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By Gavin Kentch
LAGO DI TESERO — The Olympics continue. The distance races were a little underwhelming, with multiple falls for the Americans on a course feature that hopefully does little more to merit its proposed names in the 10km skate. Then sprint day was completely overwhelming, in a good way. Btw, Julia Kern was sixth on Tuesday, and JC Schoonmaker eighth, results that in many other Olympic sprints would have been headline news for American skiers. But no longer.
Then Jessie won a medal in the 10km, her fourth career Olympic medal; that never harms the vibes. But then three out of four men had a rough time of things in their 10km, and the vibes were candidly trending down pretty hard. But today is a new day.
This is your update for Sunday. The rain is gone. It was below freezing last night; there was frost on all the cars this morning. “The snow sounds like ice,” roving correspondent Devin Ward reports from the top of the course.
Relay day + sunshine. Fans are [non-cheugy synonym for “turnt”].
I met John Steel Hagenbuch’s crew on the way in here. They are psyched for their boy, as they should be. It’s gonna be loud up on the top of the course today.
On to the details:
When are the races?
| date | race | time (AK) | time (EST) | results |
| Sunday, Feb. 15 | men’s relay | 2 a.m. | 6 a.m. | here |
Local time at the venue is Central European Time. This is six hours ahead of the East Coast, and 10 hours ahead of Alaska. We’re gonna lead with Alaska Time here, now, as always, because half of the Olympic roster is based there. Them’s the rules.
Who will be racing for the U.S.?
In the men’s relay: in order, Ben Ogden, Gus Schumacher, John Steel Hagenbuch, and Zak Ketterson. Rather than the APU–SMS bimodal distribution characteristic of a lot of high-level American skiing, that’s SMS, APU, Sun Valley, and Team Birkie, respectively. E pluribus unum, indeed. Someone pass me the pesto.*
(* this is a joke, albeit a very obscure and probably not very funny one)
Here is a roundup of historical American relay results if you are curious:
What is the weather like?
Sunny. Calm. It’s gonna be so nice out there today.
Here is the point forecast for the venue fyi.
Where can you watch these races?
NBC, because Olympics. On broadcast television, and on something called Peacock. I think you can also watch live events for free on olympics.com. The venue wifi is emphatically not letting me geolocate to the U.S. via a VPN, so I can’t tell you what this looks like from the states, sorry.
How many Olympics stories have we written so far?
A ton. You can find them all here. Thanks for sticking with us.
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.
