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By Peter Minde
LAKE PLACID — In the final World Cup sprint race of his storied career, Italy’s Federico “Chicco Pelle” Pellegrino went big, winning the skate sprint here in Lake Placid in the second day of racing at 2025/2026 World Cup Finals. Pellegrino’s time in the final was 2:35.01. Norway’s young phenom, Lars Heggen, took second place, 1.24 seconds back, but it wasn’t that close. Anton Grahn of Sweden was third, .04 second behind Heggen. Uff.
I took the shuttle bus to Mount van Hoevenberg this morning under a dead gray sky. Temperature was 28 degrees (-2.2 Celsius). The track looked firm and fast: van Ho’s grooming crew did yeoman’s work following yesterday’s six inches of new snow. As we shall see, the track broke down in places.
Today being Saturday, the crowd was markedly larger than Friday. (Pro tip: the weekend actually begins at 3 p.m. Thursday.) Flags for Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, and Italy flew, in addition to U.S., Minnesota, and Alaska flags. Van Ho has a dedicated wifi network for media; today the number of press taxed it to the max.
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo opted to skip today’s sprint. From his interview yesterday, this was partly to save energy for tomorrow’s 20km skate, and partly not to overexert himself post-concussion.
Thus, Lucas Chavanat, FRA, led the way in qualification with a time of 2:29.97. Pellegrino qualified second, 2.04 seconds back. Heggen was third, 2.52 seconds back.
With extra start spots as the host nation, the U.S. fielded 12 athletes. Five of them — JC Schoonmaker, Jack Young, Zanden McMullen, Ben Ogden, and Gus Schumacher — made the heats, finishing the day in 9th, 13th, 15th, 17th, and 21st, respectively. In the qual, Zach Jayne was 33rd, Zak Ketterson 39th, Murphy Kimball 42nd, Kevin Bolger 43rd, John Schwinghamer 54th, Will Koch 55th, and Owen Young 64th.
The final hairpin turn before the finishing straight proved to be the crux corner on the day. In the first quarterfinal, Gus Schumacher was in the mix until that corner, where he was boxed in on the outside. He finished fifth in the heat. Time and again, those on the outside of that corner had a huge disadvantage.
“That hairpin was tough,” Schumacher wrote to Nordic Insights after the race. “I knew I needed to be on the inside but came up on Grahn and he was playing Seattle Seahawks defense. I couldn’t go right [inside] so I went left, but didn’t have the speed to pass him. Which let the rest of the field go through on the inside, and that was just about that. Pretty frustrating there for sure, but cool day overall. Conditions were solid but definitely got pretty sugary.”
At some points, the women’s quarterfinals looked like NASCAR, with multiple crashes. The men’s rounds were slightly better, but also featured drama. In the second quarterfinal, Elias Keck, GER, and Jules Chappaz, FRA, both fell in the final hairpin corner before the finishing straight. They didn’t appear to tangle.
The third quarterfinal had both lucky losers, Schoonmaker and Norway’s Harald Østberg Amundsen.
On to the semifinals. In the first semi, Schoonmaker was off the back at the start, but closed, drafting Pellegrino in the omega. Grahn won, and both lucky losers, Chavanat and Pellegrino, came from this heat. Schoonmaker was fifth.
Erik Johansson, SWE, won the second semifinal, with Amundsen right on his ski tails. There was drama at the back, as Spain’s Jaume Pueyo tangled with Norway’s Ansgar Evensen on the Grindhouse climb. Subsequently, Pueyo was relegated to last. Who knew that they’d subsequently clash in the mixed zone? In front of your correspondent, Evensen accused Pueyo of deliberately stepping on his skis twice. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough turning on the voice recorder.
“It was good, very good,” Pueyo said to Nordic Insights following his verbal contretemps with Evensen. “I did semifinal, but they run me as last. I don’t know why. It has no sense. I was trying to pass Amundsen. I did nothing, it seems like, and where is that incident?”
Was it down here, your correspondent asked, gesturing towards the crux hairpin? (The mixed zone here doesn’t afford great sight lines.) “No, no, it was there,” Pueyo said, gesturing towards the Grindhouse climb. “I was there, and I didn’t see it. I mean, I was trying to pass Amundsen, and so I don’t know.”
In the final, Pellegrino went out like a man possessed. He led the field over the Grindhouse climb. Dropping into the stadium, fast skis let him pull away by a country mile. As they went into the final hairpin corner, the bunch closed, but Pellegrino wasn’t having it. A clear win, topping off a great career.
“Thank you, Lake Placid,” Pellegrino told FIS. “The energy in the warm-up lap before qualification, I stopped in the climb and I got this feeling of power coming from the public, cheering for me — ‘Chicco Pelle!’ — and then in the final I could not wait.”
Of his race, Grahn said, “It was really fun. I’ve worked hard all year for the skate sprint and to get [to the] final and get the podium, it feels very good, and I’m just so happy.”
On his race strategy, Grahn said, “It was all about going first from the beginning and having the first position in the last uphill. And every time I succeeded, and I know that that hill isn’t my best. So sometimes I lost a position or two there, but because I was first in, I have a good place.”
Erik Johansson, SWE, finished sixth in the final. “Huge crowd today. Very fun to race today,” he said. On his race strategy through the heats: “I wanted to be in first position all the time, so I had a whole track for myself.” On the crux corner, he opined, “It was a tough corner, but I thought it was good for us today, so it was not a problem for me.”
Venue transportation
Yesterday, getting to and from the venue was challenging. On this site, a hit piece was published that attacked the organizers and their integrity. I will not link to this odious piece.
Suffice to say, said article implies that the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) took a “let them eat cake” attitude towards transportation to the venue. Simultaneously, I’m impressed by the number of people on social media who magically have become public transit experts.
It’s only right that ORDA get to respond, so I sought out Rebecca Dayton, Vice President of Sport and Events.
“Yesterday wasn’t our best performance,” Dayton said.
“We always have challenges on Fridays,” she said. “Our parking system is, we work really closely and really well with the local schools to provide buses to support our shuttling systems. Unfortunately, Fridays are always a challenge.”
Because Friday is, you know, a school day. Kids have to be transported, and the various school districts are unable to provide as many buses as ORDA would like. In addition, six inches of new snow slowed down the buses that were there.
“We knew [Friday] was always a lighter bus number day than we have for the weekend. We’re really comfortable with where we are with buses for the weekend, and I think the plan will work well,” Dayton said.
“We worked with our security partners and state police to help on the exit in the flow of all of those things,” Dayton said. “The other thing we noticed yesterday is everybody arrived at the event directly from their home base, anxious, sometimes a little bit later than they wanted to get to where they needed to go. And I do think there was some education on all sides. Yesterday, I ran into a bunch of people who still felt like they were just going to drive into van Hoevenberg exactly like they normally would, and park exactly where they always do, whether it’s an Eastern Cup or a carnival race, and have the exact same experience.
“I’m hoping that we correct that today. People have been really graceful, gracious, and we’re thankful this morning, when I talked to them, that there were more buses, and hopefully we can correct the problem for this weekend.”
On Friday, a writer waited 30 minutes for a bus back to the ski jumps. On Saturday, that wait was five minutes. People learn, people adapt.
Racing concludes tomorrow with men’s and women’s 20km skate. Unless something changes overnight, the races will run over five laps of a four-kilometer loop that hasn’t figured in recent races. Stay tuned.
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