By Gavin Kentch
The World Cup traveling circus journeys south to Lillehammer for the second stage of the 2024/2025 season, with races number four through six going off over the next three days. Emphasis here on journeys, as well as on south: A few minutes with Google Maps suggests that the U.S. wax truck mothership, Yolanda, and her new sidekick, Nellie, traveled roughly 1500 kilometers between last weekend and this one. Soldier Hollow to Mazama would be a shorter drive, to put that in American.
Here is a photo of the fine vessel that is Nellie. I was going to make a sick “Dilemma” reference, but that would actually be Nelly, so now I’m torn between missing a chance for a hilarious allusion and forcing a joke, and am unsure what to do.
Anyway. Here is when the races will be this weekend.
World Cup (local time at venue: GMT +1. This is 6 hours ahead of the East Coast and 10 hours ahead of Alaska.)
| date | race | time (AK) | time (EST) | results |
| Friday, Dec. 6 | M 10km skate | 12:30 a.m. | 4:30 a.m. | here |
| W 10km classic | 2:45 a.m. | 6:45 a.m. | here | |
| Saturday, Dec. 7 | skate sprint qual | 11 p.m. Friday | 3 a.m. | here |
| skate sprint heats | 1:30 a.m. | 5:30 a.m. | here | |
| Sunday, Dec. 8 | M 20km skiathlon | 12 a.m. | 4 a.m. | here |
| W 20km skiathlon | 2:15 a.m. | 6:15 a.m. | here |
How can I watch the races?
I haven’t actually written this one up as a standalone article yet this year, awkwardly; I’ve been spending all my time hiring an awesome new staff and getting them up to speed. TLDR, here are your viewing options if you are tuning in from the U.S.:
- Paid and reliable: 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 English audio commentary, and so on. Who will be commenting there? Ryan Sederquist has broken this down for you on his increasingly invaluable site, SederSkier (disclosure: Sederquist will sometimes be the commenter, which means that he is well qualified to speak to these logistics).
- New quantity: FIS TV, which you can find here. Again, the SederSkier article linked above has more thoughts on this.
- Free but take your chances: See what gets uploaded to YouTube after the fact. If you search for the race name and date, you can sometimes find a full broadcast online for a day or two after the race. Try also transliterating the venue name into the Cyrillic alphabet to loop in Russian users. Best to watch this with alacrity if you do find it; they tend to get taken down pretty quickly, because lawyers.
- This worked last year but I don’t yet know enough to necessarily be able to sign off on it again: Last season you could download a VPN (Windscribe should give you enough free bandwidth each month to stream all races), set your location to Canada, and stream races for free on the FIS cross-country page (link). I’ll know more after this weekend about the viability of this option.
Who will be racing for the U.S.?
Good question. Friday’s 10km skate sees Hunter Wonders, Ben Ogden, John Steel Hagenbuch, Zanden McMullen, Michael Earnhart, Gus Schumacher, and Zak Ketterson on the start list for the men. For the women, it’s Haley Brewster, Julia Kern, Sydney Palmer-Leger, Sophia Laukli, Rosie Brennan, Alayna Sonnesyn, Jessie Diggins, and Renae Anderson.
The skate sprint is scheduled to be Anderson, Brennan, Brewster, Erin Bianco, Diggins, Lauren Jortberg, Kern, and Sonnesyn for the women, then Kevin Bolger, Earnhart, Ketterson, Ogden, JC Schoonmaker, Schumacher, and Jack Young for the men. Young will make his World Cup debut for the season.
Sunday, meanwhile, is set to be the same as Friday for the women (excepting Anderson), then just Earnhart, Steel Hagenbuch, McMullen, Ogden, and Schumacher for the men.
Just to dork out here a little, Anderson, fwiw, went over to Period 1 race as just a sprinter, and on paper for just the Ruka classic sprint at that, but has been called off the bench to start tomorrow’s distance race, as well as skate sprints both here and in Davos. My reading of the USSS nominations list suggests that Anderson takes the place of one or more of Sammy Smith, Margie Freed, or Mariah Bredal here, but that is a surmise on my part rather than sourced reporting.
Who currently leads the second most important standings, the World Cup overall?
Defending champion Harald Østberg Amundsen, for the men, and Jonna Sundling, for the women. There is lots of red on the men’s side, as Norwegians claim the next three spots as well (Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, Martin Løwstrøm Nyenget, and Erik Valnes). There is more diversity for the women, with Sundling of Sweden first, Jessie Diggins second, Therese Johaug of Norway third, and Victoria Carl of Germany fourth.
Who currently leads the most important standings, the Diggins Collapse Index?
Amundsen is first, with a narrow lead over the index’s eponymous hero, Jessie Diggins, in second.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go here, or follow @digginscollapseindex on Instagram — multiple people working inside the U.S. wax truck already do, and you want to be cool like them, don’t you. The site is dedicated to “Ranking the most dramatic finish line collapses of the 2024/2025 FIS Cross Country Ski World Cup,” it explains in its profile. “Named after the reigning champion Jessie Diggins.”
(Anonymous founders behind this account, whose identity I don’t specifically know but whom I am quite certain from various subtle clues are based in Anchorage, you should allow embeds please so that I can greater publicize your contributions to the gestalt tyia.)
What are some storylines to be aware of for this weekend?
- This one is really, really obscure, I know, but Diggins is the reigning world champion in tomorrow’s race, the 10-kilometer interval-start skate, while Therese Johaug won this event at 2021 world champs (also, in classic, at the 2022 Olympics and at 2019 world champs). You might just hear something about one or both of these athletes during the broadcast of the women’s race.
- They’re actually having a skiathlon this year? This event, in this format, has a poor track record of actually being held. When the skiathlon was contested in world championships in Planica in February 2023, it had not yet been raced on the World Cup that season (it is often modified to a straight classic race due to course limitations imposed by low-snow conditions). These year there are two skiathlons scheduled during the World Cup, one on Sunday and one during the Tour de Ski, before another at world champs in Trondheim.
- Load management for the Americans. Gus Schumacher, Zak Ketterson, and John Steel Hagenbuch all declined a race start last weekend, citing, generally, a long season and some energy issues (Ketterson noted on Strava that he had simply slept quite poorly after his first race, for example). Watch which athletes are starting which races, or not, to see how different skiers respond to the mix of fatigue and stimulus posed by Period 1 World Cup racing.
- Certain Norwegians’ health. Klæbo is sitting out at least Friday’s distance race. Kristine Stavås Skistad, speaking with media for the first time in six months, said that she is returned from November abdominal surgery, but had to spend three to four weeks without training as a result. Skistad will be racing on Saturday, which should help answer a lot of questions about her current form.
Enjoy the races!
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 years one and two of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year three 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.
One longstanding source of cross-country and biathlon races on Eurosport in the U.S. you haven’t mentioned have been the recordings made by “JungleBoy.” These started over 20 years ago with someone in Sweden and then when he bowed out were picked up by someone in the UK, directly or eventually by JungleBoy. For many years, these top quality several hour delayed recordings were the sole source of World Cup, World Championship, biathlon and Olympics races in the U.S. They even created a bit of a cult following for the Eurosport broadcasters, such as Mike Dixon. Unfortunately, this season the recordings have come to an end. Due to a substantial Eurosport rate increase and his lack of interest in watching the races, JungleBoy has decided to bow out. He suggested DiscoveryPlus as a cheaper alternative, but unlike in the UK DiscoverPlus U.S. doesn’t include sports.