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By Lukas Sæther Pigott
“Congratulations Johannes, this was really big!” was Håkon Klæbo’s message on Norwegian TV to his son, who had just won his third Olympic gold in Val di Fiemme in as many attempts.
Håkon added that this is the event that his son has thought the most about and been most nervous for. “This is real cross-country skiing,” he said. “To win gold in an interval start — I know it means a lot for him.”
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who is gaining recognition outside of the cross-country skiing world thanks to his explosive attacks on the final hill in the skiathlon and sprint events, had never won a skate interval-start race in a World Cup or championship, making it the only weak spot in his palmarès.
Today, Klæbo was racing against the clock, chasing seconds in every corner of the course, knowing that everyone would count. Across the line he lunged and collapsed, a rare sight for a man who is normally always in control but who visibly pushed himself to the utter limit today, possibly taking inspiration from watching Jessie Diggins take bronze yesterday.
Another person who pushed themselves beyond limits was Einar Hedegart, the favorite for the 10-kilometer interval-start after winning all previous 10km skates this season.
He was however not able to match Klæbo today. Klæbo managed to take the win thanks to a strong finish to a race which, unlike the women’s race, was a thrillier from start to finish.
“I was so dizzy I could barely see the last two kilometers. I just hit the wall” Hedegart told NRK reporters following a race where he led for most of it, but had to settle for third in the end after brutally hemorrhaging time over the last kilometer.
How was that?
“It’s a new feeling for me and it just shows how tough this course is,” Hedegart said, seemingly quite content. He added, “no matter how much of a favorite you are, you can never be disappointed with a medal.”
There was however a hint of annoyance at Klæbo’s ability to be at his absolute best when it matters. “I’ve beaten him every time, and now when it really matters he beats me,” Hedegart said. “He’s the best of all time.”
Hedegart finished 14 seconds behind Klæbo, after losing 15 seconds in the final kilometer. In between the two of them, however, was the confirmation of one of the breakout stars of this Olympics: Mathis Desloges finished a mere 4.9 seconds off Klæbo at the line.
“No podium in the World Cup, two silver medals in two races at the Olympics” was how the young French star pointed out how impressive his races have been.
There is however no lack of confidence in the man from Villard-de-Lans, just outside of Grenoble, which hosted the 1968 Winter Olympics. “I would like to have the gold medal but Klæbo was too strong today,” Desloges said.
At the first checkpoint after 1.8 kilometers, which had included a significant uphill section, the silver medalist from the skiathlon showed everyone that that result was not a fluke.
All the favorites were close in time here, with Klæbo taking the most controlled pacing strategy, lagging 7.5 seconds behind. He was adopting a gambit he had yesterday prescribed to Karlsson with great success: easy to 3.75km, and then go.
One of the favorites for the day, American Gus Schumacher, was well placed, 5 seconds behind Desloges. His teammate Zak Ketterson was also in the fight at 8.6 seconds behind.
John Steel Hagenbuch started very strong, but an unfortunate detour meant that he was already 13 seconds behind at the first checkpoint after briefly going the wrong way out of the stadium.
By the halfway point, however, the many Americans were clearly struggling to keep up the pace. Schumacher had drifted to 20th place, 41 seconds behind the leader, Hedegart, with Ketterson on the same time. Zanden McMullen had started out more controlled but was clearly not on his best day, sitting in 38th place after 4.9km.
For the rest of the race McMullen, Ketterson, and Schumacher continued to lose time. Steel Hagenbuch, however, kept going better throughout the race.
Chris Grover, the USST program director, had plenty of praise for Steel Hagenbuch, who put out one of the performances of the year. “I was out on the course giving splits,” Grover said, “and to my eye, he was motoring every time that I saw him. He was skiing with so much energy, which was really cool.”
With the sun out and the temperatures rising the question for the American men today was:
What are you wearing under your race suit?
After it had been ascertained that underwear was a given, the answers were unanimously: nothing. (If you were curious whether McMullen has a backup plan after shearing off the sleeves of his one-piece race suit, he did receive two suits for these Games. Also, he added, “I kept the sleeves, so I can sew them back on if I need to.”)
John Steel Hagenbuch was however really wearing nothing on top, with only a bib between himself and the rest of the world. He was the talk of the course today, with both Nordic Insights photographer Anna Engel (stationed at multiple photo positions around the venue) and Nordic Insights roving correspondent Devin Ward (uncredentialed, but providing insights from the upper spectator area) reporting that his sartorial choices were much remarked upon.
Tell me about your outfit.
“It’s hot. And I get hot easily, so on a warm day — race in the bib.”
Fair enough. How did this go?
“It was great. It’s so funny as someone who I think is prone to overthinking, I was so in the moment that I wasn’t thinking at all at the start and I was just skiing and skiing and skiing and then I kind of snapped back to reality about 30 seconds in and I’d taken the wrong turn,” Steel Hagenbuch told reporters after the race.
“So I slammed on the brakes, skied backwards for a little bit, and then got on the right track,” he continued. “Then what I’ve been saying to everyone, because they’ve been asking me, like — oh, you know, you’d maybe be in the lead, or you may be be this, you may be that — well, I made a mistake, and I think I was more just proud of it.”
“I made the mistake, and then I just let it go. When you mess up like that at the highest stage, you have nothing left to lose so then I was just sending it and skiing really fast.”
With bib number 21 Steel Hagenbuch was one of the strongest early starters fighting to take the lead at the different checkpoints around the course and at the finish.
“I was like just a couple seconds off the lead, into the lead sometimes, and then I was like, Okay, keep pushing. I think it’s honestly kind of poetic that I made a mistake like that at the Olympics. People keep asking if I’m upset, and the answer is no. I tried as hard as I could and pushed myself to the limit.”
“Could I have been 20 seconds faster? Yeah, probably. And would I be in 6th instead of 11th, which I was the last time I saw it? Yeah, I guess, but I don’t think I was going to get a medal.”
“I went into today with my goal of just trying as hard as you can. I would have been a little bit faster had I not made that mistake, but I did try as hard as I could. So, in many ways, I achieved my goal. You can kick yourself all you want that you made a mistake, but I’m not gonna.”
McMullen finished the day in 32nd place 1:41 behind Klæbo. “This course is just like — there’s just no rest,” McMullen told journalists after his race, still breathing heavily after his effort. Assembled media held their questions for McMullen for an extra minute or two so that he had a chance to open his bottle of water. He drank some of it, while dumping much of it over his head.
What are some features of a championship course? McMullen was asked.
“Ridiculously long steady climbs. For whatever reason, the nature of this course, it feels like there’s ten times as much climbing as there is downhill.”
McMullen explained why this might be, saying, “There’s a lot of like gradual downhill sections that are all just like hard working terrain where you don’t actually get to recover.”
While not having the best day physically, he shared some advice from Diggins on how to keep on fighting.
“Jessie kind of gave us some words of wisdom yesterday to think about and at any given moment in the race, you know, am I giving it my best? Not necessarily thinking about a good split or bad split that you’re getting, just saying, all right am I going out there and giving them my all? I definitely feel like I did that, so I’m happy.”
His teammate Ketterson, who also didn’t have his best day, spoke candidly to journalists after finishing the day in 38th, 1:52 behind.
“Man, I just did not feel good. And it’s kind of a bummer because I feel like the first two races I had in my mind pretty good excuses for why it didn’t go well, but I just felt bad today. And that’s really sad.”
“My big goal this season was to qualify to make it here and then once you’re here you of course want to race really well. I’m not going to write myself off, but it honestly feels like I hit my best shape earlier in the year and I’m just not feeling as good right now.”
Ketterson, who has been consistently on a strong level this year, clearly shows how important — and hard — it can be to hit your top form at the right time.
“It’s a long season and we are under pressure to perform every single weekend. And I’m just not feeling great right now.”
What did you tell yourself while you were skiing?
“I feel like I really held it together until about maybe seven, seven and a half k, and then I was just surviving,” Ketterson said. “You can do all the mental talk and positive self-talk you want, but when you’re out there just like seeing stars, it’s a little hard to do much.”
He summed up his situation by saying, “So, it’s a bummer. It’s hard to say what the rest of this championship will hold for me, but I think at this point, whatever happens is for the best, and hopefully, I can find my shape again.”
What do you say to the people who still like you no matter what happened today?
“Obviously I am a professional skier and I really want to race fast, but there’s so much more to me and who I am as a person than just my skiing.”
“Rest assured that I’m trying as hard as I can and I went into this championship feeling so good and really confident about my preparation, but something clearly is not right so it’s sad, but thanks to everyone who cheers for me, anyways.”
“You know, like I cheer for the Vikings and the Timberwolves, and they lose all the time. I’m not going to not be a Timberwolves fan just because they lose, you know?”
The writer of this article may or may not be a Tottenham Hotspur fan and therefore know exactly what he means.
“It’s true though, it’s the journey and it’s up and it’s down, but I think it makes the ups even more fun.”
Schumacher, who has struggled so far in the Olympics with a crash in the skiathlon and bad skis in the sprint, finished the day just behind Ketterson in 39th, 1:54 behind the Micheal Phelps of the Winter Olympics.
Do you feel like you went out too hard?
“Honestly, no. I think if I was having a good day I would have been able to keep it. I feel like I was skiing well, I just got tired,” Schumacher said after the race.
“I feel like I’m skiing well. Something just didn’t quite work out today. That’s kind of how it happens sometimes,” was his honest assessment of the day.
You’re being gracious to chat with us, but are you maybe not having the best time at these Games so far?
“I feel like it’s a weird assumption to make,” he responded to a journalist’s question.
“I’m having a good time. I mean, my results so far have been nothing crazy, but I know I’m still in a good place and there’s still races to come, so there’s no reason to get down on myself.”
Are these Olympics more fun than the last one?
“Yes,” was Chris Grover’s succinct answer.
“A, we’re not in the pandemic anymore; that’s the biggest thing. B, we have all these friends and family and fans around us. C, we’re in a place with a tradition of ski racing and a history of ski racing. We come here every year, and the places that we’ve been to for the Olympics recently are newer countries to ski racing. They don’t have that quite yet. And so, this has a really atmospheric feel. That makes it really special.”
Grover told Nordic Insights after everything was beginning to settle down that this was “definitely a disappointing day overall for us”.
Summing up a mostly rough day, he said, “Everybody had something that went wrong with their race out there and three of the four guys were pretty disappointed in terms of how their performance went. Johnny was the exception to that for sure.”
What do you tell them after a day like this?
“You can be one percent off on a given day and you’re going to lose 15 spots, if not more. So I think the most important thing is to trust in your fitness, trust in your preparation, get the rest that you need, take an assessment of what the mental, emotional, physiological tolls of being at the Olympics are, reset, get some rest, and you never know what the next day can bring.”
When asked how he and the team supporting the skiers during the Games make it through long days like Tuesday’s sprint ready to take things on the next day with an even keel, Grover said that people are working hard and getting to bed early.
“A late night for our service team these days is about 9:30 — like lights out, and everybody’s asleep,” he said. “That’s even on a night that we’ve won a medal. I tried to drag them out last night to have a glass of wine or a beer at about 9:30 [after Diggins’s bronze medal], and the vast majority of them were already in bed.”
Grover however tells Nordic Insights that “the bigger thing is the athletes, the amount of emotional toll for the athletes and how many friends and family are here and the pressures they put on themselves. It’s hard for them to recover.”
He continued, “I think the load that Ben’s been under after his medal or Jessie’s been under after her medal — it takes a big emotional toll and you have to factor that into their training preparation, because if you just think everything’s normal and you do training like normal you’re gonna fry them.”
Other standout results today were Italian home favorite Martino Carollo, who finished 7th, and Canadians Thomas Stephen and Rémi Drolet, who finished 9th and 19th.
Norwegians Harald Østberg Amundsen and Martin Løwstrøm Nyenget finished 4th and 5th. They were followed by Scot Andrew Musgrave, who after the race said that he “should have at least beaten some of the Norwegians.”
On Klæbo’s race today Hedegart said, “this is what he should be weakest at, but he is unbeatable.” He added that he is “99 percent sure” that Klæbo, who is now tied with Bjørgen, Dæhlie, and Bjørndalen on eight Olympic Gold medals, will take home all the golds in the Olympics.
Silver medal winner Desloges agrees with Hedegart but is not giving up. “I think yes, but I will train hard for no.”
How much training at this point is going to help him beat Klæbo next weekend we will see, but Desloges is at any rate ready for the relay on Sunday. “I have good shape,” he said, “but I will be better in the relay.”
Before the men’s relay gets underway, it’s time for the women’s relay tomorrow in Val di Fiemme. Sweden are the overwhelming favorites, with the Norwegians being the favorites for silver. As for the final medal, the race is wide open, with Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Team USA, and many more all ready to put up a fight.
Tomorrow’s relay will be Jessie Diggins’s 12th and final championship relay. With the best result from this sample set being fourth on four different occasions and an average result of 5.36th place, can Milano–Cortina finally be the stage where she brings home a medal?
According to the recently released start list, Diggins will, of course, be skiing the anchor leg on Saturday. Julia Kern will take the scramble leg, with Rosie Brennan on the second classic leg and Novie McCabe on the first skate leg. Diggins for sure, and presumably Brennan as well, will be putting on the relay socks one last time. Racing kicks off at noon CET.
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.
