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By Lukas Pigott
The 20th edition of the ascent up the “Monster-Hill” Alpe Cermis was set to crown Johannes Høsflot Klæbo as a record-breaking five-time Tour de Ski champion, which is precisely what occurred after 34 minutes of racing. The race for the stage win, however, was wide open.
Previous winners Simen Hegstad Krüger (Norway) and Jules Lapierre (France) were amongst the favorites to reach the finish on top of the alpine hill first. With a lead of 1:23 on second place in the overall, though, Klæbo’s lead looked secure. In the end he delivered, but the race for the overall turned out to be more exciting than many had predicted beforehand.
That was largely thanks to Mattis Stenshagen (Norway), who started the day 1:29 down on Klæbo, but did one of the most unbelievable performances of the season by winning the race up the feared alpine hill, showcasing his amazing current form. “Insane” was how Harald Østberg Amundsen (Norway) described Stenshagen’s win.
“What happened there!?” Stenshagen exclaimed on Viaplay after the race. “I said I was going to destroy physical rules and gravity, but now Newton has to come to life because this shouldn’t be possible.”
“It’s just crazy that a 90kg guy can just destroy the field up here,” he continued. “I think I have taken one for high-performance sport and shown that you have to fight in the body you have got and not take any shortcuts.”
Early on the climb Stenshagen and the winner from 2024, Lapierre, separated themselves from the rest. Stenshagen pulled most of the climb but towards the top Lapierre came to the front and it looked like Stenshagen might be struggling to hold the pace.
“I thought that now I’ve put myself in a position that I might never get again so [I thought], This one I’m going to win. Then he [Lapierre] turns up the pace and I feel like I’m starting to feel it, but I thought, You can try, but never in this world am I going to let you win,” Stenshagen told Viaplay on the top of the mountain.
58 seconds behind Stenshagen, Kæbo crossed the line in 12th place securing the win with “only” 30 seconds ahead of Stenshagen, much less than most would have predicted. He however never looked like he was out of control despite Stenshagen hauling in substantial amounts of time during the climb.
Klæbo looked like he would win the overall comfortably from day one of the tour, and was never really challenged in his position as tour leader. When asked if he ever felt like his win was in danger despite not being amongst the best up the Alpe he said, “The pursuit stage was a key one.” Klæbo added, “That’s the one I value the most from this year’s tour.”
Gus Schumacher, who skied most of the climb with Klæbo, finished the day in 16th, securing a strong 7th place overall. “The climb was tough!” Schumacher told Nordic Insights after the race. “I definitely went for it and paid a bit at the end but ultimately accomplished my goals and I’m proud of how I skied.”
Schumacher’s seventh was the top finish for an American man in Tour de Ski history, surpassing Ben Ogden’s 13th here three years ago.
19th in the classic sprint was Schumacher’s worst result in a Tour de Ski where he took his second career World Cup victory, showing his all-roundedness and consistency. “Proud of everything in the tour” was his main takeaway. “Fighting the whole way and being in the mix, top 20 in every race, is pretty sweet. It’s great to string together a bunch of good races with little to no mishaps.”
Klæbo, as unsurprising as it may be, also managed to get through the race without any hiccups like what happened in Davos. After the race he was full of praise for Stenshagen, saying, “We know that Mattis has a great capacity, but to be the heaviest skier in the field and win up here… I wouldn’t have believed that.” While Stenshagen might not literally be the heaviest skier in the field, he certainly isn’t the type who most often succeed on the monster hill.
Another strong performance against the odds came from Emil Iversen (Norway), who also isn’t the lightest in the field. He, along with Stenshagen, is fighting for one of the three last available tickets to the Olympics, meaning that he has to prove himself every chance he gets. Iversen was overjoyed with his performance, telling Viaplay’s reporter, “I said I was in good form!” after finishing third place on the day and fifth overall.
For a while however it was looking like Savelii Korostelev (AIN) was going to snatch his first ever World Cup podium. “I thought I was going to get fourth,” Iversen said, “but I found some superpowers and just flew up the hill at the end. I hope it got caught on camera because that was sensational!”
Korostelev finished a career-best fourth, 25 seconds behind Stenshagen, and was followed by Amundsen, who secured himself a spot on the final podium behind Klæbo and Stenshagen. Federico Pellegrino (Italy) had a strong race to secure fourth overall, finishing seventh today, just behind Joe Davies (Great Britain). Iversen rounded out the top five in the overall Tour standings, just three seconds behind Pellegrino.
“Stenshagen has again overshadowed me a little bit, but both of us have shown ourselves throughout the tour,” Iversen told the media. He and Stenshagen still live in uncertainty as to if they will get the chance to compete in the Olympics just down the hill from where he finished yet again on the podium. “It’s fun when it’s going well, but it costs.”
While Iversen and Stenshagen look like they will be competing at least in one race each at the Olympics, they will likely have to compete in the Norwegian National championships next week and continue to show form before they get any guarantees.
“You’re fighting against the best in the world and you have to show yourself time after time again,” Iversen said. “I’m not on the national team, so I have to show even more. I feel like I have managed to do that which has made me relieved, proud and exhausted all at the same time.” He added, “I’ve told my psychologist that I need a talk soon.”
Along with Schumacher, Ben Ogden and Zak Ketterson made their way up the final climb for America with Ogden finishing in 22nd place, 1:35 behind the winner, and Ketterson finishing in 35th, 1:59 back.
Ogden finished 25th in the overall Tour de Ski standings. Ketterson was 36th overall.
“It was successful in some ways, not in other ways,” Ogden told USSS media of this year’s Tour for him overall. “I mean, training-wise and stuff it sets me up well for the rest of the year, which is part of the goal, but also I’ve been doing it long enough to — I want better results for sure. So there is that. I don’t think I did as well as I hoped to today, or in this tour.”
As for today’s climb, plus a look ahead to what comes next, Ogden said, “I guess there’s always some like relief, honestly. Like today I was more energetic than I expected, but I don’t race this often enough to really have an idea of how long it is and how much it’s gonna hurt. So you’re always a little nervous, so it’s nice to just be done and not have to think about eating and freaking out and sleeping perfectly before the night of the race, you know? Be done and chill.”
Ketterson summed up his day and week of racing on Strava: “Hard! Muscles pretty whipped in the end there. Pretty good feeling to go for it like that though. Happy to have good fitness and health for this tour, and glad to be done :)”
In comments shared via USSS media, Ketterson added, “It wasn’t anything crazy strong by me today, but at the same time, like, I’ve done three tours. And only finished, I guess, two of them. And the one that I did finish, I think I was like 100th up the climb. So 35th is not like great, but it’s a big improvement for me. So I keep chipping away at this.”
Ketterson identified some growth areas from the day: “I need to work on my right-side V1,” he candidly noted, “because I always do my left. But there was a lot of kind of off-grade hills today where right was better, and I just felt like I didn’t really have that in my bag.”
Overall, he added, “I’m really happy with the season that I’ve put together so far, and we have Olympics and a bunch of other exciting stuff coming up. So, full gas forward.”
Now that they have climbed the biggest hill of the season the World Cup circuit gets a weekend off from racing before the World Cup season continues in Oberhof on January 17th to 18th and Goms on January 23–25. After that, it’s Olympics time.
“My focus at the Olympics race-wise is pretty wide” Schumacher, who has the possibility to do what no American male has done since Bill Koch in 1976, told Nordic Insights. The possibility for a medal is there in every race he races, as he has shown throughout the Tour de Ski. For his preparation going into the greatest sporting event of the quadrennial, his focus is “in general just making sure I’m calculated with the training leading up and being really careful about illness.”
Results: stage six | Tour de Ski overall | climber’s bib | sprint bib
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