By Gavin Kentch
This is the second in an informal series of pieces looking at the 2024/2025 season. Today: Who won races.
There were a lot of ski races held last season. At the World Cup level, Klæbo won nearly half of them, 14 out of 30 individual races on the men’s side. Therese Johaug won another seven among women. Jessie Diggins and Harald Østberg Amundsen each won six. That’s 33 out of the 60 individual World Cup victories up for grabs, a healthy 55 percent, claimed by four athletes right there. More broadly, the Norwegian men won 27 of 30 races across the season, or a staggering 90 percent, while seven distinct Swedish women each won at least one race. Breaking, the Norwegian men and Swedish women are both good at skiing. #insights
But you probably knew all that, intuitively if not mathematically. So, and with an eye to bringing you the added value of combing through a lot of domestic results so you don’t have to, here is who won races at the SuperTour and national championship levels in this country in the 2024/2025 season:
Women
Erica Lavén (University of Utah): classic sprint, U.S. Nationals; classic sprint, 10km skate, and 20km mass start classic, Birkieland SuperTour; 20km mass start skate, skate sprint, and 7.5km classic, Crosscut Mountain SuperTour
Kate Oldham (Montana State University): 10km skate, U.S. Nationals
Kendall Kramer (University of Alaska Fairbanks): 20km mass start classic, U.S. Nationals
Julia Kern (SMS): skate sprint national championship, Lake Placid
Jessie Diggins (SMS): 40km mass start classic national championship, Lake Placid
Anabel Needham (APU): skate sprint, Birkieland SuperTour
Mariel Merlii Pulles (Team Birkie): skate sprint, Anchorage SuperTour
Sydney Palmer-Leger (SMS): American Birkebeiner [a SuperTour race]
Luci Anderson (Team Birkie): 10km skate, Lake Placid SuperTour
Men
John Steel Hagenbuch (Dartmouth College): 10km skate, U.S. Nationals; 40km mass start classic national championship, Lake Placid; 10km skate, Birkieland SuperTour; 20km mass start skate and 7.5km classic, Crosscut Mountain SuperTour; 10km skate, Lake Placid SuperTour
Andreas Kirkeng (University of Denver): classic sprint and 20km mass start classic, U.S. Nationals
Ben Ogden (SMS): skate sprint national championship, Lake Placid
Luke Jager (APU): skate sprint and 20km mass start classic, Birkieland SuperTour
Michael Earnhart (APU): skate sprint, Anchorage SuperTour; skate sprint, Crosscut Mountain SuperTour
Graham Houtsma (BSF): classic sprint, Birkieland SuperTour
Gérard Agnellet (Club des Sports de La Clusaz): American Birkebeiner [a SuperTour race]
I ranked these listings first by greatest total number of wins, then with national championships ahead of SuperTour wins, then chronologically. Among domestic clubs, fwiw, APU claimed a total of five wins, SMS four, Team Birkie two, and BSF one. All were clearly dwarfed by the University of Utah/Erica Lavén, with seven victories, and Dartmouth College/John Steel Hagenbuch, with six.
Put all that together and Erica Lavén is your women’s overall SuperTour leader for the 2024/2025 season, by a huge margin: she won seven races, while no other woman won more than one. But Lavén is Swedish, and the second-place athlete on this list, Mariel Merlii Pulles, is Estonian. Kate Oldham, third overall but the top American, therefore gets the Continental Cup leader’s spot for Period 1 of the 2025/2026 World Cup.
Things are simpler on the men’s side, where John Steel Hagenbuch led the way by nearly as much as Lavén did en route to claiming six victories. Period 1 starts this fall are his if he wants them.
(Another outlet has suggested that the sprint qual standings in this document are “significant in US Ski Team selections for Period 1 of next year,” and also that qual performance as late into the season as Spring Series would bear on this. This is incorrect. Sprint qual performance was a potential avenue for selection for 2025 World Championships, not for the 2025/2026 World Cup season; the selection window for that closed in Period 3, in late January; in practice, neither athlete who topped this list at the close of Period 3, Erin Bianco and Murphy Kimball, was chosen for Trondheim anyway.)
There are more awards out there than you may know of. Here is my reading of who won eight additional awards last season, in the order that they are mentioned in, uh, this 2022 USSS Awards Manual that is the most extensive information I can find for a lot of this. All quotes are from the USSS document linked to above. USSS, if you’re reading this, you should probably Ctrl-F for “Junior Olympics” in all of your programming and clean that up fyi.
Alaska Cup Award: Intermountain
“The Alaska Cup Award is given to recognize the outstanding divisional team performance in cross country skiing at the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Junior Olympics [sic].”
U.S. Ski & Snowboard Junior Olympic [sic] Club Team Awards: Bridger Ski Foundation (overall), Alaska Winter Stars (men), Loppet Nordic Racing (women)
“The U.S. Ski & Snowboard Junior Olympic [sic] Club Team Awards recognize the top boys’, girls’ and combined boys’ & girls’ club teams competing at the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Junior Olympics [sic]. The awards were initiated to recognize the importance of outstanding clubs to the development of a strong national ski program.”
Roger Weston Award: North Tahoe High School (women), South Anchorage High School (men)
“The Roger Weston Award honors the top high school boys’ and girls’ cross country ski teams competing at U.S. Ski & Snowboard Junior Olympics [sic]. The award was initiated to recognize the valuable contribution from high school skiing to the development of cross country ski racing across the USA. Roger Weston was instrumental in developing the sport of cross country skiing in the Mid-Atlantic division and across the US.”
Dave Quinn Award: Anhelina Hryhorenko
“The Dave Quinn Award is presented to the outstanding cross country skier at the Junior Olympics [sic] by the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Cross Country Sport Committee based on results as well as sportsmanship. The award is presented in the memory of U.S. Ski Team racer Dave Quinn, who died in 1976 at the peak of his career.”
Martha Rockwell Award: Kate Oldham
“The Martha Rockwell Award recognizes the fastest woman in the 10-km at the U.S Cross Country Championships. The award is presented in honor of Martha Rockwell, an outstanding international competitor of the U.S. Cross Country Team in the ’60s and ’70s.”
Gale Cotton Burton Award: John Steel Hagenbuch
“The Gale Cotton Burton Award is given to the winner of the men’s 15-km race [now: 10km] at the U.S. Cross Country Championships. It was originated by the Burton family of Wayzata, MN, in memory of their son.”
Mike Gallagher Award: John Steel Hagenbuch
“The Mike Gallagher Award is given to the senior men’s overall winner at the U.S. Cross Country Championships. The award is presented in honor of Mike Gallagher, an outstanding international competitor on the U.S. Ski Team in the ’60s and ’70s, who is also a former U.S. Ski Team coach.”
Tony Wise Award: Erica Lavén
“The Tony Wise Award is presented to the winner of the women’s overall SuperTour title. The late Tony Wise was a pioneer in cross country ski event development, starting the American Birkebeiner; the Worldloppet, a series of 14 international ski marathons, and the Gitchi Game [sic], the predecessor of today’s SuperTour.”
(Yes I know that Lavén is a foreign national. Four times in five years in the mid-aughts, this award was won by either Karin Camenisch, who is Swiss, or Kristina Strandberg, who is Swedish. The award therefore seems to go to the overall winner, not to the highest-placing American skier. Oldham did receive this award, though, fwiw.)
Al Merrill Nordic Award: stay tuned for the USSS awards announcement at next month’s Spring Congress to see who wins this
“The Al Merrill Nordic Award is presented to the individual or group involved with any aspect of nordic skiing (cross country, nordic combined or ski jumping), who or which demonstrates an exceptional level of commitment, leadership, and devotion to excellence. Each of the nordic sport committees submits a nominee with the final selection being made by the sport committee chairpersons.”
Finally, this year’s NNF Cup went to the University of Utah, for the second time in three years. You can see APU second and BSF third in the above podium photo (final Cup standings here). The University of Utah receives a $3,000 cash prize for this victory.
The raison d’être of the NNF Cup is for “the National Nordic Foundation … to celebrate the spirit and creativity at play in providing US skiers with structured programs for their continued development.” Top points scorers for Utah in this year’s NNF Cup competition included Erica Lavén, Selma Nevin, and Joe Davies.
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