By Gavin Kentch
Here is some recent news of interest. In today’s roundup: Eagle Glacier reopens; Olympic medals are officially unveiled; Kikkan Randall named to the Ski Hall of Fame; and a closer look at Rosie Brennan’s health struggles.
I acknowledge the Alaska-centric nature of this compendium. This is probably one part “write what you know,” one part that this is just where the current news I am aware of comes from. Stay tuned for some content from Outside the Lower 48 the States the rest of the country soon when East Coast correspondent Peter Minde is on site for weekend rollerski racing at Mt van Hoevenberg and Whiteface Mountain.
Eagle Glacier reopens for summer training
If you were anywhere on skier social media this summer you could not have missed the drool-inducing posts from a reopened Eagle Glacier, the APU-operated summer training facility in the mountains above Girdwood, Alaska, a roughly 45-minute drive and 10-minute helicopter ride from Anchorage. Here’s Zanden McMullen and Michael Earnhart skiing in the sunshine (embedded above). Here’s Gus Schumacher and Renae Anderson skiing in not-sunshine. Here’s Kate Oldham and Jack Young with the edit from USST camp:
And so on.
So where was Eagle Glacier the last several years? The glacier itself was clearly literally still there (disclosure: the toe of the glacier is receding), but the training center immediately adjoining it was having some issues. There was a 7.1 earthquake in November 2018 that was the death knell for an already aging building (or close to the death knell, rather, considering that APU ran a full summer of camps out of the dilapidated building in 2019) (cite: I stayed there in summer 2019 for a Masters camp. The floor was disconcertingly slanted.) Then there was a pandemic.
TLDR, the building was formally condemned in 2021, a necessary step to release federal funding to cover the $8 million cost, and rebuilding began soon thereafter. But construction, not to mention everything else, takes a long time when your construction site is at 5,700′. On top of a glacial moraine. Accessible only by helicopter. In a national forest.
Eventually, the building reopened this spring. APU staff ran a handful of camps there this summer, for a total of five weeks of on-snow time. Attendees included the APU Elite Team, an APU summer training group, and the U.S. Ski Team.
Marc Lester with the Anchorage Daily News was granted media access in August, and brought back a great story and photos on the revamped facility. You can read the whole piece here. You should be able to read a story or two from the ADN without a paywall; if you get stuck, this Instagram post from the paper has the highlights:
Training on Eagle Glacier typically resumes in early June each year. If I ever make it up there again for Masters camp, I will share photos. Stay tuned.
Olympic medals unveiled
The medals for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games and Paralympic Winter Games were unveiled in Venice in July.
Here are the gold medals for both Games (all photos: courtesy Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026):
Here is the complete set of medals for the Olympics:
And for the Paralympics:
And here are the Olympic medals depicted with, uh, computer-generated movement and blurred lines:
#dynamic
“The medals of the 2026 Games feature an essential design that places emotion and teamwork at its core,” states the organizing committee in a press release, “symbolising not only the union of two cities, Milano and Cortina, but also the soul of victory and the effort it takes to achieve it. Two halves brought together by the Olympic and Paralympic values. Two dimensions reflecting the culmination of an athlete and Para athlete’s journey, and all of those who stood by their side along the way. This concept becomes a powerful metaphor to portray the story of two worlds coming together, united by the spirit of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games: a world where competition doesn’t divide, but unites.”
You can find out more about the medals, anything from their weight and metallurgic intricacies to more about their symbolism, here.
As a reminder, Nordic Insights will have a reporter, me, and a photographer, Anna Engel, on site at the cross-country skiing venue, Val di Fiemme, for the Olympics. Everything involved with the Olympics is really expensive, it turns out. You can support the site’s Olympic programming (read: help pay for my way-too-expensive lodging) at our Olympics GoFundMe here.
Embed from Getty ImagesKikkan Randall named to USSS Hall of Fame
In a Monday press release, the U.S. National Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame and Museum announced that Kikkan Randall was among eight people named to the hall for 2025. A formal induction ceremony will follow at Utah’s Snowbird ski resort in spring 2026.
The announcement states: “Kikkan Randall was a trailblazing cross-country skier whose success catapulted the U.S. Ski Team cross-country skiers onto the world stage. She claimed 29 World Cup podiums with 11 wins and took three consecutive season sprint titles. Her World Championship silver in 2009 and gold in 2013 ushered in a new era. And in her final Olympics in 2018, she took gold in the team sprint with teammate Jessie Diggins. It was Team USA’s first Olympic gold in history.”
This palmarès slights Randall by two World Cup wins (she actually had 13 individual wins) and one World Championship medal (she also claimed a bronze in Lahti in 2017), but at least they spelled her name right.
There are currently 483 people in the Ski Hall of Fame, not counting the eight names announced earlier this week; you can find the complete roster here. As of 2015, there were, awkwardly, only 60 female inductees in a hall of 410 members, or less than 15 percent. Women have been deemed worthy of inclusion at a higher rate over the past decade.
Other notable cross-country skiers in the Ski Hall of Fame include Martha Rockwell, Alison Owen, John Caldwell, Robert H. Reid, and Ole Hegge.
NBC takes a closer look at Rosie Brennan’s health struggles
Rosie Brennan has had a rough several months. The longtime star looked roughly like herself in the opening race of the 2024/2025 World Cup season, finishing ninth in the 10km classic in Ruka, and then unfortunately not at all like herself for most of the rest of the year. She withdrew from the Tour de Ski before it ended, took two weeks off from racing, and tried again in Les Rousses in mid-January. When she didn’t find success there she pulled the plug on Europe completely, heading home to the U.S. to attempt to recover in familiar surroundings.
“When your livelihood depends on your body, these are the things nightmares are made of,” wrote the typically circumspect Brennan in a raw Instagram post on January 19. “As with all things out of our control and unknown, I’m crushed and scared and don’t know what the future holds. But I know I need to be in a place where I can physically and mentally heal, focusing one day at a time in hopes of returning before the season is over.”
Brennan would gamely return for World Championships a month later, starting three races in Trondheim, but was clearly still not at full strength. Her body language in a televised interview following the relay (where, it must be said, she lost the second-least time of any skier on a rough day for the whole team) was… not upbeat:
So what is ailing Brennan here? Months later, sad to say, she still seems not to know for certain.
“It’s been very strange,” Brennan told Nick Zaccardi with NBC Olympics for a late-August piece. “Possibly a post-viral thing. I’ve seen a million doctors. No one’s really had an answer.”
Brennan added, “I have had weeks where things have been really good, and I felt normal, and then I gain a lot of optimism, of course. Then it’s just like, the next day, things will just fall apart for a reason I can’t explain. Part of it is just going to come down to the cosmos.”
You should definitely read the whole thing for more. N.b., the article is introduced by a video of Jessie Diggins doing an interview with something called the Stifel Snow Show in December 2024, which autoplays at the top of the article (here’s what the page looks like on my screen). This video choice — which is almost certainly the doing of someone other than the author of the article — feels a little too on-the-nose as a shorthand for media treatment of each athlete in this country. Nat Herz had a fine piece on this dynamic coming out of 2023 world champs.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing and now we’re going to the Olympics. You can read more about our first three years here, and donate to the Olympics fund here. Thank you for consideration, and, especially, for reading.
