By Gavin Kentch
This is a reader-funded website. Virtually all of my income (for perspective: I took home less than $5,000 from Nordic Insights last year after paying staff) comes from reader contributions, which I sincerely appreciate. If you would like to support the site, including helping us get to the Olympics in February, you may do so here. Thank you.
The World Cup traveling circus moves on to Trondheim for the second full weekend of racing. Someone drove the U.S. Ski Team wax truck, Yolanda, approximately 15 hours south and west from Ruka soon after racing wrapped up there. Everyone else flew. Insert dad joke about “cross-country” skiing here.
Something special about Trondheim is that Johannes Høsflot Klæbo is from here. Something else special is that world championships were held here this spring, and that Klæbo won an unprecedented six out of six possible gold medals on home turf. These are both very obscure facts; you have probably seen very little about them on ski social media leading up to this weekend. Glad to help.
So far this year for the Americans, Zak Ketterson (Team Birkie) has been the breakout star, with career-best performances on both distance days in Ruka. Gus Schumacher was perhaps in position to do the same, but instead his ski just broke. That’s rotten luck, but also that’s ski racing.
Oh and by the way, Jessie Diggins is once again wearing the yellow bib as the overall leader of the World Cup. She claimed the yellow bib only slightly later last year, midway through the second World Cup weekend, and kept it through the end of the season. So far, so good.
Anyway. Here is when the races will be this weekend.
World Cup (local time at venue: GMT +1. This is six hours ahead of the East Coast and ten hours ahead of Alaska.)
| date | race | time (AK) | time (EST) | results |
| Friday, Dec. 5 | classic sprint qual | 11:45 p.m. Thurs. | 3:45 a.m. | here |
| classic sprint heats | 2:15 a.m. Fri. | 6:15 a.m. | here | |
| Saturday, Dec. 6 | men’s 20km skiathlon | 1:10 a.m. | 5:10 a.m. | here |
| women’s 20km skiathlon | 3 a.m. | 7 a.m. | here | |
| Sunday, Dec. 7 | men’s 10km skate | 11:30 p.m. Sat. | 3:30 a.m. | here |
| women’s 10km skate | 1:55 a.m. Sun. | 5:55 a.m. | here |
Who will be racing for the U.S.?
Good question. American starters in Friday’s classic sprint are Julia Kern, Jessie Diggins, Alayna Sonnesyn, Kate Oldham, and Erin Bianco, for the women, and Gus Schumacher, Ben Ogden, JC Schoonmaker, Jack Young, Zak Ketterson, and Kevin Bolger, for the men.
Expect largely the same slate of starters for the distance races this weekend as last weekend (Kern, Diggins, Sonnesyn, Oldham, Kendall Kramer, Rosie Brennan (probably/hopefully), and Sophia Laukli; Schumacher, Ogden, Schoonmaker (maybe), Ketterson, Luke Jager, John Steel Hagenbuch, and Zanden McMullen). With relatively minimal changes, this is pretty much your American World Cup crew on the ground in Europe between now and Davos. Starters have been named for Period 1, but not for after that.
Who will be racing for Russia and/or Belarus, two countries that have been in the news a great deal recently?
Another good question. As of Friday’s race, or at least the start list for same… no one, on either the men’s or the women’s side. It takes a not-zero amount of time to submit an application for neutral-athlete status, and for FIS to vet it. There are also the logistics of traveling from elsewhere in Europe (let alone: from somewhere in Russia) to Trondheim, and, potentially, obtaining a visa to lawfully enter the country as part of doing so.
I have read a lot of articles about this over the last few days. TLDR, the general consensus seems to be that Davos (next weekend) represents a more realistic timeline for Russian return, but that the back half of this weekend is not out of the question.
I do have to note that the war in Ukraine remains ongoing. I don’t want to be super tendentious about this, but it does have to be said that little has changed on the ground as of earlier this week.
When can you read an article about these races on this fine website?
Yet another good question. We are moving to an afternoon-paper model this year, so that I can go skiing in the scant Alaska daylight and not get stuck inside all day waiting for articles, then go out only in the (admittedly lengthy) gloaming and get depressed. Skiing should make people happy, not sad.
Additionally, on Saturday and Sunday of this weekend I will be out at the venue for in-person reporting from the opening stop of the 2025/2026 SuperTour season here in Anchorage. This is good for boots-on-the-ground coverage of our highest level of domestic racing, less good for editing and posting World Cup coverage. Sorry; there’s just one of me.
So: Wake up, skim the results to see who won, read FIS’s writeup of the day here, and then go for a ski or play with your kids or what have you. Check back here later — much later, candidly, if you live on the East Coast — to see what the athletes had to say about their day. I promise that our… insights will be worth the wait.
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.
