By Gavin Kentch
There are, suddenly, only eight races remaining in the 2023/2024 World Cup season, which itself will be over come two weeks from Sunday. There are three races in Lahti this weekend, two races in the greater Oslo area next week (counting the two days of Holmenkollen as one race), then three races in Falun for World Cup Finals, and that’s it. By March 17, some of the fittest, most carefully scheduled athletes in the world will be letting down their hair for the season-ending party.
USSS informs us, with an eye to SuperTour Finals at Spirit Mountain on March 20–26, that “The World Cup will be over, and many U.S. Ski Team athletes will race in Duluth!” I fear that this may be slightly optimistic — USST attendance at Spring Series has been spotty the last few years, given the rigors and length of the World Cup season and the increasing number of top U.S. athletes racing in Europe for several months each winter — but I would love to be proven wrong here.
But that is three weeks from now. For this weekend, there are three races in Lahti to attend to. There is a classic team sprint on Friday, a 20km interval-start classic on Saturday, and a skate sprint on Sunday. The team sprint is not scored for overall World Cup points, which explains the relatively lacunose nature of Friday’s start lists.
Here is when the races will be:
World Cup (local time at venue: Eastern European Time. This is 7 hours ahead of the East Coast and 11 hours ahead of Alaska.)
| date | race | time (Alaska) | local time | results |
| Friday, March 1 | cl team sprint qual | 3:45 a.m. | 2:45 p.m. | here |
| W team sprint finals | 5:45 a.m. | 4:45 p.m. | here | |
| M team sprint finals | 6:18 a.m. | 5:18 p.m. | here | |
| Saturday, March 2 | W 20km interval-start classic | 11 p.m. Friday | 10 a.m. | here |
| M 20km interval-start classic | 2 a.m. Saturday | 1 p.m. | here | |
| Sunday, March 3 | skate sprint qual | 11:15 p.m. Saturday | 10:15 a.m. | here |
| skate sprint heats | 1:45 a.m. Sunday | 12:45 p.m. | here |
Who is racing for the U.S.?
Not that many folks on Friday, then a much fuller slate of athletes on Saturday and Sunday. In the team sprint, Sammy Smith and Julia Kern, in that order, are the only team entered for the women. For the APU American men, Luke Jager hands off to Zanden McMullen for USA I, while Logan Diekmann and Michael Earnhart team up for USA II.
Yes, the Swedish women have two teams entered on Friday, and, yes, they are seeded first and second, even with Emma Ribom out with a cold. Also of note on the start list, Norway I is seeded only fifth, which feels like some sort of modern-day record. All of Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic have two teams entered in the women’s race. And Estonia starts an all-sisters team of twins Keidy and Kaidy Kaasiku, which feels very wholesome.
American starters for Saturday and Sunday will be drawn from here:
How can you watch the races?
I have thoughts on this. TLDR, pay Ski & Snowboard Live (link) $8 to $9 per month throughout the season if you would like to be assured of being able to watch the races, with good quality, and audio commentary in American English, and so on. For as little as $0/month, depending on VPN cost, get a VPN that will let you geo-locate to Canada, then watch the free livestream on the FIS YouTube channel, with commentary in British English. Find out more about that here. You might want to try Windscribe as a VPN; their free version gets you a fair amount of data.
You can also take your chances with what gets uploaded to YouTube after the fact, which is free but not always as reliable, and subject to pesky take-down notices. Find out far more about all of these options, including some VPN how-tos, in this article:
How are the Europeans coping with the demands of their roughly once-every-four-years travel between Europe and North America for World Cup racing?
Poorly. Here is an entire article about Frida Karlsson experiencing jetlag following an eight-hour time change from Minneapolis. The Alaskans who are watching these races from eleven time zones away send their sympathies.
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.
