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Late May News Dump: Quick Hits from All Over
By Gavin Kentch
It is May. I am home with my kids. I don’t have time for a full treatment of various news stories, apparently. Here are some quick-hit news items from all over:
Ben and Gus to get signature IDT models
Rollerski manufacturer IDT will be trotting out signature models for Ben Ogden and Gus Schumacher later this year, industry sources tell me. The only other athlete who currently has a flagship ski with IDT is some rando named Johannes Høsflot Klæbo. Congrats to the boys; you love to see it.
Mentioning Ogden, Schumacher, and Klæbo in the same paragraph is more than enough of an opening for me to share the following priceless mixed-zone exchange from February, which was on the record following the Olympics team sprint but somehow never made it into an article in the midst of a very full fortnight of reporting:
What did you talk about with Klæbo before you guys got up on the podium?
Ogden: “Oh, what were we talking about?”
Schumacher: “Probably some bullshit.”
Ogden: “I was giving them some shit for the fact that they have the least cool podium outfits. And then he said, How many golds do you have? And I was like, Well, that’s a good point. But they still have the least cool podium outfits. There can be no denying that.”
Scene.
USSS hires first of two new World Cup wax techs
In April, USSS program director Chris Grover announced that the team was hiring for two new World Cup Wax/Ski Technicians to fill spots previously held by longtime staffers Per-Erik Bjørnstad and Chris Hecker. One of these jobs is going to Simen Finjord, a 22-year-old Norwegian wunderkind from Alta (Norway, not Utah) previously employed by Team Aker Dæhlie. (The recent implosion of the coaching staff at Aker Dæhlie deserves more attention than this parenthetical can provide.)
Finjord shared the following post to his personal Instagram on May 5:
“After two fantastic years in Team Aker Dæhlie, the time has come for new adventures,” he wrote, per an auto-translation. “Thanks for the ride guys. And thank you for believing in me💙🧡 Now the trip continues to new challenges in the U.S. Ski Team 🇺🇸”
The following day, langrenn.com had a longer piece on the news (paywalled, sorry).
“I will be the main responsible for gliding in the U.S. national cross-country team, as well as personal responsibility for the ski [fleet] of two of the runners on the team,” Finjord told that outlet, again per an auto-translation. The identity of his two athletes was not established yet, he said.
Team Birkie hires new High Performance Coach
Sticking with coaching news: Team Birkie has named Randy Gibbs as their new High Performance Coach and Race Service Director, per a Tuesday press release. Gibbs takes over this coaching role from another boldface Midwestern name, Chad Salmela.
Jake Stiele continues as head coach for the program, with Julie Ensrud as managing director and Jake Brown as coach of the college team.
“Gibbs brings deep Minnesota Nordic roots and one of the most accomplished ski service and coaching resumes in American Nordic skiing history to a program that has rapidly grown into one of the most competitive professional Nordic ski teams in North America,” the press release informs us.
Gibbs was Head of Glide for the U.S. team at the 2010 and 2014 Olympics, per the press release. According to his LinkedIn page, Gibbs did seasonal coaching work for Ski and Snowboard Australia from 2015 through January 2022, then worked in communications for much of the last four years. He was also on the service team for Far West at 2026 JNs, and, per the press release, on ski service for Team Birkie at 2026 Spring Series.
U.S. Ski Team to have June Camp in Norway, not May Camp in Bend
The national team is trading its traditional May Camp, in Bend, for a Norwegian swing, in June, this year, owing to horrid snow conditions across much of the Mountain West this past winter.
“The new season will kick off in June with a two-week training camp in Norway in collaboration with the U.S. Ski Team,” wrote SMS head coach Colin Rodgers in a recent email to team supporters. “Our time will be split between dryland training in Sjusjøen and on-snow training on Sognefjellet. While we missed our usual May camp in Bend, OR due to lack of snow in the West, we’re excited for the opportunity to log quality ski training in Norway and to test new skis and grind patterns on snow.”
The alpine portion of Mount Bachelor closed this season on April 19, more than a month earlier than 2025’s closing date of May 26. The nordic center also closed on April 19. This native-advertising piece from… another outlet, entitled, unfortunately, “Great Skiing in June? It’s Real, and Mt. Bachelor Has Your Ticket,” continues to age poorly.
Fairbanks mood shot, November 2025. Not actually the venue — this is from the UAF trails, not from Birch Hill — but check out that color palette. I like Fairbanks. (photo: Gavin Kentch) Alaska on track to host both Junior Nationals and Spring Series next year
The end of the 2026/2027 season will tentatively feature spring skiing in The Last Frontier, for both junior and senior athletes, per decisions made at USSS Spring Congress earlier this month.
2027 Junior Nationals will be held in Anchorage, tentatively from March 11 to 15 (four races in five days: 7.5km interval-start classic, skate sprint, 5/10/15km mass start skate, classic mixed relay), according to the current version of the U.S. skiing vertical calendar.
This was to be the Mountain/Far West’s turn in the five-year rotation for JNs hosting, with Auburn Ski Club set to host. However, ASC subsequently withdrew their bid due to “organizational restructuring” on their end, per a USSS spreadsheet. Anchorage then volunteered to move up one year in the hosting rotation to give the region time to regroup.
Alaska was previously in line to host in 2028. Their next hosting spot on the schedule, in 2033, remains unchanged. Look for, presumptively, Mountain/Far West to host JNs in 2028 instead of in 2027 (cite: a bid from Royal Gorge for 2028 was accepted by the Sport Committee), then a return to the normal rotation: East in 2029, Mountain/Far West in 2030, Central in 2031, Mountain/Far West in 2032, then back to Alaska again in 2033. I am pulling from this spreadsheet when I prognosticate all this, btw.
A few weeks later, high-level racing is slated to return to the state, this time to the Golden Heart City. Fairbanks is currently scheduled to host Spring Series, featuring three races in three days, on April 2–4, 2027. There will be an individual skate sprint, a team classic sprint, and a 40km mass start classic. All three races should be national championships, per my reading of the season’s race schedule.
Fairbanks last hosted Spring Series in March 2017. Before then, Anchorage hosted in March 2014.
40 kilometers, classic, at Birch Hill, at the end of a long season. Gods help us. At least it should be hardwax skiing.
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Fourteenth State of Mind: Catching up with SMS T2
By Peter Minde
STRATTON, Vermont — Having met the new kids on the block at Mansfield Pro Nordic not quite a year ago, another spring road trip to visit Vermont-based professional ski clubs seemed in order. Gavin and I have discussed the inefficiency of driving 150 miles one way, on back roads, to an interview, instead of picking up the phone and dialing. But I’ll be housebound from the end of May for a while after the other knee gets replaced; I need to get out.
Colin Rodgers, SMS T2 program director and head coach, kindly consented to an interview. I wrangled a pet sitter, gassed up the shooting brake (an extremely fancy way of saying station wagon), and absquatulated up to Stratton. On a blazing, bright Monday morning in early May, I drove past the Stratton alpine hill to meet Rodgers at Stratton Mountain School.
SMS began in 1972 as the brainchild of Warren Hellman and Donald Tarinelli. They wanted a milieu where their children could get an education while also preparing for top-level alpine skiing. Initially, parents provided housing, until the school moved into the defunct Hotel Tyrol at Stratton’s base. (For those reading this from outside the northeast, ersatz Swiss chalet/alpine architectural motifs dominated Vermont resort architecture in the 1960s.) In a casually sexist article from just a few years earlier, the New York Times recommended Hotel Tyrol as “fine for singles with a bit of money.” While the story focuses on alpine, it’s an interesting read into the gestalt of the ski scene 56 years ago. No paywall.
Bromley Mountain, viewed from one of Stratton’s alpine slopes, May 2026 (photo: Peter Minde) To this day, Manchester, Vermont, downhill from Stratton and the other alpine and nordic ski centers, remains affluent, as the 1970 Times author observed. Unfortunately, in Vermont’s bougiest town, a good espresso is hard to come by. Adding insult to injury, it was served in a paper cup. In the name of all that’s holy, please do better. (The astute reader will observe a Boomer correspondent desperately trying to remain relevant, writing “bougie” instead of the archaic “swanky.”) [You really ate with this one. –Ed.]
It is unknown how Hotel Tyrol went from swingers’ magnet to insolvency, but it served the growing ski academy for over 20 years. In 1999, SMS opened an actual campus in the same area, replete with dormitories, dining hall, classrooms, and faculty offices.
The cross-country skiing pro team came along in 2012, under the school’s auspices, and quickly became one of the country’s powerhouse teams. This historic article on the club’s founding, from May 2012, is entitled, “With Elite Team, Stratton Aims To Create ‘Hotbed of Skiing’ in Southern Vermont.” Hindsight is 20/20, but this seems to have worked out pretty well.
The team was initially coached by Gus Kaeding, alongside SMS lifer Sverre Caldwell. It was later helmed by Pat O’Brien (2014–2022), Perry Thomas and Maria Stuber (2022–2024), then just Stuber (2024–2025). Rodgers was announced as head coach in April 2025.
Matt Boobar, SMS’s nordic program director, arrived to accompany Rodgers and a reporter on a tour of the school. The strength training rooms alone are impressive, and include an indoor ramp for the freestyle skiers to practice aerial moves, using skis and snowboards equipped with inline skate wheels. The school even has its own physical therapy office. There’s a 10-kilometer nordic trail system, and if students need a change of scenery, Wild Wings and VIking are right up the road.
Afterwards, Rodgers, Boobar, and I sat down in a conference room to chat. Sunlight streamed into the window behind Rodgers, lighting up the room and framing Rodgers in silhouette. The following conversation is lightly edited for clarity
Like Mansfield Nordic to the north, SMS T2 welcomes college skiers to train over the summer.
“We’ve had a summer training group of college athletes for years,” Rodgers said. “It’s an NCAA training program for the summer, and the athletes are able to train with some of the very best in the world. When you’ve got athletes like Ben and Jessie and Julia around, it’s an inspiring place to be training out of. There’s some serious draw to training with these athletes.”
Although he moved to SMS T2 from Green Mountain Valley School, a high school ski academy located in Waitsfield, Rodgers has prior experience coaching at the elite level. From 2012 to 2016, he was the head coach for the SVSEF Gold Team, working with athletes like Mikey Sinnott, Miles Havlick, and Chelsea Holmes (also, briefly, Simi Hamilton, before the sprinter headed east to join what was at the time the new program at… SMS).
Rémi Drolet, right, high-fiving Petter Northug, Canmore, 2016 (photo: Peggy Hung) “I was coaching elite, older athletes” at Sun Valley, Rodgers said. “Last year, I transitioned back into that role. Obviously, I had Ben, Jessie, Julia, Rémi [Drolet], who were athletes that were all very competitive at the highest level, in the World Cup. We had high-level athletes when I was on the Gold Team too, but we didn’t have overall World Cup winners. I think the foundation of what we’re doing day in and day out, is not all that different” from what they were doing at Sun Valley ten years ago.
Moving to SMS T2, Rodgers said, gave him the chance to learn not only from the athletes, but also from other coaches. “It was great to work with Jason [Cork],” Rodgers said. “He’s been here, working with the T2 program in the summertime now for, I think, 12 or 13 years.”
On Jessie Diggins’s retirement, Rodgers said, “Jessie will leave a huge hole for sure, but there’s really strong athletes that are coming up right behind. She’s paved the way for a good future. The men’s team is right there, and you got athletes like Julia right there, and, yeah, we’ll fill the void.”
“I’ve been here since the inception of the elite team,” Boobar said. “Of course, [there’s] a huge hole in Diggins leaving, but it’s also a massive opportunity to rethink how people want to approach things.”
How do you mean?
“Diggins had her way of training, which worked really well for her,” Boobar continued. “Are there other ways to look at programming that maybe no one thought of? Because people were kind of keying off what was clearly highly successful training” for Diggins.
Julia Kern at the 2026 Winter Olympics (photo: Anna Engel) Rodgers pointed out that Ben Ogden and Julia Kern also had custom-tailored training plans. “I think the reason that this team has been so successful, it’s the program and the community that’s created around the team and the support network,” Rodgers said. He credited both Matt Boobar and longtime SMS coach Sverre Caldwell with building a culture of excellence.
“And it’s not only about the skiing, but it’s also the balance between how we can connect with the next generation of skiers coming up and junior development and inspiring the next generation. I think that that’s a huge part of what we do here, and it’s also one of the reasons why we’re looked at in such a positive light. When Jessie, Ben, Julia, and Rémi go on the road, they’re trying to be at their very best athletically, but they’re also connecting with the local communities around them.”
When one looks at clubs like the Green Racing Project or APU, one sees rosters of twenty or more athletes (some on GRP are biathletes). Is there a conscious decision to keep SMS T2 smaller?
“We’re trying to give every athlete the opportunity to get really world-class training and support,” Rodgers said. “We can only afford to support so many athletes at that level.”
Rodgers said that the elite skiers receive financial support from a nonprofit called World Cup Dreams Foundation, whose mission is “empowering America’s top snowsport athletes.” The T2 Foundation and World Cup Dreams Foundation merged in 2021, though T2 is still mentioned in the full name of the club.
“I think a key part is the mission, right?” Boobar said. “‘International excellence, local inspiration.’ That’s your mission.”
Boobar stressed Sverre Caldwell’s vision: to get post-college athletes to the World Cup. “We want to be a stepping stool, not a parking lot, as far as keeping people on [the] SuperTour indefinitely.”
In this scheme, the core group is keyed into international competition. The goal of the summer program is to prepare younger, college athletes for the SuperTour and, hopefully, for international competition. “The goal isn’t to be on the SuperTour for five years, and maybe not quite making that jump,” Boobar said. “That’s definitely how I interpreted it from Sverre.”
Boobar also credited collaboration with other coaches for SMS’s success, citing, for example, Patrick Weaver (head nordic coach at UVM), Kristen Bourne (USST), and Cork as coaches who had helped them to effectively manage individual training plans for multiple athletes. “How do we keep it as a team workout as much as we can, but also meeting individual needs, which is probably the biggest challenge being an elite coach, versus what I do in high school coaching,” Boobar said.
SMS T2 and APU are the two dominant U.S. ski clubs these days, and have been for years now; 2026 marked the first time that any club other than SMS or APU won the mixed relay at Spring Series, an event first held in 2014, and SMS and APU perennially claim an outsized share of USST athletes. Between SMS and APU, one of those teams is based in a place where winter lasts longer than just about anywhere else on the continent. Does the amount of on-snow time that APU skiers get give them an advantage?
“A lot of Alaskans are coming into Ruka [Period 1] super prepared, because they’ve been skiing on snow for a few weeks prior to getting over to Finland,” Rodgers said. “So that’s an advantage for sure, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be competitive.”
“It levels out after the first few weeks of the World Cup, that on-snow advantage,” Boobar added.
Ben Ogden, Lake Placid World Cup Finals, March 2026 (photo: @rylanhphoto) And now, the nitty gritty, the secret sauce. Have training plans evolved, have you had an aha moment with a breakthrough, magical workout? Or is it all just gradual evolution from one year to the next?
According to Rodgers, it really is all just about the fundamentals. Lots of hours in level one. Add in intervals and speed work. Also strength. Cultivate mental toughness. The only secret is that there is no secret, as they say.
“You’re not really doing too many things that are all that high level, super fancy, cutting edge,” Rodgers said. “You hear about athletes that are trying to do new things, and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. But the gist of what basic training philosophy is is, you have to train hard. It takes years and years and years of hard training. That’s why the best athletes are generally older.”
Those who become superstars at a younger age (looking at you, Klæbo), may have had guidance from exceptional teachers or coaches as kids.
“I think we’re fortunate right now to have great teachers, folks that have taught us a lot as coaches that are our peers and a little bit older than us,” Rodgers said. “Stratton has a huge tradition of really good skiers and people that are very knowledgeable. You think back to Bill Koch, John Caldwell, Mike Gallagher, folks that are hugely inspirational for U.S. cross-country skiing. I mean, they’re all from right around here.”
Should a young skier go to college and get NCAA starts, or go straight into full-time training?
“The [U.S.] Ski Team has flip flopped on that 1,000 percent, way back when Sophie [Caldwell] was coming up,” Boobar said. “She was in Dartmouth and was a little bit behind the curve on national team stuff. Maybe, like eight years ago, they realized the value of trying to use college as a development tool because of the level of support they get. There’s no financial commitment, really, to college, so they’re trying to balance that.”
(For a deep dive on this enduring question, particularly a look at how, as Boobar notes, the pendulum has completely swung within a generation, compare these two articles by Nat Herz: this one, from 2009, on the perception that NCAA skiing was not the best stepping stone for international success, and this one, from 2022, in which Matt Whitcomb says that an approach to development that did not welcome NCAA skiing was “an error.”)
What about the depth of the American ski pool. What are the limiting steps?
“I think a little bit is talent ID,” Boobar said. “We have so many bigger sports in the U.S., and only, what, a third of the country [skis], or really less than that.”
Within that smaller group, kids that might have become standout skiers may gravitate to other sports. Durango native Sepp Kuss’s father coached the U.S. Ski Team from 1963 to 1972; his mother taught nordic skiing. But he chose bike racing. Currently, he’s 19th overall in the Giro d’Italia, riding with Team Visma–Lease a Bike. In 2023, he won the Vuelta a España. Courtney Dauwalter won state high school skiing championships in Minnesota and attended the University of Denver on a ski scholarship. Instead of continuing to ski, she chose ultrarunning, where her palmarès include wins at Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, Hardrock (clockwise course record), and Western States (course record). Scott Jurek, a Duluth native who ski raced in high school, turned to running instead, winning Western States seven times in a row. What kind of skiers would they have been?
In that vein, would having an additional top-level club or two in this country increase the talent pool of American cross-country skiing?
“I think it’s nice to have fewer clubs that are executing at the highest level, versus more clubs that aren’t able to execute at the highest level,” Rodgers said. “If you really want to get the most out of each athlete, it’s best to have the programs that can really support the athletes to get to where they really want to get to and reach their ultimate goals.”
Finally, what else should people know that wasn’t asked about here?
“One of the reasons this program is so successful, we’re really true to our roots,” Rodgers said. “Matt mentioned our mission. It’s so simple: international success and local inspiration. It’s a great program to be a part of.”
Currently on the SMS roster: Elite Team: Haley Brewster, Rémi Drolet, Zach Jayne, Julia Kern, and Ben Ogden; Development Team: Fin Bailey, Tabor Greenberg, and Jack Lange; NCAA summer training group: Micah Bruner, Finn Christiansen, Nathan Doughty, Joe Graziadei, Miles Miner, and Luke Rizio.
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Kappa Caput: R.I.P. Kappa®, the Official Technical Apparel Partner of U.S. Ski & Snowboard, 2022–2026
By Gavin Kentch
This is a reader-funded website. Virtually all of my income (for perspective: I took home less than $5,000 from Nordic Insights last year after paying staff) comes from reader contributions, which I sincerely appreciate. If you would like to support the site, including helping us pay off our final bills from Olympics travel, you may do so here. Thank you.
The national team’s move from Kappa to The North Face for uniforms and apparel is not only a chance to wonder what happened behind the scenes to make what was originally announced as a ten-year sponsorship deal come to an end after just four. It is also, like any moment of transition, a chance to take stock of what we have gained and what we have lost.
In corporate-speak, we have, I regret to inform you, lost a collaboration that wasn’t just “an honor and a testament to the credibility Kappa has built over time,” but that further “reinforce[d Kappa’s] long-term vision of working side by side with athletes and federations to develop authentic, performance-driven products born from real sporting experience.” (Will we nonetheless soon stand poised to gain increased synergies from vertical integration with a leader in the outdoor exploration space that has for sixty years now outfitted expeditions that inspire us to test the outer limits of performance and possibility? Stay tuned!)
Update: I wrote that paragraph earlier this week, before the official announcement from USSS came out on Tuesday. We did indeed learn at that time that “The North Face is synonymous with innovation, performance and a deep respect for the mountains, which are values that align perfectly with U.S. Ski & Snowboard,” per USSS president Sophie Goldschmidt. Is USSS “proud to partner with a brand that shares our commitment to excellence, athlete-driven innovation and pushing the limits of what’s possible”? You know it.
From a purely aesthetic perspective, meanwhile, what did the Kappa era look like for the cross-country team? Let’s remember some dyes.
2022–2023: The pajamas
(photo: screenshot from broadcast) Ben Ogden, left, and JC Schoonmaker, right, stun as they strut their sprint stuff in this shot from early December 2022. There are stars across the entire front of the suit, giving way to stripes on the lower right and upper left arm. An American flag, on the lower left leg, is the only real pop of color here. Sponsors on the arms are just USANA, the Salt Lake City–based multi-level marketing company that you may recognize from the USANA Center of Excellence powered by iFIT (viz., USSS headquarters in Park City), and then a Kappa logo on each shoulder. The left quad appears to feature Xfinity, which is basically Comcast but maybe not quite so widely reviled. Maybe they will have live coverage of World Cup Finals in Lake Placid! (Too soon?)
Ben and JC: Top-ten in the Lillehammer skate sprint, first in our hearts.
Haley Brewster (photo: Graeme Williams/@oneskatephotos) Additional view: Haley Brewster races at World Juniors in Whistler in January 2023. Possibly the only time in the past decade that athletes competing at this venue (a) raced on hardwax or (b) wore what appears to me to be the Toko Polar Race Glove. (I got a sunburn early in race week, because everyone had told me not to bother packing sunscreen for Whistler lol.) From this angle you can really see how extensively the stars spread across much of the suit, plus the additional logos on the outside of the right quad (Visa, Toyota, and a notably large Kappa brandmark).
2023–2024: Good ombré
Novie McCabe during the Stifel Loppet Cup 10km freestyle individual start at Theodore Wirth Park on February 18, 2024 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (photo: @dustinsatloff // @usskiteam) So, personally speaking, I loved these suits. There were no stars per se. There were no stripes. Just a melding of blue, pink, white, and red, working surprisingly well together in a colorful whole. I’m not sure what the concept pitch for this was, or how it got approved, but I love the result. It’s bright. It’s fresh. It, dare I say, pops. It is a great deal more vibrant than the somber pajamas of the season before. I am a fan.
Sponsor watch: The same Visa–Toyota–Kappa trifecta on the right quad. Stifel replaces Xfinity on the top of the left quad. USSS media asked me to start referring to the squad as the Stifel Cross-Country Team around this time; I politely declined, because I bow to no brand. (Except for Runners’ Edge Alaska, which is, financially speaking, the reason that years three and four of this site happened; thanks, Zuzana et al.) Looks like USANA still on the upper right arm, and now another “Stifel” on the upper left.
2024–2025: Back to stars, including some problematic ones
The American men train in Toblach, Tour de Ski, December 2024 (photo: Leann Bentley) After the blank verse that was 2023–2024, we return here to strictly metered vexillological rhythm. This suit has some STARS, and it is going to tell you about them. There are stars down the right leg. There are stars down the left leg. There are stars on the left arm. There are stars on the right arm. There are suggestions of stripes on both forearms, but really just the stars predominate.
(As an aside, Jack Young, foreground of the above photo from the iconic Toblach stadium roof, and Gus Schumacher, back right, are both wearing Toko gloves, in red, white, and blue and red and white, respectively. They nicely align with, if not fully accentuate, the red and white stripes from the forearms. I am 99 percent certain that the other two athletes in this shot, Schoonmaker and Ogden, are also wearing Toko gloves, but they seem to be the standard black colorway.)
The stars here stop in the front middle of the suit, fading to a solid blue. They did, however, continue up the legs on the back of the suit, extending to, well, up to and onto the athlete’s butt.
One prominent American skier blacked out the stars on the rear of their suit, seemingly with a black Sharpie, for the entirety of the 2024–2025 season. I assume they did so for some or all of aesthetics, modesty, or just general feel.
I got so. many. questions from readers about this; like, folks were really curious why there were no stars on [redacted]’s butt. I had intentions of covering this story after the first dozen or so reader questions, even going so far as to ask the athlete in question for comment (I got back a polite “no comment”), but ultimately forebore since I really couldn’t write about this without implicity encouraging readers to zoom in on [redacted]’s butt, and that felt not great. Plus the no comment, while polite, was telling. In conclusion, designers should maybe include athletes earlier in the ideation process? And/or just show them a mockup at some point and ask them if they would be okay having stars on their ass?
Sponsor watch: A lot of Stifel and Kappa, not too much else. Based on other photos that I reviewed for this important and hard-hitting article but don’t have rights for to readily embed, the suit had, in toto, two Stifel and three Kappa logos. In addition to those, the right quad said USANA; the right arm, Visa and Toyota. The other arm had ads for Cloudflare (an IT company) on the left bicep, and something called Easy Green on the outside of the left forearm. Easy Green is, apparently, an internal USSS sustainability initiative; the fact that I am a massive dork about this stuff and am only now just learning this — I thought it was a fertilizer company! — feels telling, and not in a good way. Though tbf maybe it is my brand awareness that is lacking here.
Bonus: 2025 World Championships: melting ice
Jessie Diggins, Trondheim, February 2025 (photo: Leann Bentley) Keeping with sustainability concerns, 2025 World Championships, held in a very rainy Trondheim, featured a custom kit designed to evoke melting glaciers. The alpine team had previously raced with a similar version of this suit at their 2023 world champs.
“In addition to the team partner logos traditionally on athlete race suits,” USSS wrote at the time, “the World Championship suit also showcases the POW logo, a key partner of U.S. Ski & Snowboard in the fight against a warming climate, and the Easy Green logo.” Awkwardly, the logo is on the collar, and is covered by an athlete’s bib in basically every single photo that I have from these championships. You can see a trace of a suggestion of it on the right side of Kate Oldham’s neck in this zoomed-in shot (yes I know that this is a horrible photo sorry).
Kate Oldham detail, Trondheim world champs (photo: Leann Bentley) Sponsors for this race suit, “designed to bring attention to climate change,” included the notably climate-forward companies Toyota and United Airlines. Other sponsors were Visa, Cloudflare, USANA, and Easy Green. And, of course, Stifel.
2025–2026: Back to stripes for the final year of Kappa, plus the U.S. Army entered the picture, because America
Rosie Brennan, left, and Kristen Bourne, women’s 10km classic, Lake Placid World Cup Finals, March 2026 (photo: @rylanhphoto) Kappa went out with the most flag-like iteration of their Olympic quadrennial worth of kit. There are stripes on both lower legs, large ones. There are stripes on the left forearm, but not on the right forearm unless I have really missed something. There are stars, but fairly large ones, in a pleasing array of sizes. We have both a U.S. flag per se on the left quad, and “USA” below that over the left knee. A not-small Stifel logo is between them, because Stifel really loves America or some such. I am a big fan of the small caps in their logo.
On the one hand, this suit does not try to do too much. On the other hand, it does it well. It is red. It is white. It is blue. There are stars. There are stripes. There are, notably, no stars on the butt, nor indeed anywhere north of the back of the left knee, as per this photo of the skate train from the men’s 20km in Lake Placid:
men’s 20km skate train, Lake Placid World Cup Finals, March 2026 (photo: @rylanhphoto) Sponsors? A few new ones here: on the right arm, Dunkin’, née Dunkin’ Donuts, and our friends at the National Nordic Foundation, or NNF. On the left arm, iCapital, a relatively young fintech company. They are joined by stalwarts Visa and Toyota, on the right arm, and Cloudflare, on the left. Plus another Stifel logo or two, and that large Kappa brandmark above the right knee. Happy trails to Easy Green, at least at the level of claiming uniform space.
From left, Jessie Diggins, Luci Anderson (Team Birkie), and Alayna Sonnesyn (Team Birkie), Toblach, Tour de Ski stage one, December 2025 (photo: Leann Bentley, USSS) The 2025–2026 season also saw USSS announce the U.S. Army as the organization’s “official armed forces partner,” which manifested in part as athletes “don[ning] an Army/10th Mountain Division patch on team outerwear” and the Army “investing in the U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s athlete influencer program.” You can see the patch on Jessie Diggins’s jacket in the above shot.
In non–ski race news during the 2025–2026 season, representatives of this same U.S. Army (Delta Force and 160th SOAR(A)) joined other branches of the United States Armed Forces to kidnap the sitting head of state of another country and extradite him to Brooklyn, followed by their Commander in Chief announcing hours later that the U.S. would take over and run that country’s oil infrastructure. “We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive, and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations,” President Trump said. “And they stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country.”
I would say something snarky here about the Americans proceeding to compete in Italy under their own flag just a month later while the few Russians in attendance had to compete as neutral athletes, but hey, the Olympics are not political, so what do I know.
Speaking of which:
Olympics bonus: The 1984 L.A. Olympics come to Val di Fiemme
I previously wrote about the suits designed for the 2026 Winter Olympics here, at some length:
“A key source of inspiration,” the relevant USSS press release told us at the time, “comes from the iconic design of Team USA uniforms at the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games. Distinctive elements recalling the LA ’84 aesthetic include the star band inspired by the American flag and the bold ‘USA’ lettering, which appear across the collection as signature design features.”
(1984 and 2026: What are, two Olympics at which Russia did not compete. But hey, the Games are, again, apolitical, and probably I should keep politics out of sport here. Lord knows that the two never mix in real life.)
I liked these suits on-screen at the time they were unveiled. I liked them even more in the flesh after two weeks spent standing courseside at the venue and trying to pick the Americans out of the pack. Indeed, I just installed a large print of this photo:
Gus exults (photo: Anna Engel) in a position of honor above my SkiErg, so personally speaking it is a suit that I don’t mind looking at. Shoutout my good friend Anna Engel for crushing photography duties all Olympics long.
And because you can’t have one without the other, here is the other American male who medaled at these Games (yes Jessie Diggins also medaled, but I sort of feel like she got enough Olympics exposure already tbh):
Ben Ogden with flag (photo: Anna Engel) In conclusion, Kappa is dead. Long live Kappa.
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.
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Job Posting: Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks Seeks Head Coach for Junior Program
The following job posting is from the fine folks at Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks. While the rest of their job listing is obviously posted verbatim, I will editorialize only that I have trained and raced broadly in this country, and that Birch Hill, their home venue, is my favorite place in the country to ski race. Fwiw. Here’s NSCF:
The Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks (NSCF) seeks an energetic and enthusiastic head coach to lead its Fairbanks Cross Country (FXC) junior racing and training program.
Position details:
- Salary: $45,000 to $59,000 DOE
- Benefits: Flexible personal time off during training breaks and a $5,000 health stipend
- Relocation assistance: Negotiable
About FXC and NSCF:
FXC has been a cornerstone of competitive skiing in Fairbanks for 20 years, growing from fewer than a dozen participants to more than 60 skiers, ages 10–18. The program includes seasonal and year-round training at the Competition, Prep, and Junior Development levels.
The FXC coaching team consists of:
- One year-round assistant coach
- Part-time seasonal coaches for additional support
Beyond FXC, NSCF offers other programs:
- Junior Nordic (for younger skiers up to middle school)
- Adult lessons
- Biathlon
- Masters training
Why Fairbanks?
Fairbanks boasts one of the longest natural snow ski seasons in the U.S. (late October–April), at an elevation under 1,000 feet. The Birch Hill Recreation Area serves as FXC’s home venue, featuring an outstanding trail network and world-class facilities.
FXC resources include:
- Dedicated training space at Birch Hill
- A 12-passenger van and gear trailer
- A robust race schedule, including local races, JNQ events across Alaska, and U.S. National Championships
- Opportunities to coach on the Alaska Junior National Team
Living and coaching in Fairbanks
The Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks, with close to 1,000 members and a strong financial foundation, has been a leader in cross-country skiing for more than 50 years. Fairbanks has a strong high school ski culture and a deeply supportive ski community.
Beyond skiing, Fairbanks offers:
- Outdoor recreation: World-class nordic trails, running, mountain biking, road biking, fat biking, and mushing
- Arts and culture: A vibrant music and arts scene
- Higher education: Home to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which has its own cross-country ski team
- Travel connectivity: Excellent airline connections to major U.S. airports
- Community: A welcoming, tight-knit borough with a population of roughly 100,000
How to apply:
By the end of May 20, 2026, interested candidates should submit a letter of interest and résumé to executivedirector (at) nscfairbanks.org. A selection committee from NSCF will conduct interviews in person or electronically with qualified applicants.
For more information:
Contact Thad Keener at executivedirector (at) nscfairbanks.org or (907) 978-6343.
Join us in leading and inspiring the next generation of Nordic skiers.
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Exclusive: USSS to Move from Kappa to The North Face for Uniforms and Apparel
By Gavin Kentch
This is a reader-funded website. Virtually all of my income (for perspective: I took home less than $5,000 from Nordic Insights last year after paying staff) comes from reader contributions, which I sincerely appreciate. If you would like to support the site, including helping us pay off our final bills from Olympics travel, you may do so here. Thank you.
U.S. Ski & Snowboard is changing its official uniform and apparel sponsor for the upcoming season, from Kappa to The North Face, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the imminent change.
Kappa, a longtime Italian sportswear company, became the official apparel partner for all USSS teams in 2022. At the time, it was announced as a decade-long sponsorship agreement.
“U.S. Ski & Snowboard announced today that Kappa, Italy’s leading sportswear brand, has signed a multi-year sponsorship as Official Technical Apparel Partner,” USSS wrote in May 2022, four years ago this week.
The initial press release does not explicitly refer to a term of years, but it does refer to Kappa supporting domestic events through 2032, as well as to outfitting American skiers competing at the 2030 Winter Olympics. By November 2022, USSS was explicitly describing the deal as “a 10-year partnership.”
The apparent end of the Kappa deal comes four years into this ten-year period. USSS media representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reasons behind the premature cessation. I will update this story if they do.
The North Face has previously outfitted some of the teams within the USSS family, most notably freeskiing. For example, here are Alex Ferreira, left, and David Wise on the podium at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang wearing North Face gear:
Embed from Getty ImagesMy thanks to the dozen or so (lol) folks who reached out to me with this news over the past few weeks. If you know more about this story and would like to share, emails (info (at) nordicinsights.news) and DMs (@nordicinsights) are open.
Most remaining items in the Kappa/USSS collection are currently available on Kappa’s site at a 50 percent discount from retail.
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.
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21 Athletes Officially Nominated to National Team for 2026/2027
By Gavin Kentch
This is a reader-funded website. Virtually all of my income (for perspective: I took home less than $5,000 from Nordic Insights last year after paying staff) comes from reader contributions, which I sincerely appreciate. If you would like to support the site, including helping us pay off our final bills from Olympics travel, you may do so here. Thank you.
In a Wednesday press release, USSS announced the athletes officially nominated to the national team for the 2026/2027 season. The 21 athletes nominated are:
A-Team
men
Ben Ogden (SMS)
JC Schoonmaker (APU)
Gus Schumacher (APU)
B-Team
men
John Steel Hagenbuch (Sun Valley)
Zak Ketterson (Team Birkie)
Zanden McMullen (APU)
Jack Young (Craftsbury)
women
Julia Kern (SMS)
Kendall Kramer (APU)
Sophia Laukli (Team Aker Dæhlie)
Novie McCabe (APU)
Sammy Smith (Stanford University)
Ava Thurston (currently Dartmouth, though she graduates soon)
D-Team
men
Corbin Carpenter (University of Alaska Anchorage)
Tabor Greenberg (University of Vermont)
Zach Jayne (SMS)
Murphy Kimball (University of Alaska Anchorage)
Jack Leveque (Alaska Winter Stars)
women
Haley Brewster (SMS)
Neve Gerard (University of Utah)
Sydney Palmer-Leger (Mansfield Pro)
Sophia Laukli skis leg three of the women’s relay, 2025 world champs, Trondheim, March 2025 (photo: Noah Eckstein) On my reading, 18 of the athletes listed above made the team under objective criteria, which look to their results during the 2025/2026 season. Those athletes were first reported here two weeks ago. (That article also contains the basis for selection for every athlete mentioned, in case you would like to read the footnotes; I am pretty scrupulous about showing my work with this stuff.) The additional three athletes who made the team on a discretionary basis are Sophia Laukli, on the B-Team, and Haley Brewster and Sydney Palmer-Leger, on the D-Team.
I nodded to the possibility of bringing on both Laukli and Palmer-Leger under the illness/injury criterion when I previously wrote about this in April. Since Brewster (a) raced broadly last season and (b) was literally one-half second out of making the team under the application of objective criteria,* I would assume that she comes in on a discretionary basis.
(* Brewster was born in 2003. An athlete in her birth year could make this year’s D-Team on the basis of, inter alia, one individual top-10 result at 2026 U23 Championships. In the 20km mass start skate in Lillehammer (photos here, results here), Brewster finished twelfth, in a time of 50:06.7. Tenth place in this race crossed the line in 50:06.2, 0.5 seconds ahead of her. If the KO criterion of 2020 suggests that 1.3 seconds is close enough to make the team, then apparently 0.5 seconds is, too. But not 11 seconds (David Norris Rule). Disclosure, I did not mention Haley Brewster in my preview article, if you are checking my receipts here.)
The discretionary criteria are both broadly written and not limited to those bases enumerated in the selection document, so I’m not going to spend too much energy trying to suss out which bullet point or bullet points encompass Brewster. I will editorialize only that Haley Brewster is a good skier, and, again, was approximately two ski lengths off the team over 20km of racing, so her selection here does not offend me. I am spending ink on this because hers is the one real notable choice on this list vis-à-vis the criteria, not because I think it is a poor choice.
[Read more: Complete National Team Rosters for the U.S. Ski Team, 2004/2005 to 2023/2024]
An official team naming announcement should come in October. Judging from USST want ads during April, look for a new Development Coach, a new World Cup Coach, and at least two World Cup techs to be named at that time. On the final point, happy trails to Chris Hecker and Per-Erik Bjørnstad. Per-Erik, I would like to share here that I still have a pair of hand-me-down World Cup skis from [redacted, because brands don’t like to think about their skis being resold] with your zone markings on them. I feel like a good classic skier every time I look at them. It is a welcome contrast to how I feel when I then look at footage of me actually classic skiing. But those markings are 🤌😙.
Congratulations to all athletes nominated to the team. An especial shoutout to first-time national-team members Corbin Carpenter of Carbondale, Neve Gerard of Bend, and Jack Leveque of Anchorage.
This article was updated on May 7 to reflect an announcement that Haley Brewster and Zach Jayne were now affiliated with SMS. I had previously listed them under their college teams, Vermont and Utah, respectively.
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.
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World Cup Podiums and Olympic Dreams: Women’s Nordic Combined Looks to the Future
This is a reader-funded website. Virtually all of my income (for perspective: I took home less than $5,000 from Nordic Insights last year after paying staff) comes from reader contributions, which I sincerely appreciate. If you would like to support the site, including helping us pay off our final bills from Olympics travel, you may do so here. Thank you.
By Peter Minde
Is this a breakout season for U.S. nordic combined? It wasn’t not a breakout season.
Alexa Brabec notched her first career podium in December, then jumped and skied consistently for the rest of the year to finish second in the nordic combined World Cup overall standings. The American women placed three athletes in the top-15 overall to claim their place at the World Cup table; after Brabec in second, Tara Geraghty-Moats was ninth overall and Annika Malacinski twelfth. As a country, the American women ranked third in the Nations Cup standings for 2025/2026, behind only perennial powers Norway and Germany.
On the men’s side, Niklas Malacinski led four Americans in the overall standings in 23rd. Behind him, Ben Loomis placed 37th in the overall, Erik Lynch 59th, and Henry Johnstone 61st. The men ranked ninth in the Nations Cup.
In December 2025, Brabec scored her first career World Cup podium, taking third place in Trondheim in the Gundersen normal hill/5 km skate. The following month, she won outright in Seefeld. Throughout the season, Brabec delivered consistent results, with a worst individual finish of fourth, albeit multiple times.
“From the results perspective, it’s about the consistency we’re seeing across multiple athletes,” Stephanie Wilson recently wrote to Nordic Insights of the Americans’ performance last season. Wilson is a board member of Nordic Combined USA. “Alexa, Annika, and Tara are proving the U.S. can compete regularly with the best, which is a meaningful shift for both Nordic Combined in the U.S. and for the sport internationally.”
A writer observed the parallel between the burgeoning success of the nordic combined women and the results that followed Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins leading the U.S. cross-country team to its first Olympic gold in 2018.
“These women are showing young girls what is possible in this sport,” Wilson wrote. “You can’t be what you can’t see.”
“I have really looked up to Jessie Diggins and the way she has helped to reshape U.S. cross country skiing over the last years,” concurred Brabec.
In her email, Wilson also gave a shoutout to Annika Malacinski’s younger brother, Niklas, who along with Loomis represented the American men at the 2026 Winter Olympics. “Statements by commentators during the Olympics, identifying [Niklas] as one to watch in future OWG, are also impactful,” she wrote.
Alexa Brabec kindly gave time to answer a reporter’s questions. What was it like to land that first podium?
“It felt pretty unbelievable to get onto the podium that first time,” she wrote. “It seemed pretty unreal, because honestly up until quite recently, I didn’t really think that getting onto the podium was something that ever was in the cards for me. It has been a long road from the very bottom of the results sheet to make it up to the top three, which is something I am extremely proud of.”
Did Brabec change up her training over the summer? Significant changes, not so much. But the little things add up. Details, details.
“I think it was small changes over time,” Brabec mused, “like slowly increasing my cross country hours and then just continuously working on jumping technique. Improvements on the ski jumping side made the biggest difference, and it is the side of the sport that I have been putting a bit more time into these last few years. It has been a lot about building some consistency and dialing in more of the smaller details.”
Are there good days and rough days on the ski jump?
“There were good and bad jumps for me as well this season, which is just part of sport,” Brabec wrote. “What’s been helping me to keep the range between good and bad jumps closer is building muscle memory through lots of imitations on the ground and then keeping my focus extremely simple to just one or two things for each jump and oftentimes keeping that same focus for the entire weekend or multiple weekends.”
In the 2020/2021 season, Tara Geraghty-Moats won the inaugural women’s nordic combined World Cup. After that season, she turned her attention back to biathlon. This year marked Geraghty-Moats’s return to nordic combined. Between 2021 and the 2025 Flaming Leaves Festival last fall, Geraghty-Moats’s only jumps were three times as a forejumper for the 2025 Nordic Combined Junior World Championships in Lake Placid.
“It felt like every week this winter just kept getting better and being more fun than the last,” Geraghty-Moats wrote. “It was very fulfilling to start the winter at the bottom of the field and finish the winter in second place [in Oslo, large hill / 5 km]. I knew women’s nordic combined had made a lot of progress since I had last competed, and I didn’t know if or when I could achieve top results again, so I’m really happy I was able to progress over the season.”
Although Geraghty-Moats won a national championship in October, she wasn’t named to the national team. The nordic combined national team is named every May. Starting from scratch, Geraghty-Moats paid her own way over to Europe this winter through savings, crowdfunding, and a modest grant. The Czech nordic combined team helped with waxing. Tomas Matura of Czechia has been Geraghty-Moats’s coach for nordic combined from day one, as shown in the below Instagram shoutout.
Now that the 2026 Winter Olympics are in the rearview mirror, the IOC will “conduct a full evaluation” of nordic combined before rendering a verdict on the sport’s Olympic future. According to NordicMag, IOC will review the sport’s “universality and audience” before making a decision on its future this June.
It’s difficult to discuss universality when the IOC reduced the number of [men’s] NoCo Olympic quota spots from 55 in 2022 to 36 this year. One impact of the roster reduction has been that the large hill/team relay was reduced from four competitors for each team down to just two. Fewer roster spots also translates to fewer opportunities for non-traditional winter sports nations.
The IOC has complained about limited competition, with Norway and Germany dominating the results since the first Winter Olympics in 1924. Should men’s cross-country skiing, a sport where Norway has nearly 60 percent more gold medals than its nearest competitor across the past century, be taken off the Olympic roster, at least until one Johannes Høsflot Klæbo turns, I don’t know, 45 years old? Should women’s slalom also be removed, at least until Mikaela Shifrin hangs them up?
Hopefully, the U.S. squad bursting into the spotlight will influence the IOC to not only keep (men’s) nordic combined in future Olympics, but also add women’s nordic combined alongside it. Stay tuned.
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.
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Exclusive: Who’s On the 2026/2027 U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team?
By Gavin Kentch
This is a reader-funded website. Virtually all of my income (for perspective: I took home less than $5,000 from Nordic Insights last year after paying staff) comes from reader contributions, which I sincerely appreciate. If you would like to support the site, including helping us pay off our final bills from Olympics travel, you may do so here. Thank you.
It is once again time for the annual feature in which I prognosticate who will be named to the national team when official nominations for next season come out. Because this article is increasingly well-received every year (apparently this is information that people are curious about, who knew), let me just give you my take up front, then show my work below. I will say here only that I am batting 1.000 when it comes to objective selections for the national team and the Olympics roster over the last half-dozen or so times I have written a version of this article. We will, to be sure, see about this year, but I have a promising track record here.
Without further ado, the following athletes have, on my analysis, met the objective criteria for nomination to the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team for 2026/2027. Club affiliations are my own.
A-Team
men
Ben Ogden (SMS)
JC Schoonmaker (APU)
Gus Schumacher (APU)
women
[on paper: Jessie Diggins (SMS)]
B-Team
men
John Steel Hagenbuch (Sun Valley)
Zak Ketterson (Team Birkie)
Zanden McMullen (APU)
Jack Young (Craftsbury)
women
Julia Kern (SMS)
Kendall Kramer (APU)
Novie McCabe (APU)
Sammy Smith (Stanford University)
Ava Thurston (currently Dartmouth, though she graduates soon)
D-Team
men
Corbin Carpenter (University of Alaska Anchorage)
Tabor Greenberg (University of Vermont)
Zach Jayne (currently University of Utah, though he graduates soon)
Murphy Kimball (University of Alaska Anchorage)
Jack Leveque (Alaska Winter Stars)
women
Neve Gerard (University of Utah)
Neve Gerard USA at the finish of the Cross Country Skiing Women’s 7.5km Classic at the Alpensia Biathlon Centre. The Winter Youth Olympic Games, Gangwon, South Korea, Tuesday 30 January 2024. Photo: OIS/Simon Bruty. Handout image supplied by OIS/IOC Showing my work, plus some thoughts for USSS Legal
This analysis is based off of this year’s USSS team naming criteria document, which you can find here. You can find World Cup discipline standings here, and the relevant FIS world rankings here. If you would like a compilation of which skiers finished in the top x positions y times in various international race series, a criterion that frequently occurs in this year’s USSS document in various iterations, well, that’s the value that I’m adding with this article, since it’s hard to make the FIS database tell you this without a lot of prodding.
If you read the raw data of race results and world rankings against the standards set forth in the criteria document, you get the nineteen, or really more like eighteen, names set forth above. As to that discrepancy, what do we do with the only entry for the A-Team women, “on paper: Jessie Diggins”? Strictly speaking, I am reading here from a document entitled “Team Nomination Criterion” (the final word in the title should more properly be the plural “criteria,” but, different issue). So the focus here is on who will be nominated, I suspect some time soonish, as opposed to officially named, this fall, a process that presumptively involves athletes declining or accepting team nominations in advance of a team-naming press release.
By the time that USSS moves to officially name the team this fall, I assume that Diggins will no longer possess a “valid … FIS license,” at least on the assumption that “valid” is synonymous with “active.” Additionally or in the alternative, she could simply decline the nomination if things get that far.
Finally, as an aside for U.S. Ski & Snowboard and/or its lawyers, the criteria document reads to me as unintentionally ambiguous on the question of how to treat results in team competitions vis-à-vis potential nomination to the B-Team. The top of page two refers, in the second bullet point under A-Team qualification, to “an individual … podium” at the 2026 Winter Olympics or during the 2025/2026 World Cup season, then in the third to qualifying finishes in “individual … competitions.” And the bottom of page three similarly refers to an “individual … result” as a means for D-Team qualification, multiple times. This is pretty clear, and in keeping with prior practice for team naming; so far, so good.
But. Between them, on the bottom half of page two, the first three bullet points under B-Team qualification refer simply to “results,” not to “individual results.” The fourth and fifth bullet points, by contrast, again refer to “individual” results, as does the first potential tiebreaker on page three.
If I knew nothing about the sport, or prior custom in this area, I would assume that the careful use of “individual” everywhere in this document save this one section was intentional, and so we should look not only to individual but also to team results, on the World Cup and/or Olympic level, for potential B-Team athletes born in 1997 through 2002. Expressio unius est exclusio alterius, and all that. In practice, I know that this interpretation does an injury to everything I have historically seen in team selection, and so I will let it be. But I do want to flag this, in a spirit of service; suffice to say that people feel strongly about ambiguities in USSS selection documents.
(What does this look like on the ground? Under this theory, someone like Lauren Jortberg (YOB 1997) picks up a top-20 World Cup result for her 15th-place finish in the team sprint in Goms. I didn’t fully run the numbers to definitively establish whether there exists an athlete who would be off the team via individual results only but on the team if you also include team events; my strong sense is that this is in fact a null set. This year. Someone at USSS Legal should feel fortunate that Hailey Swirbul, who has one Olympics top-20 finish to her name from 2025/2026, didn’t also start a World Cup team sprint and relay last season; things could get messy fast.)
From left, John Steel Hagenbuch, Zanden McMullen, and Zach Jayne, 2026 U.S. Nationals, Lake Placid. All three men have qualified for next year’s national team, on my analysis. (photo: Peter Minde) Anyway. Here is the basis for objective qualification to the national team for each athlete set forth in the first part of this article.
A-Team
Ben Ogden (basis or bases for qualification: top-15 World Cup sprint ranking at the end of last season; individual Olympic medal; three or more top-12 World Cup or Olympic finishes last season)
JC Schoonmaker (three or more top-12 World Cup or Olympic finishes)
Gus Schumacher (top-15 World Cup distance ranking; individual World Cup podiums; three or more top-12 World Cup or Olympic finishes)
[Jessie Diggins (top-15 World Cup sprint ranking; top-15 World Cup distance ranking; individual Olympic and World Cup podiums; approximately one million top-12 World Cup or Olympic finishes)]
B-Team
John Steel Hagenbuch (top-100 world rank for distance for male athlete born in 2001 or later)
Zak Ketterson (three or more top-20 World Cup or Olympic finishes for athlete born in 1997)
Zanden McMullen (three or more top-30 World Cup or Olympic finishes for athlete born in 2001; top-100 world rank for distance for male athlete born in 2001 or later)
Jack Young (three or more top-30 World Cup or Olympic finishes for athlete born in 2002; top-80 world rank for sprint for male athlete born in 2001 or later)
Julia Kern (three or more top-20 World Cup or Olympic finishes for athlete born in 1997)
Kendall Kramer (three or more top-30 World Cup or Olympic finishes for athlete born in 2002; top-80 world rank for distance for female athlete born in 2001 or later)
Novie McCabe (three or more top-30 World Cup or Olympic finishes for athlete born in 2001)
Sammy Smith (three or more top-30 World Cup or Olympic finishes for athlete born in 2001 or later; top-80 world rank for sprint for female athlete born in 2001 or later)
Ava Thurston (two top-10 finishes at 2026 U23 Championships for athlete born in 2003 or later)
D-Team
Corbin Carpenter (one top-10 finish at 2026 U23 Championships for athlete born in 2003–2005)
Tabor Greenberg (one top-10 finish at 2026 World Juniors for athlete born in 2006; top-400 world rank for distance for male athlete born in 2006)
Zach Jayne (one top-30 World Cup result for athlete born in 2003 or later)
Murphy Kimball (one top-10 finish at 2026 World Juniors for athlete born in 2006; top-250 world rank for sprint for male athlete born in 2006)
Jack Leveque (one top-10 finish at 2026 World Juniors for athlete born in 2006 or later)
Neve Gerard (one top-10 finish at 2026 World Juniors for athlete born in 2006)
On team size and discretionary nods
The total size of the national team over the past decade-ish has ranged from 27 athletes, in 2024/2025, to 16 athletes, for three years in a row from 2016/2017 through 2018/2019. Last year saw 21 athletes on the national team total: the 16 whom I accurately identified as qualifying on an objective basis in this article, plus five more who were named on a discretionary basis, largely due to illness or injury (Rosie Brennan, Novie McCabe, Jack Lange, Fin Bailey, and Haley Brewster).
So… who, if anyone, comes in via discretion this year? Brennan, maybe, under an injury/illness theory, though that feels like a harder sell this year than last tbh. Maybe Sydney Palmer-Leger, who I am sorry to say has had a pretty snakebitten few seasons here, culminating in both a broken foot and a mono diagnosis last season alone. Lange and Bailey both raced broadly this year, so probably not qua illness? I don’t make the rules. Hailey Swirbul, in theory, under the “indicia of medal potential” criterion — her palmarès through age 24 clearly stand alone among active American skiers — but it has been ages since anyone came in on purely discretionary criteria like that (KO in 2020 comes to mind, though don’t quote me on that having necessarily been the last such pick), and I don’t personally see USSS doing that here. And I say this as a Hailey stan for the past, yikes, decade now.
Finally, Sophia Laukli feels like a sort of sui generis injury case. An argument for naming her to this year’s team is that the potential is clearly there! An argument against it is that she is, like, really starting from square one here; this is an athlete who took five weeks entirely off from skiing in the middle of the season, returning only at the level of walking on skis (see Instagram embed from March 23 above). Personally speaking, I would name her to the team if I were USSS, just to show her that she was included and not forgotten, but that is definitely the heart speaking here, not the head. I truly do not know what will happen with Laukli. Probably she does get named, by analogy to Novie McCabe’s status at this point last season? Hopefully Laukli can follow a similar trajectory for her return.
On a mostly unrelated note, it appears that this will be the first year with no women on the A-Team (or, previously, the World Cup Team) since at least 2005/2006, when the team had just five athletes on it total, all men.
Congratulations to all athletes named to the national team this year. Official announcement from USSS should come within the spring, at which point you can all see whether I got this right again or not.
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.
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Sponsor News: Join the Madshus Team
This is a sponsored post from Madshus. I appreciate their support of the site.
Join the Madshus Team
Madshus North America is currently seeking athletes, coaches, and brand ambassadors to join our team for the 2026/27 season. As one of the oldest and most authentic Nordic ski brands in the world, we are proud of our heritage and excited to continue building on our recent success.
Our company is deeply rooted in performance, driven by innovation, and committed to developing leading-edge technology for competitive skiing. With our factory located in Biri, Norway, we operate in close proximity to the legendary trails of Lillehammer and benefit from the extended training season in Sjusjøen. This unique environment allows us to test and refine our products nearly year-round alongside elite athletes and top-tier programs.
Madshus stands apart in the industry by maintaining consistency between our World Cup and consumer products. We do not differentiate between elite race skis and those available to the public—many skis raced at the highest level are selected directly from our production warehouse. This ensures that the same construction, materials, and performance are accessible to all athletes, including those used by top competitors such as two-time Olympic silver medalist Ben Ogden.
For the 2026/27 season, we are introducing an entirely new lineup of skis and boots. Our award-winning Skate X technology delivers a measurable performance advantage over traditional binding systems. Combined with our latest skate and classic ski designs, this represents an exciting opportunity to elevate performance for athletes at every level.
We invite you to be part of the Madshus team and help us continue pushing the boundaries of Nordic skiing.
For more information or to express interest, please contact us directly by filling out this form. The application period runs through April 30th.
(photo: Madshus) 2026 – 27 Race Program
GOLD: Negotiated support
- World cup starts Nordic / Biathlon / Nordic Combined
- IBU starts Biathlon
- World Junior Qualifier Nordic
- NCAA All-American
SILVER: WHSL Pricing
- World Junior Qualifier Biathlon / Nordic Combined
- NCAA Championship Qualifier
- Top 10 at Junior Nationals
- Supertour Podium or Top 10 Overall Ranking
BRONZE: WHSL +15% Pricing
- Top 20 at Junior Nationals
- Individual State Champion Nordic
TEAM: Team Pricing
- Set-up via Madshus dealer
Application Deadline April 30th
Scan the QR code or click on the link below:
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Job Posting: Craftsbury Seeks Assistant Coach for Youth and Masters Programs
The following posting was recently received from the fine folks at Craftsbury. If you have a job posting I should hear about, please be in touch: info (at) nordicinsights.news. Here’s Craftsbury:
The Craftsbury Outdoor Center (COC) is now accepting applications for an Assistant Coach with the Craftsbury Ski Club (CSC), supporting both youth and Masters cross‑country skiing and biathlon programs in northern Vermont.
The CSC is seeking an individual with a diverse coaching skill set to assist with the development of our Bill Koch League (BKL)/Junior/Master cross-country skiing and biathlon programs. The CSC operates under the umbrella of the Outdoor Center and serves roughly 300 people aged 6–85 who are pursuing a goal of lifelong ski development. Our platforms range from learn-to-ski programs to highly competitive junior programs to recreational masters. The Craftsbury biathlon programs operate alongside ski programming and serve a smaller subset of the same athletes. During the off season, most of our ski and biathlon coaches stay busy working with our mountain bike programs, particularly our Wheels On Wheels learn-to-ride program.
Craftsbury coaches wax testing (courtesy photo) Major duties & responsibilities may include:
- Facilitate regular practices for ski and biathlon groups, ranging from BKL skiers to competitive juniors and Masters.
- Travel to regional races to provide waxing and race support.
- Help develop practice plans for each group.
- Assist in managing and maintaining equipment.
- Help organize and coach day and overnight camps.
- Maintain biathlon rifles and the range.
- Assist with weekly learn-to-ride bike groups on campus and at local schools.
Applications are now open. Full job details and application instructions can be found at craftsbury.com/jobs or via this link.
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