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By Peter Minde
LAKE PLACID — Does the winning ever get old? Is Norway’s water more magical than APU’s water? On a rainy Sunday Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won the 20-kilometer mass start skate at Mount van Hoevenberg, the final men’s race of the 2025/2026 World Cup season. Harold Østberg Amundsen, of Norway, his season-long rival for the distance crystal globe, came second, just 0.8 seconds back. Einar Hedegart, also of Norway, coming to the dark side from biathlon, was third, 2.5 seconds adrift of Klæbo. Most impressive, Klæbo’s winning pace was just under 2:10 per kilometer. An eye-popping pace, considering the conditions.
For the Americans, six from APU and six from elsewhere, Gus Schumacher finished in 20th place following a torrid start. Behind him, Hunter Wonders was 35th, then JC Schoonmaker was 38th, followed by Zanden McMullen in 39th. Ben Dohlby was 44th, Brian Bushey came 47th, Ben Ogden was 52nd, and Zak Ketterson was 55th. Luke Jager was 58th, Michael Earnhart was 62nd, John Steel Hagenbuch was 69th, and Zach Jayne finished 70th.
Today’s race took place on one of the Ho’s homologated four-kilometer loops. I’ve not seen this particular course used before. One first skis up through the omega, as per usual. Instead of heading straight to the A-climb, it detours, parallel to the 1980 stadium, and then winds back to the A-climb. At the end of the reservoir, a hairpin turn has skiers skipping the section with the two hills from the old Ladies 5 km course, going straight to the downhill called Coaster. A more fitting name for Coaster would be The Carousel of Terror, but I digress. From here, one is back on the usual five-kilometer loop. While both the four- and five-kilometer loops feature van Ho’s daunting A-climb, total climb on the 4km loop is 144 meters, compared to 192 meters of climb on the 5km loop.
Going forward, I’ll attempt to refer to some of the corners by the names given by the Ho. Please see the map below.
It was sprinkling as I went through security at the venue this morning. The guard inspecting my bag goes, “I think it’s going to clear up.” I replied, “Don’t jinx us.”
As the men warmed up around noon, in advance of the 12:30 p.m. start, it was raining. Not torrential, but neither was it a mere sprinkle. Enough to make the day interesting; not enough to dissuade spectators. My dude, you jinxed it.
Air temperature was 33 degrees (0.7 Celsius); snow temperature was 31.5 degrees (-0.2 Celsius). Wet packed powder was the order of the day.
Trying to stay dry, athletes ran to the start at the very last minute. The gun went off and Klæbo and Amundsen, bibs one and two, led into the omega. The whole pack stayed tightly together through Florida, crowded like rush hour in midtown Manhattan.
By the reservoir hairpin, the pack strung out some, with Klæbo and his teammates controlling the front of the race. Coming off the first descent from the height of land, Klæbo stood up and relaxed for a moment before everyone dropped into the descent leading to the Grindhouse corner, which I’ve previously referred to as the Fishhook.
The group stayed tight as they skated through a soggy stadium. At the end of the second lap, 1.4 seconds separated the top 10. Gus Schumacher held his own in the lead pack, in 10th place.
On the third lap, Klæbo took the time bonus at the front of a six-Norwegian pack. Schumacher was ninth here. Andreas Fjorden Ree, also of Norway, led over the top of the Grindhouse climb, aka the sprint climb or B-climb.
As they headed into the stadium to complete the third lap, the bunch began to break up. While they might close together on downhills, a group of eight or nine separated itself on uphills. Klæbo rested in second or third place, taking advantage of a draft and protected by his teammates both to the front and the back. Benjamin Moser, AUT, was the first non-Norwegian skier at this point, and Schumacher was hanging tight in seventh, 2.6 seconds back.
At the 13.6-kilometer checkpoint, six, count ’em, six Norwegians controlled the front of the pack. Schumacher had slipped back to thirteenth, 18 seconds off the pace.
The bunch began to break apart as they descended into the stadium. Setting out on the fourth lap, Ree, Amundsen, and Klæbo, all of, well, Norway, had a small gap over the next three skiers. Meanwhile, Britain’s Andrew Musgrave fought his way to the front, into eighth place.
On the last lap, only Italy’s Davide Graz could stick with five Norwegians off the front, as Moser faded. (“Air Norway had one unexpected passenger today 🇮🇹✈️🇳🇴,” Graz would later crack wise on Instagram.) The sextet descended to the Grindhouse/sprint/B-climb corner and set up for the sprint to the finish (it should be noted, some skiers favored an outside line here, while some went inside).
And what were you expecting at this point? Duh, Klæbo drilled it on the climb, with Amundsen close behind. A few meters separated them on the last downhill, and Klæbo won. As he tends to.
In the mixed zone, your correspondent asked Klæbo, are you ever gonna bust a move anywhere before the final climb?
“I don’t know, I just always try to focus on the things where I can get a kind of, use different parts of the tracks to my advantage,” Klæbo said.
Responding to a question about the weather, he said, “We’ll take what we have. And even though the weather is not very good, we still have an amazing crowd. It’s been packed with people, which is cool.”
Would a multi-stop tour across the U.S. and Canada in future World Cup seasons be desirable? Here’s Klæbo’s take: “The best part would be to have a weekend in the U.S. and maybe a weekend in Canada so we can have a couple of more races. I think that worked pretty well a couple of years ago [in February 2024], when we had Canmore first and then went to Minneapolis. So I would like to see if we can do something like that again.”
Caught in the mixed zone and needing dry clothes, Ben Ogden was his normal candid self but wanted to be brief. “It was so brutal,” he said. “I didn’t have the legs to stay with the leaders for too long. But I just enjoyed the last couple laps with all my fans out there. We got thousands of people out here, and it’s pouring rain, 40 degrees, and, like, that’s New England skiing for you. And I couldn’t be prouder to be a part of it.” New York skiing, but we’ll let it slide because Ogden!
“Not my best race, but good to take a last lap here in the World Cup this season,” Gus Schumacher said. “I just wanted to go with the leaders and hopefully pick up some bonus points. I struggled running up the hills. I don’t know if the wetness of the snow changed how my skis are working, but I just got tired by the last big climb.”
Was an inside line better than outside on the crux corner before the Grindhouse climb? Schumacher said, “We’re taking a lot of different lines in that corner. I went both out and in, and I felt like inside was a little more predictable.”
Forget racing for a moment, let’s turn to fuel. On Strava, Andrew Musgrave had complained about the lack of decent coffee in Lake Placid. In his hotel at least.
“Ben Ogden’s uncle has his truck here, and he is making the best coffee I have tasted for a long time, least since I’ve been in Italy,” was Musgrave’s update from the mixed zone today. Cameron Chalmers, Ogden’s uncle, swooped in from southern Vermont on Tuesday. Parking his truck in the wax area, he has spent the past week pulling espressos for ski technicians and athletes.
And that pesky race, interfering with the important stuff? “Oh, I was not hanging on,” Musgrave said. “I was yo-yoing off the back there. And then I got a little bit tired, and I had to make sure I wasn’t getting caught by the guys behind. But I had good skis. It was nice conditions, even though it’s raining. I just, I’m not in the best form of my life, but super good fun, great crowds.
“The course was super nice. It broke up a lot more than I thought it was going to,” Musgrave said.
The mixed zone continued to be friendly, with many more athletes coming through than yesterday. Harold Østberg Amundsen, also of Norway, said, “It was tough conditions, but a nice and tough course with a lot of steep uphills. We had a great team effort, and second place in the end was quite good.”
It’s dang near axiomatic that Klæbo wants to break away on the last big climb. How does one counter that? “I knew that he would try to be fast in the last uphill and I just tried to follow, and I was quite satisfied with my last uphill sprint,” Amundsen recounted. “But he’s difficult to beat in the last 100 meters. I had a good race. And I think, I don’t know if it’s my fourth or fifth second place behind Johannes this year, but yeah, he’s tough.”
“What an amazing crowd and crappy weather,” Zanden McMullen said. “The skis were pretty fast, but I’m definitely wet and cold right now.”
How did the track hold up? “Over 20km, it held up remarkably well,” McMullen said. “The turns are definitely turning into slush, but the uphills are still firm, and that’s definitely nice. Normally, the slushy conditions are slow, but ground speed actually stayed pretty high.”
“This was the first race in quite a while that I felt like I could keep my head in the game,” said fellow APU skier, and South Anchorage High alumnus, Hunter Wonders. “So that was a nice change of pace, and I’m happy to end the season on that note.”
“I knew it was going to go out hot,” said Wonders of the race. His plan coming in was to “and “just try and stay in the pack for as long as I could, but it’s hard if somebody way up ahead of you decides they want to drop anchor and break the gap, or make a gap between you and the leaders, it’s really hard to gain that back. I just wanted to treat it like an interval set and work my way up to the top of the course and then recover, and then work my way up to the top and recover.”
Next up was Elia Barp, one of Italy’s young guns. “It was tough, with the weather conditions,” Barp said. “The snow was okay, pretty fast, but the rain made it difficult to race. I’m happy to finish the season like this. I was always in a good position in the sprint overall. So yeah, and definitely happy with what I did this season.”
What will it be like next year on the Italian team, with Pellegrino retiring? “It’s been amazing. I’m really happy that he finished his career with probably one of the best weekends so far for him. So I’m very happy for him; I’m very happy for the team. I think we proved that we are ready to race without him, not only me, but a few other young guys are ready to try and take victories next year. And yeah, I think he taught us a lot, and we are ready.”
Racing continues next week with — wait, what, the season is over? In that case, bloviation will continue in the near future with a wrap-up story on the first ever World Cup finale in North America. Same bat time, same bat channel. Be there.
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I thought Moser was Austrian.
As skiers finished, it looked like Davies from Great Britain chatted with you after finishing his race. Any insight in what he said? It appeared he tangled up with someone on the sprint finish and took a fall.
If you compare World Cup Protected athletes versus discretion athletes the USA really mixed it up.
Next season starts now!
Good catch regarding Moser. I’m sorry for my error; it’s been a loooong few days. For the British skiers, I spoke with Muzzy and Andrew Young. I didn’t see Davies’s crash.