By Gavin Kentch
Welcome back to your 2024 roundup of the six main professional ski clubs in this country. Previously on the site this fall: Team Birkie preview | BSF preview. And now here’s Stratton:
What is the official name of this ski team? SMS T2 Team (aka SMS or Stratton)
Where is it located? Stratton, Vermont
Who’s on the coaching staff? Perry Thomas enters his third year as head coach of the powerhouse program located in southern Vermont. Maria Stuber starts her second year as Program Director. Jason Cork (official job title: World Cup Coach for the U.S. Ski Team) continues his longstanding coaching work with Jessie Diggins.
Who’s on the roster this season? Jessie Diggins, Ben Ogden, Julia Kern, Will Koch, Adam Witkowski, Fin Bailey, Sydney Palmer-Leger, Rémi Drolet, Ava Thurston, and Jack Lange.
Diggins, Kern, and Ogden are on the U.S. Ski Team A-Team; Palmer-Leger and Koch are on the B-Team; Thurston, Bailey, and Lange are on the D-Team. Yes, of the nine American athletes on this squad (Drolet is Canadian), eight of them are on the U.S. Ski Team.
Koch, Bailey, Thurston, and Lange continue in NCAA skiing. Koch remains at the University of Colorado while pursuing a graduate degree. Bailey recently started at the University of Vermont. Thurston and Lange are at Dartmouth.
What’s different from when I did this last year? Rémi Drolet joined the club after a stellar NCAA career at Harvard, from which he graduated with a degree in Math and Physics. Alayna Sonnesyn returned to her native Midwest to ski with Team Birkie. Lina Sutro retired from pro skiing. Lauren Jortberg is still competing, but has moved on to generally solo training.
Here’s Thomas on some of what Drolet brings to the team:
“Rémi Drolet, who recently graduated from Harvard University this past spring, has joined the team. Rémi, who originally hails from Rossland, British Columbia, has over 30 World Cup starts including competing at the Beijing Olympics, and Oberstdorf World Championships in 2021. He also has several NCAA All-American finishes at Harvard including winning the 20km classic race at NCAA Championships in Lake Placid NY in 2023. We’re excited to see Rémi continue to build upon his success, and contribute to our talented group of athletes here in Stratton.”
What were some results highlights of last season? Uh, how long do you have? SMS makes me spend longer and longer on this section each year. (I am not complaining. I like it when American skiers go fast.)
Jessie Diggins, yet again, led the way, for both this club and for much of the women’s World Cup field. She won the overall World Cup title, for the second time in her career. She won the Tour de Ski, for the second time in her career. She won the Distance Globe, for the second time in her career. (The 2020/2021 season was the other year for all three accomplishments.) Over the past four seasons Diggins has now finished first, second, second, and first in the overall World Cup standings, by far the highest average finish for any female skier in that time.
You don’t win an overall crystal globe without being at or near the top of a lot of races. Diggins has 60 individual World Cup podiums in her career, including 21 victories; 13 of those podiums, and seven of those victories, came this season. (The databases I’m using here count a top-three finish in the Tour de Ski overall standings as an individual podium, n.b.) Diggins has now reached the podium in roughly one-fifth of her career World Cup starts.
Although she has always identified as a stronger skate skier than a classic skier, Diggins did claim second in a skiathlon in Trondheim in December, then third in both an interval-start 10km classic (!) and a 20km classic pursuit during the Tour de Ski a few weeks later. The third in Toblach was, by my math, the first interval-start classic podium of Diggins’s World Cup career, a notable accomplishment for an athlete who has always been self-effacing about her classic abilities.
And by the way, there were two World Cup races at Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis in February. You probably didn’t hear much about this on the broadcast or in the leadup to the races, but, little-known fact, Diggins is actually from Afton, and grew up roughly 30 miles from the venue. Diggins called just crossing the line in the skate sprint qual at Wirth an all-time career highlight. She would finish fourth in the sprint final on Saturday, then third in the 10km interval-start skate on Sunday. The following Saturday she took the victory, and roughly $18,000, in the lap Birkie with relative ease.
At the podium ceremony in Cable, Diggins said, “I feel like until I did the Birkie, I was really missing something big. And now I can finally say I’m a true Midwesterner.” I… don’t think she was joking here.
Ben Ogden was on track to have another superb season until he wasn’t, felled by mono shortly after arriving in Canmore in February. Before that he logged his first career World Cup podium in late December, taking third in the skate sprint in Toblach in stage one of the 2023/2024 Tour de Ski. He exulted on the podium, then soon after announced that he was donating his prize money to an endowed NENSA youth programming position named after his recently deceased father, John Ogden. I am on the verge of tears just writing that out while sitting at my kitchen table in the (literally) cold light of an October day. In December 2023, even more so, for pretty much everyone in American skiing, sunt lacrimae rerum.
Before illness put a kibosh on his season, Ogden was a consistent presence in sprint finals and semifinals in the first half of the year. In addition to that third in Toblach, he was fourth in a classic sprint in Östersund and sixth in a classic sprint in Oberhof. Seventh in a skate sprint in Canmore. 11th in Goms, 11th in Ruka, and 19th in Trondheim. Of the seven sprints he started last season, Ogden was outside the semis only once, with that 19th in the Trondheim skate sprint. He also had two top-ten finishes in 10km classic races, and was on the fifth-place relay team in Gällivare that saw the American men claim their best World Cup relay result in decades.
At the moment he withdrew from the circuit for the rest of 2023/2024, Ogden was ranked fourth in the sprint standings and 13th in the World Cup overall, the highest of what was at the time the 20 (!) American men in those rankings.
Kern had another up-and-down season dogged by illness, I was going to write… but also she was in a solid seven sprint semifinals last season, evenly split between skate and classic, so that’s actually not nothing. Kern’s best individual result last season was seventh, in the classic city sprint in Drammen, always a, well, classic venue in which to have a strong result. She was also third in the December relay in Gällivare, the second relay podium of her career (fifth total if you also count team sprints here). Other highlights included an additional five sprint heats and three top-20 distance results. Kern placed 12th in the overall Sprint Cup standings for the season.
Will Koch yet again won the skate sprint qual in a national championships at Soldier Hollow, the second time in his career he did so; Koch added a win in the final this time as well. He was ninth, 11th, and 11th in the other three races at SoHo. He was third in the 20km classic at NCAA Championships, and fourth in the 7.5km skate. Koch continued looking for his first World Cup sprint heats, reaching knocking-on-the-door status with 35th in Canmore and 38th at Wirth, both of them skate sprints. He was 41st, 45th, 47th, 50th, 53rd and 68th in European sprint quals over the rest of the season, because World Cup sprinting is hard, actually.
Sydney Palmer-Leger won an NCAA championship, in the 7.5km skate this time, the third of her career following a pair of wins in 2021. She was second in the 40km skate at Spring Series in Duluth, a national championship race. Second in the 10km classic (but also first American, thereby claiming the national title) at Soldier Hollow in January, against the deepest field of the year. Three additional SuperTour podiums. Palmer-Leger started all six North American World Cup races, with a best finish of 25th, in the 15km skate in Canmore. A month later, a 23rd in Falun, in the 20km skate, marked her best World Cup finish of the season, as well as of her career (Palmer-Leger has been as high as 20th at world champs).
Adam Witkowski had, in his coach’s estimation, “an up and down first year on the SuperTour circuit.” Highlights included an 11th in the national championship skate sprint in Duluth, and 24th in the classic sprint at Soldier Hollow. He had seven additional top-30 finishes on the SuperTour. In his World Cup debut, he was 53rd in the skate sprint qual in Minneapolis.
Jack Lange was ninth in the 20km skate at World Juniors in Planica, thereby punching his ticket to the U.S. Ski Team. He won the 10km skate in the juniors race at U.S. Nationals, and was 16th overall in the 10km classic interval-start there, the highest-ranked athlete in the field born in 2004 or later (and there were many of them). He raced broadly; in the month of March alone he was 9th and 20th at NCAA Championships in Steamboat, won both distance races at Junior Nationals in Lake Placid, and was 12th and 22nd in the distance races at Spring Series in Duluth. Lange had a best finish of second in EISA racing, in the 7.5km skate at the Harvard Carnival, behind only some rando named John Steel Hagenbuch.
Fellow New England and Dartmouth product Ava Thurston had a similar but if anything slightly more impressive season. In Planica she was second in the sprint qual (21st overall), seventh in the 20km skate, and 21st in the 10km classic, as well as on the fourth-place mixed relay team. She took the handoff in that relay from one Jack Lange, which probably should have been my transition sentence for this paragraph.
Thurston shined in domestic racing, with four top-ten finishes in national championships, highlighted by fourth in the skate sprint at Spring Series. She was fifth in the 40km skate at Spring Series in March, and ninth in the 20km skate at Soldier Hollow in January. She had three more top-ten finishes on the SuperTour. In NCAA racing, she garnered seven podium finishes in eight EISA races, then was seventh and 10th at NCAA Championships. Finally, she made her World Cup debut at Wirth in February, finishing 40th in the skate sprint qual, the second of eight American women outside the heats.
Fin Bailey was one of the country’s top juniors last year, placing second to Lange in the 15km classic at Junior Nationals and winning the classic sprint going away. At the risk of burying the lede here Bailey also won a SuperTour, taking the win at the skate sprint at Craftsbury in January. Bailey joined the ski team at the University of Vermont this fall.
What does the coach have to say? Here’s Perry Thomas once more:
“We had a great a summer of training! Most of the U.S. Ski Team athletes on our team kicked off the training year in Bend. We decided to forgo that camp this spring for the non–national team athletes, and ultimately decided that we wanted to really cut down on travel and expenses this summer in general.
“We again bolstered our training group this summer by bringing in a few college athletes to train alongside us. Those athletes included Zach Jayne (Utah, USST), Logan Moore (Middlebury), Skylar Patten (Michigan Tech), and Keelan Durham (Williams). With that we had a large(r) men’s group this summer, which was done on purpose as one of our goals last year was to build up our men’s team as we’ve lately had fewer of them compared to women. And as things go, we consequently have a smaller contingent of women in Stratton this summer, but we’re confident we can have a more balanced ratio in the future.
“As we rolled into August, the college athletes departed for their Fall terms; Jessie, Julia, and Jason headed down under; and we took the remaining athletes to nearby Lake Placid, NY for a training camp with little travel and expenses. The camp in Lake Placid was very productive as we had excellent access to the Mt Van Hoevenberg rollerski track where we could simulate good ski-like terrain for technique work, and a couple hard time trial efforts.
“The majority of us are currently in Park City for the annual U.S. Ski team training camp. Always great to get all of the pro teams and U.S. Ski team athletes training together in the Park City area this time of year. As camp comes to an end in another week, we’ll all head back to Stratton for a few more weeks of training before we either head to Europe for Period 1 World Cup, or start to get on early snow and racing opportunities domestically.
“We’re looking forward to this winter, and continuing to build on our team’s success. With Jessie finishing last season as the Overall World Cup winner, she’s showed no signs of slowing down. Julia is on track to continue to show she’s a top 10 sprinter in the world and top 30 distance skier. And of course we’re really looking forward to those two teaming up again at World Champs in the team sprint, and Jessie defending her 10km title.
“Ben says: ‘Mono who?! Never heard of ’em!’ But seriously Ben is looking stronger than ever, and like he will pick up where he left off before he got sick last season.
“We’re psyched to have Sydney with us full time this year [following her graduation from the University of Utah], and excited for her to continue to prove she’s a consistent top 30 World Cup skier. It’s been really fun to have a collaboration of sorts with Canada and Rémi, and we’re confident Rémi can show he is a strong candidate for World Cup racing and World Champs with Team Canada. Adam had an up and down first year on the SuperTour circuit last season, but Adam is on track to prove he can compete with the best, and garner more World Cup starts.
“Of the athletes on our roster (10), all but two of them raced on the World Cup last season. We’re looking to continue this trend.”
How can you get more information or follow the team? website | Instagram | blog | newsletter
See also:
Harvard Independent profile on Rémi Drolet
Jessie Diggins Opens Up About Cameras and Pressure Ahead of Wirth World Cup Weekend
Ben Ogden Crushes Toblach Skate Sprint for First Career Podium; Diggins 9th, Kern 11th
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, last season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
