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By Adele Haeg
The 2026 U.S. Cross Country National Championships kicked off in Lake Placid this morning with a 10-kilometer interval-start classic race at Mount Van Hoevenberg.
This event was the first of four this week. Top finishers here may qualify for World Cup starts in Period 3. And, of course, win medals too.
Today’s American champions are all experienced on the World Cup. As their former and potentially future teammates climbed up a mountain halfway across the world, Hailey Swirbul (28:42.5), her Alaska Pacific University teammate Novie McCabe (29:26.1), and Samantha Smith (29:47.3) skied to the top three spots on the domestic podium in New York.
APU had a fantastic day, with four women in the domestic top-six and times under 30 minutes (Kendall Kramer placed fifth and Renae Anderson sixth).
Two Swedish skiers took second and third overall, just beating out McCabe and Smith: University of Utah’s Erica Lavén was second (29:14.4) and University of Colorado’s Tilde Bångman third (29:23.9). Swirbul, the only female skier to cover the course in under 29 minutes today, finished a whopping 31.9 seconds ahead of Lavén in second. She was 43.6 seconds ahead of McCabe and 1:04.8 up on Smith.
Swirbul told Nordic Insights after the race [huge shoutout to Peter Minde for taking the lead on in-person reporting this week –Ed.] that “it was a really hard day out there.” It was lightly snowing on course and well below freezing, around 10 degrees Fahrenheit, but it seems that athletes were contending less with the conditions and more with the climbing.
McCabe told Nordic Insights, “It was good. Definitely a hard race. These courses are really legit,” she added, “but it was really great conditions out there and fun.”
The skiers raced the 5-kilometer loop shown here twice, climbing just under 400 meters overall. This is near the top end of the range for a homologated 5km course. The elevation map is a triangle: steep up, and what Michigan Tech skier Kat Stow called “fun downhills.” Swirbul said it is a course that “rewards efficiency and relaxed skiing.”
Swirbul added, “Out of everyone I talked to today, I haven’t heard anybody say that it felt really good.” And this was your race winner.
However they felt, the American women on the podium today had something to prove beyond a national championship. The dynamics on the SuperTour are interesting: Athletes want to win here, but are often also thinking of the next level. This is no less so for the three women on your domestic national podium today: Swirbul has 61 World Cup starts to her name (also a World Cup podium and three Olympics starts), McCabe has raced 23 World Cups (as well as three starts in Beijing in 2022), and Smith has raced 36 World Cups.
The talented and personable Swirbul retired from World Cup competition in 2023. After that, she sold her gear and tried working for an engineering firm and on ski patrol in Colorado, while still staying in touch with skiing via coaching for APU. But now she’s back, and, according to a profile that ran in the Vail Daily in November, potentially gearing up for the Milan–Cortina Olympics.
American athletes have until the World Cup in Oberhof the weekend of January 17-18 to prove themselves worthy of an Olympic spot. For athletes not on the World Cup circuit like Swirbul, however, it is typically more difficult to qualify. Jessie Diggins is the only American skier to have officially qualified so far, though Julia Kern and Rosie Brennan have presumptively secured spots for Milan–Cortina based on their performance in the World Cup to start this season.
APU head coach Erik Flora told Ryan Sederquist for his November Vail Daily profile: “With Hailey’s background, I think she is in a good fighting position for a place on the Olympic team.” Swirbul has since racked up strong results by racing well in the SuperTour, which is the circuit below the World Cup. Today’s win will certainly help her standing. But, if Flora’s comment is any indication, there’s more “fighting” to be done.
Regarding the Olympics, Swirbul told Nordic Insights today, “I think I’m in a unique situation because I think I’m still building back. Every day, every week, I feel a little stronger. Every interval session I remember what it feels like to go hard again. Every race I remember what that feels like. So I haven’t really thought beyond this event, to know how I would prepare for the next one if that opportunity arises.”
You can hear more from Swirbul below:
Sammy Smith, age 20, raced on the World Cup last season, but has been MIA to start this year due to her obligations to both fall-semester classes at Stanford and her starting role on the Stanford Cardinal women’s soccer team, which was a heartbreaking second in the country after losing in the College Cup final last month.
Smith, who skis for the Sun Valley Gold Team, is a two-sport athlete, soccer at Stanford plus high-level nordic skiing. She’s also pursuing a degree in Environmental Systems Engineering. Call it three sports.
If Swirbul was trying to prove she belongs on the U.S. Olympic team, Smith was out to demonstrate that she can still do it all: soccer, school, and skiing, all at a very high level. Also, she wouldn’t say no to an Olympic spot should it be offered.
Smith said that the transition between soccer and skiing is not easy: “Yeah, it’s definitely a bit of a challenge. I think the last year was kind of a trial year, figuring out what worked, what didn’t work. I was fortunate to have someone who used to ski professionally, Braden Becker. He is a graduate student at Stanford this year, so he helped a lot with coaching, and that made a huge difference just to have him.”
About today’s race, Smith said, “To be honest, I was just trying to think about skiing smooth, skiing consistently. It’s a long stretch of climbing from like the 1.2km mark to 3.5km. So I was just trying to focus on staying relaxed, skiing big, and then just pushing hard over the tops and working into the downhills.”
Full audio from Smith here:
As for McCabe, today’s second-place finish was her best result in a long time. McCabe performed well at 2024 U.S. Nationals, coming off a World Cup tour during which she placed as high as 11th in a 20-kilometer mass start in Falun. She then had increasing struggles with frustratingly opaque health issues.
McCabe admitted she’s had issues training and racing recently, saying, “I’m a little bit surprised that today went so well.”
“My plan was just to go out at a solid pace, but not super hard,” McCabe said. “I wanted to try to save something for the last lap, but I knew that no matter what, the last lap on this course was gonna be slower and really hard. So I kind of tried to just go out and find a good rhythm and ski with good technique and see where it went.”
Hear more from McCabe here:
The next event of this edition of U.S. Nationals is the skate sprints on Tuesday. Watch out for APU!
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