By Gavin Kentch
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The 20th running of the Tour de Ski kicks off tomorrow in Toblach. And then, well, sort of stays in Toblach for a bit, with stages one through four all being contested in or around the nordic arena that has the very striking and cool feature where the sprint course goes up and over the roof of the building.
Things move a few hours down the road to Val di Fiemme next Saturday, where athletes still remaining in the Tour will get to preview the Olympic venue five weeks before the Games return there in February. Maybe call this year’s edition more of a tour of a 60-mile stretch of the Dolomites (de Ski). We would also accept Tour de Trentino–Alto Adige, Tour de Trentino–Südtirol, or Tour de Trentin–Südtirol, depending on what language you want your snark in.
Update: I just saw that the wags over at the Devon Kershaw Show are calling it “The Italian Walkabout de Ski,” so it seems that we are sipping from the same vintage of haterade here. “It’s time for the Tour de Ski,” they write, “which really is just a northern Italy promenade this year.” Remember when the Tour had multiple stages in the Czech Republic? City sprints in Prague? That was cool. Oh well.
Back to this year: The opening two days of racing bring a skate sprint tomorrow, then a 10-kilometer interval-start classic on Monday. After a day off, Wednesday brings a, uh, 5km mass start skate in a heat format (approximately 20 athletes per heat, three or four heats total depending on field size), which I’m pretty sure that just about everyone other than FIS hates, or thinks they will hate. I’m not even trying to be super snarky when I say that, just I really do think that there has been scant buy-in for this idea from just about any of the athletes. At least Jessie is good at racing the 5km distance.
Thursday brings the first day of 2026, and with it a 20km classic. This will be a pursuit race, based off of athletes’ total times in the overall Tour de Ski standings through stage three. Following the stage, teams will travel two hours southwest to Val di Fiemme.
Friday is an off day. Saturday, January 3, is a classic sprint, a direct preview of the same event that will be held on this course at the Olympics on February 10. Sunday, of course, brings the climb up Alpe Cermis, an event with less utility as an Olympics preview. The overall winner of the Tour de Ski takes home 80,000 euros and 300 points toward the World Cup overall; they will probably be okay in this moment with the lack of Olympics relevance.
(Smaller-but-not-nothing prizes are given for each stage, as well as for the top-six finishers in the Tour-specific sprinter’s bib standings and top-three in the Tour-specific climber’s bib standings.)
Following six races in eight days, the World Cup circuit takes the following weekend off before resuming in Oberhof on January 17. The three-race weekends of Period 1 mean that some athletes began the year with six races in ten days. They will likely enjoy the extra recovery following the Tour.
Who is racing?
Most top contenders, but not all. Star-crossed Linn Svahn of Sweden is out, following what is probably a pinched nerve in her foot. Lotta Udnes Weng of Norway is out, after waking up on Christmas morning with a sore throat. Mika Vermeulen of Austria, the revelation of last year’s Tour in second place overall, got sick after Davos and is still not up to racing.
Jonna Sundling is out, because she is very good at skiing right now (has an Olympic spot already locked up), and will be skipping the Tour to train. Calle Halfvarsson and Jens Burman are out, because they are not very good at skiing right now (have had a very rough start to the season), and so were not named to the Swedish squad for the Tour de Ski. The two veterans will bring their club coaches and club ski support to the Scan Cup races happening in Hakunila, Finland, next weekend, and hope for a return to historical form.
The Americans send Alayna Sonnesyn, Julia Kern, Jessie Diggins, and Luci Anderson to the start line in Toblach tomorrow for the women, and Jack Young, JC Schoonmaker, Ben Ogden, Gus Schumacher, Zak Ketterson, and Kevin Bolger for the men. Six of the ten athletes named here are on the U.S. Ski Team. Sonnesyn, Anderson, Ketterson, and Bolger are not; all four of them ski for Team Birkie.
There were more starters than this named for the Americans a week-plus ago: Lauren Jortberg, Rosie Brennan, Hunter Wonders, and John Steel Hagenbuch all declined their starts.
Jortberg is not a surprise; she told me in Anchorage earlier this month that she was leaning toward not accepting the Period 2 starts that she had earned as the country’s Continental Cup leader through Period 1. Wonders is also not really a surprise; he told me that he would have to talk with his coach and look at the season as a whole and think carefully about his options. And Steel Hagenbuch, honestly, is not really a surprise; his Period 1 results in Europe fell somewhere below his potential, and choosing to race U.S. Nationals rather than the Tour de Ski is an understandable response to same at this point in the season.
That leaves Brennan, a longtime mainstay of the World Cup crew who has battled health issues for a year-plus now. In her last two starts, in Davos earlier this month, she was 33rd in the skate sprint qual, then had to withdraw from the 10km skate roughly two-thirds of the way through the race. Five years ago that weekend, she had won back-to-back races at the venue.
“I continue to have issues with blood flow in my leg,” Brennan told us following her withdrawal from the recent 10km. “I’ve worked extremely hard to figure things out and get myself back and it’s been unbelievably heartbreaking and challenging to continue to struggle with unknown things.”
Brennan was rollerskiing (!) near her childhood home in Park City a few days ago, which was strong indicia that she would not be starting this year’s Tour. I reached out to her earlier today to see how she is doing; I will update this story once I hear back from her.
Who will win?
I mean, you probably have to start with Diggins and Klæbo among the favorites, for pretty obvious reasons. Moa Ilar, currently just behind Diggins for second in the World Cup overall, is clearly on form right now, and would have an incentive to see the Tour through to its end if the crystal globe is important to her.
Frida Karlsson is not the strongest sprinter out there, but has been first and fourth in the two Tours she has finished, so there’s that. Astrid Øyre Slind, second last year, is the highest returning finisher from the 19th Tour de Ski; winner Therese Johaug is now retired, and Diggins was third last year. Slind has been slightly behind her form of the 2024/2025 season, but is also very good at skiing.
On the men’s side… there are ten Norwegians on the start list. I would go with one of them. Or maybe Hugo Lapalus.
Swedish women and Norwegian men, plus Jessie Diggins… like and follow for more recherché insights like these.
Enjoy the races, everyone.
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