By Peter Minde
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Norway’s Martin Løwstrøm Nyenget won today’s 10-kilometer classic interval-start race in Ruka, Finland, to kick off the 2025/2026 World Cup season. With a time of 22:30.8, he beat Johannes Høsflot Klæbo by 2.1 seconds.
Just missing out on what would have been his first World Cup win, Austria’s Mika Vermeulen was third, 4.2 seconds behind Nyenget. Zak Ketterson had the best U.S. result on Friday, finishing 14th in 23:07.0. It was a career-best finish for the 28-year-old.
In the Arctic half light, skiers set off at 30-second intervals. The early starters represented non-traditional ski nations, trying to qualify for the Olympics. Bermuda, Peru, Ecuador, the Philippines, Thailand, and Venezuela were all represented. For the record, Venezuela’s Guillermo Racero and Nicolas Claveau-Laviolette would both acquit themselves better than their countryman Adrián Solano. And at least one athlete each from all of Ecuador, Venezuela, China, Lithuania, and Thailand logged a finish that put them under the 300-point barrier necessary for Olympic qualification.
New snow had fallen overnight on top of machine-made snow. Snow temperature of -1 Centigrade and air temperature around freezing made for challenging kick waxing. To make things more interesting, snow began falling as the first skiers started.
Pro cyclists would call an interval-start race a time trial. Informally, they call a time trial “the race of truth.” There’s no skiing in a pack with a frantic sprint to the finish in the last kilometer. Skiers have to figure out the hardest pace they can go without blowing up. Instead of seeing who’s where in the pack, they rely on a coach’s splits to see how they’re doing.
The first of seven American men to start, in bib 10, Luke Jager briefly took the lead at 3.1 km checkpoint. This was at the top of a steep, selective climb. Some athletes were able to kick and glide right up the hill. Others had to jump out of the tracks to herringbone.
Alvar Myhlback, a 19-year-old Swedish phenom who usually focuses on marathons, eventually displaced Jager as the leader. Myhlback is affiliated with Team Lager 157, a pro ski team focusing on the Ski Classics races such as Vasaloppet and Marcialonga. Myhlback has already won the Vasaloppet.
In the preseason opener in Gällivare, Myhlback finished third behind winner Edvin Anger. In an article in Expressen, Myhlback’s father said that neither the World Cup nor the Olympics were on his son’s radar. (Article in Swedish. Google Translate is your friend.)
But a discreet meeting with Swedish national team manager Anders Byström and men’s coach Anders Högberg changed the younger Myhlback’s mind. Myhlback wasn’t the only newb on the Swedish men’s team today. Only three of the skiers who represented Sweden in Trondheim last spring were on the starting line in Ruka.
In bib 44, Ben Ogden started fast, placing sixth at the 3.1 km checkpoint. He would finish 34th on the day.
Myhlback continued his charge at the front, leading at the 6.1-kilometer checkpoint, atop another nasty climb. Edvard Sandvik, making the most of his first ever World Cup start, overtook Myhlback at 6.1 km. Sandvik was a late substitute for Simen Hegstad Krüger.
Hometown favorite Iivo Niskanen went out in bib 51, nearly the middle of the field of 109. As one might expect, he topped the leader board at the first checkpoint.
Meanwhile, Myhlback sat in the leader’s chair with a healthy lead, waiting for the top skiers to finish. Sandvik still led at 8.1 km. Gassed at the finish, he beat Myhlback by 5 seconds, displacing him from the leader’s chair.
Vermeulen, more of a skater than classic skier, took the lead at 6.1 km by a fraction of a second. He skied into the finish 7.8 seconds faster than Niskanen. For a few minutes, it looked as though he might snag his first career World Cup victory.
Leading at every checkpoint and looking smooth throughout, Niskanen finished in 22:42.8. Around this time, Klæbo was on course. With the advantage of split times, he skied relaxed and smooth. After the 8.1-kilometer checkpoint, Klæbo turned on the afterburners to take the lead, bumping Niskanen to third place.
After his Trondheim performance last winter, one might be forgiven for assuming that when Klæbo starts, the only question is who’ll place second. But today wasn’t quite going to be his day. A capable distance skier, Nyenget won in Ruka in 2023.
The last seeded skier to start, Nyenget put the hammer down, leading at every checkpoint. As the snow intensified, Nyenget and Ketterson skied together for a bit around 9 km before Nyenget gapped him. With a finish-line lunge, Nyenget beat Klæbo by 2.1 seconds.
In an email, Ketterson wrote, “Today was just super solid! I didn’t have any crazy out of body experience or anything. I just feel like for once I paced it really well and had skis that let me ski the way I wanted. I had pretty fast skis and also had great kick outside the tracks. My plan was to try to use my arms as little as possible up the hills so I could push the flatter sections hard.”
While it may not have felt special for Ketterson as it happened, it was a career day for the Team Birkie skier: It was the best individual World Cup result of his career, supplanting a 15th in a distance race in Falun in March 2022. That race was a 15km skate, a race format no longer in existence, if that gives you a sense for how long Ketterson has been grinding out there.
After Ketterson, the other U.S. finishers were Ben Ogden, 34th; Gus Schumacher, 37th; Zanden McMullen, 49th; J.C. Schoonmaker, 62nd; John Steel Hagenbuch, 64th; and Luke Jager, 68th.
“The race definitely didn’t feel great,” Zanden McMullen wrote in a text message. “I’ve been dealing with a small rib injury the last few weeks which has prevented me from having the season prep that I would have liked.
“It was very challenging conditions out there today. I’m hoping with a little more racing that I’ll be back to where I want to be.”
Schumacher sounded similar tones: “[Today] wasn’t great, to be honest,” he wrote after the race. “Body felt really good, it’s been feeling strong, but I struggled with the skis a lot.
“Conditions were tricky. Snowing a fair bit, and pretty high humidity,” he continued. “My skis in testing were good. But as people skied it in, the tracks got really glazed. We were out-skiing the snowfall, so it stayed on the wetter/glazier side. Our late kick adjustment didn’t pan out, so I ended up too slick.”
Asked if he would skip any World Cup races to prepare for the Olympics, Schoonmaker wrote, “I’ll skip Oberhof, but that’s all that’s planned so far.”
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