By Gavin Kentch
Andy Newell is many things: A successful high-level athlete turned successful high-level coach, an astonishingly consistent skier who made every World Cup sprint heat he contested over a period of nine (!) straight seasons, a versatile skier who made nordic jibbing cool again.
But from a narrative perspective, Newell is also an unparalleled lens through which to view the development of American skiing over the first quarter of the twenty-first century.
Do you have a vague recollection that Pete Vordenberg was at one point the head coach of the national team? Newell was coached by him.
Do you remember stories of a time when the Eagle Glacier training facility in Alaska was not a well-honed operation, but more of a shoestring affair? Newell was sleeping in janky beds back then to get in invaluable summer training.
Have you followed American skiing since long before the Kikkan-begat-Jessie distaff renaissance, when online comment sections would light up with adulation over a single American top-30 result? Newell was out there then, grinding, on a team with a fraction of the budget and support and visibility it now enjoys, getting those top-thirties. And top-tens. And podiums. Dude has put in the work, and has done so for a long time.
This episode is not intended as a history of American skiing since 2000, but it is not not that, either. Newell talks about his career at some length; considering that his first World Cup start came in 2004 and his last in 2020, he has a first-hand sense of this history that is worth listening to. This is a man who raced at World Championships in Val di Fiemme in 2003, and at World Championships in Seefeld in 2019. (Also, btw, at world champs in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. And at the Olympics in 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018.) If it happened in international nordic skiing between 2000 and 2020, Newell was probably there.
Would you like to hear his take on the resurgence of the U.S. men’s team in the mid-aughts, ft. Kris Freeman and Carl Swenson? Newell will tell you that. On the gradual shift from Germany to Russia to Norway as preeminent skiing nations? That too. On how attitudes toward altitude training have evolved over that time? Also yes.
In fact, the lion’s share of this (not short, but also very good) episode is about training. Newell’s current day job is head coach at the Bridger Ski Foundation Nordic Pro Team, a team he resurrected in 2020. Newell has thoughts on coaching style and communication, on coaching and athlete development, on technology and technique, on the uses and limitations of HRV scores (TLDR, a simple orthostatic heart rate test is more reliable), on training components as basic as the proper use of warmup and cooldown and as complex as mental preparation. BSF has gone from not existing in March 2020 to putting four athletes on the World Cup in February–March 2024, so it looks from here as if they’re doing something right. And not just because they have by far the most professional social media presence in all of American nordic skiing.
Simple probability suggests that you, dear reader, are presumptively not in a position to join the BSF Pro Team within the next few years, but anyone at any level will benefit from Newell’s thoughts on training.
And if that is your goal? Yeah, something in this podcast, probably many things, will help you in your quest to get there. Just don’t be surprised if it’s more, “Get eight hours of sleep every night and focus on getting out the door to training every day” and less, “Coaches hate this one crazy trick to instantly increase your VO2max by 10 points.” The biggest secret really is that there are no secrets.
Plus the episode discusses this video of Newell crushing a rollerski agility course, which, and I say this as someone who can say something about anything having to do with skiing, you truly have to watch to appreciate for yourself. Dude knows what he’s doing on skis, to put it mildly.
Is that enough of an excuse to embed the following video as well? Yes, yes it is.
Anyway, here is the episode. It is not short, but also it is August; it’s not like you have World Cup races to watch right now. Plus here is an auto-generated episode summary with timestamps, which should help you to see what’s what within this three-hour corpus. A simplified version of this appears at the very bottom of this article, which can help you to narrow in on a specific topic more easily.
(Disclosure, the linked summary is pure AI; I touched it up a tiny bit, but the computer did the rest. Summaries and transcriptions are the only context in which I have used AI content on the site. Arguably the transcript is more LLM than AI per se, but my point, of course, is that, like Post Malone and Morgan Wallen, I had some help.)
You can listen to this episode here. You can also find it on Apple Podcasts here, on Spotify here, or anywhere else you get your podcasts (here is our RSS feed). As always, podcast content does not reflect the views of the Nordic Insights editorial side.
If you do not want to listen to this episode, you can find a 30,000-word transcript here. This transcript, like the summary above, is machine-generated; I have not corrected it, though frankly it is distressingly accurate. Good thing I can still make jokes about nordic jibbing; it is this level of wit that truly separates us from the machines.
In closing, thank you, as always, to host Fast Big Dog for his assiduous interview preparation, to guest Andy Newell for his time, and to audio engineer Nathan Shuttleworth for making this sound good, with a supporting shoutout to the anonymous listener who donated better quality sound equipment to the cause. And to you for listening!
Episode topics and timestamps
Skiing career and entrepreneurship with former US Ski Team member Andy Newell. 0:03
Skiing career accomplishments with a former World Cup athlete. 6:34
U.S. Ski Team’s growth and success, highlighting key athletes and milestones. 11:43
Changes in World Cup skiing, athlete’s adaptability and memorable results. 17:09
Athlete’s career highlights and challenges, including doping scandals and crashing. 22:32
Altitude training for athletes, evolution of thinking over time. 26:21
Altitude training for athletes, including benefits and drawbacks. 30:48
Altitude training and qualifying in cross-country skiing. 35:32
Qualifying for skiing competitions and dealing with criticism. 39:16
Cross-country skiing, freestyle moves, and the development of jib skis. 43:41
Importance of patience and adaptability in skiing career. 49:26
Why Norway is dominant in cross-country skiing, with insights on cultural factors, training methods, and age-specific aerobic activity. 53:48
U.S. skiing development and challenges. 59:17
U.S. junior ski racing development, coaching education, and geographical challenges. 1:04:45
The unique culture of the U.S. Ski Team and the importance of camaraderie and shared vision among teammates. 1:09:14
Coaching ski athletes, team culture, and funding challenges. 1:14:41
College skiing’s growth and its pros and cons for athletes. 1:21:05
Coaching style and communication with athletes. 1:28:07
Coaching and athlete development, with a focus on patience and problem-solving. 1:33:15
Improving cross-country ski training with technology and a mechanics-based approach to technique. 1:41:10
HRV measurement accuracy using chest straps, wrist devices, and Polar watches. 1:48:28
Ski training techniques, including the importance of proper warm-ups and cool-downs, and the use of simple, low-tech methods to measure 1:51:28
Prioritizing training frequency, duration, and intensity for optimal performance. 1:56:14
Financial challenges faced by U.S. skiers on the World Cup circuit. 2:00:55
Funding for U.S. Ski and Snowboard athletes, with a focus on the financial burden on athletes and the need for more support 2:05:47
Athlete mental preparation and execution during races. 2:11:00
Goal setting, nutrition, and body image in sports. 2:17:01
Coaching strategies for young skiers, including resource constraints and seeking expert advice. 2:21:51
Coaching gender and hiring coaches for ski teams. 2:25:56
Balancing diversity and technical capabilities in hiring coaches. 2:30:34
Improving athlete selection process for World Cup skiing. 2:33:59
Reducing carbon footprint in skiing industry. 2:41:01
Climate change and political advocacy. 2:46:01
Improving funding for U.S. skiing by increasing exposure and sponsorship opportunities. 2:51:56
Optimizing U.S. Ski Team performance with small changes. 2:57:16
Athlete’s skiing career, advice for young athletes. 3:01:30
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.
