By Noah Eckstein
The mixed relay is an odd bird. Since it was introduced to the World Cup in the 2021/2022 season, it has been contested just five times, today included. Offering no World Cup points and also lacking the cachet and historical rivalries of the single-gender relays, it presents a prime opportunity for tired or injured or World Cup overall–oriented athletes to snag an extra day of rest with no consequences beyond a good finger-wagging from Devon Kershaw.
On the other hand, it is undoubtedly a valiant effort to inject some whimsy and fun into a sport sometimes accused of staleness and waning relevance.
Caring not even a little bit about any of this, a full-strength Swedish team loped to a comfortable victory in Friday’s 4×5-kilometer mixed relay in Switzerland’s Engadin Valley, backlit by a fiery sunset over the Alps.
The World Cup has visited the Engadin just once before: In 2021, when Norway’s strict Covid regulations nixed the Holmenkollen Ski Festival in Oslo, the valley — famed for its annual ski marathon — stepped in as the host of the World Cup finals.
The World Cup race course, nestled in the village of Surlej and just a few minutes up the valley from the glitzy hotels of St. Moritz, sits at roughly 5,900 feet above sea level. Though readers in Colorado might find that piddling, it is nonetheless the highest elevation the World Cup will reach this season (Davos and Cogne are both about 800 feet lower).
On top of the altitude, flapping flags along the course made apparent an unforgiving wind ripping up off the lake and turning gradual downhills into working sections.
Undeterred, Iivo Niskanen and Pål Golberg, skiing the scramble classic leg for Finland I and Norway I, respectively, pushed the pace from the gun and took a small gap. Canadian Antoine Cyr and Swedes Jens Burman and Calle Halfvarsson managed to hang within touching distance.
After the first handoff, Norway I fell back and Sweden I took its place. Jasmi Joensuu and Emma Ribom continued the ferocious pace, widening the gap into a nearly unbridgeable one.
In the third leg, Anger — having won his first ever World Cup last weekend in the classic sprint — displayed his burgeoning distance chops by decisively skating away from Remi Lindholm of Finland I and Benjamin Moser of Austria I. Even an in-form and World Champs-snub-motivated Iver Tildheim Andersen of Norway, skiing roughly 25 seconds behind, was unable to put any time into the charging Anger.
By the final handoff a Swedish win was almost certain, but anchor Moa Ilar was determined to leave nothing to chance. Five kilometers later, she arrived at the finish straight in the fading light of a glorious golden hour with enough time to grab a Swedish flag and coast across the line.
Norway I’s anchor, Kristin Austgulen Fosnaes, having dropped the other chasers within the first couple kilometers of her leg, cruised home in second. The last spot on the podium came down to a sprint, though, with veteran Nadine Fähndrich outkicking Anna Kjersti Kalvå to claim a crowd-pleasing bronze on Swiss soil. Liliane Gagnon led Canada I home in a more-than-respectable sixth place.
The American team has a history with this short-lived event: during its inaugural appearance in Falun in 2022, the quartet of Rosie Brennan, Zak Ketterson, Scott Patterson, and Jessie Diggins took a dominant victory over a strong Finnish team and a somewhat less-strong Norwegian team (sans Johannes Høsflot Klæbo and Pål Golberg but still no B-team, with Heidi Weng scrambling and Therese Johaug anchoring).
Today, no such glory was in the cards. USA I, made up of Zanden McMullen, Julia Kern, Ben Ogden, and Sophia Laukli, skiing in that order, finished 14th. Just behind in 16th was USA II, composed of Luke Jager, Kendall Kramer, JC Schoonmaker, and Sammy Smith. Neither squad ever looked particularly close to contending.
Overwhelmingly, reports from athletes were that — despite each leg on paper being just 5 kilometers on a relatively soft course — this was a grueling day out.
Kendall Kramer, racing her first World Cup outside of North America, skied alongside Julia Kern on the second leg as both tried to make up a small gap to the main chase group.
“It was windy today and downhills were long and straight,” she wrote to Nordic Insights, “so drafting was helpful. I definitely gave my best on my leg and my goal was to catch up to the group and draft to stay in it, and that was Julia [Kern]’s goal as well, but of course it is hard to start a race at altitude with a sprint to catch up and even if we would have, our matches were pretty burned. We just tried to bring it in and not drop places!”
Kern echoed that experience in comments to Nordic Insights. “Normally a 5k at altitude I would pace the first lap conservatively,” she wrote, “but the wind was super strong today, especially a big headwind going downhill on all the sections, so I started faster to try to close the gap to the pack in front of me. Unfortunately, it was a little too big of a gap to close, so I got a bit flooded by the end, but I’m proud of sending it and feel like I skied a solid leg.”
Jager, no stranger to grappling with altitude from his time racing on the RMISA circuit with the University of Utah, elaborated on the approach. According to him, “The altitude is a fun challenge to try to solve because it’s very unforgiving. It’s a balancing act to not go over your limit, cause when you do there’s not much you can do about it.”
JC Schoonmaker simplified the equation: “A blow up at altitude costs a lot.”
Perhaps experiencing the rudest awakening of all, though, was 19-year-old Sammy Smith. After finishing her season with the Stanford women’s soccer team in early December, Smith had to cram an entire fall’s worth of training into about a month. She made a brief detour to casually win a national championship in the classic sprint in Anchorage before rejoining the U.S. Ski Team.
“I definitely had a very late start to the season,” she wrote in comments to Nordic Insights, “and am not feeling nearly as prepared as I would like to, but trying to embrace the opportunities knowing I have a long career ahead of me. I still haven’t had more than 3 weeks total on snow which is a fraction of what all the other athletes have, but hoping for the best! Given the fall looked so different for me and will for the next few years, I don’t have a ton of expectations for the season. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow’s race and world juniors, hoping I can have some good results!”
Expectations or not, Smith has already succeeded in making the rest of the world feel bad about what they had accomplished at age 19.
Two race weekends, in Cogne and Falun, remain before World Championships in Trondheim at the end of February. Expect to see more, ahem, tactical DNSs in the coming weeks as athletes taper their training and attempt to restock energy stores in preparation for the primary objective of this race season.
In this vein, Sophia Laukli indicated that her plan is to “focus on training after this weekend instead of racing.”
In the meantime, though, racing in the Engadin continues tomorrow with a skate sprint. In the women’s race, Americans Sammy Smith, Jessie Diggins, Julia Kern, Alayna Sonnesyn (Team Birkie), Lauren Jortberg (Centre National d’Entraînement Pierre-Harvey), Kate Oldham (Montana State University), and Luci Anderson (Team Birkie) are expected to start. On the men’s side, Jack Young, Gus Schumacher, JC Schoonmaker, Ben Ogden, Zanden McMullen, and Murphy Kimball are expected to take the line.
Brief video recap:
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