By Gavin Kentch
This is a reader-funded website. Virtually all of my income (for perspective: I took home less than $5,000 from Nordic Insights last year after paying staff) comes from reader contributions, which I sincerely appreciate. If you would like to support the site, including helping us get to the Olympics in February, you may do so here. Thank you.
Corbin Carpenter (University of Alaska Anchorage) placed 13th in the men’s 10-kilometer interval-start classic on Saturday, the final day of individual racing at 2026 World U23 Championships in Lillehammer, confirming that his tenth-place finish in Thursday’s 20km skate was no fluke. Ava Thurston (Dartmouth), speaking of strong weeks, once again led the way for the women, placing 15th. Thurston had previously placed ninth in both the skate sprint and the 20km.
Here is a photo of Carpenter:
And here is a photo of Thurston:
All pictures today, and all week long, are courtesy of Steve Fuller, @flyingpoint on Instagram and online here. It has been a delight to get his photos, and witty commentary, coming through in my WhatsApp notifications throughout the week.
On the men’s side, Carpenter was followed yesterday by Benjamin Dohlby (University of Alaska Fairbanks) in 34th, Anders Weiss (BSF Pro) in 47th, and Fin Bailey (Vermont) in 66th. Here are some photos of these three, plus I guess a bonus Carpenter shot:
For the women, Sammy Smith, the pride of Stanford, was 23rd, with Nina Schamberger (Colorado) 33rd. Evelyn Walton (Dartmouth) was 44th. Here are photos of the women:
Last but certainly not least, was there a tech race? Yes. Did Steve capture superb photos of the action in arguably the most important agôn of the week? Also yes. Did the American team of Julia Forbes and Tuva Granøien take the win, showing that the U.S. had not only some of the fastest skis of the week, but also the fastest service staff? Judge for yourself.
And yes of course I know and like all these people and will say nice things about them given the slightest opportunity, but were the team’s skis really that good this week? Please consider the extent to which Carpenter, bib 32, is deeply chilling in this shot of pack racing in the 20km (to keep from running up onto the athletes in front of him), and, again, judge for yourself.
Here are a few more photos of the tech race, because Steve does fine work and I can’t resist. Also a shot of an Italian woman holding a chicken. The end.
You may view replays of the entire day here: women | men.
Mixed relays close things out today.
This week is a pillar project of NNF, in case you are curious where your Drive for 25 donations go. Go team.
Programming note: Due to being on vacation with my family following the Olympics, we will not be covering this weekend’s World Cup races in Lahti on the site. Finding an hour a day to blurb the races out of Lillehammer has been enough of an ask; upping that to three hours to also do World Cup racing is a bridge too far. I don’t do this lightly; these are the first World Cup races that we haven’t covered in at least two full seasons, probably pushing three by now, and I am proud of my team and our work. But it would not be fair to my family to take that much time out of our vacation to play unpaid, or I guess barely paid, journalist, especially after I made my wife single-parent for nearly a month so I could go to the Olympics. We will have in-person reporting from Drammen on Thursday and will cover that here. And I fly back on Saturday, Holmenkollen day, and so will find in-flight wifi at some point in that 28-hour saga to edit and post others’ work from Oslo.
