By Gavin Kentch
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It was unsurprising to see Gus Schumacher and Jessie Diggins take wins at the 2025 Schutzenski Festival on the Soldier Hollow rollerski track over the weekend. It may have felt more surprising to see them joined by Hailey Swirbul and Martin Løwstrøm Nyenget, but there was a good reason for the presence of the latter pair: Briefly put, Nyenget has been coming over from Europe to spend more time offseason training in North America, while Swirbul is poised to spend a lot more time in-season racing in Europe pretty soon if her performance here is any guide. Read on for more.
Friday: Diggins outlunges Kern in classic sprint; Schumacher pips Jager at the line
Friday’s classic sprint qual brought a bit of a strategic decision for half the field: With 30 women starting, and the top 30 advancing to the heats, how hard did one really have to go to start the day, anyway.
Julia Kern (USST/SMS) went pretty hard, pinning it with a race effort that saw her cover the SoHo sprint course in 3:13.78. Nina Seemann (+1.10) and Erin Bianco (+4.61), both of BSF, were second and third in the qual, with Jessie Diggins (also USST/SMS) fourth (+5.28). Sofia Pedersen of Sweden, a 20-year-old first-year student at the University of Utah, was fifth here (+5.65).
Things picked up a bit in the quarterfinals, where everyone other than Kern started going faster than they had before. Kern won her heat, by nearly five seconds over Neve Gerard (Utah). Diggins won her heat, by precisely two seconds over Emma Albrecht (BSF). Pedersen, Seemann, and perennial sprint contender Erin Bianco (also BSF) won their quarters as well.
The semifinals were largely chalk, with the one real noteworthy development being Karolina Kaleta (Team Birkie) advancing out of the second semi. She joined Diggins, Kern, Pedersen, Seemann, and Albrecht in the final.
The final was closer, as is often the case on a Soldier Hollow sprint course that features a notably long glideout into the finish sprint that makes it difficult to get away. It is generally disadvantageous to be leading into the final downhill at this venue as athletes approach the sweeping lefthand turn into the finishing stretch, wrote Cory Smith of this course after watching sprint heats at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Plus ça change.
(This aspect of the finish has been mitigated somewhat for winter ski racing by a slight rerouting of the course, which sends athletes southeast toward the scoreboard, up and down a small bump, and out of a straight-shot downhill. The paved rollerski path, by contrast, remains a sit-and-tuck straightaway.)
Anyway. Diggins won, at the end, by just 0.03 seconds over Kern. The most famous lunge of Diggins’s career, for perspective, involved a margin of 0.19 seconds, if that helps you to visualize things. If you know offhand what Diggins’s finish in the team sprint at 2017 world champs a year earlier — over, again, Stina Nilsson — looked like you’re a bigger dork than I am, but that was also a margin of 0.19 seconds fwiw.
Pedersen was third on Saturday, roughly two seconds back.
The men had 70 starters in their qual, though with junior heats also being held the math was a little more humane than it might otherwise be. Max Kluck, a junior at Utah, had a result belying his bib number, covering his home course in 2:40.77. Ben Ogden (USST/SMS) was close behind, 0.14 seconds back, followed by the APU triumvirate of Luke Jager (+2.69), Gus Schumacher (+3.31), and Zanden McMullen (+6.62). Schumacher and McMullen are also on the USST.
Fast forward to the final. All five men listed above were in it. They were joined by Mons Melbye, of the University of Utah via Oslo.
I saw some footage of the men’s final in an NNF Instagram story over the weekend. The video was taken looking south from the main nordic center building, and showed a large pack of men descending into the stadium together. “It’s still anyone’s race at this point,” boomed the P.A. announcer, accurately.
The video at this point cut off. Roughly 30 seconds later, in real life, Schumacher out-doublepoled Jager to the line to take the win by 0.10 seconds. It was not the first time that the childhood friends and training partners had gone 1–2 in a ski race.
update: The third slide here shows the finish-straight video I was looking for:
Melbye was third, 0.49 seconds back of Jager. McMullen was 0.09 seconds back of Melbye in fourth; small margins out there. Kluck and Ogden finished fifth and sixth.
Saturday: Nyenget and Swirbul win 10km skate, with Schumacher and Kern once again on the podium in second
Saturday brought a 10-kilometer interval-start skate race, once more on (I assume matched) Hjul rollerskis. I was prepared to say something catty here about this being closer to 9km, but race organizers started athletes with a brief parade loop around the stadium before undertaking three full laps of the 3km-ish rollerski loop, so I withdraw my snark.
I can’t seem to be able to link to specific segments on Strava, to my regret. If you’d like to get into the weeds on this, click through from Murphy Kimball’s post:
into the full Strava upload. Once you get into Strava you’re looking for either the segment called “2024 Rollerski Blue” (2.93km distance, 88m elevation gain, high point 1,734m oof) or “Schutzenski 3.1km lap.”
Kimball’s average HR for the three laps of Rollerski Blue was 182, 189, and 190, if you’re curious, with a MHR of 196. Schumacher, meanwhile, set the course record on the Schutzenski 3.1km on Saturday with, if Strava is to be believed, an MHR of 170. I was gonna say, Not sure about that one… but dude maxed out at 178 while literally winning a World Cup at home in front of 20,000 Americans all losing their mind, so maybe Gus is just that chill.
Anyway. Nyenget won the race on Saturday, in 20:10.8, by 13.7 seconds over Schumacher (USST/APU). Ben Ogden (USST/SMS) was third, 31.6 seconds back. Joe Davies of Utah was fourth (+36.3), with Luke Jager (APU) fifth, and third American, 42.8 seconds in arrears.
Zach Jayne (Utah) was the day’s fastest starter, lapping through the parade lap in 1:20. Nyenget clocked a 1:24 here, before building into the race with a 6:23 first full lap, then a metronomic 6:11 for both the second and the third. Schumacher was one second back of Nyenget after the first long lap, then out to 16.2 seconds back after lap two. His 6:08 to close things out was the fastest lap three on the day, but still brought him up to only 13.7 seconds back at the finish.
Behind him, Ben “not just a sprinter” Ogden sat in fourth for much of the race. But the steady progression of his laps — 6:33, 6:25, and 6:20 — ultimately brought him clear of Joe Davies (6:41, 6:12, and 6:29), relegating the Brit to fourth at the line.
Turning to the women: Hailey Swirbul (APU) technically led at every checkpoint over Julia Kern (USST/SMS), who started four bibs and I would assume two minutes behind her, but the race was hardly devoid of suspense. Kern was 2.0 seconds back through lap one, 6.6 seconds back after lap two, then skied lap three five seconds faster than Swirbul to bring the margin down to just 2.3 seconds at the finish.
The lion’s share of Kern’s photos from camp (see Insta post above) are of her joyfully hugging her erstwhile teammate — the pair was famously half of the breakthrough bronze-medal relay team at 2017 World Juniors at this same venue — so she may not have felt too put out by the renewed competition.
The pair were the class of the field on Saturday, as no other athlete finished within a minute of them. (Diggins did not race the 10km after injuring her toe; Rosie Brennan did not compete at all this weekend.) Haley Brewster (USST/Vermont) was third, 1:05 back, showing a return to the form that brought her a national championship here in the 20km skate at 2024 U.S. Nationals.
Sofia Pedersen (Utah) was fourth, 1:07.0 back, scarcely ahead of Nina Seemann (BSF), 1:07.5 back. The fifth-place finish, 2.3 seconds off the podium, marks a strong entree to professional skiing for the 23-year-old Seemann (the FIS database tells me that she turned 23 on Monday; happy birthday, Nina), who graduated from Dartmouth this spring and now turns her energy solely to professional skiing with Bridger.
Speaking of professional skiers: Hailey Swirbul once more has that as her job title. Subject to a number of appropriate caveats — the season is young, rollerskis are not snow, Diggins and Brennan weren’t in the field, altitude can be wonky for people who didn’t grow up in El Jebel, etc. — Swirbul 2.0 is off to a pretty darn strong start.
Results: classic sprint | 10km skate
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