By Gavin Kentch
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The 2025/2026 World Cup season wrapped up in Lake Placid last Sunday with three days of racing. Nearly 36,000 people showed up, at a venue that, while by all accounts quite lovely, was not exactly centrally located vis-à-vis major American population centers. The weather was also, shall we say, New England-ish. And time after time, athletes told reporters on site that it was the best stop of the season. If any questions remained about whether the U.S. “deserves” more World Cup races after the madness that was Minneapolis in February 2024, this should put them to rest.
I posted 16 articles on this website last week, and remember none of them. It’s been a long season for all of us in the industry. But before you go gently into that good offseason, here are some fine photos from the weekend that was.
These photos were taken by Rylan Hodgson, who is not only a skilled photographer but is also a 2020 New York State high school champion for nordic skiing. (I pulled that one from his bio. You’re welcome, Rylan. He also is like a Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student at UC Boulder and stuff.) You can find him on Instagram here, and his website here.
Rylan took hundreds of photos over the weekend. I asked him for 20ish of his favorites for a gallery. Here they are. Enjoy. Click on any image to enlarge; athlete names are in captions.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing, and then we made it to 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.
