By Gavin Kentch
Not to be too teleological about things here, but it seems fair to say that if most athletes could choose between a podium finish at this weekend’s World Cup weekend in Falun and a podium finish at next month’s World Championships week in Trondheim, they would go for the latter.
That said, there are legitimate World Cup races going down in central Sweden this weekend, with real World Cup points being offered and everything. And no non-points team sprints or relays or anything, but, like, RACES races. Look for largely full fields to compete over the next few days, but with some boldface names missing, and some of the athletes who do compete perhaps at different points in their training cycle as they attempt to find the optimal peak for World Championships in two weeks’ time.
Anyway. Here is when the races will be.
World Cup in Falun, Sweden (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, Feb. 14 | classic sprint qual | 11 p.m. Thurs. | 3 a.m. Friday | here |
| classic sprint heats | 1:30 a.m. | 5:30 a.m. | here | |
| Saturday, Feb. 15 | W 10km classic | 1:45 a.m. | 5:45 a.m. | here |
| M 10km classic | 3:45 a.m. | 7:45 a.m. | here | |
| Sunday, Feb. 16 | W 20km mass start skate | 1 a.m. | 5 a.m. | here |
| M 20km mass start skate | 4 a.m. | 9 a.m. | here |
Who will be racing for the U.S.?
In Friday’s classic sprint: Emma Albrecht (Bridger Ski Foundation), Erin Bianco (Bridger Ski Foundation), Jessie Diggins, Julia Kern, Kate Oldham (Montana State University), and Sammy Smith, for the women. Kevin Bolger, Luke Jager, Zak Ketterson, Murphy Kimball, Zanden McMullen, and JC Schoonmaker, for the men.
In Saturday’s 10km classic: Diggins, Kern, Oldham, Sophia Laukli, Sydney Palmer-Leger, and Alayna Sonnesyn (Team Birkie), for the women. Jager, Ketterson, McMullen, Schoonmaker, Gus Schumacher, and Will Koch, for the men.
In Sunday’s 20km skate: Diggins, Kern, Laukli, Oldham, Palmer-Leger, and Sonnesyn for the women, then Jager, McMullen, Schumacher, Walker Hall (University of Utah), 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. When I get the update emails from USSS they give an asterisk to each non–national team member with a footnote reading, “* non–Stifel U.S. Ski Team member.” This always feels a little pointed to me, but I do feel like it is worth keeping in mind which starters probably had to pay for their own wax tech for the weekend. Fwiw, you can support BSF here, APU here, Team Birkie here, and/or NNF here if you are so inclined.
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.
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.
