By Gavin Kentch
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I wrote a whole lot of words last week explaining who I think will be on this year’s Olympic team, and why. You can read those words here if you would like.
If you just want to know who is going to be on the roster when that is announced in a day or two, here you go. The following athletes will, on my analysis, be nominated to the team. This list is admittedly very similar to what I wrote last week. It is updated to remove ambiguities and what-ifs in light of last weekend’s World Cup results from Oberhof.
If anyone gets in off of pure discretion (criterion two), they will displace the lowest-ranked athlete or athletes, from their gender, from the relevant list or lists below. I personally really do not foresee USSS selecting any athletes via criterion the second, but stay tuned. If you would like to know what I mean by “pure discretion” or “criterion two,” see, again, last week’s article.
Without further ado, this is who you should expect to see nominated to this year’s Olympic team for American cross-country skiing, in this order:
Women
- Jessie Diggins (SMS) (prior Olympic teams: 2014, 2018, 2022)
- Julia Kern (SMS) (2022)
- Rosie Brennan (APU) (2018, 2022)
- Sammy Smith (Sun Valley)
- Novie McCabe (APU) (2022)
- Hailey Swirbul (APU) (2022)
- Lauren Jortberg (Mansfield Pro)
- Kendall Kramer (APU)
Men
- Ben Ogden (SMS) (prior Olympic team: 2022)
- Gus Schumacher (APU) (2022)
- Jack Young (Craftsbury)
- Zak Ketterson (Team Birkie)
- JC Schoonmaker (APU) (2022)
- Hunter Wonders (APU)
- Zanden McMullen (APU)
If an eighth spot becomes available for the men later this week following the quota reallocation process, it goes to John Steel Hagenbuch (Sun Valley, but maybe also still Dartmouth). It would be his first Olympic team.
Another nordic skiing news website recently characterized this ongoing selection discourse, particularly surrounding the final athletes named to the team, as “a conversation that concentrates more on likely Olympic also-rans, and less on the skiers whom fans really follow.”
I would at this juncture direct the reader’s attention to the above image, which portrays the sign greeting arriving passengers as they descend to baggage claim at Fairbanks International Airport. You may draw from this your own conclusions as to how many fans really follow Kendall Kramer.
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The sign in the airport is awesome—this post would have been worth it just for that image. And your broader suggestion is on-point: Xc ski-racing is basically a single-tier community in the U.S. Anyone who cares about the sport at all likely knows all the names in contention and follows their narratives (whether or not they’re potential medalists).
Oh, it’s so good. I’m already a huge fan of Fairbanks – I think that their skiing community is incredible, their wealth of trails is amazing, and my hot taek is that Birch Hill is the best venue in the country from which to watch a ski race – but when I saw that sign coming down to baggage claim, that just sealed the deal.
And I think you are 100 percent correct on your broader point. This is such a niche sport in this country; we’re all just a degree or two of separation away from someone who’s on this team. I’m a little too snarky at heart to write, like, “when one of them wins, we all win,” but damnit if we don’t sort of do.
P.S. Additional local context fwiw, APU (the school) has an ad up in the Anchorage airport that uses images of APUNSC (the ski team), also by baggage claim. But Fairbanks stands alone in giving this pride of place to xc skiing. Which, honestly, and I’m clearly just reading way too much into this, I think actually tracks with the centrality of the sport to each community. Anchorage is gonna have multiple local kids on that roster when it gets named; we like skiing here. But there’s a lot else going on here. Fairbanks… has junior hockey and skiing, and that’s sort of it. They really like their ski team there.
What happened to US Ski and Snowboard announcing the team on the 20th?
Good question. You know as much as I do. They *nominated* the team to USOPC yesterday, I am sure; I truly do not know why they have not yet publicly announced it.