By Noah Eckstein
At risk of stating the obvious, the Norwegian men are very good at team sprints. Since the 2021/2022 season, Norway has won five of the six men’s team sprints that have been contested on the World Cup, with the one exception coming during an anomalous Livigno race taking place over the FIS altitude limit and with an exceptionally small field.
It will be no shock to hear, then, that — even without GOAT sprinter Johannes Høsflot Klæbo — a Norwegian team of Even Northug and Erik Valnes picked apart the field to claim yet another win in Friday’s classic team sprint in Cogne, Italy. Joining them on the podium were Jules Chappaz and Richard Jouve of France in second and Calle Halfvarsson and Oskar Svensson of Sweden in third.
The two American teams finished 10th and 14th.
World Cup racers found themselves in the high Aostan valley of Cogne, where organizers made the most of a sloping farm field by creating a sinuous, power-oriented course. After the race, winner Valnes gave his interpretation of the track.
“It’s a fast one, but it’s quite intense,” he told the FIS interviewer. “Short, explosive hills and a lot of doublepoling. It’s fast, but it’s hard.”
The pack went out hot from the gun, and both American teams were well positioned near the front. USA II scrambler Luke Jager put in a surge over the top of the final climb to send his partner, Zak Ketterson, off onto the second lap in the lead. Ketterson took the metaphorical baton and ran with it, skiing aggressively at the front of the group and leading for a majority of the lap.
Lap three saw Frenchman Chappaz attempt to stretch the field out only for it to come back together in the draft on the descents.
The next lap saw the pedal really hit the floor, and a big push by Jouve and Switzerland I anchor Valerio Grond stretched the lead pack nearly to its breaking point. USA I anchor JC Schoonmaker managed to hang onto the back of the shrinking lead pack, just barely, but Ketterson began sliding backward. The American teams tagged off in ninth and 12th.
The penultimate lap saw the decisive split when five teams — France I, Finland II, Norway I, Norway II, and Sweden I — formed a leading pack. Behind, Schumacher did his best to hold onto the tails of the chase pack, but any hope of contesting the win had disappeared.
The lead pack of five headed out on their final loop with a small lead. Swiss anchor Grond dug deep up the main hill to bridge up, setting up a six-man sprint for the honors.
Jouve, not wanting to leave it to the finish, swung into the lead up the final hill. His acceleration wasn’t enough to drop Valnes, though, and the big man from Bardufoss slingshotted around the Frenchman over the final roller, thundering down the finishing straight for a decisive victory.
Schoonmaker rolled in 12 seconds down in 10th and Ketterson followed him 35 seconds behind the winners in 14th.
Ketterson, reporting a mishap in the later stages of the race, nonetheless seemed upbeat about his and Jager’s performance.
“I am really proud of how Luke and I asserted ourselves and skied where we felt we belong,” said Ketterson in a U.S. Ski Team press release. “We had a really unfortunate crash that took us out of the fight, but prior to that I felt like it was some of the best skiing Luke or myself had ever done. Taking a lot of positives away from the experience into the next days.”
Jager sent the teammate love right back: “It was fun to get to do a team event and team up with one of my best friends and a great guy, Zak!” Jager said in the same USST report. “I’m proud of and very thankful for all the hard work our team did to give us really good skis today, too.”
Schumacher, who reported a tough time last weekend in Engadin, noted today that signs were not pointing in the right direction in the lead up to the start. “Still wasn’t feeling very good in race prep or even warmup here,” he wrote to Nordic Insights,” but I guess you can’t always trust those feelings.”
But things turned around a bit once the race got underway. “My first leg was sweet, nice to ski up front and feel relaxed, the pace wasn’t that hot,” he reflected. “Second leg we had drifted back a bit and had a hectic tag, and while I was still in it, it was tough to ski super well or move up with the mass of the field in front of me. Third lap was super hard and I was just too far back and too tired to get JC into a good finishing spot so it was just fighting the whole way for us on those last two.”
Schoonmaker concurred on the difficulty of maintaining position in such a competitive field. “It was a super tough one today,” he noted in written comments to Nordic Insights. “The plan was to stay towards the front of the pack and not push the pace but be in the mix up there. Didn’t work out great for me and I lost a lot of positions for us in the first lap. That was a bummer because Gus was skiing great today but learned a bit for tomorrow.”
He will attempt to put those lessons to good use in tomorrow’s classic sprint on a similar course. American men registered to start there are Zak Ketterson, JC Schoonmaker, Gus Schumacher, Ben Ogden, Zanden McMullen, and Luke Jager.
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