Welcome to Nordic Insights 2.0. We’re still working out what weekly coverage will look like this season, but I can tell you now that we are sending Peter Minde to 2027 U.S. Nationals in Cable, marking the fifth consecutive year that we will have in-person coverage from the most important domestic races of the season. We truly believe in the value of boots-on-the-ground reporting, but, real talk, I will lose money on this venture. Peter will lose even more money. You should donate here to help cover his travel expenses so that he loses less money. Thank you for consideration, and thank you, as always, for reading.
By Peter Minde
LAKE PLACID — Does the winning ever get old? On a breezy, cloudy Sunday, Tara Geraghty-Moats and Niklas Malacinski repeated their Saturday success, taking the normal hill and 5km/10km race in Lake Placid to claim their second nordic combined national championship in as many days.
In a carbon copy of Saturday’s results, Geraghty-Moats, of the U.S. Nordic Combined National Team, was followed by teammates Alexa Brabec and Annika Malacinski in second and third. For the men, Niklas Malacinski was followed by Erik Lynch, also of the national team, and Henry Johnstone, of Team Olympiaparken.
[Read more: Niklas Malacinski, Tara Geraghty-Moats Win Nordic Combined National Championships in Lake Placid (from yesterday)]
While Sunday’s weather was not as cooperative as last year, at least for the jumping, the weather was nonetheless better than on Friday. It was overcast as jumping got underway. Unlike the last two days, there was no breeze, so jumping proceeded more smoothly.
At the jumping complex, Austin and the Inlaws (“The North Country’s Premier Post-Outlaw Country band”) cranked out classic country music — none of this “Achy Breaky Heart” BS — and kids played in bouncy houses while their parents and elder siblings watched the competition. The ski jumping gizmo meant to tempt little kids to the dark side was sadly absent.
Early in the first round of jumping, the three women podium finishers were separated by just six points.
When it came time for the men, Malacinski, Liam Demong, and Lynch were the early leaders. Seth Rothchild, a junior from Park City Ski and Snowboard, could easily be heard shouting “Yeah!” as he nailed what surely was a personal best.
The higher bib numbers belonged to special jumpers, athletes who would jump today but not ski. Each one seemed bound and determined to go, Oh yeah? You thought you done good? Take that! Each successive athlete uncorked a new distance, leaving a correspondent scrambling to keep his notes straight.
On the subsequent drive to Mount van Hoevenberg for the ski-racing portion of the day, the weather got interesting. The wind freshened. It was brisk enough that it felt colder than the official air temperature of 60 degrees (15.5 celsius). Athletes drifted in from the jumping complex, and a crowd began to grow. In addition to noco parents and siblings, tourists visiting Mount van Ho, because leaf peeping season, came out of the lodge to watch warmups and the race.
Several ski jumping juniors came over to support their noco brethren. During warmup, and after the races, multiple games of hackysack ensued around the stadium. It should be noted that this also occurred on Friday. Jerry, Bob Weir, Phil, and the several deceased Grateful Dead keyboardists would surely be happy.
On Sunday, the Gundersen formula determined the start intervals for the rollerski race. This meant that athletes generally started further apart than they had on Saturday. Both men and women skied the 1,700-meter loop used by the women on Saturday. Three laps for the women today; six for the men.
The women raced first. Geraghty-Moats charged out of the start first, reflecting her strong showing in the jumping portion of the day. Sixteen seconds later, Annika Malacinski set out in pursuit, with Brabec following her close behind. Geraghty-Moats seems to be the strongest skier in the American women’s noco field these days, as witness the 18 seconds she made up in just the first lap of yesterday’s ski race. It was no surprise to see her immediately putting time into her competitors today.
In fourth place on her first lap, Caroline Chor fell hard on the out-and-back section in the parking lot. She finished her first lap, and her race, with road rash and aplomb.
Meanwhile, Brabec bridged up to Annika Malacinski as the two came off the Grindhouse climb. By the end of the second lap, Geraghty-Moats was a full thirty seconds clear of her pursuers. Brabec, meanwhile, pulled 19 seconds ahead of Annika Malacinski. With a fall in the parking lot section Malacinski lost time to Brabec that she was unable to regain. That’s the way it stayed until the finish, with Geraghty-Moats first, Brabec second, and Malacinski third. Chor came fourth, followed by Ella Wilson in fifth and Charlotte Fleming in sixth.
Asked about her preferences between the Gundersen and compact start formats, Annika Malacinski said afterwards, “I think I definitely enjoy a Gundersen more because I feel that it shows the true grit of nordic: that you have to be good at both” jumping and skiing.
I’ve been told that the Gundersen calculation is unfair to those skiing five instead of ten kilometers, a reporter inquired. That the time gaps are huge, too much to make up within the shorter race distance.
“It can be,” Malacinski said. “That’s why we’ve tried to change it up as well with the mass start. That’s also [a format] I like much better than the compact.”
What’s up with the road rash? “You can’t brake with rollerskis very well, and when you’re going down so fast and you have to do a 180-degree turn, it makes it almost impossible. I’m a little bit bummed out because I think that me and Alexa could have really fought for the finish. But you know, it is what it is and you get road rash once in a while when you rollerski.”
Asked about her race, Chor said that she just wanted to hold her position. “It was hard out there today. I took a little tumble, had to get up quickly and keep going, but overall I think it was a good race.”
By the time the men started, the wind got serious, gusting to 20 or 25 mph. Niklas Malacinski went out first, and went out hard. Liam Demong and Erik Lynch followed. Malacinski opened a gap over his pursuers. Behind him, a deer decided to cross the omega, ten feet in front of Demong and Lynch. All escaped unscathed. Shades of Kincaid Park in Anchorage.
[Read more: A national championship ski race was set for Kincaid Park. Then the moose showed up. (by Nat Herz, January 2025]
Things got crowded the third time up the Grindhouse climb, as Malacinski and Lynch worked their way through the back of the group. A couple of the younger junior boys looked fried here. Having negotiated that hill five times the day before, can you blame them?
On the face of it, the detour into the parking lot seems benign enough. It’s a parking lot; it’s flat. Sure, there’s a tight 180-degree right turn at the end, but how bad can it be? Except that one comes into it having just descended the forbidding Grindhouse downhill, where Finn Bailey hit 35mph a few years back. As one approaches the range, the hill levels out some, but you’re still carrying plenty of speed. (It should be noted that junior lugers train on this stretch in the summer.) Ordinarily, one turns right, and uphill, into the range. Today, racers turned left, downhill. Still hauling astronaut.
Everyone checked speed before stepping lively around the V-boards. The top athletes left it until late, snowplowing hard about 20 meters from the corner (take “snowplowing” here in the rollerskiing sense of the term, more so than the strict on-snow sense). Others snowplowed earlier, and ya can’t blame them. This corner had eaten up both Chor, and later, Annika Malacinski.
At the end, Niklas Malacinski took another convincing win, ahead of Erik Lynch. Henry Johnstone came in a hard-fought third, several seconds back.
At the finish, a writer asked Niklas Malacinski, does the winning ever get old?
“I don’t think it could,” Malacinski said. “It’s just nice to see the hard work paying off.”
On the paradox of holding a winter sport’s national championship in dryland season, Malacinski said, “Absolutely, but I think this is a great compromise. Everyone understands that this isn’t quite peak performance. This is one of the only ways to truly get more senior athletes, national team athletes together with the juniors, and I think that’s more important than peak performance.”
Erik Lynch didn’t feel fully recovered from yesterday’s hard effort. “Today was extra hard,” he said. After all, they raced 2.5 km further on a different course. “We had a change in the course with this scary downhill corner over there. Everything was just more hardcore and more tiring, but really fun. It was really good chasing Niklas this whole time. And I think we pushed each other super hard.”
“That was fun. It was a really hard course,” echoed third-place finisher Henry Johnstone. “I was happy I that had a little bit better jump than yesterday. So I was starting a little further up, but still just out of touch of Eric Lynch and Niklas Malacinski. I tried to put time into them. I cut some time off, but not enough to do better than third, but I’m happy.”
On Gundersen versus the compact format, Johnstone said, “I’m a stronger nordic racer than I am a jumper. So the compact gives me an advantage. Just because it condenses our time, so it’s a more competitive cross-country race.”
How was that hairpin turn? “That was sketchy,” Johnstone said. “You had to be careful. Had to scrub some speed, otherwise you’re going off the track.”
What about Demong’s encounter with Bambi? [see the opening seconds of this video for more; shoutout Liam Demong for the raw action footage]
“I started the race with my friend Erik Lynch. Coming around the first lap, we had a deer run up on us and then cross the trail in front of us. So it was pretty cool.”
Of his race, Demong said, “My first goal was to ski with Erik, but it was a bit much, so I skied my own race. I came in fourth, so I was pretty happy.”
As for the deer? They get a little crazy during rutting season. They’re active at dawn and around dusk, and the races were in late afternoon.
Meanwhile, Nordic Insights caught up with Stephanie Wilson. Not only is she a board member of Nordic Combined, she’s also a principal of the Velocity Ski League [see yesterday’s article for more on the VSL]. How did the league come about?
“The concept came about a year-and-a-half, two years ago,” Wilson said. “A friend of mine that I’d known years ago, who I’d reached out to about some stuff for Nordic Combined USA — it turned out he’d been involved with creating the TGL golf league.
“So he heard the situation we’re in and came to me and said, ‘There’s a way you can save your sport that’s bigger than just what you’re doing with Nordic Combined USA,’ and proceeded to lay out this whole concept.” Wilson subsequently called him to learn more.
That led to assembling a team of people with varying skill sets, and taking a long view to develop the league.
“There’s a lot of things that have to happen,” Wilson said. “The biggest one being some fundraising.” VSL are discussing fundraising with various investors. They’ve also discussed potential race formats with athletes.
As nordic combined, both men and women, fight to regain their rightful place at the Olympic table, the new, single-venue race format looks tantalizing. Stay tuned come February, when this same venue will host one day of VSL racing alongside two days of official Nordic Combined World Cup racing. This reporter will be on scene for all the action.
Results (please note that these only list the jumping portion of the event)
Video from the rollerski portion of the normal hill championships. First segment, featuring Bambi, by kind courtesy of Liam Demong. Remainder from yours truly.
