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By Angie Kell, Ph.D.

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It stands to reason that peak fitness attained for the 2026 Winter Olympics would again serve a purpose this weekend in Falun, Sweden, as the 2025/2026 World Cup season continued. In today’s first running of a skiathlon, the men’s race and ensuing podium proved that theory to be on point. Of course, injury, illness, and fatigue can shape a start list and its resulting import, challenging this thesis, and it did today in the women’s race — with the most notable names missing being that of Ebba Andersson of Sweden and Norway’s Astrid Øyre Slind.

The latter of these two was off at the Vasaloppet attempting to rebound from her Olympic misfortunes, though Slind had to withdraw from the marathon with a likely injury as her struggles continued.

Even skiers who made it to the start line had to earn their laurels on the course, with the snow hovering around the freezing mark and mix of recent, natural and manmade snow making classic ski choice a challenge for the 10km classic ski portion of the race. Tactics would also become especially important for the skate portion, which featured the brutal Mördarbacken (Swedish for “Murder Hill”) once per lap. Lastly, experience in this discipline cannot be overstated, as changing from classic skis to skate skis requires patience yet also a quick efficiency only attained through practice.

So, the plausible pre-race favorites were truly a short list: Skiathlon gold medalist Frida Karlsson of Sweden, whose appearance in Milano–Cortina can only be described as dominant; Norway’s 34-year-old seasoned veteran and skiathlon bronze medalist, Heidi Weng; and lastly Team USA’s Jessie Diggins, whom commentator Kikkan Randall dubbed “Ms. Falun” owing to her numerous starts at Falun and her success at the venue.

Spoiler alert: You have now seen the podium for today’s women’s skiathlon.

But it was not one that was so easily deciphered in practice as it was on paper: ski fans, we had ourselves a proper ski race. 

At the gun, Diggins, Weng, and Karlsson all took turns at the front to assess what a quick, but manageable tempo would do to the pack. Any gap formed between the frontrunners and the pack would ultimately be erased over three laps of the 3.3km classic loop, though, as it was full of transitions, making it difficult for any breakaway to stick.

After the first of three laps of the classic leg, a group of 20 women led the charge of the 47-person field, with several names in the pack lurking as possible challengers to the overall outcomes. Most worrisome was the Swedish sprinter Linn Svahn (who started deep in the pack with bib 32), a woman with solid distance chops who, if still in contact for a finishing sprint, would likely emerge as the winner. Switzerland’s more than respectable showings at the Olympics also rendered them a threat, with Nadja Kälin and Anja Weber in the pack as well.

Also notable was that Team USA and APU skier Kendall Kramer (starting in bib 45) was also in this large group and seemingly kept Sweden’s Maja Dahlqvist in her sights as a high-level barometer on how her day was shaping up. The skiathlon is a discipline that she has raced once already this season — in Trondheim in December — where she placed 48th, but appeared hungry to improve upon this result. Canada’s Alison Mackie, at just 20 years old, likewise seemed eager to perform well and kept Kramer in her sights early in the race at the front.

The lead group splintered to just seven on the second classic lap and at times swelled to even fewer, owing to both the ebbs of the course and the barbs being traded by Diggins, Weng, and Karlsson. Svahn, Swede Moa Ilar (who currently trails Diggins for second in the overall World Cup contest), and independent athlete Dariya Napryaeva all provided worry for the favorites as part of this pack throughout the remaining final two classic laps.

Going into the transition area where the athletes’ skate skis awaited, Karlsson, Weng, Diggins, and Napryaeva were on equal footing, and six additional athletes were less than three seconds behind them. But Weng and Karlsson proved to be the most efficient at the transition and the pair started quickly on the first of two 5km skate laps to assess the rest of the field’s tolerance for a breakaway. 

Diggins, whose slightly less skillful transition caused a few seconds of loss, never fully lost contact with the group though, and Weng and Karlsson appeared to ease up and opt to conserve energy for the true contest of the skate leg: the Mördarbacken.

Viewers of the Olympics recall Karlsson’s decisive moves on the climbs in both the skiathlon and the 10km skate, and it was with this anticipation that we saw her climb the long, infamous hill cautiously and seemingly with less confidence. The result was that there was no real separation between her, Weng, Nepryaeva, Diggins, Svahn, Ilar, Kälin, and Kristin Austgulen Fosnæs for the full first lap.

The second lap, however, was one for the history books. Immediately, Karlsson pressed on the gas pedal, undoubtedly to remove her teammate Svahn from a finishing duel and to break up the group of eight. It worked, and Svahn was gapped along with Napryaeva. But Weng and Diggins remained alongside Karlsson.

The final climb up the Mördarbacken was indeed murderous, as Weng immediately charged at the bottom to shatter legs and souls. This, too, worked, and the remaining hills found Diggins stumbling over her skis to remain in contact with Weng and Karlsson, clearly depleted of energy and form.

As we’ve seen in many races in recent times, however, one never counts Diggins out, particularly when she can uniquely conserve energy on an ensuing descent. 

In the finishing straight in the stadium, all three athletes were looking doggedly tired for a full out sprint — but this dog fight was precisely what happened. With the trio in a full-on sprint, Karlsson faded first, and Diggins unleashed her full sprinting fury in an attempt to catch Weng. She only barely ran out of real estate to best Weng for the gold, however, as the Norwegian who has spent her career in the shadow of first Marit Bjørgen and then Therese Johaug took her first World Cup win in four years. Weng’s winning time was 54:42.8, with Diggins 0.1 second back on the results sheet. Karlsson took third, 0.9 seconds back of Weng, to round out the podium.

“That was a really cool last race here in Falun,” Diggins said in general comments shared via USSS. “My first thing to say is a huge thank you to our tech team. I don’t know if you could tell from the broadcast, but it was crazy conditions for the classic half. … You could go on zeros, you could go on rub skis, you could go on klister. Everything was kind of working, nothing was perfect; it was a huge guess as to what you should do. It was snowing, then it stopped snowing, then it started again, then it stopped again.

“And it was just really, honestly, quite stressful. And I’m just so grateful for having competitive skis; that makes such a big difference. And it was truly a team effort out there. So huge thanks to the team behind the team.

“For me, I was just trying to ski a gutsy race, trying to stay smart. I just kept telling myself, like, Just try to be there at the finish, and then you can dig deep and just see whatever’s at the bottom of the tank, but you just have to be there. So I pushed myself really hard, and I was psyched that the energy and the fitness is all still there, it’s all good. It was just a really nice feeling to have in the race.”

Behind them, but not that far behind, Kramer crossed the line in ninth, a breakout performance for the 23-year-old from Fairbanks. She had previously finished as high as 18th in a World Cup race, in a 10km skate in Cogne in February 2025. This result soared past that for a new career best. Kramer closed out Olympic medalists Karoline Simpson-Larsen and Maja Dahlqvist over the final lap, plus World Cup podium finisher Nora Sanness, among others, to achieve it. You love to see it.

“It was so enjoyable to feel I was skiing to my potential,” said Kramer to USSS. “Even the top 20 felt like a ceiling for me this year, and today surprised me. I was sticking with girls I thought I’d never be around in my ski career. Everything just went right in a way you can never predict in ski racing because you prepare to do your best every single day, but the stars aligned today. A lot of confidence was gained today and I’ll be chasing the feeling of feeling this good during a race for a while!”

Kramer was followed by Hailey Swirbul in 33rd, Rosie Brennan in 35th, Novie McCabe in 42nd, and Emma Albrecht in 44th.

“I don’t think the mordarbakken is any different than any other climb on the World Cup,” was Swirbul’s clear-eyed take on the most famous feature of the Falun distance course. “It is a good and fair climb!”

Between Swirbul’s recent retirement and the paucity of this race format in general, it had been, well, three or four years since Swirbul had last done a skiathlon. “It was really cool to get to do one again,” she told us. “I never thought I’d have that opportunity.” Swirbul added, looking ahead, “I am on my way home to reset before lake placid. It should be a cool scene!”

Last among the Americans, but certainly not least, Emma Albrecht spoke delightfully candidly when we asked her what she had learned from the day:

“I learned that understanding how your skis will be set up in the exchange area is important,” she wrote to us, “along with knowing how to lap properly and how to enter the different courses. I also learned that skating in classic boots is more difficult than I expected.”

Looking ahead, she said, “I can definitely improve my transition time and potentially get better at skating in classic boots. I believe I paced it well and had a strong double pole.”

Results

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