By Myles Brown
BIRKIE TRAILHEAD, Cable, Wisconsin — Sunday’s interval-start 10-kilometer skate in Cable was the first distance race of the 2024/2025 SuperTour season. With it came strong results across the field as the distance skiers were able to show their form.
Conditions were again a stark contrast from the first race here on Thursday, when the start of the sprint qual was repeatedly delayed in order to allow the temperature to rise to a FIS-legal –4° F. Today, when the first male starters kicked things off at 8:30 a.m., temps were hovering just above freezing. There was an all-encompassing fog that hung over the venue that grew thicker as the day went on.
The race took place on the new 3.3-kilometer homologated course at the Birkie Trailhead, which is new to most of these athletes and proved to be a challenge to some. The course seemed to play to skiers who could deliver consistent power and keep a high turnover through its steep hills.
*bah Gawd, that’s John Steel Hagenbuch’s music!*
The men’s race was dominated by John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth and USST), who took the win with a commanding gap of 37.7 seconds over Will Koch (Colorado and USST). The third step of the podium was filled by Steel Hagenbuch’s familiar NCAA foil Rémi Drolet (+44.1), who is back in contention in the distance races that are his strength. Drolet is a recent Harvard grad now looking to grow as a pro skier with SMS T2. Notably, the Canadian national chose to stay south of the border with SMS, rather than join a club based in Canada.
Following Drolet on the six-deep SuperTour podium was Luke Jager (APU/USST) in the fourth spot, Walker Hall (Utah) in the fifth, and Hugo Hinckfuss (Colorado) in the sixth and final in-the-money spot. Four of the top six men all being a part of the collegiate circuit is a testament to the strength of NCAA skiing in the U.S. right now.
Speaking of which: In the women’s race, first-year phenom Erica Lavén of the University of Utah took another commanding victory with a sizable gap over Colorado’s Tilde Bångman, who was 40.6 seconds back over 10km. In the third spot was Nina Seemann (+1:14.3), who is in her first year of skiing with the BSF Pro Team and quickly showing her future promise in international skiing for the US.
The top six was rounded out by Nina Schamberger of Utah, Selma Nevin of Utah, and Emma Albrecht of the BSF Pro Team, in that order, for another four collegiate skiers on the top-six podium. The Utah women were the class of the field, with three athletes in the top six. BSF Pro Team also showed its strength with another two podium finishes. And Bångman of Colorado showed that she is poised to help bring Colorado back to the top step of the NCAA championships again this season after a win in 2024, though the powerhouse squad being assembled 500 miles to the west in Salt Lake City may have something to say about that.
I spoke with John Steel Hagenbuch after the race to get a read on what this win meant to him. Steel Hagenbuch started this season racing in Europe, contesting three distance races during World Cup Period 1 between Ruka and Lillehammer, but returned home after the second weekend of racing to heal from sickness and find some fitness again.
“It’s nice to win,” Steel Hagenbuch wrote to Nordic Insights, “but it’s nicer to feel 100% — which is something that I have yet to feel this winter. It was a really well run race today and a great course. It was fast skiing conditions, and you were working pretty much the entire time on the transitions and technical downhills (which have claimed a few people in the races thus far). There were something like 500 people out racing today, but the competition ran smoothly thanks to so many volunteers out there.
“I decided to pull the plug on my Period One campaign after struggling with some borderline illness upon arrival and some debilitating breathing issues in races. In Ruka, after sitting out the classic interval due to feeling tired, I had my first-ever asthma attack — or so I thought. I could barely breathe, and I couldn’t utter a word for about 15 minutes after the finish. It was not pleasant. I had a decent race in the interval start in Lillehammer… only to have shortness of breath again in the skiathlon.
“After consulting with the USST doctors, it became clear that what I was experiencing wasn’t asthma, but rather it is exercise induced laryngeal obstruction. It’s something you fix through breathing physical therapy rather than medication. I’m working through it, but I have yet to have a race where I feel that I am at 100% capacity and unhindered. Right now racing has felt like ‘rev limiter,’ which manifests in being unable to get my heart rate to the levels that I normally do. I’m hopeful I’ll figure it out soon.”
Steel Hagenbuch is looking forward to making his return to the World Cup when his body permits, as well as culminating his collegiate career when Dartmouth hosts NCAA Championships in March 2025.
Before then, racing wraps up here with a pair of 20km mass start classic races on Tuesday. The women are scheduled to start at 9 a.m., and the men at 11:15 a.m. There is then a break of two-plus weeks until high-level domestic racing resumes with U.S. Nationals in Anchorage on January 2.
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.
