By Gavin Kentch
A 10-kilometer interval-start classic race was held in Falun, Sweden, earlier today, marking the penultimate competition of the 2023/2024 World Cup season. It snowed, hard, and athletes pushed through the woods beneath snow-covered trees, a single classic track snaking through the forest. They went up Mördarbacken. They lapped through the stadium as fans lustily waved Swedish flags. If you have a vision in your mind’s eye of classic World Cup racing, Saturday in Falun probably matched it.
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who even after establishing himself as the best men’s skier of all time is still finding new ways to amaze, won the race. It was his 11th win in the last 14 World Cup races, dating back to Goms in late January. The only other men who have stood atop the World Cup podium since that time are Simen Hegstad Krüger, Pål Golberg, and, yes, Gus Schumacher. Klæbo’s “weakness,” such as it is, is distance races; the three non-wins were all distance races (yes I know he also literally won a 50km in that time). Klæbo in a sprint race is the closest thing to a sure bet you will find in World Cup skiing these days.
Klæbo’s winning time for 10 kilometers today was 26 minutes on the nose. Second place went to Iivo Niskanen, no slouch in interval-start classic races. Niskanen was 22.1 seconds back. Over 10km. When Jessie Diggins put 14 seconds into Frida Karlsson to win in Planica last year over the same distance, that was justly hailed as a resounding victory. This was a margin a further 50 percent greater.
Martin Løwstrøm Nyenget was third in the men’s race. He was 24.0 seconds back of Klæbo, and thus 1.9 seconds back of Niskanen. These types of gaps were more characteristic of today’s race, non-Klæbo division; there was only one minute between 2nd and 23rd on today’s results sheet. Every second counts out there. Unless you are racing Klæbo these days, in which case every second still counts, but also it may just count for second. The chiasmus does not lie.
Gus Schumacher led the Americans today in 24th place, 1:23.9 back. Close behind was Zanden McMullen in 27th. Zak Ketterson in 41st, Scott Patterson in 68th, and Peter Wolter in 84th were varying degrees farther in arrears.
Today marked the second-to-last distance race of Patterson’s World Cup career, per a recent Instagram post from the longtime Alaskan distance skiing maestro. It was also Patterson’s worst World Cup distance result in at least three seasons. Skiing can be humbling.
Michael Earnhart and Luke Jager did not start for the Americans today.
“It was new snow, but glazed tracks that were pretty icy and wet, and the poling was pretty bad,” wrote Schumacher to Nordic Insights when asked about how the course skied.
I also inquired as to something Schumacher liked about the way he had skied today. Here’s Gus: “I liked how I adapted to what I had to work with and pushed where I could and tried to relax where my skis weren’t really working.”
McMullen sounded similar themes on both race and skis. “My race was alright,” he wrote to Nordic Insights. “Another tricky day for skis where they were great on half the course and not so much on the other half. Definitely running on fumes but really excited to give it one last hard effort and leave all my energy out on course!”
Kerttu Niskanen took the win in the women’s race, which is clearly impressive — it’s hard to win a World Cup race! — but statistically not fully surprising. That is, Niskanen has eight victories in her World Cup career, and all eight have come in classic distance races. It is her 11th podium in the last two World Cup seasons, continuing a late-career renaissance for the now-35-year-old Finn who first reached an individual podium in 2013, at age 24. Success in distance skiing can take a long time (*non-Klæbo division).
Niskanen’s winning time was 30:01.3. Second today was Johanna Matintalo, also of Finland, 4.2 seconds back. Matintalo, 27 years old, today claimed her first career World Cup distance podium in her 84th start. Success in distance skiing can take a long time, etc.
Third place today was Jonna Sundling of Sweden, whom I still think of as “just” a sprinter but who in fact has a not-small number of distance podiums by this point in her career, so so much for my assumptions. Sundling was 10.0 seconds back of Niskanen.
Fourth place today went to Teresa Stadlober of Austria (+12.9), and fifth to Diggins (+23.1). Behind them, Rosie Brennan was 12th for the rest of the American squad, Sophia Laukli was 21st, Novie McCabe was 44th, Julia Kern was 48th, Sammy Smith was 54th, and Haley Brewster was 56th.
Here is the entirety of what Diggins had to say about her race today, in audio comments shared by USSS:
“That was really hard.”
“It was really slow out there but my only goal was, just like always, to finish with nothing left, and I think I almost fell over three times in the finishing straight.
“That was really, really hard but I’m really proud of myself for making sure that my last classic race of the year was everything that I had, and also really thankful to our wax techs. I had amazing skis and that is a huge part of this for better or for worse, and today was definitely on the best side of that for me and I’m really grateful.”
Diggins also spoke to ski selection:
“There’s a lot of stressful moments in a race like this, obviously conditions but also choosing the right skis because it is tricky. I was leaning on the experience of our wax techs and the Salomon guys, and we went with zeros. That was definitely the right call for me.”
(Diggins did not speak with written media in the mixed zone today, so I don’t have any insights from the foreign papers to provide here.)
Finally, here are some talking points that USSS has shared and has encouraged me to highlight following today’s race, which saw Diggins both wrap up the distance globe for the second time in her career and put substantial distance on Linn Svahn (18th today), thereby increasing her gap over the Swede to 75 points going into tomorrow’s final race of the season:
- “This season, Jessie has 5 individual wins and 11 podiums”
- “She won the Tour de Ski and is the only American to ever do so”
- “Jessie has been leading the overall World Cup since the beginning of the season and has not let it out of her hands since” [Not to sic this, but I would say that Diggins has led the overall standings since Gällivare in early December; this talking point was maybe not per se wrong as currently phrased, but I should just give that clarification.]
- “If she wins the overall, she will be the only American to win it twice: Bill Koch won the World Cup overall Crystal Globe back in 1982”
- “If Jessie wins the distance Crystal Globe, she will only be the second American to do so in history; Kikkan Randall [won] three sprint Crystal Globes”
- “This is the most successful season Jessie has ever had in her World Cup career”
- “This is the most successful season the entire Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team has had, with six U.S. athletes on the podium (Jessie Diggins, Rosie Brennan, Sophia Laukli, Gus Schumacher, JC Schoonmaker and Ben Ogden)”
- “Victories this season: Gällivare, Sweden – 15k skate; Östersund, Sweden – 20k skate; Toblach, Italy – 20k skate pursuit; Goms, Switzerland – 10k skate; Canmore, Canada – 10k skate.”
- “Tomorrow will be her 310th World Cup start. Right now, she has 59 podiums and 20 wins.”
- “Winning the overall Crystal Globe is a testament to the strength and success of an athlete throughout the entire season. To win, you must be competitive in all disciplines, in both skate and classic technique.”
The 2023/2024 season concludes tomorrow with a 20km mass start skate race.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love 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.
