renae Anderson, bib 508
- Emilie Bulle, bib 509
- Annika Landis, bib 510
- Erin Bianco, bib 511
- Lina Sutro, bib 512
- Lauren Jortberg, bib 513
- Michaela Keller-Miller, bib 514
- Alexandra Lawson, bib 515
- Margie Freed, bib 516
- Erika Flowers, bib 528
- Ingrid Thyr, bib 539
- Lindsay Williams, bib 585
- Sophia Velicer, bib 589
Men
- David Norris, bib 1
- Gérard Agnellet, bib 2
- JC Schoonmaker, bib 3
- Christian Winker, bib 5
- Mika Vermeulen, bib 6
- Dorian Girard Carrabin, bib 7
- Matt Liebsch, bib 8
- Brian Gregg, bib 9
- Zak Ketterson, bib 10
- Rémi Martin, bib 11
- Nick Power, bib 12
- Garrett Butts, bib 13
- Scott Hill, bib 14
- Zanden McMullen, bib 15
- Scott Patterson, bib 16
- Luke Jager, bib 17
- Finn Dodgson, bib 18
- Anders Weiss, bib 19
- Sam Hendry, bib 20
- Ricardo Izquierdo-Bernier, bib 21
- Francis Izquierdo-Bernier, bib 22
- Gus Schumacher, bib 23
- Peter Wolter, bib 24
- Hunter Wonders, bib 25
- Willson Moore, bib 26
- Lucas Bögl, bib 27
- Reid Goble, bib 28
- Braden Becker, bib 29
- John Schwinghamer, bib 30
- Thomas O’Harra, bib 41
- Max Mahaffy, bib 42
- Chris Queitzsch, bib 66
- Adam Farabaugh, bib 78
- Andrew Siegel, bib 98
- Eric Lavigne, bib 234
- Andy Newell, bib 242
- Jake Adicoff, bib 243
- Simon Zink, bib 247
- Joseph Lynch, bib 248
Racing starts at 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning local time, for the women’s Elite Wave, and 10:45 a.m. for the men’s Elite Wave. Counting the (very fast) citizen racers in each wave, this should be approximately 90 women and 250 men. Look for live streaming of the whole race, because CXC and ABSF are very good at this. Details on that coming soon.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love project dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing. 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.
On the Birkie website, the listed prize money was about half cited above-did it increase recently or was the website out of date?
https://www.birkie.com/ski/events/birkie/
Great question. I wrote this while looking at an email sent from race organizers to the elite/SuperTour field (where most of the info in this article comes from) that read as follows. So I think it was more of a one-time thing and they didn’t remember to update the website for that this year – but you are 100% correct that this is not currently reflected on the Birkie site.
Thanks for checking/calling me on this; I really appreciate it.
[excerpt from email]
Prize Money
In celebration of the 50th American Birkebeiner, we have increased the prime money substantially!
Overall Men & Women
1st – $15,000
2nd -$7500
3rd – $5000
4th – $4000
5th -$2000
6th – $1000
Tony Wise – First American FInisher Man & Women
$2500
Madshus Bonus Sprint Man & Woman
$500 for first across the bonus line on Lap 1 and Lap 3