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By Devin L. Ward, Ph.D.
Welcome to the first race of the 2026 Milano–Cortina Olympics: the women’s mass start skiathlon. The course is six laps of 3.3km, with the first three loops classic (red course) and the second three skate (blue course) after a transition. The classic loops have a tougher first half, with a time point at the top of a big climb, and the second half is more flat. The skate loops were more undulating.
Most spectators were concentrated either in or just above the stadium, with the outer aspects of the loops quiet and in the woods, populated only by coaches and staff (and by photographers, but they’re not allowed to cheer).
Anna Pryce (GB) said that this was a nice variation with, “a bit of a break and some like alone time … Sometimes I get a bit distracted looking at the people.” Novie McCabe, meanwhile, admitted that she wasn’t necessarily even paying attention. “I feel like I was kind of like blacked out the whole time, so I didn’t really notice,” she said. “But I for sure heard [people] cheering on the hills.”
Overall, everyone is excited and doing their best to relax between racing. McCabe is doing homework between cleaning efforts with roommate Sammy Smith in an attempt to maintain some visible floor space in their room. Hailey Swirbul is playing guitar. Racing certainly feels different from the pandemic-era 2022 Beijing Olympics, which definitely couldn’t be described as a “party” (McCabe).
With 70 athletes starting, we did see some tangle-ups as the lanes and skiers condensed after the start. Initially the pace at the front was just lukewarm and things seemed off to an easy start, when suddenly it became clear that Jessie Diggins and Karoline Simpson-Larsen of Norway had fallen on a downhill. The stream (including the replay) didn’t show exactly what happened, and we could only see Diggins getting up and skiing away.
“It’s her fault, but she’s not doing it on purpose,” Simpson-Larsen told Expressen afterwards. “It ruins the race. It’s a shame for all the rest of us who were dragged into it.”
The warmth must have softened the snow off the trail, and after the race Diggins said that her ski tip “just disappeared in the slush.” This in and of itself didn’t spell disaster for Diggins, whom we have previously known to stage an epic recovery in similar circumstances. A miraculous recovery, however, was not to be today.
Maybe Frida Karlsson, Ebba Andersson, Jonna Sundling, and Astrid Slind were all planning to turn up the gas anyway at the end of the first lap, but after Diggins fell, there was a clearly different vibe at the front. This group of four began drilling it to generate a clear breakaway at 4.8km, leaving Diggins in 14th (+18 seconds), more than 10 seconds further back than she had been at 3.3km. Slind’s glide wax was, at this point of the race, looking far superior to that of the Swedes’ skis. The lone Norwegian in the front group of four easily gained time on the downhills, pulling (and at one point pushing) the rest along with her.
A second chase pack materialized by the end of the second lap, consisting of Heidi Weng, Moa Ilar, Kerttu Niskanen, Kristin Fosnæs, and Nadja Kälin. This group unfortunately did not include Diggins, who continued to bleed time and fell back even further.
Chris Grover, speaking to reporters afterwards, speculated that waxing may have played a role in this lost time, saying, “And her skis to me — you know, I was out in the stadium, in the feed zone, watching her climb. She looked too slick; watching her descend, she didn’t look fast enough.” Grover later said, more directly, “Unfortunately, we just did not get her the classic skis that she needed.”
Meanwhile at the front, the newly hot pace wasn’t manageable for everyone as Sundling completely imploded. Mouth wide open for any available oxygen, she ended up joining the chase pack at the transition and sitting 40 seconds back.
Slind was not able to navigate the transition from classic to skate as well as the Swedes and dropped back 20 seconds behind them by 11.8km. Meanwhile, Weng was hunting her way out of the chase pack. Having bested Sundling she continued to eat 20 seconds out of the 23-second gap between her and Slind in the span of the first skate lap.
With Slind out of the way, it initially appeared that Karlsson and Andersson would stay together, but it became increasingly obvious that Karlsson was skiing like a machine and Ebba was having to work a little too hard to hold on. With 5km to go, Karlsson had secured a 20-second lead on her teammate. The remainder of the race was mostly a continuation of these trajectories.
Karlsson took gold in 55:45, Andersson took silver (a healthy 51 seconds back), and Weng claimed bronze (+1:26.7). Karlsson was clearly thrilled, telling Olympic Information Services after the race, “I had so much fun out there today and I am really proud of my whole team who have made this happen. The skis were super and the body felt amazing. I will ride this wave now, just taking everything in, and all the positive vibes. Now, everything is a bonus.”
Diggins did climb the standings to finish 8th (+2:21.2), but continued to lose time, even in the skate leg. (Glass half full, she did have the third-fastest skate leg of the day. Glass a little less full, she was still 49 seconds back of Karlsson’s standard here.)
Diggins minimized the importance of the crash afterwards, but admitted it was a poor time to lose momentum.
“The crash wasn’t that big of a deal to me,” Diggins told a crush of reporters. (“Oh, my goodness, so many microphones,” said Diggins, no novice to media scrums, when contemplating the horde before her, if that gives a sense of her popularity today.)
“I mean, I did lose some time,” she continued, “but that wasn’t the bigger problem today. So I just kept focusing: just stay calm, work your way back, just ski the best that you can ski.”
“I’m in the best shape of my life,” Diggins unambiguously stated, “and my body felt really, really good. There’s a lot of things that need to come together for a good ski race to happen. There’s a lot of puzzle pieces that need to lock into place. And I was really, really encouraged by the skate half, but the classic half, the things out of my control, did not go very well. I was really, really encouraged by that, and I’m so proud of the team. They work so hard, and it is really, really tricky. And so we’re going to keep working, and I’m just really proud of everyone.”
Things are looking up for Rosie Brennan (37th; +6:20.8), who was positive about this race and about her recent diagnosis in comments to media after the race: “I was super stoked with my classic skiing, but my skating has been hindered by — I don’t even know what you call it. Injury, I guess. So I haven’t actually done any hard skating since Davos. So, I learned still it’s not fixed.”
Elaborating on said injury, Brennan added: “I’ve got external iliac endofibrosis, so essentially I don’t get blood flow to my legs. So they like cramp when I skate,” which would explain why her classic leg was much stronger today.
If you follow professional cycling, you may have heard of this condition, which is (among many other conditions) much better studied in men and is common in cyclists. It is rare and can be difficult to diagnose (sometimes 3+ years to diagnosis), but essentially occurs when repeated hip flexion compresses the iliac arteries, causes blockage, and limits blood flow into the leg.
It seems like individual anatomical variation can make some people more susceptible than others, and 3D, cross-sectional imaging (taken when the hip is flexed) is needed for diagnosis. My professional opinion on the publications here is that a lot of the literature leans on anecdotal case studies and relatively small sample size (well <100 people), but surgical intervention to remove blockage and repair blood vessels seems effective in many cases.
“I kind of have an understanding of what’s happening, and that gives me like some tools to kind of try to work around it as best I can,” Brennan noted.
Diagnosis aside, Brennan was also positive about overall race vibes saying, “There were lots of fans out there, so that was nice, and it was actually very nice skiing. … The snow is good. It’s obviously a little wet and slushy, but it wasn’t crazy deep or anything. Like, it had a nice bottom to it. So the skiing was really nice.”
She was equally happy with her own race, all things considered. “I would have loved to not have the problems with skating,” Brennan said, “but I kind of knew that was a massive risk. But I was really happy with how I classic skied and I was also really happy with how I handled it in the skate. In Period 1 [of this World Cup season], when I would have [those] kind of problems, it was really game over, and today it was only half game over. So I’m proud of myself for that.”
Julia Kern (24th; +4:17.12) was also positive about her race, reflecting both on how she felt and on the conditions: “I’m really proud of how I skied,” she said. “I made a race plan and I feel like I executed that pretty closely. I had sections of the course where I wanted to push really hard or hang on to keep contact with the draft and some technique cues. I feel like overall I did a pretty good job of that and kept fighting. I felt like I died 20 times and came back to life, so I kept pushing.”
“Of course I would maybe want a little bit of a better result,” she added, “but given the really slow and challenging conditions, I skied to the best I could today and that’s all you can really do. And I thought both my classic and skate skis were competitive and I was happy with them.
“Overall, I felt pretty solid. I didn’t feel tired at all out there [or] anything like that. I think it was just a really slow grind, and I am more of a power skier, and I don’t mind grinding hard and skiing in slush. I’m from New England, so I don’t mind a good old klister day, but there was just no rest out there on the course. The downhills were really deep and slushy and challenging, so you had to be focused 100% of the time, and there were really no opportunities to just sit in a tuck and catch your breath out there today, especially with very little glide.
“I think my body kind of skied the way I expected. I wish I had a little bit more to give, but overall, for a hard day like that, I’m proud of how I skied. And I think this is a good starting spot, and I’m excited to build from here and do some shorter, faster racing coming up.”
Continuing by reflecting on how this opening race compared to her time in Beijing four years ago, Kern said, “I’d say this first race went a lot better than in Beijing. Unfortunately, I had no kick in the skiathlon last time around and that made for a very, very challenging race, but today I had a great kick. Despite it being really hot and slushy and slow, it was equally slow as Beijing when it was really cold snow. So, again, another very slow, grindy championship type of condition, just on the hot side.”
Novie McCabe (26th; +4:20.9) wouldn’t have changed anything about her race. She told us, “It was medium. I struggled a bit in the classic and was definitely suffering. It went out pretty hot and was a bit chaotic at the start but I feel like I found my groove a little more at the end of this week so I was happy with that. So some positives for sure.”
One of many, many APU athletes representing the USA at these Games, McCabe noted that, “It just kind of feels like I’m with my club team, so that’s really fun.”
At the beginning of this piece, I mentioned that waxing didn’t seem too difficult today. To loop back around, we got Chris Grover’s thoughts on this topic more specifically.
Grover said, “I think we were feeling pretty good for most of the morning. [We] felt like we have good glide solutions, good kick solutions. We checked all the boxes. We’ve been doing some good work on the grinds, [and] some of those grinds are starting to make it into the fleets of these athletes. I thought the process was really good and I think it showed there was an issue with ski selection [or] maybe it was how the kickbox was applied.
“It’s kind of hard to know. These guys do a really nice job of debriefing after the race. Now we have the men coming out to do some ski testing, so they won’t have a chance to do it in a while, but they’ll sit down later this afternoon and they’ll kind of go through point by point by point, [asking] what could have gone better.”
It will be interesting to see how the wax lessons learned from today can be leveraged to support the men tomorrow. Weather will be, in very broad strokes, similar to what the women experienced today, though it will probably be colder tonight than on Friday night so the course could harden up quite a bit more. It should still break down by the time of the 12:30 p.m. start, however.
The next race is tomorrow’s men’s skiathlon, with Zak Ketterson, Gus Schumacher, Zanden McMullen, and Hunter Wonders toeing the line for the Americans. Ketterson skis for Team Birkie domestically; the other three ski for APU.
If you’re wondering how four starters are selected from among the eight athletes per gender, helpfully, Nordic Insights asked McCabe just that
“It’s a little less straightforward than the criteria for making the [Olympic] team,” she said. “It’s kind of up to coaches’ discretion. So they look at the most recent racing. [Today’s starting list] was basically determined off of the last 20km we did in Goms [on the World Cup] and maybe some other things. But it’s basically coaches’ discretion, and they make the best choices they can. And then … there’s a possibility that they’ll change a lot throughout the Games, so we just have to wait and see.”
Grover also commented on this, indicating that starts are still not set in stone: “We haven’t laid out the starts for the relays quite yet, for the team sprint and for the 50km. That’ll come kind of in the next days, and you know, we want to see how everybody goes in the sprint and in the 10km as well. And then we’re going to start … to nail people down a little bit for the second half.” There’s a lot of racing still to come in Val di Fiemme.
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 at 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.
