By Devin L. Ward
Stade Nordique des Tuffes à Prémanon, Les Rousses, France — Returning from a weekend off after the Tour de Ski, the first race back for the women in Period 3 of the 2024/2025 World Cup season was today’s 10-kilometer interval-start skate race in Les Rousses. I was on the ground reporting for Nordic Insights and can attest personally that conditions were great, sunny, and clear (yes, my sunburned face does hurt).
This was a fast course — winning times were under 20 minutes for the men, and under 23 minutes for the women — with three 3.3-kilometer loops, tight and icy corners, and a 40m climb along the side of the ski jump. Admittedly, transportation around the course, between media accreditation and the stadium, was much slower, but no less exciting. This is because I never had a clue how to get where I needed to be and relied very much on both the kindness of strangers for guidance and my supportive Canadian husband’s French-language skills.
But back to the important stuff: Racing was tight in spite of a few noticeably missing Norwegian athletes. Jessie Diggins won in a speedy 22.37.3, keeping the lead in the overall and also taking the red distance bib from an absent Therese Johaug. It was the 25th individual victory of Diggins’s World Cup career.
Diggins was in good spirits after the race, about both her foot injury (she made no promises either way regarding the upcoming World Championships) and also the men’s performance earlier in the day.
“I was also really inspired by the boys,” Diggins told a scrum of print media in the mixed zone. “They went out there and had an amazing day. Ben with his first [distance] podium, so cool! He’s worked so hard, he’s my club teammate as well so I see how hard he works all year long, so that got me really fired up and inspired and I just wanted to go out there and smash a really good race.”
Perhaps taking Ogden’s approach, Diggins went hard from the gun, then simply got far enough ahead that no one could catch her. You can see from the above line graph, pulled from the FIS results site, that she was already 3.8 seconds up through 2km, stretched the lead slightly over the rest of lap one, then grew the lead from there, particularly over the final lap. Diggins ultimately won by 19.5 seconds, an eternity in a World Cup field, particularly for a race that took all podium finishers less than 23 minutes.
The only athlete today happier than Diggins was probably Victoria Carl, who hopped up and down in joy when Teresa Stadlober crossed the finish line in fourth, just 2.4 seconds behind Carl, securing Carl’s second place. Astrid Øyre Slind finished third today, 20.1 seconds behind Diggins.
Sophia Laukli finished 8th (+38.9), a strong result considering a less-than-ideal conclusion to her Tour de Ski. (She previously spoke with Nordic Insights about sustaining a, quote, “bruised ass” in the stage six skiathlon, and suffering through the next day’s final climb as a result.)
When asked today how her fall in the penultimate stage of the Tour is still impacting her skiing, Laukli said, “I basically just really bruised my butt which luckily is not so serious, but it really hurts to ski. … I tried racing the hill climb [at the end of the Tour] but it was really quite terrible and I mean, again … I don’t really regret trying, but it was it was not so smart to race maybe.”
She added, “The Tour de Ski, you kinda have to finish out if you’re that close but you know … the week after the Tour was a bit rough because I definitely felt how much that fall actually did to my body and I wasn’t really able to ski for the following week. So this weekend I was very unsure if I would come, and before the race today it was all a mystery. I’m happy that I was at least able to have a more comparable result to what I know I’m capable of, but I definitely want more. [It’s] a good start.”
When asked about this course in particular, Laukli said, “You hear that this course has massive hills and it was … super good for me … but there’s a lot of transition down hilly stuff which I know I’m not so good at. That in combination with it being a very short 10km, I think I did as well as I could have, but I would have probably liked a few more laps to make it more suitable for me.”
(The course is short on time, but not on distance; the 3.3km course at Les Rousses is precisely 3,379 metres, per homologation documents. It just skied very fast today.)
She may well get those extra laps in Sunday’s 20-kilometer classic; Laukli, Rosie Brennan, and Alayna Sonnesyn are the anticipated American starters for the final race of the weekend.
Luci Anderson of Team Birkie was the next fastest American woman today, finishing 22nd (+1:24.5). While Anderson, who is on the national team for U.S. Biathlon, made her debut on the Biathlon World Cup earlier this season, this was her first FIS Cross-Country World Cup. She presumptively got to lead the team cheer last night in honor of this milestone.
Anderson told Nordic Insights, “It was fast. It was kinda icier than when I was warming up, which I wasn’t expecting. All the corners, all the 180s, were pretty like skied-in, but overall it was really fast and really fun.”
I did try to pressure her into admitting that maybe ski World Cups were a little better than IBU World Cups, but Anderson (very professionally) did not take the bait, riposting just, “I can’t say! It’s all different; they’re all fun!”
We then quickly transitioned into a discussion about knitting this particular scarf, which I was wearing courtesy of my talented mother. Anderson said that she’s “making one right now!” and that “the girls have been hobbying with knitting.” Knitting is probably good active recovery?
Rosie Brennan finished 28th (+1:45.9) and was visibly disappointed in the finish area. Understandably so; she finished fifth here in this race in January 2023, and hasn’t seen results anywhere close to her best yet this season.
When asked how her body is feeling Brennan said, “Pretty bad. Yeah, I’ve been dealing with some health stuff. I don’t really have the answers for it yet so, I’m not sure what’s next, but this wasn’t really what I was looking for.”
Alayna Sonnesyn, also of Team Birkie, was by contrast content with her 34th-place finish (+2:13.9), saying, “Being disappointed with 34th is kind of funny because … in the past I would have been ecstatic to be 34th. Then today was a pretty medium day after getting sick in the Tour and then kind of recovering from that. This is I think a good wake up for the rest of the period, so yeah I’m excited for more.”
As a spectator, it was great to see many schoolkids at the race. We heard from a race coordinator that several hundred were brought in to watch, but they also definitely enjoyed throwing themselves off of snowbanks, sliding down hills, and having a nice day in the snow. While we didn’t see (or hear) any chainsaws, there were more than enough vuvuzelas, megaphones, and maybe a trumpet (?).
We can only hope for chainsaws in tomorrow’s classic sprint. As Sadie Bjornsen Maubet once said of husband Jo Maubet’s course-side demeanor — garish hat, overalls, chainsaw body, smoke bombs, etc. — “He’s not crazy. He’s just French.”
Diggins, Sonnesyn, and Brennan are on the start list for the qualifier, which starts at 12:15 p.m. CET (6:15 a.m. EST and 2:15 a.m. in Anchorage). Diggins was not listed as an anticipated sprint starter for the U.S. in advance of the weekend, and told FIS today that she was not going to contest Sunday’s 20km classic, saying, “I can’t stride right now so I’ll just enjoy being a skate specialist for the time being.” So keep an eye out for whether Diggins starts, does not start, contests only the qual, or something else. Stay tuned.
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.
