By Gavin Kentch
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If Klæbo is feeling any sort of post-Olympic letdown, he didn’t show it today. The pride of Trondheim picked up where he left off before the Olympic break, winning the men’s skate sprint with both ease and aplomb as World Cup racing returned in Falun on Saturday afternoon into evening. The man last failed to win a race in the Tour de Ski final climb on January 4.
Second today was a young Lars Heggen, still just 20 years old, if you were curious just how deep the bench of Norwegian men is these days. Third went to Benjamin Moser of Austria.
The Americans put three of their four starters into the heats today. Gus Schumacher and Jack Young both skied well in their quarterfinal, with Schumacher in particular flashing an all-time free skate twice in 45 seconds in the first heat he contested, before ending up on the wrong end of their semifinal. Schumacher would finish 11th overall on the day, and Young 12th.
Behind them, Bolger did not have the skis to compete in his group-of-death quarterfinal, ultimately finishing sixth in the heat and 29th overall. Earlier in the day, JC Schoonmaker placed 35th in qualifying, five spots and 0.69 seconds out of making the heats.
In approximate chronological order: Bolger was drawn into quarterfinal one, a heat containing all of Klæbo, Heggen, Federico Pellegrino of Italy, Anton Grahn of Sweden (who qualified in 30th but ultimately came 0.02 seconds away from making the final), and Sasha Masson of Canada. Bolger sat in fifth leaving the stadium. He was sixth going into the first big downhill from the high point of the 1.3-kilometer Falun sprint course, though squarely in contact as the pack skied with a relative lack of urgency on the tactical course. “Leaders stone cold chilling on first climb,” read my contemporaneous notes for this section.
Up the second climb, Grahn went, with Bolger largely unable to respond. He would remain in sixth throughout the rest of the heat.
Bolger’s skis, bluntly, appeared to me on the broadcast to not be in a position to let him compete with the rest of the field. He did not shy away from this polite suggestion in his more expansive thoughts on the race.
“Always fun to be in that quarter haha,” wrote Bolger of the strength of field of the day’s first men’s heat. “Quite honestly I knew what was going to happen and which skiers were going to attack early so I was quite ready for it — my energy was great all day and was ready to put down what I thought would be a lucky loser heat!”
“But,” he continued, “I could kinda feel early into the first hill — my skis weren’t as competitive as they should be on a course like this! I kept contact best I could hoping to take the draft back into the stadium but I had no chance. But it’s fun to be back in the heats and skiing feeling good!”
While Bolger’s official club affiliation remains with Team Birkie (or “American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation,” per his FIS page, if you want to be official about it), he spends most of his time in Europe with Falun–Borlänge SK, a Swedish club based in, well, Falun. What’s it like to be racing at his second home?
“It’s super fun racing here — and having a small fan club!” Bolger wrote. “I think a lot of people know this course was a little different this year with a new curve into the stadium. But it’s fun to be racing in a place that feels like home!”
On to Jack Young. The kid from Vermont had a less straightforward path to the semifinals than many, initially placing third in his quarterfinal heat, the fifth of the day, and failing to advance as a lucky loser. I, and many others, thought that his day was done at this point.
But then the man immediately ahead of him, Filip Skari, received a yellow card, for obstruction. It was his second yellow card of the season. Skari was therefore out of the race, and Young was into the semis.
“The first thing I heard about possibly moving on was on the very long walk from finish to start,” Young wrote to me of this moment in his afternoon. “I saw Kevin and he told me that there was a chance Skari would be relegated. News to me.”
Young continued: “Then I got back to the start, still hadn’t heard anything definitive, so I took off my leg bibs [i.e., the bib numbers that affix to athletes’ lower legs] and started mentally preparing for some punishment intervals. When I heard that I was in, my first thought was relief because a world cup semi final is a lot more fun than 6×45″!
“After that, I weirdly had some of the best focus I’ve had in the lead up to a semifinal. I think I can just chalk that up to being more experienced, but when I hit the start line, it was the most determined I’ve been to really get in there in the race compared to my other two semifinals I’ve made.”
As for that semifinal itself: Young skied in fourth and fifth after the gun went off, but took a wide line up the second main climb to move into contention by the hilltop choke point that was the crux of the race for many athletes today.
Over to Young for this moment:
“The semi was interesting. I had a good start and was parked behind [George] Ersson on the inside. I then had to do some work to get to the front, but I succeeded and found myself on the front row at the top of the second hill. I would have loved to launch an attack at that point, but you kind of need the inside for that (Ersson along with the rest of the heat would have easily marked and passed me). So, we stopped and waited until [Oskar Opstad] Vike came charging around. I was actually in an excellent position, but I came out of the corner too hot on Vike’s tails and had to pop out of the draft. That was about all she wrote — I was soon swallowed up.”
Young was indeed swallowed up; he pushed hard to the line, but would finish sixth. He was also 1.27 seconds out of finishing second and advancing; this course today made for tight finishes.
Finally, Young last raced in Goms, a full five weeks ago, with his last time racing a sprint heat coming in Oberhof on January 17. (Young qualified for and traveled to the Milano–Cortina Olympics, but classic sprinting remains a growth area and he did not contest the classic sprint. Young left the area midway through the Games to resume training elsewhere.) I therefore asked him how on earth he can maintain race sharpness after such a layoff.
Much as with yesterday’s article on carbohydrate consumption, this is another area where my assumptions are ill founded.
“Staying fresh and ready to race was actually easier to do while away from the World Cup/Olympic scene if that makes any sense,” Young graciously explained. “I trained really hard for the two weeks leading up to Falun. So hard that I was a little worried that I would bounce back in time for today. I love to train, so getting away from the racing for a couple of weeks and just focusing on the process did nothing but good things for how ‘fresh’ or ‘sharp’ I was for this weekend. With this one under my belt, I feel like my shape is trending upward, and I’m super pumped for the rest of period 4.”
Finally, on to Gus Schumacher. The Anchorage skier-turned-Olympic-medalist put on a fine showing in his quarterfinal heat, using his distinctive, and devastatingly effective, free skate once to move up from fourth into second over the final minute of the race, and then again to stay there coming into the finish stretch.
Schumacher appeared to my lay eyes to have a rougher time of things in the ensuing semifinal, largely skiing in sixth throughout the heat. However, this course is a tactical one, and my impression on this point could simply be wrong.
“Semifinal wasn’t my best work,” was Schumacher’s measured take here. “Kinda frustrating for me, but overall, I’m happy. I’ve never been a super fast starter and usually it’s fine. Going into the semi, I thought I’d ski similarly to the quarter and light it up in the second half knowing S1 would most likely be the faster semi. It was fast but everyone was in it so there was never really good space, and in hindsight I should’ve saved my efforts for just the finish straight. My energy was good. It’s one of the freshest-feeling semis I’ve had, just didn’t quite have the speed I needed.”
“Definitely happy with my quarterfinal,” Schumacher concluded, “and being confident in myself to make the moves I needed to advance outright.”
Oh yeah, as for the final: Lucas Chanavat of France led out of the stadium, with Klæbo just behind him. Their positions were unchanged by the top of the first hill, with the Norwegian clearly happy to slot in in second and let Chanavat pull.
Going up the second main hill, those two tried to distance themselves, with Heggen blasting in from the chase pack to come join the party. It was Chanavat first, Klæbo second, and Heggen third as they came over the critical crest of the hill.
“Klæbo just glides past Chanavat,” read my notes for what happened next. Yes, the man (always) has good skis, but what we see at the bottom of the hill is also a function of what happened at the top of the hill, and Klæbo always does an impeccable job of that, too. So, yes, the skis appeared to be good, but good skiers also make skis look good.
When Klæbo takes the lead coming into the final 200m of a sprint, he does not tend to relinquish it. He did not do so here. Behind him, Heggen was well clear of everyone not named Johannes Høsflot Klæbo to take second with relative ease. It was the fourth World Cup podium of his career, all coming in the last two months. The worst World Cup sprint result of Heggen’s career is eighth. Again, he cannot legally buy a drink in the U.S. at present.
Moser skied well down the stretch to come into third. It was the second World Cup podium of his career; he was second, behind Schumacher, in the Tour de Ski 5km heats in Toblach that the Americans think are awesome and the rest of the world finds a hateful gimmick. (That said: scoreboard.) Behind him, Chanavat came into possession of a second-lap-of-the-800m-sized anchor on his back at an inopportune moment, falling off the face of the earth to finish in sixth.
Racing continues in Falun tomorrow with a 20km skiathlon. Schumacher, Bolger, and Schoonmaker are slated to race for the second day in a row, to be joined by Zanden McMullen and Hunter Wonders. Are the APU men the Norwegian men of American distance skiing? Discuss.
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Where was Ben Ogden today?
statement from USSS:
“Ben is recovering after his sickness he incurred at the end of the Olympics. He’ll be back shortly when he’s 100% healthy and ready to race.”