By Myles Brown
BIRKIE TRAILHEAD, Cable, Wisconsin — Tuesday morning’s distance race here marked the end of Period 1 of the 2024/2025 SuperTour season. Tuesday brought a classic mass start 20km, the first 20-kilometer race of the season for most of the athletes in the field.
Tuesday saw a wide variety of conditions as an increase in temperatures reaching up to 35° F on Monday, followed by a 23-degree temperature at the start of the women’s race, created tricky kick conditions and some wicked fast tracks. 13 athletes went under 50 minutes in the men’s race, and winning times in the women’s race were just five minutes slower.
It seems like a broken record on the women’s side this week: Lavén, the first-year skier from the University of Utah, was the champion of the day. This marks an asterisked sweep for Lavén, as she won every race she entered this week. Do take note, though, that she did not enter last Thursday’s skate sprint in frigid temps.
Tuesday’s race was certainly made interesting by Lavén’s foil of the week, Tilde Bångman. The collegiate rival from the University of Colorado was 1.2 seconds back at the finish (slide two above for finish video). The third spot was filled by Nina Seemann of the BSF Pro Team, nearly 1:30 back of Lavén.
The next three in-the-money positions were filled by Bångman’s Colorado teammate, Hanna Abrahamsson, in fourth. Following Abrahamsson was Mariel Merlii Pulles of Team Birkie, and in the sixth spot was another BSF Pro Team member, Emma Albrecht.
The women’s races were dominated by Lavén and Bångman through the week, with Seemann and Albrecht consistently in the mix for the third spot on the podium. It looks like Utah and Colorado will again be dominant forces on the women’s side this year, which should lead to a competitive and close NCAA season in the RMISA leading into U.S. Nationals in Anchorage. Seemann, a current senior at Dartmouth, will be looking to gain ground on those two and proving she has potential in the distance races. Seemann will be hoping to hold them off on her home turf when NCAA Championships come to Dartmouth in March.
The men’s race was another close and technical affair, which helped Luke Jager (APU/USST) to take the win on Tuesday. Jager showed his strength, unleashing a strong attack heading into the last of six, 3.4-kilometer laps, establishing a breakaway with John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth/USST) and Brian Bushey (Utah) in tow.
The break stuck, leading to a gap over the rest of the field of roughly five seconds. In the sprint to the line to close things out, Jager took the win in 49:12.4, with Steel Hagenbuch in second (+1.1) and Bushey third (+2.2).
Close behind were Reid Goble (BSF) in fourth, Tabor Greenberg (Vermont) in fifth, and Canadian Scott Hill (Team Hardwood) in sixth. Greenberg, a rising star in his first year at the University of Vermont, showed solid promise in his ability to hang with a domestic pro field.
I was able to contact Jager and get a read on how the race unfolded and the tactics he employed to come away with the win.
“It was fun to get to ski in such a big group for so long on a course that had a lot of gliding and punchy climbs which really kept us together,” Jager wrote to Nordic Insights. “I had to fight hard to get ahead of those guys by the finish but had a great set of skis thanks to our team that gave me the confidence to go for it! Fun to have a competitive and fast race like this in the US.”
National-level domestic racing resumes with 2025 U.S. Nationals, which begin in Anchorage on January 2 with a 10km interval-start skate. Nordic Insights will be on site at Kincaid throughout the week.
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.
I think there’s a typo: If Bångman and Lavén are both skiing for the Univ of Utah, in what sense is Abrahamsson a Colorado teammate of the first?
Great catch. Thanks. That’s on me as the editor, not on Myles. The sentence has been changed to reflect the fact that Bångman is at Colorado. Thanks again for the careful reading.