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By Peter Minde
Under bluebird skies, Sweden’s Ebba Andersson decisively won the women’s 50-kilometer mass start classic earlier Sunday, the first women’s 50km race in 102 years of Winter Olympics history, with a time of 2:16:28. For Norway, Heidi Weng took second place, a healthy 2:15 back. Breaking from a group of three on the course’s final climb, Nadja Kälin, SUI, claimed bronze, roughly 4.5 minutes out of silver and 6:42 off the pace set by Andersson. She narrowly gapped Kristin Fosnæs of Norway in fourth (2.4 seconds out of third), with Jessie Diggins right behind her in fifth (2.5 seconds out of fourth, 4.9 seconds out of the medals). It was the 22nd and final Olympic race for Diggins.
All four American starters finished in the top 30. Rosie Brennan took 15th place, in what is presumptively, though not officially, the final Olympic race for the 37-year-old veteran. In her second appearance in this Olympics, Hailey Swirbul was 19th. Kendall Kramer rounded out the USA/APU squad, placing 26th.
The race was seven laps of the same 7.2km loop used by the men on Saturday. Unfortunately, through the whole entire Olympics, NBC commentator Steve Schlanger has insisted on using imperial measurements when talking about race distances and speed, when he wasn’t making the preposterous suggestion that athletes in the 10km interval-start race were carrying some sort of radio or other communication device and receiving real-time electronic updates from their coaches.
Today’s loop was “four-and-a-half miles,” per Schlanger. The sprint course was “nine-tenths of a mile.” Even with Kikkan Randall providing color commentary and using metric terms, Schlanger doubled down.
Steve, the rest of the world runs on metric, as do Americans when they are discussing cross-country skiing. There is no such thing as a 31-mile race in this sport. It’s the 21st century; get with the program.
We’ll say nothing of the British commentator who came out of nowhere at the finish, supplanting Schlanger and Chad Salmela. He said that Swirbul, in this race, was coming out of retirement (true) and that “she’s only been back on skis for two months” (grievously false).
Back to the race: We may never know how much Andersson’s disastrous second fall in the relay played on her mind, or whether she was able to shake it off like a baseball pitcher giving up a home run. With both Frida Karlsson and Jonna Sundling scratching today, and Sweden having made the quizzical decision to send the rest of the team home early with minor illness (sorry, Moa Ilar and Linn Svahn), the weight of the race for Sweden was on the shoulders of Andersson and Emma Ribom.
The race started with a tight group. Although Diggins led at the start, Andersson, followed by Weng, moved to the front quickly. Three kilometers into the race, five seconds separated these two from Astrid Øyre Slind (NOR), Diggins, and Teresa Stadlober (AUT). It remained that way for another five kilometers.
Between the 7.2 and 8.5 km checkpoints, Andersson, Weng, and Stadlober gunned it off the front. Diggins quickly yielded 25 seconds to them, while remaining in fourth. She was skiing by herself, with Fosnæs and Kerttu Niskanen (FIN) around five seconds behind her. Throughout the second lap, Diggins continued to bleed time, fighting skis that refused to kick well. She looked, even by her own standards, as if she was having a rough time out there.
Over a minute back from the cruising Andersson and Weng, Diggins stopped to change skis at the end of her second lap. On leaving the exchange zone, Diggins’s skis grabbed, and she stumbled. The same thing would happen to Andersson later when she changed skis.
There was “more kick” on the second pair of skis, was USST coach Kristen Bourne’s succinct take on what Diggins found underfoot heading into lap three. “That’s basically the difference. And then I’d have to check with my service staff, I’m not totally sure about the glide, but they were obviously testing pretty late, as close as they could to the start. But it was a different kick for sure.”
The ski exchange cost Diggins some time, and she was back in 9th place. At the front, at the 20km mark, Andersson and Weng dropped Stadlober like a hot potato; suddenly, she was nearly a minute behind. Diggins, meanwhile, seemed to have received a new lease on life with the new pair of skis, pulling herself up into sixth place. Stadlober gradually drifted back to the chase group of Niskanen, Diggins, and Fosnæs. When an athlete is caught by chasers like this her day typically only ends one way… but today Stadlober was able to regroup, join the chase pack, and remain in contention for bronze until the final kilometer. Chapeau.
Near the halfway point, Diggins was in third place as she led the chase group, which, barring an all-time collapse at the front, was by this point realistically the bronze-medal chase group. Ahead of them, Andersson began to pull away from Weng, while the chase group continued to lose time to them. By 36km, Andersson had 49 seconds in hand on Weng; the Norwegian was probably reassured to have multiple minutes on the main chase group as she worked to secure silver.
Behind her, five women would fight for one bronze medal.
As Diggins, Stadlober, Kälin, Fosnæs, and Niskanen headed out on their final lap, skiers’ grip continued to erode. Diggins, who was now into lap five on this pair of skis, repeatedly stepped out of the tracks to maximize grip, working heroically to make the skis kick for her. One should also note Eliza Rucka-Michalek (POL) bravely skiing solo nearly the entire race to bridge up to the Diggins group.
With four kilometers left, Diggins remained in the five-women chase group seeking the bronze medal. As they went up the Zorzi Climb for the final time, she threw down a huge effort on skis that could not have had much klister left on them by this point to pull into fifth place, just behind Fosnæs.
But Kälin put in a move of her own, drawing away from the other two women over the top of the Zorzi. She was able to push hard enough over the top to gain a gap safe from the pursuit of any drafters. Kälin skied in alone to take bronze, with Fosnæs and Diggins following close behind for fourth and fifth. Stadlober and Niskanen came in around 10 and 15 seconds later, respectively.
“It was just a really gritty race,” Diggins said afterwards. “Literally, every muscle in my body started cramping with three laps to go. If you had told me even a year ago I’d be in the fight for a bronze medal in a 50km classic, I would not have believed you. So it’s taken so much work from so many people for so many years to get here, and I’m just really proud of it.”
Diggins spoke to her approach to getting that single pair of skis to kick for her for a full 35km: “I was getting technique advice from the techs on course,” she recounted, “like, Hey, shorten it up, jog, short kicks. Like, start each hill with a couple little bounces. And so I was doing everything I could to make the skis work. I knew I had to switch early, but I’m so glad I did.”
“Really proud of this last Olympics,” was Diggins’s summary of her final trip through an Olympic mixed zone, “and really grateful and really happy. And I’m leaving here just full of joy, and probably needing a new body. So that’s the story.”
Of the longest classic race she’s ever done, Swirbul said, “I went for the tourist approach. Trying to start slow and pace it. Fifty km is so long, I just feel like it’s not worth it to me to go out hard and try to stay with a pack that’s maybe a little too fast and then really suffer for the last 30km.”
“Overall it was good,” was Swirbul’s summation of her day. “I think every long race is a new experiment to learn something about feeding or pacing or practice kicking your skis.”
What did you learn? came the obvious follow-up.
“I learned that I can stomach a lot of food before a 50km.”
What kind of food? (Yes we are now into “If you give a mouse a cookie” territory here.)
“I just feel like I’ve been eating all morning. I had Pringles. I had some candy. I ate some bars.”
What kind of candy? And what kind of Pringles? (These are the #insights you come here for, I know.)
“Sweet Scandinavian swimmers [candy]. Sour cream and onion [Pringles]. I kind of regretted that, actually, at the start. I was like, Rosie, I taste garlic in my mouth.”
And back, finally, to the racing: Did you have fun today, Hailey?
“I did, honestly,” came the reply from perhaps the most chipper athlete in the mixed zone today. “If I go past the red line, I can’t really come back from it. So it’s like, I really like to ski below it for a long time. I think retirement Master Blaster L2 pace really prepares you for the 50km grind, if you know what I mean.”
[Editor: Personally speaking I would call this more “go L3 trying to keep up with Hailey” pace, but, yes, I do know what she means.]
Today was Kendall Kramer’s second appearance in a 50km race; her first shot at this distance was the Sonot Kkaazoot, a citizens race in her native Fairbanks, in spring 2023. (Hopefully my editor will clue me in on how to pronounce this.)
“You definitely have to tap into yourself and see if you have another gear,” Kramer said of racing this distance. “Then start assessing how people are doing within your group, and then assess energy levels, of course. By the end, I was really trying to make it to the end. I think as I do more 50km’s in my life, I will be able to think of more of a plan. I’m really grateful to not have been lapped today, and I’m really grateful to have gotten [into] the top 30, so I call it a success.”
Remarkably, Kramer did not cramp, even over 2.5 hours of racing on a warm day. “I typically don’t,” she said, “so I’m blessed with that.”
Bourne summed up the Games succinctly. “We’re super proud of this team and to walk away from this Olympics being our most successful ever. Having a variety of people, three different people getting Olympic medals is, excuse my language, is fucking insane. We’re just super proud and stoked to keep the season going after a little bit of rest.”
Canada started four women in this race, and all finished in the top thirty. Nordic Insights caught up with Jasmine Drolet, who finished 17th.
“This was my first ever 50km, and I was really nervous,” Drolet said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more nervous before a race.
“It’s 20 km longer than any race I’ve ever done before. It can be tough out there if you don’t fuel properly, [or] if you have bad skis, but we had pretty good skis. The pack went out really hard at the beginning, and I was a little bit nervous about that, but I just found my own race and skied into the race as much as I could and ended up having a pretty good day.”
A final question: Can women race 50km?
“Of course,” said Drolet. “Women can do anything.” Preach!
The next World Cup stop is Falun. Stay tuned. And be glad you’re not driving a wax truck and a grind truck from northern Italy to Sweden immediately after, in Bourne’s phrasing, “working insane hours for the last three weeks.”
Bourne anticipates that the trucks will be there by Wednesday. The athletes will have a brutal turnaround of their own between getting to Verona for the closing ceremony and then leaving on a plane tomorrow morning, but at least they will get to fly to Sweden.
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.
After reading this summary I don’t need to watch the race. Felt as though I was watching when reading!
Aw, many thanks. I’m glad you appreciated all the details and Peter’s fine writing.
What kind of question is “Can women race 50km?” at the end of a women’s 50k race?
Ha. Fair. (I, Gavin, will speak to this, since I was the one who was present on site for this and asked the question. Peter did include it in the article, probably because I highlighted this in the transcription I sent him and editorialized, “fucking preach.”)
I would say, “an extremely self-aware question designed to get an answer like that so that I can end the article with this reminder that, of course, women can do anything.” You don’t have to agree, and if you want to tell me that the question/phrasing/concept is still stupid or boorish, I will listen to that. But I promise that it was asked with good intentions, and by someone who firmly believes that women can do anything.
I’ve beat the drum pretty hard for women’s abilities on this site over the last four years; for example, here is what I wrote in advance of the inaugural World Cup women’s 50km at Holmenkollen:
https://nordicinsights.news/2023/03/10/viewing-guide-for-march-11-12-literally-holmenkollen/
https://nordicinsights.news/2022/11/22/jessie-diggins-on-the-season-ahead-nothing-to-prove-and-so-psyched-to-race-holmenkollen-50km/
Or take this pretty snide and objectively unnecessary to the rest of the article comment about no one’s uterus falling out when the women raced the same distance as the men at Spring Series a few weeks later:
https://nordicinsights.news/2023/03/27/andreas-kirkeng-and-sydney-palmer-leger-take-multiple-wins-at-spring-series-in-craftsbury/
All that said, perception is important, and if you still want to tell me that it is a stupid question, I will listen. Thanks. (Unrelated, sorry for the delay in getting this posted. I have to manually approve comments otherwise the site just gets overrun with spambots. If you ever comment again from this email address, it will go up right away, now that you’re in the system as approved.)
Thanks for the response. “Someone who firmly believes that women can do anything” is the sense l’ve gotten from this site overall which is why I was surprised to see the question. It just seemed unnecessary after a really good article showing that not only can women race a 50k, it can be a really exciting race as well. I guess I’d just like us to be past such questions, but l only do citizens’ races where there’s always equal distance, whereas it’s obviously much newer in the world cup world.
Regardless, I don’t doubt the question was asked with good intentions and I appreciate the work done on this site.
I somehow can’t reply to your reply, it seems, so pretend that this is nested in under what you just wrote:
Thanks for your gracious thoughts. I, really and quite sincerely, appreciate it. And I am glad that you don’t think that I am coming to this issue from a misogynistic or even doubting perspective. All that said… if you are giving me the benefit of the doubt and coming in with that understanding of my views… and a question that I asked still causes you (the only woman in this thread, it has to be said) to have a negative or even questioning reaction… then that feels like something I should listen to.
So I will do so. Thanks again for calling me out on this. I, really, appreciate it.
— Gavin
No need to post this comment, just some random thoughts on your article :
Just to clarify, NBC is trying to encourage a wider audience for cross country skiing. And accommodating viewers to translate kilometers into miles is a way to assist in reaching more viewers. It isn’t so much a decision by the commentators, it is executives trying to help USA cross country skiing. They don’t lose viewers sticking with kilometers, but they try to gain viewers by using miles.
Also you forgot to tell us how far back all the American woman were from the first place finisher.
And you never told us how many total finishers were in the race, you just said everyone was ” top 30″. It helps to provide context when you share how many finishers.
There has never been an issue whether woman can ski 50 KM. The issue is has this change grown the sport or enervated it.
You could ask the US Ski Team Coach:
” Would you get more racers on the start line if it was a 30 KM and not a 50 KM for women?”.
“Are you seeing the woman start fewer races and if they are racing the longer distances are they touring portions of the race to get to the finish?”
” Have you noted an increase in fatigue or inability to train as much now that the woman are spending more time at race pace than previous?”
I know how hard so many people fought for equal distance and nobody is suggesting it go back to the way it was before that I know of. If more and more skiers are not getting on the starting line or too many of them tour the race and don’t race it, and if the health of the athletes is jeopardized ; ongoing conversations hopefully continue.
I don’t see them going back to unequal distance 50 km / 30 KM, but I do see them getting rid of the 50 KM if they keep seeing fewer and fewer athletes on the starting line.
Thank you so much for carrying on this conversation.
Thank you for your brilliant reporting! On to Falun 🙂