By Gavin Kentch
Period 3 of the World Cup season marches on. Jessie had plantar fasciitis. Jessie couldn’t walk. Jessie couldn’t classic ski. Jessie doublepoled a classic sprint qual. Jessie is back to striding, albeit gingerly, on flat ground. Jessie is not on Friday’s relay start list, but is on the start list for both Saturday and Sunday, because this is an all-skate-ski weekend.
In non–Jessie Diggins news, Rosie Brennan has left the circuit, due to illness, which is bad. Frida Karlsson returned from injury, destroyed the field in a 20km classic in Les Rousses, then went back home to Sweden to hide out in the woods and do top-secret training in advance of World Championships in Trondheim. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but it is certainly interesting.
Alongside a bevy of veterans, the U.S. brings a handful of young and early-career athletes over to Engadin for this and upcoming races. Mazel tov to Kate Oldham of Montana State University (World Cup debut), Luci Anderson of Team Birkie (made World Cup debut last weekend), Murphy Kimball (made European World Cup debut last weekend), and Kendall Kramer (making her European World Cup debut this weekend; somehow first raced on the World Cup in a trio of nation’s group starts in Québec in March 2019, at age 16, two facts that, jointly, do not make me feel any younger).
Also welcome back to Julia Kern and Gus Schumacher, both returning to World Cup racing after an extended training block at home, and to Sammy Smith, making her 27th career World Cup start, but her first one this season after being an NCAA soccer player to start the year.
Anyway. Here is when the races will be.
World Cup in Engadin, Switzerland (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, Jan. 24 | 4 x 5km mixed relay | 6 a.m. | 10 a.m. | here |
| Saturday, Jan. 25 | skate sprint qual | 12:45 a.m. | 4:45 a.m. | here |
| skate sprint heats | 3:45 a.m. | 7:45 a.m. | here | |
| Sunday, Jan. 26 | W 20km mass start skate | 2:30 a.m. | 6:30 a.m. | here |
| M 20km mass start skate | 5 a.m. | 9 a.m. | here |
Who will be racing for the U.S.?
In Friday’s relay: Zanden McMullen, Julia Kern, Ben Ogden, and Sophia Laukli, for Team USA I, and Luke Jager, Kendall Kramer, JC Schoonmaker, and Sammy Smith, for Team APU plus Sammy USA II.
In Saturday’s sprint: Luci Anderson (Team Birkie), Jessie Diggins, Lauren Jortberg (Centre national d’entraînement Pierre-Harvey), Julia Kern, Alayna Sonnesyn (Team Birkie), and Sammy Smith, for the women. Murphy Kimball, Zanden McMullen, Ben Ogden, Gus Schumacher, JC Schoonmaker, and Jack Young, for the men.
In Sunday’s distance race: Anderson, Diggins, Kern, Kramer, Laukli, Sonnesyn, and Kate Oldham (Montana State) for the women. Walker Hall (University of Utah), Luke Jager, McMullen, Ogden, Schumacher, and Hunter Wonders (APU) for the men. Everyone receiving a (team name) parenthetical here is not on the U.S. Ski Team; every other listed athlete is.
How can I watch the races?
I never actually wrote this one up as a standalone article this year, sorry. TLDR, here are your viewing options if you are tuning in from the U.S.:
- 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.
- Paid and reliable: Pay Ski & Snowboard Live (link) $12 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.
Enjoy the races, everyone.
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 toAmerican 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.
