World Cup Viewing Guide for December 28–January 1: Tour de Ski in Toblach

By Gavin Kentch

We’re back. Happy third night of Hanukkah. Happy third day of Christmas. Happy second day of Kwanzaa. And so on.

Athletes finished up Period 1 racing in Davos on December 15, then enjoyed a nearly two-week break before putting on a bib. Next up is the Tour de Ski, now in its nineteenth running. While perhaps somewhat defanged from its heyday, which saw Devon Kershaw and Dario Cologna et al. enduring epic bus rides between backwater venues (or perhaps you would enjoy this story of the Swedish men finishing the penultimate stage in Val di Fiemme in January 2007 then spending hours running around the sleepy town in an attempt to get a slice of pizza in the middle of the afternoon after a week’s worth of racing), this year’s edition still demands that athletes complete seven races in nine days, which is not nothing.

Anyway. Here is when the races will be over the first half of the Tour de Ski. This year’s Tour takes place entirely in one country, Italy, for the first but not the last time; stages one through four will be held in Toblach, and stages five through seven in Val di Fiemme. The bus ride between them is scarcely over two hours. I think continually of those who were truly great, and all that.

Tour de Ski in Toblach (local time at venue: GMT +1. This is 6 hours ahead of the East Coast and 10 hours ahead of Alaska.)

How can I watch the races?

I haven’t actually written this one up as a standalone article yet this year, sorry. 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 there’s a catch this year: 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). This does work again this year, but only live; replays are not available. If you share my time zone and sleeping habits, this may not be a great option for you.

Who will be racing for the U.S.?

Ten athletes, five per gender, will be starting for the U.S. in Toblach on Saturday: Gus Schumacher, Ben Ogden, Zanden McMullen, Jack Young, and JC Schoonmaker for the men, then Jessie Diggins, Sophia Laukli, Rosie Brennan, Julia Kern, and Alayna Sonnesyn for the women.

I would personally be surprised to see the pure sprinters, Young and Schoonmaker, remain in the Tour past the classic sprint in stage five (Val di Fiemme, January 3), but that is just a surmise on my part rather than sourced reporting. General statistics on finish rates suggest that you should probably not expect all of the other eight to reach the top of Alpe Cermis, but stay tuned. Jessie Diggins has raced the Tour de Ski in every one of the past twelve seasons, DNF’ing only in 2015, so ask her about not finishing at your peril.

Who else is racing?

There are 67 women and an even 100 men starting this year’s Tour de Ski. Presumptive podium favorites on the women’s side include, obviously, the returning champion, Jessie Diggins. Additionally, Victoria Carl, Rosie Brennan, Heidi Weng, Astrid Øyre Slind, Ebba Andersson, and Therese Johaug have to be on any short list. Yes, Johaug is not as good at sprinting as some of the other names on this list, but that didn’t stop her from winning the Tour de Ski three times before (2014, 2016, 2020). And finishing second three more times (2011, 2013, 2015). And third once (2012). So there is some history here.

Notably, Frida Karlsson (first in 2023) is not starting this year, while continuing her recovery from injury.

On the men’s side… well, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (first in 2019, 2022, and 2023) is pretty good at skiing. So is Harald Østberg Amundsen (first last year). Both men start this year, along with the rest of last season’s overall podium, Friedrich Moch and Hugo Lapalus. Pål Golberg (fifth, fifth, sixth, and eleventh in his last four Tours) didn’t even earn a start nod, because Norway. Veterans Martin Løwstrøm Nyenget and Simen Hegstad Krüger, along with this season’s new stars Jan Thomas Jenssen and Andreas Fjorden Ree, are among the ten Norwegian men on the start list. Yes, this paragraph is mostly just listing the Norwegians, but also have you looked at the men’s overall standings lately?

The highest-ranked non-Norwegian there (Iivo Niskanen, sixth) is not racing in this year’s Tour de Ski, a late scratch due to illness. The next best (Gus Schumacher, eighth) is; look for him to substantially improve on his previous career Tour best of 18th (from 2021) as he increasingly comes into his own as a skier.

Diggins, Amundsen, and Jenssen are currently top three in the Diggins Collapse Index standings. My pick for the Tour de Collapse was Helene Fossesholm, fwiw (not because I doubt Diggins or Jenssen, but because I was playing the odds on a less popular choice). Prove me right, Fossesholm.

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.