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Lake Placid Photo Dump II: Even More Photos
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.
Joking in the headline aside, I have almost an embarrassment of riches here when it comes to images out of last weekend in Lake Placid. A site that has largely made its name off of skilled writing paired with, uh, grainy screenshots from the FIS livestream had not one, but two photographers on scene for the biggest weekend in American skiing since the Loppet Cup two years ago.
Today’s featured photog: Tryg Solberg. Tryg is a recent graduate of Michigan Tech; he skied for the Huskies for four years. He finished as high as 15th in a SuperTour, 20th at NCAA Championships, and 14th in the Birkie.
Also, he took these fine photos for us. I like them; you can really get a sense for the conditions, particularly on Sunday (viz., it was damp).
You can find Tryg’s galleries on SmugMug here, and his Instagram here. If you see photos, from this weekend or elsewhere, that pique your interest and would like to arrange purchasing some, his Venmo is @Tryg-Solberg.
Here are some photos from the weekend that I liked. Enjoy. Click on any image to enlarge and bring up a slideshow; athlete names are in captions.
Skate sprint day
20km skate day
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. -
Photo Dump: The Weekend That Was in Lake Placid
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 2025/2026 World Cup season wrapped up in Lake Placid last Sunday with three days of racing. Nearly 36,000 people showed up, at a venue that, while by all accounts quite lovely, was not exactly centrally located vis-à-vis major American population centers. The weather was also, shall we say, New England-ish. And time after time, athletes told reporters on site that it was the best stop of the season. If any questions remained about whether the U.S. “deserves” more World Cup races after the madness that was Minneapolis in February 2024, this should put them to rest.
I posted 16 articles on this website last week, and remember none of them. It’s been a long season for all of us in the industry. But before you go gently into that good offseason, here are some fine photos from the weekend that was.
These photos were taken by Rylan Hodgson, who is not only a skilled photographer but is also a 2020 New York State high school champion for nordic skiing. (I pulled that one from his bio. You’re welcome, Rylan. He also is like a Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student at UC Boulder and stuff.) You can find him on Instagram here, and his website here.
Rylan took hundreds of photos over the weekend. I asked him for 20ish of his favorites for a gallery. Here they are. Enjoy. Click on any image to enlarge; athlete names are in captions.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing, and then we made it to the Olympics. You can read more about our first three years here, and donate to the Olympics fund here. Thank you for consideration, and, especially, for reading.
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World Cup Hangover: All the News That Didn’t Fit
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
LAKE PLACID — After a fashion, the hangover is probably mine. Eight weeks post–knee replacement, roaming the course was outta the question this weekend. So I’m gonna sit on my tuchis in the media room, watching the live stream. Then, walk to the mixed zone to interview as many athletes as I could. How hard could it possibly be?
A former ORDA president, who shall remain nameless, once opined that “nobody” would pay to watch ski races or mountain bike races. This was confirmed by a current ORDA staffer who’s in a position to know.
Yet, after three days of racing,the Olympic Regional Development Authority, ORDA, counted 35,622 attendees across three days of the World Cup Finals. That includes not only spectators, but teams, staff, media, and volunteers. This is comparable to the crowds in Minneapolis two years ago, where admission was free, and blows away the approximately 17,400 who turned up for the UCI mountain bike races held here in October. Not too shabby for a backwoods village in the sticks.
Friday’s classic race. It snowed a little. (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) Friday opened with the 10-kilometer interval-start classic for both men and women. I watched the livestream, then raced to the mixed zone to interview skiers as they came in. Between men and women, I interviewed 17 athletes. My phone’s touch screen got wet and went haywire in the near-blizzard conditions, but I managed.
Because of the late hour — the men’s race didn’t start until 3 p.m. — not only did I get home late to a hungry cat, but also Snowmageddon had dumped six inches of snow, and the village kindly plowed a knee-high berm at the end of my driveway. I had to dig out before I parked my car. Only then, to paraphrase Charles Bukowski, could I start typing. Gavin didn’t get the story until 9:45 Eastern Time.
There’s a rush one gets from interviewing all these athletes and being right in the thick of the action, but it catches up with you. Saturday morning, I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. And I had two more days to go. There’s plenty of stories here besides the racing. Do it more, do it better.
Cameron Chalmers is Ben Ogden’s uncle. On Tuesday, he trekked from southern Vermont with beans, a grinder, and an espresso machine and parked his truck in the wax area. He spent the whole week pulling espressos from the tailgate for ski technicians and athletes, and he did it the right way. Grind the beans fresh, put the coffee in the machine. No stinkin’ pod coffee. No charge, no tip jar, just a desire to give back to the sport and keep people caffeinated.
Your correspondent has been accustomed to roaming wherever he dang pleases at races. But at the sport’s highest level, access to athletes and ski technicians is more restricted. On Wednesday, we caught up with a road-weary Bjørn Hanson of Out There Nordic.
The peripatetic Hanson and his crew have traveled all across snow country this winter, including three stops in Lake Placid. He estimates he’s driven between 10,000 and 15,000 miles this race season alone. “I’m glad this is the last event,” he said.
“Kris and I were at Junior Nationals all last week [in Cable] with the High Plains region, and the week before that, we were [in Lake Placid] at the IBU Cup,” Hanson said. After Junior Nationals, they turned it around and came right back to Lake Placid, bringing along the head of World Cup service for Kästle skis. For reference, the drive between these two venues is slightly over 1,000 miles. One way.
Is there an extra stress level at an event like this, as opposed to Junior Nationals or the Birkie?
“The goal for anybody doing service is to make sure that you have competitive skis,” Hanson said. “I think sometimes it’s a little easier when you have athletes that understand competitive skis and have been putting in the training. Some of the citizens’ events are kind of tricky because we can’t fix no training. Sometimes those can be a little more stressful because the expectations are hard, too hard to match if you haven’t done the training.”
Kästle aren’t as widely known in the U.S. as Fischer, Rossignol, et al. “If we can get Klæbo to switch to Kästle, then we could give him some really good skis,” Hanson said. “But, you know, I think he’s gonna stick with Fischer for now.”
Who’s on Kästle at present?
“We have three athletes. We’re providing race service support for two athletes from Australia, Rosie Fordham, who just took the double win at NCAA, and Seve de Campo, who is just coming off the World Cup and the Olympics. And then Katey Houser. Katey skis for Montana State University and got a World Cup start. So she is coming here, just off of NCAAs, for her first World Cup start.”
Some people might think that ski service is a thinly veiled excuse for a vacation. Here’s Bjørn’s report from January’s national championships to help disabuse you of that notion.
Hugo Hinckfuss races in the sprint qual (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) Later on Wednesday, prior to the races, I ran into Australia’s Hugo Hinckfuss. He’d just finished a training session. Although his hometown is Sydney, Australia, he studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and skis NCAA for the Buffaloes. But this week was the first time in Lake Placid for the RMISA skier.
“Funnily enough, I’ve, for sure, had a lot of opportunities to race in Lake Placid, but I’ve been ducking and weaving to get out of there,” Hinckfuss said, laughing.
“It’s beautiful, tough tracks, for sure,” he said of the course. “We’ve had some crazy weather the past few days, so the snow can be a little dirty here and there, but the tracks are tough, and I think they’ll be really fun for racing.”
Then, along came Alexei Sotskov, the Australian team coach. A resident of Gilford, New Hampshire, he’s coaching a team halfway around the world. How does that work?
“The biggest challenge is to combine two seasons,” he said. “You know, it would be great to live in one season, but because of summer and winter not particularly aligned in Australia. So we have to ski for the local community in the summertime. And it’s also qualification, a lot of qualification races for the kids to qualify for racing in Europe, they have to be in good shape. And then it’s good on one hand, you know: we have a lot of snow time, but at the same time, it’s difficult to get to Europe and perform well, because the competitive season is twice.”
Does it wear on the athletes to spend so much time on snow?
“It’s a good question. I’m always questioning myself,” Sotskov said. “This, the same, same? Is it a problem, or an advantage, or disadvantage? I don’t know. But I always say, swimmers swim year round, and they seem to be in good shape, runners running year round. I don’t know the answer.”
Embed from Getty ImagesOn Sunday, I left the mixed zone after interviewing 20 wet, cold athletes. National teams took turns mounting the podium and spraying sparkling wine all over each other.
An unassuming man in black, gray in his beard, walked away from the crowd around the podium. It was Thomas Wassberg of Sweden, a hero of the 1980 Winter Olympics here in Lake Placid. Wassberg won the 1980 15km race by 0.01 second over Finland’s Juha Mieto. [Wassberg is shown here in 1980 in the above file photo] At that time, it was the closest race finish in Olympic history. ORDA invited Wassberg to come from Sweden, and he graciously did. ORDA also invited Mieto. Unfortunately, he was unable to attend.
In those days, the only mass start race was the relay. The 15km race that year was an interval-start. Classic, of course. One long lap through the woods. There are few picture-postcard views such as one finds at Craftsbury, Prospect Mountain, or Viking, all in neighboring Vermont (and all fine places to ski). Rather, the 1980 trail system is a blunt instrument designed to break athletes’ motors and technique. Those trails might not meet modern FIS standards. But I’ve skied that 15km loop hundreds of times. Trust me, even though I used to be a salesman: it’ll get your attention.
But I digress. I accosted Wassberg, begged for an interview. He looked aside, saying, No, my English is no good. But ultimately he relented.
How is it, coming back to the site of your big victory in 1980?
“It’s fun, and fun to see how it looks,” Wassberg said.
by “one man” he means Klæbo (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) Is it healthy for the sport to have one team, even one man, so dominant?
“It’s not good for the sport. I think the whole nation, the Norwegian nation, is too good,” Wassberg replied. “No, they have to have more nations which have good skis.”
What do you think about the changes in the race formats? In your day, it was mainly interval starts, and now it’s all mass start. Is one format better?
“No, I like interval starts much more, and I think it should be more from this season. You can have both, but longer distance and individual start,” Wassberg said.
Starstruck, I couldn’t think of anything else to ask him. I thanked him, as I did the athletes, for coming to the US.
Incidentally, in their story about the women’s 20km race, a reporter for a competing news outlet wrote, “Lake Placid sits at the highest elevation of any village in the east.” A publication that my esteemed editor has termed the paper of record for our sport. [I was trying to be nice. –Ed.] Lake Placid village’s elevation is 1801 feet, or 549 meters. Mount van Hoevenberg sits at 1879 feet, or 573 meters. For the record, the highest-elevation ski center in the east is Prospect Mountain in Woodford, Vermont. 2250 feet, 686 meters.
On my way to Sunday’s 20km races, I stopped into my local for an espresso, on top of the six-cup moka of Café Bustelo with which I’d fortified myself at breakfast. Who was there but Australia’s Lars Young Vik [far left in above embed photo], with a couple of compatriots.
Uh, the men’s race is starting in two hours?
“I need my coffee,” Vik said. “I’m a sprinter. My biggest day was yesterday, but I’m looking forward to racing today.”
How are conditions out there?
“It was a bit tricky, to be honest, with the fresh snow we got on Friday,” he said. “The past couple months of racing has been a lot of soft, quite warm conditions from the Olympics and Period 3 in Scandinavia. So having fresh snow again and the more wintry conditions was actually a bit weird just to ski on again. But it was really good conditions, good skiing.”
crowds (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) It’s not possible to convey in words the vibe and energy that spectators brought to the Ho. Of course, there was the outpouring of love for Jessie Diggins. Despite the rain, the lodge was EMPTY for Sunday’s 20km; everyone wanted to watch Diggins’s last race.
But the crowd cheered everyone that raced past them, whether it was Diggins, or another favorite U.S. skier, or someone from a competing nation. They got loud, and they remained loud until the end of every race. Every day in the mixed zone, every foreign athlete commented on the love they got from the crowd.
Finally, ORDA merits a well-earned shoutout, as do the volunteers who gave their time making this event happen. This is a way bigger event than — no disrespect to those athletes — a Junior Nationals qualifier or a SuperTour race. ORDA went all out and put on a great event. And the races couldn’t have happened without the awesome volunteer corps in the Tri-Lakes.
That’s it from Lake Placid. I wish to thank all the people who’ve come up to me, or messaged me this winter to talk about the stories I’ve written. You’re too kind! Your appreciation motivates me to go 90 miles an hour every time I sit down to write. There will be more stories to get us through the offseason, but I gotta go play the guitar now. But not having practiced for a week, I’m not sure I’ll find them.
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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Klæbo Wins Soggy 20km Barnburner; Norway Sweeps Podium in Men’s Distance Race. Again.
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
LAKE PLACID — Does the winning ever get old? Is Norway’s water more magical than APU’s water? On a rainy Sunday Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won the 20-kilometer mass start skate at Mount van Hoevenberg, the final men’s race of the 2025/2026 World Cup season. Harold Østberg Amundsen, of Norway, his season-long rival for the distance crystal globe, came second, just 0.8 seconds back. Einar Hedegart, also of Norway, coming to the dark side from biathlon, was third, 2.5 seconds adrift of Klæbo. Most impressive, Klæbo’s winning pace was just under 2:10 per kilometer. An eye-popping pace, considering the conditions.
For the Americans, six from APU and six from elsewhere, Gus Schumacher finished in 20th place following a torrid start. Behind him, Hunter Wonders was 35th, then JC Schoonmaker was 38th, followed by Zanden McMullen in 39th. Ben Dohlby was 44th, Brian Bushey came 47th, Ben Ogden was 52nd, and Zak Ketterson was 55th. Luke Jager was 58th, Michael Earnhart was 62nd, John Steel Hagenbuch was 69th, and Zach Jayne finished 70th.
Today’s race took place on one of the Ho’s homologated four-kilometer loops. I’ve not seen this particular course used before. One first skis up through the omega, as per usual. Instead of heading straight to the A-climb, it detours, parallel to the 1980 stadium, and then winds back to the A-climb. At the end of the reservoir, a hairpin turn has skiers skipping the section with the two hills from the old Ladies 5 km course, going straight to the downhill called Coaster. A more fitting name for Coaster would be The Carousel of Terror, but I digress. From here, one is back on the usual five-kilometer loop. While both the four- and five-kilometer loops feature van Ho’s daunting A-climb, total climb on the 4km loop is 144 meters, compared to 192 meters of climb on the 5km loop.
Going forward, I’ll attempt to refer to some of the corners by the names given by the Ho. Please see the map below.
map of van Ho 4km course (photo: Peter Minde) It was sprinkling as I went through security at the venue this morning. The guard inspecting my bag goes, “I think it’s going to clear up.” I replied, “Don’t jinx us.”
As the men warmed up around noon, in advance of the 12:30 p.m. start, it was raining. Not torrential, but neither was it a mere sprinkle. Enough to make the day interesting; not enough to dissuade spectators. My dude, you jinxed it.
Air temperature was 33 degrees (0.7 Celsius); snow temperature was 31.5 degrees (-0.2 Celsius). Wet packed powder was the order of the day.
Trying to stay dry, athletes ran to the start at the very last minute. The gun went off and Klæbo and Amundsen, bibs one and two, led into the omega. The whole pack stayed tightly together through Florida, crowded like rush hour in midtown Manhattan.
By the reservoir hairpin, the pack strung out some, with Klæbo and his teammates controlling the front of the race. Coming off the first descent from the height of land, Klæbo stood up and relaxed for a moment before everyone dropped into the descent leading to the Grindhouse corner, which I’ve previously referred to as the Fishhook.
The group stayed tight as they skated through a soggy stadium. At the end of the second lap, 1.4 seconds separated the top 10. Gus Schumacher held his own in the lead pack, in 10th place.
On the third lap, Klæbo took the time bonus at the front of a six-Norwegian pack. Schumacher was ninth here. Andreas Fjorden Ree, also of Norway, led over the top of the Grindhouse climb, aka the sprint climb or B-climb.
As they headed into the stadium to complete the third lap, the bunch began to break up. While they might close together on downhills, a group of eight or nine separated itself on uphills. Klæbo rested in second or third place, taking advantage of a draft and protected by his teammates both to the front and the back. Benjamin Moser, AUT, was the first non-Norwegian skier at this point, and Schumacher was hanging tight in seventh, 2.6 seconds back.
At the 13.6-kilometer checkpoint, six, count ’em, six Norwegians controlled the front of the pack. Schumacher had slipped back to thirteenth, 18 seconds off the pace.
The bunch began to break apart as they descended into the stadium. Setting out on the fourth lap, Ree, Amundsen, and Klæbo, all of, well, Norway, had a small gap over the next three skiers. Meanwhile, Britain’s Andrew Musgrave fought his way to the front, into eighth place.
On the last lap, only Italy’s Davide Graz could stick with five Norwegians off the front, as Moser faded. (“Air Norway had one unexpected passenger today 🇮🇹✈️🇳🇴,” Graz would later crack wise on Instagram.) The sextet descended to the Grindhouse/sprint/B-climb corner and set up for the sprint to the finish (it should be noted, some skiers favored an outside line here, while some went inside).
And what were you expecting at this point? Duh, Klæbo drilled it on the climb, with Amundsen close behind. A few meters separated them on the last downhill, and Klæbo won. As he tends to.
Klæbo (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) In the mixed zone, your correspondent asked Klæbo, are you ever gonna bust a move anywhere before the final climb?
“I don’t know, I just always try to focus on the things where I can get a kind of, use different parts of the tracks to my advantage,” Klæbo said.
Responding to a question about the weather, he said, “We’ll take what we have. And even though the weather is not very good, we still have an amazing crowd. It’s been packed with people, which is cool.”
Would a multi-stop tour across the U.S. and Canada in future World Cup seasons be desirable? Here’s Klæbo’s take: “The best part would be to have a weekend in the U.S. and maybe a weekend in Canada so we can have a couple of more races. I think that worked pretty well a couple of years ago [in February 2024], when we had Canmore first and then went to Minneapolis. So I would like to see if we can do something like that again.”
Caught in the mixed zone and needing dry clothes, Ben Ogden was his normal candid self but wanted to be brief. “It was so brutal,” he said. “I didn’t have the legs to stay with the leaders for too long. But I just enjoyed the last couple laps with all my fans out there. We got thousands of people out here, and it’s pouring rain, 40 degrees, and, like, that’s New England skiing for you. And I couldn’t be prouder to be a part of it.” New York skiing, but we’ll let it slide because Ogden!
“Not my best race, but good to take a last lap here in the World Cup this season,” Gus Schumacher said. “I just wanted to go with the leaders and hopefully pick up some bonus points. I struggled running up the hills. I don’t know if the wetness of the snow changed how my skis are working, but I just got tired by the last big climb.”
Was an inside line better than outside on the crux corner before the Grindhouse climb? Schumacher said, “We’re taking a lot of different lines in that corner. I went both out and in, and I felt like inside was a little more predictable.”
Gus Schumacher (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) Forget racing for a moment, let’s turn to fuel. On Strava, Andrew Musgrave had complained about the lack of decent coffee in Lake Placid. In his hotel at least.
“Ben Ogden’s uncle has his truck here, and he is making the best coffee I have tasted for a long time, least since I’ve been in Italy,” was Musgrave’s update from the mixed zone today. Cameron Chalmers, Ogden’s uncle, swooped in from southern Vermont on Tuesday. Parking his truck in the wax area, he has spent the past week pulling espressos for ski technicians and athletes.
And that pesky race, interfering with the important stuff? “Oh, I was not hanging on,” Musgrave said. “I was yo-yoing off the back there. And then I got a little bit tired, and I had to make sure I wasn’t getting caught by the guys behind. But I had good skis. It was nice conditions, even though it’s raining. I just, I’m not in the best form of my life, but super good fun, great crowds.
“The course was super nice. It broke up a lot more than I thought it was going to,” Musgrave said.
The mixed zone continued to be friendly, with many more athletes coming through than yesterday. Harold Østberg Amundsen, also of Norway, said, “It was tough conditions, but a nice and tough course with a lot of steep uphills. We had a great team effort, and second place in the end was quite good.”
It’s dang near axiomatic that Klæbo wants to break away on the last big climb. How does one counter that? “I knew that he would try to be fast in the last uphill and I just tried to follow, and I was quite satisfied with my last uphill sprint,” Amundsen recounted. “But he’s difficult to beat in the last 100 meters. I had a good race. And I think, I don’t know if it’s my fourth or fifth second place behind Johannes this year, but yeah, he’s tough.”
so much Norway (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) “What an amazing crowd and crappy weather,” Zanden McMullen said. “The skis were pretty fast, but I’m definitely wet and cold right now.”
How did the track hold up? “Over 20km, it held up remarkably well,” McMullen said. “The turns are definitely turning into slush, but the uphills are still firm, and that’s definitely nice. Normally, the slushy conditions are slow, but ground speed actually stayed pretty high.”
“This was the first race in quite a while that I felt like I could keep my head in the game,” said fellow APU skier, and South Anchorage High alumnus, Hunter Wonders. “So that was a nice change of pace, and I’m happy to end the season on that note.”
“I knew it was going to go out hot,” said Wonders of the race. His plan coming in was to “and “just try and stay in the pack for as long as I could, but it’s hard if somebody way up ahead of you decides they want to drop anchor and break the gap, or make a gap between you and the leaders, it’s really hard to gain that back. I just wanted to treat it like an interval set and work my way up to the top of the course and then recover, and then work my way up to the top and recover.”
Next up was Elia Barp, one of Italy’s young guns. “It was tough, with the weather conditions,” Barp said. “The snow was okay, pretty fast, but the rain made it difficult to race. I’m happy to finish the season like this. I was always in a good position in the sprint overall. So yeah, and definitely happy with what I did this season.”
What will it be like next year on the Italian team, with Pellegrino retiring? “It’s been amazing. I’m really happy that he finished his career with probably one of the best weekends so far for him. So I’m very happy for him; I’m very happy for the team. I think we proved that we are ready to race without him, not only me, but a few other young guys are ready to try and take victories next year. And yeah, I think he taught us a lot, and we are ready.”
Racing continues next week with — wait, what, the season is over? In that case, bloviation will continue in the near future with a wrap-up story on the first ever World Cup finale in North America. Same bat time, same bat channel. Be there.
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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van Ho Fans Bid Sparkle Chipmunk Adieu: Diggins 12th in Final Race as Sundling Wins
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.
If you don’t drop a sprinter before the finish, she tends to drop you at the finish. The women’s field in today’s 20-kilometer mass start skate, the closing race of both World Cup Finals and the 2025/2026 season, was reminded of this evergreen truth once more over five soggy laps of the 4km distance course at Lake Placid earlier Sunday afternoon.
Jonna Sundling, who had lurked near the front for much of the day, took the win with ease, capping off an extremely strong weekend for the powerhouse Swedish women’s team. Countrywoman Linn Svahn, who had been nowhere near the front for most of the past 45 minutes, finished second, giving Sweden seven of nine distaff podium spots on the weekend. Heidi Weng of Norway, who is (a) not a sprinter and (b) 34 years old, was third, a fair reward after pushing the pace at the front for much of the day.
Jessie “retiring” Diggins, in the final 20 kilometers of her coruscant career, finished twelfth, 16.5 seconds back, after an untimely, and unfortunate, fall in rough snow conditions on one of the final downhills.
This is perhaps heresy to even think, let alone commit to print, but since I owe you an honest accounting of the race, I have to share my take that I do not think that Diggins was realistically in position to contend for the podium even without the fall. There’s no way she beats the sprinters to the line, and Weng was already pulling away from her at this point, not to mention late-race sensation, and ultimate fourth-place finisher, young Karoline Grøtting of Norway.
I don’t think that Diggins particularly minded. She threw her arms in the air as she crossed the line, the happiest 12th-place finisher you’ll ever see. She hugged everyone. She hugged her husband. She hugged her mom. She hugged her dad. She hugged her sister. She hugged the lion’s share of athletes in the finish area. She hugged every other American skier seriatim, then waited until the final American finishers came in (Rosie Brennan, 57th, and Emma Albrecht, 59th) before leading a group hug. Brennan procured champagne and gleefully sprayed the entire crew.
screenshot from broadcast The FIS broadcast crew gave Diggins the first on-camera interview; to put it mildly, this is seldom an honor afforded to the 12th-place finisher, but the production crew knew who people were there to see.
“That was really incredible,” said Diggins, through tears. “So many people out there cheering. I feel like I got to celebrate this moment with the whole world. I’m really gonna miss this, but I’m really, really thankful that I got to do this and that I got to be part of such an incredible team for so many years.”
Sundling got the second interview. “It was a really good day for me,” said the winner on the day. “I had good skis and it happened a lot during this race that many of us fell. And in the last hill I was like, Okay, now I need to jump over two persons.”
Sundling added, “It means a lot to close this season with this win.”
Jessie Diggins smiles (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) I should give you a little more play-by-play of the race as a whole before we go on here, but honestly, this part can be summarized pretty quickly. It was a five-lap distance race. Every lap had a high point a kilometer-plus out from the end, then was mostly downhill to the finish. The steady rain seemed to make the course ski pretty fast. I did not notice hugely discrepant ski speed out there among the leading athletes. And, by the way, it was the final race of a four-month season that began above the Arctic Circle in Ruka over Thanksgiving weekend; people were tired.
Putting all that together, either no one wanted to try to get away early today, or no one could. The pack simply stayed together at the front; as athletes headed out for the final lap, there were still 18 women within five seconds of the lead.
Weng had led much of the time to that point, with Diggins lurking near the front. The main drama had come in lap two, when Astrid Øyre Slind got tripped up on an uphill and fell. She, unfortunately, did so immediately at the feet of Frida Karlsson. The Swede managed to make her way back to near the front over the next few laps, though she surely had to burn some matches in the process.
Anyway. There were at least eight women still in position to contend for the win going into the final part of the final lap. Sundling used her unstoppable V1 to surge to the front on the final climb and solo in for the win by 3.5 seconds; she was never going to be caught out there. Svahn came from what felt like way back in the field up to the front at just the right time, deftly sidestepping a supine Diggins on her way to the podium. Weng didn’t fade so much as she was simply passed by the two sprinters, holding onto third for a well-deserved podium.
Grøtting had come seemingly out of nowhere to take the lead within the final two kilometers; the young skier in bib 28 would finish fourth, but hers was arguably the most exciting race of the day. Karlsson fell a second time, off-camera, on a late climb, ultimately finishing 15th. She seemed sanguine enough, though not as joyous as Diggins; no one was today.
women’s lead pack (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) “It’s a little bit chaotic,” said Slind, seventh overall, of a day with multiple falls, “with so many in the group all the time and fast tracks from behind. So the group was always gathering in the downhills. But it was fun. Lots of people watching and we were so happy to be here.”
“I felt pretty good,” echoed Karlsson, 15th, “but I fell twice, and the second time was in the finish uphill, so it was a bummer. But I’m just happy to finish this great season, and now we will just celebrate with the team.”
“I just wanted to find my own skiing and enjoy the last dance of this season,” Karlsson continued. “So I did my best, and sometimes you fall.”
Karlsson’s countrywoman Moa Ilar was 13th today. She finished the 2025/2026 World Cup season second in both the overall and distance standings, in each case behind Diggins. Ilar’s previous career bests here were 10th in distance and 12th in the overall, both last year; this season marked a huge step up for the 28-year-old.
“I actually felt quite good,” Ilar said afterwards. “I was more energized than I was expecting, so really happy actually. But it’s nice to end the season.”
It’s hard to stay focused across a four-month season, Ilar admitted. “It’s been a really long season and I’ve done every single race for the whole World Cup year,” she said. “So I’m really happy that it turns out to be a second overall and second in the distance cup. It’s been incredible.”
“I knew that I was tired,” she continued, “but the pace was a bit slower than I was expecting, so I’m happy with that.”
Also happy, if not delighted, was Rosie Fordham, who finished one spot back of Karlsson in 16th. This is superb, but somehow not even the best World Cup result of her career; she was 13th in a 10km skate in Davos last December. I was going to make a crack about the Aussie being the best cross-country skier to ever come out of Sydney, but the University of Alaska Fairbanks skier, and recent double NCAA champion, is surely the best skier to ever come out of anywhere in the entire country, so there’s that. Oi oi oi!
“I’m feeling great,” beamed the ever-upbeat Fordham at the finish. “That was awesome. I never thought I’d be able to just ski with a pack for the whole 20km on World Cup, so I’m stoked.”
“There’s been a a couple of highlights throughout the season,” said the redshirt senior of a year that saw her finish 13th on the World Cup, as noted, and 29th at the Olympics, “but this is definitely up there, if not the best.”
kids in stadium for One Last Lap ski (photo: Peter Minde) Peter Minde, the Nordic Insights man on the scene for the weekend, spoke with a full dozen women after the race (shoutout to Peter for some dogged reporting work in a cold rain), so we’re just gonna keep going here so that we can give more of the Americans their due. Diggins was pulled away from media to go ski with kids, anyway, in the One Last Lap ceremony [photo above shows some of the 600 (!) kids on scene for this], so I’ve already told you all that we’re going to get from her today.
So, here’s Katey Houser of Montana State, soon to be APU following her graduation this spring, who was 34th today. I know that today was all about Jessie, but this was a commendable result for a college kid in just her second career World Cup start (the first one came on Friday).
“It was super fun,” said Houser. “I feel like I would forget that it was a World Cup because I was just skiing with girls I’ve skied with for a while and looked up to, and then I would come around a corner and hear the crowd, and it was super awesome.”
Houser raced here in January, and described it as an “eight-thousand-people difference” between now and then. “But other than that, no, because it rained then, too.”
“I was starting in the back,” Houser said of her day, “which I wasn’t super used to. So I figured I would just kind of see how things spread out and try and keep my equipment to myself and not cause any falls and not get caught up in anything, and then find people that I knew I could ski with, and that’s what happened. And then everything just was awesome.” You love to see it.
Jessie Diggins (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) Next up: Julia Kern, 43rd.
“The fans and spectators made up for the bad weather,” said Kern. “It was awesome.”
“I went in with an open mind,” was Kern’s take on her day. “I’ve been struggling with my lungs the last month so just being able to be in a place to race was a big goal of mine. And I still struggled in the race, but I was just happy to be out there in front of the fans so how the day went didn’t really matter, and I just was gonna meet me where my body was.”
Next American among folks we talked with: Sammy Smith, 50th.
“Well, definitely more of a sprinter so today was just kind of for fun,” said the best cross-country skier at Stanford. “But super fun to be out there racing and in front of a great crowd, and really exciting to be part of Jessie’s last World Cup sprinter.”
As for how a sprinter paces a 20km?
“Just kind of try and hang on,” Smith said. “I feel like I definitely have a lot of room to grow in distance skiing. I certainly prefer sprinting and I’m a lot more confident in that now, so just trying to embrace the distance races I do and learn from them.”
“She’s done so much for skiing in the United States,” Smith added of you-know-who, “and I’m super excited that she got to have her last World Cup starts at home and in front of such an incredible crowd. It’s a pretty incredible last race for her.”
Last, but empathically not least, Rosie Brennan was 57th today, in a race that she did more for the vibes than for the competition.
“I knew that I basically can’t go above threshold in skating without kind of severe problems,” said the veteran athlete who has shouldered multiple health challenges across the last few season. “So when I chose to do this race, it was just to enjoy the atmosphere and kind of have one last hurrah out there this year. So that’s what I did. And it was great that so many people were willing to brave this horrible weather to come and cheer for me and help me enjoy these last few laps.”
But n.b., this was the last few laps this year, not necessarily of her career.
“No,” said Brennan, politely, when asked if that was retirement champagne we had just glimpsed her hoisting. “I’m not sure what is next, but I need some time and distance to think about it.”
Oh, and lest I forget, your other American finishers today are Kendall Kramer, 28th; Hailey Swirbul, 31st; Ava Thurston, 32nd; Novie McCabe, 35th; Luci Anderson, 44th; Alayna Sonnesyn, 46th; and Emma Albrecht, 59th.
okay, one more Jessie photo (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) Speaking of retiring: Diggins leaves the day, and her career, with four overall Crystal Globes, four Distance Globes, four Olympic medals, seven World Championship medals, three Tour de Ski wins, 78 individual World Cup podiums (including 31 wins), 11 World Cup team podiums, and one Birkie win. Needless to say, these are, other than the Birkie win total, all records for American cross-country skiers, most of them by yawning gaps of margins.
Finally, the headline here is an allusion to this seminal piece in The New Yorker, by John Updike, on Ted Williams’s final home game. No comment on how long I’ve been sitting on that one in advance of today.
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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‘Swede’ End to the Season for Dominant Sprint Squad
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 Adele Haeg
LAKE PLACID — On the 30 miles into Lake Placid from Vermont, this reporter passed by at least two “Olympic gateway” signs in AuSable, New York. When we arrived at the venue, it was just as stately and historic-feeling as all the signs prepare you for it to be; there’s a sweeping sort of drama to the course, the snowy mountains as the backdrop.
You don’t hear or see the crowds from far away until you’re in the venue, and then it’s overwhelming.
“This is so cool. Everyone brought such energy,” Jessie Diggins said to Nordic Insights today, after finishing her last World Cup sprint competition ever. “I mean, listen to the cowbells.”
“I wish I could have, like, had even more time to just stop and really just walk along the trail to absorb everything,” Diggins said, ever so slightly sentimentally. “I would love to adopt the entire Ski World.”
On warmup laps and during each of the heats, fans all over the course were calling out nearly every athlete from every nation by name. Shouts — Sammy! Chicco! Gus! — could be heard throughout the venue, when there weren’t chainsaws running or cowbells clanging. Diggins said she felt “so loved,” and she wasn’t the only one.
“I announced at the start of the season this would be my last, and I wanted everyone to come celebrate with me,” Diggins said. Fans came from all over the country and world for Diggins, and other beloved athletes who aren’t returning to the racing circuit next year. Italy’s Federico Pellegrino and Switzerland’s Nadine Fähndrich, both known as sprinters and both legends in their own right, both got their own retirement fanfare today, too. Maybe they’d have stayed if they were promised more American World Cups.
women’s final (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) All the sprinters put on a show for the American fans on a course of hairpin turns and steep uphills. The Adirondacks got about five inches of snow during yesterday’s 10-kilometer race, and conditions didn’t slush up under the cloud cover today, a reprieve for these tired athletes who have trekked through much fog and other precipitation in recent weeks.
Going into today’s sprint finals, only 20 points separated Fähndrich from Maja Dahlqvist in the race for the overall sprint globe. Dahlqvist, in first, had 720 points, second-place Johanna Hagström had 708, and Fähndrich 700.
Dahlqvist, who went into today wearing the red sprint leader’s bib, dominated in her qualifiers, as did Sundling and Svahn, although most of the heats and semifinals were very close.
After three rounds of sprints, it came down to six competitors, among them Dahlqvist, Hagström, and Faehndrich, all three of the Crystal Globe contenders. If it wasn’t dramatic enough, Fähndrich is one of several fan favorite athletes retiring this season. A sprint win is good for 100 points in the discipline standings — it was anyone’s game.
Linn Svahn, the Swedish sprint superstar who won yesterday’s 10-kilometer classic, also took the win today, lunging across the line less than a second ahead of second-place Jonna Sundling, who also did not place in the overall Globe competition.
While either Hagström or Faendrich could have pulled ahead and taken the Globe, Dahlqvist finished just behind Sundling, Hagström behind her, and Fändrich in fifth, with Coletta Rydzek in sixth. Dahlqvist claimed her third career sprint globe, by 16 points over Hagström and 21 points over Fändrich. So bitter-Swede.
“I just followed Linn’s ass the whole time. I was constantly checking it out,” Dahlqvist told Swedish outlet Expressen about her experience in the final. Svahn will likely make a run at the sweep tomorrow in the 20-kilometer skate race.
Jessie Diggins (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) Jessie Diggins made it out of the quarterfinals as a lucky loser, but didn’t clear her semifinal. Though Diggins and teammates Sammy Smith and Julia Kern looked in position to advance to the semifinals going up up the second uphill of the course, neither of them advanced, finishing the day in 17th and 26th respectively.
Diggins, at least, wasn’t too worried about the results. She couldn’t get over the crowds at Lake Placid this weekend.
“For me, it’s so cool to get to be Auntie Jessie, and for these young boys to see professional women’s sport, and to see that the women are getting exactly the same amount of cheering as the men, and that we’re seeing the skiing the same course with the same level of intensity and competition,” she told Nordic Insights of her day.
In the qualifiers, Ava Thurston finished in 38th, Lauren Jortberg 40th, Rosie Brennan 42nd, Alayna Sonnesyn 44th, Hailey Swirbul 45th, Emma Albrecht 48th, Erin Bianco 53rd, Nina Schamberger 54th, and Renae Anderson 61st. It was Schamberger’s first World Cup start.
“Today was an unbelievable atmosphere and so fun to race in front of a home crowd! I pushed myself pretty hard in the 10k yesterday and am really proud of that race. It meant I was a bit tired this morning for the sprint quali so I was bummed to not have quite enough speed and power,” Alayna Sonnesyn wrote in a text to Nordic Insights.
Tomorrow will be a very, very emotional day for American ski fans, Diggins’s last dance. Get ready for drama, and tears.
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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Pellegrino Caps Career by Winning Skate Sprint in Lake Placid
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
LAKE PLACID — In the final World Cup sprint race of his storied career, Italy’s Federico “Chicco Pelle” Pellegrino went big, winning the skate sprint here in Lake Placid in the second day of racing at 2025/2026 World Cup Finals. Pellegrino’s time in the final was 2:35.01. Norway’s young phenom, Lars Heggen, took second place, 1.24 seconds back, but it wasn’t that close. Anton Grahn of Sweden was third, .04 second behind Heggen. Uff.
I took the shuttle bus to Mount van Hoevenberg this morning under a dead gray sky. Temperature was 28 degrees (-2.2 Celsius). The track looked firm and fast: van Ho’s grooming crew did yeoman’s work following yesterday’s six inches of new snow. As we shall see, the track broke down in places.
Today being Saturday, the crowd was markedly larger than Friday. (Pro tip: the weekend actually begins at 3 p.m. Thursday.) Flags for Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, and Italy flew, in addition to U.S., Minnesota, and Alaska flags. Van Ho has a dedicated wifi network for media; today the number of press taxed it to the max.
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo opted to skip today’s sprint. From his interview yesterday, this was partly to save energy for tomorrow’s 20km skate, and partly not to overexert himself post-concussion.
Thus, Lucas Chavanat, FRA, led the way in qualification with a time of 2:29.97. Pellegrino qualified second, 2.04 seconds back. Heggen was third, 2.52 seconds back.
With extra start spots as the host nation, the U.S. fielded 12 athletes. Five of them — JC Schoonmaker, Jack Young, Zanden McMullen, Ben Ogden, and Gus Schumacher — made the heats, finishing the day in 9th, 13th, 15th, 17th, and 21st, respectively. In the qual, Zach Jayne was 33rd, Zak Ketterson 39th, Murphy Kimball 42nd, Kevin Bolger 43rd, John Schwinghamer 54th, Will Koch 55th, and Owen Young 64th.
men’s final (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) The final hairpin turn before the finishing straight proved to be the crux corner on the day. In the first quarterfinal, Gus Schumacher was in the mix until that corner, where he was boxed in on the outside. He finished fifth in the heat. Time and again, those on the outside of that corner had a huge disadvantage.
“That hairpin was tough,” Schumacher wrote to Nordic Insights after the race. “I knew I needed to be on the inside but came up on Grahn and he was playing Seattle Seahawks defense. I couldn’t go right [inside] so I went left, but didn’t have the speed to pass him. Which let the rest of the field go through on the inside, and that was just about that. Pretty frustrating there for sure, but cool day overall. Conditions were solid but definitely got pretty sugary.”
At some points, the women’s quarterfinals looked like NASCAR, with multiple crashes. The men’s rounds were slightly better, but also featured drama. In the second quarterfinal, Elias Keck, GER, and Jules Chappaz, FRA, both fell in the final hairpin corner before the finishing straight. They didn’t appear to tangle.
The third quarterfinal had both lucky losers, Schoonmaker and Norway’s Harald Østberg Amundsen.
On to the semifinals. In the first semi, Schoonmaker was off the back at the start, but closed, drafting Pellegrino in the omega. Grahn won, and both lucky losers, Chavanat and Pellegrino, came from this heat. Schoonmaker was fifth.
Erik Johansson, SWE, won the second semifinal, with Amundsen right on his ski tails. There was drama at the back, as Spain’s Jaume Pueyo tangled with Norway’s Ansgar Evensen on the Grindhouse climb. Subsequently, Pueyo was relegated to last. Who knew that they’d subsequently clash in the mixed zone? In front of your correspondent, Evensen accused Pueyo of deliberately stepping on his skis twice. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough turning on the voice recorder.
“It was good, very good,” Pueyo said to Nordic Insights following his verbal contretemps with Evensen. “I did semifinal, but they run me as last. I don’t know why. It has no sense. I was trying to pass Amundsen. I did nothing, it seems like, and where is that incident?”
Was it down here, your correspondent asked, gesturing towards the crux hairpin? (The mixed zone here doesn’t afford great sight lines.) “No, no, it was there,” Pueyo said, gesturing towards the Grindhouse climb. “I was there, and I didn’t see it. I mean, I was trying to pass Amundsen, and so I don’t know.”
finish (photo: Peter Minde) In the final, Pellegrino went out like a man possessed. He led the field over the Grindhouse climb. Dropping into the stadium, fast skis let him pull away by a country mile. As they went into the final hairpin corner, the bunch closed, but Pellegrino wasn’t having it. A clear win, topping off a great career.
“Thank you, Lake Placid,” Pellegrino told FIS. “The energy in the warm-up lap before qualification, I stopped in the climb and I got this feeling of power coming from the public, cheering for me — ‘Chicco Pelle!’ — and then in the final I could not wait.”
Of his race, Grahn said, “It was really fun. I’ve worked hard all year for the skate sprint and to get [to the] final and get the podium, it feels very good, and I’m just so happy.”
On his race strategy, Grahn said, “It was all about going first from the beginning and having the first position in the last uphill. And every time I succeeded, and I know that that hill isn’t my best. So sometimes I lost a position or two there, but because I was first in, I have a good place.”
Erik Johansson, SWE, finished sixth in the final. “Huge crowd today. Very fun to race today,” he said. On his race strategy through the heats: “I wanted to be in first position all the time, so I had a whole track for myself.” On the crux corner, he opined, “It was a tough corner, but I thought it was good for us today, so it was not a problem for me.”
Saturday photo showing multiple buses and no visible lines (photo: Peter Minde) Venue transportation
Yesterday, getting to and from the venue was challenging. On this site, a hit piece was published that attacked the organizers and their integrity. I will not link to this odious piece.
Suffice to say, said article implies that the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) took a “let them eat cake” attitude towards transportation to the venue. Simultaneously, I’m impressed by the number of people on social media who magically have become public transit experts.
It’s only right that ORDA get to respond, so I sought out Rebecca Dayton, Vice President of Sport and Events.
“Yesterday wasn’t our best performance,” Dayton said.
“We always have challenges on Fridays,” she said. “Our parking system is, we work really closely and really well with the local schools to provide buses to support our shuttling systems. Unfortunately, Fridays are always a challenge.”
Because Friday is, you know, a school day. Kids have to be transported, and the various school districts are unable to provide as many buses as ORDA would like. In addition, six inches of new snow slowed down the buses that were there.
“We knew [Friday] was always a lighter bus number day than we have for the weekend. We’re really comfortable with where we are with buses for the weekend, and I think the plan will work well,” Dayton said.
“We worked with our security partners and state police to help on the exit in the flow of all of those things,” Dayton said. “The other thing we noticed yesterday is everybody arrived at the event directly from their home base, anxious, sometimes a little bit later than they wanted to get to where they needed to go. And I do think there was some education on all sides. Yesterday, I ran into a bunch of people who still felt like they were just going to drive into van Hoevenberg exactly like they normally would, and park exactly where they always do, whether it’s an Eastern Cup or a carnival race, and have the exact same experience.
“I’m hoping that we correct that today. People have been really graceful, gracious, and we’re thankful this morning, when I talked to them, that there were more buses, and hopefully we can correct the problem for this weekend.”
On Friday, a writer waited 30 minutes for a bus back to the ski jumps. On Saturday, that wait was five minutes. People learn, people adapt.
Racing concludes tomorrow with men’s and women’s 20km skate. Unless something changes overnight, the races will run over five laps of a four-kilometer loop that hasn’t figured in recent races. 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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Klæbo Wins Men’s 10km Classic in a Maelstrom as Norway Sweeps Top Five; Schumacher Seventh
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
LAKE PLACID — In driving snow, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won today’s men’s 10-kilometer interval-start classic in Lake Placid, the first race of the first World Cup Finals ever held in the U.S., in a time of 26:44.5. Countryman Andreas Fjorden Ree was in second place, 14.7 seconds back. Mattis Stenshagen was third, almost 10 seconds further in arrears.
Duelling with Klæbo for the distance crystal globe, Harald Østberg Amundsen came fourth, 0.7 seconds away from the podium. The day’s results vaunted Klæbo from a few points back of Amundsen in the distance standings to 12 points up with just Sunday’s distance race remaining.
The early morning weather report was innocuous: “chance of snow, no significant accumulation.” As press corps members waited for the shuttle bus in the morning, the temperature hovered around freezing. On cue, snow began falling as the bus chugged to Mount van Ho. The women were scheduled to go first today, at 1 p.m. local time. Ten minutes before they started, it was nuking snow. Dang near whiteout conditions.
The course was the same five-kilometer loop that featured in national championships in January. Anticipating a March thaw, the Ho blew an outrageous snow mountain in the 1980 stadium that they used to touch up trouble spots.
Following his fall and concussion in Drammen, Klæbo spent time in the hospital and then rested at home, gradually resuming workouts. His travel decision depended on feelings following a single hard workout and discussion with his doctors. At the eleventh hour, he hopped a plane to the U.S.
The men’s start list mixed seeded and non-seeded athletes for the heart of the field, giving seeded athletes the chance for additional TV time and non-seeded athletes the chance to do some trail breaking. Athletes took off at 30-second intervals. By now, the snow had settled into a regular snowstorm instead of snowmageddon. Climbing out of the stadium, the men seemed to glide more easily than the women did earlier. After all, the women broke trail earlier.
Speaking to skiers about grip after the fact, it sounds as if more athletes used kick wax than zero skis. As one may imagine, nobody wanted to give up their wax techs’ secrets.
Starting 20th, newly minted Olympic medalist Ben Ogden went out strong and led at the 3.8 km checkpoint ahead of Sweden’s Leo Johansson. Johansson overhauled him at the next checkpoint, but Ogden stayed in touch.
By this time, the big Norwegian guns were getting their turns in the start. At the first checkpoint (1.7 km), Klæbo had a slender lead over Stenshagen. At the next checkpoint, he’d built an eight-second lead over the men with whom he’d share the podium. By the time he came through the stadium at the halfway mark, Klæbo had added two seconds to his lead. Here, the Italian grand master, Federico Pellegrino, was in the mix in third place.
And that’s the way it was. Pellegrino’s third place at 5km aside, Klæbo and his podium mates controlled the race all the way to the finish.
“I’m really happy that I made it to the starting line,” Klæbo said in the mixed zone.
Of his recovery, Klæbo said, “It’s been a little bit on and off the last couple of days, but overall it feels good enough that I was managing to race today. Most answers we’ll probably get after the race later tonight and tomorrow. I think it’s the right decision to skip the [sprint] race tomorrow just to be on the safe side, and then hopefully I will be back at it again on Sunday with enough energy to be able to fight up there.”
On the Lake Placid vibe [see below, hells yeah], Klæbo said, “It was amazing. I think the tracks are really hard. People can see you [in] more places. And on the top there it was packed with people, and it was really cool. I think the Americans really know how to make noise and how to make a good atmosphere, which it was out there.”
On the atmosphere, Amundsen added, “This is maybe the top one of the top stadiums I’ve been to with, like, nice people. I felt when we had a run this morning in the city, everyone was screaming to us and good luck. And so that’s a nice atmosphere. I spoke with Ben Ogden, and he said it will be lots of people here, a good vibe. So I was looking forward to it.”
On his fight for the distance crystal globe, Amundsen said, “Now I’m 12 points behind Johannes, so it will be a close fight on Sunday. I need to take some bonus sprints during the race and try to beat him in the end.”
“I don’t care that much about the distance globe,” Klæbo told NRK today in auto-translated comments.
“That’s just bullshit!” was Amundsen’s take on this. “I know Johannes!”
Gus Schumacher (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) Gus Schumacher was the top American, finishing in seventh place. “I think I managed the conditions well,” he said. “Tough skiing, and I think I did a good job not getting too worried about it and trying to stay relaxed.”
Ben Ogden ultimately finished in eleventh place. On the day’s conditions, he said, “It was tough, but this is New England, you know? Well, it’s technically not, but we’ll include it for now. And that’s what happens: rain, snow, we just, we just push them out. And I’m honestly happy it was like this. I think it’s good for the memories. It’s true northeast skiing, so I wouldn’t have any other way.
“I just can’t put into words how thankful I am for everybody that came out and who supports me,” Ogden said. “Today, I couldn’t look on the side of the trail at any point and not see somebody who I knew.”
In sixth place, Pellegrino was asked, is it good for the sport if one team dominates?
“It depends which point of view we want to have about the performances,” Pellegrino said. “We know that people born in [northern] latitudes are helped by the months of snow in which they can ski.”
Ten additional American men raced today. Other finishers after the Olympic-medalist pair were John Steel Hagenbuch in 32nd, Zanden McMullen in 40th, Zach Jayne in 49th, Brian Bushey in 50th, JC Schoonmaker in 53rd, Reid Goble in 56th, Ben Dohlby in 62nd, Hunter Wonders in 63rd, Michael Earnhart in 67th, and Luke Jager in 70th.
Racing continues tomorrow with men’s and women’s skate sprints. You can find the men’s start list here, and the women’s start list here. Don’t touch that dial.
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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The Biggest Collapse of the Season, by Diggins Collapse Index
Editor’s note: This post was recently received from an undisclosed email address. If you are new to the site and are wondering what the hell we are talking about, please see first here and then here (also, welcome). This should resolve all ambiguities. Oh, also the blurry header photo shows, in the background, a very small portion of the people waiting for a ride today. Can’t really make out what is going on, and don’t see any buses there? Neither does ORDA.
By The Index
LAKE PLACID — The Index is deep undercover at the Lake Placid World Cup. Or the Stifel World Cup or whatever it’s called. You will never find The Index so don’t bother trying.
However, The Index witnessed the season’s biggest collapse. Yes, bigger than Klæbo at the Olympics. Yes, bigger than Jessie’s honks of agony post–Olympic skiathlon. Sometimes supporters of The Index write in to complain about our lack of historical coverage of notable collapses such as Northug or Dæhlie. Well, today’s collapse was more spectacular than any of those. In fact, it was such a collapse it changed the entire face of the weekend. Spectators were literally so distraught by this collapse they were unable to even watch the racing.
Who was it? What did they do? Just to keep you in suspense, let’s go to the scores first. In our typical fashion we will go in order: drama, duration, help, bonus.
Drama: 8 points
The shock value alone was worth the high score here. No one expected the Lake Placid organizers to collapse. To so thoroughly botch the transportation was an unprecedented feat. The Index loves a surprise, and the organizers certainly delivered. Those spectators who fled the scene? They literally couldn’t even get to the race. The organizers collapsed so hard they sent would-be spectators in the opposite direction.
How many shuttles would you, our readers, expect would be required to move thousands of people? One might presume that number is greater than the approximately 10 (being charitable) that the organizers hired.
Let’s say you had three sites from which to fetch spectators, with ~85% of spectators at one site. Would you set up a shuttle run that hit all three sites each route? Or would you route, say, 85% of your shuttle capacity to the site that had 85% of the demand? Surely you would not want 100% your buses to do approximately 60% of the shuttle route time with only 15% of their seats taken, would you?
(Some readers may be wondering… wait, there are three sites? Yes, there are three sites. One is just not written down anywhere, but it is part of the route. This means each loop has 7–10 minutes of drive time spent to pick up or deposit just a few people. Generally in logistics, secrets are not preferred, but the Lake Placid organizers feel differently.)
At the end of the day, when people wish to leave the shuttle lot (an inevitability given how cars work), do you think there might be traffic exiting the lot? In such a case, would you prefer to have your shuttles wait in traffic, or should they have an expedited exit path to save 5–10 minutes per loop?
Would you, perhaps, brief the shuttle drivers on their duties prior to the morning of the big event? Or would you tell them that very morning where to go, with no GPS or directions in the buses?
Would you contract with your bus drivers to stop their day at 6 p.m. when there were still hundreds of people waiting for shuttle rides back to their origin point?
This may seem obvious to some of you, but trust The Index that the Lake Placid organizers do not feel the same way. Thus the drama score of 8. The Index conducted numerous interviews and gathered the crowd vibes, which were… bad.
not pictured: bus (photo: Peter Minde) Duration: 120 points
As you know, The Index awards duration points by the minute, where one point = one minute. The organizers collapsed so hard that The Index was down for the count for 120 minutes to leave the venue.
We’ve never seen anything like this before, folks. The longest duration in Index history is a 2.5, and even that has only ever occurred twice, both last season. Joensuu in the Trondheim team sprint, and Deyanov after the Lillehammer 10km freestyle. The Lake Placid organizers just put up a score that beat the previous best by a factor of 48. And even this is charitable! The transportation was truly collapsed all day, so The Index could easily award them a 480, but we’re very nice.
Help: -8 points
Help points are awarded to every person who helps the collapsed athlete recover from their collapse. The Index counted eight New York State Troopers chilling in their cars doing absolutely nothing to direct traffic at intersections where traffic direction would have been quite helpful.
Negative help points have never been awarded before, and you might wonder about this. How could The Index award negative points? Many times athletes ski right past a collapsed colleague in the finish zone and they don’t receive negative points. So why would the police? Well, let The Index know when World Cup racers take taxpayer money to help collapsed athletes and we’ll start awarding negative points to racers. You’ve undoubtedly heard the acronym “ACAB.” Well, that’s true. And in this case, it also means All Collapses Are Beautiful.
Bonus: 0 points
You think The Index is just giving away points for no reason, don’t you? Wrong. Unjustified point scoring is against our religion, so no bonus awarded.
The Index looks forward to other journalists investigating this collapse in further detail. Who from the ORDA was responsible? Do they have a full and complete brain? Can they count or do arithmetic? Have they ever been transported to any place before?
Just as The Index provides coaching advice to athletes, we also provide logistical support to failing government organizations. You know where to find us.
The Index
Update from Saturday:
The Index would like to note that, just as World Cup athletes take our collapse coaching wisdom, the Lake Placid organizers did as well. Transportation was much improved on day two. Zero drama, zero duration, and a reasonable amount of help from the state police gets the help score back to zero. In other words, not a collapse.
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Linn Svahn Best in Blizzard to Win 10km Classic at Jessie Diggins Invitational; Diggins Fifth
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 snow came in waves today and so did the Scandinavians, with Norway or Sweden claiming 11 of the top 13 spots in Friday’s women’s 10-kilometer interval-start classic, the opening race of World Cup Finals at Lake Placid.
Linn “not just a sprinter” Svahn took the win, the fourth distance victory of her career for the 26-year-old Swede. Countrywoman Frida Karlsson, the presumptive pre-race favorite after an incredibly strong string of distance races across the back half of the season, was a narrow second, 1.4 seconds back, after Svahn closed out the final kilometer of the course slightly better than she did. Heidi Weng of Norway was third, 22.1 seconds back.
Jessie Diggins, an athlete you may have heard something about in the run-up to this race weekend, was fifth, 32.5 seconds back and about ten seconds off the podium, after skiing in fifth position for nearly all of the race. Astrid Øyre Slind of Norway was two-ish seconds ahead of her for fourth. Johanna Matintalo of Finland, ninth, was the other non-Scandinavian in the top thirteen. No word on whether she had the magic skis today.
The next American on the day was fellow veteran Rosie Brennan in 19th (+2:04.5). Third for the home team today was Brennan’s APU teammate Kendall Kramer, 25th (+2:31.1). Novie McCabe, also of APU, slotted in in 28th (+2:37.5) to mark the final American in the top 30.
An additional eight (!) Americans started today. More on them later once I hear more from the on-the-ground folks, don’t worry. An especial shoutout to Emma Reeder (BSF) and Katey Houser (Montana State), both of whom made their World Cup debut today.
Today was the first victory in an interval-start race of Svahn’s career. It feels “really nice,” she told FIS in post-race comments. “I’ve been doing good on the mass start, but never on the individual start, so it was nice to finally get the win in that race.”
Svahn said that it felt like she had been “going quite the same speed” as her teammate, Karlsson, in the last few 10km classic races. “So in Lahti she was the strongest and now today I was the strongest, so it was a good day.”
Svahn admitted that, at this point in the season, while her physical shape remains good, “mentally I’m starting to get tired. So today my motivation was the crowd,” she said, “and they just pushed me.”
Speaking as someone who has watched his share of World Cup broadcasts, the crowd at the venue today looked to be somewhere between “very healthy” and “lowkey prodigious for the conditions.” Organizers were approaching 10,000 tickets sold for Saturday’s sprint as of earlier this week (at a venue far away from everything with no great public transit), while Holmenkollen drew just 9,000 to 10,000 paid spectators for two iconic races on Saturday (at a venue a short subway ride away from downtown Oslo) (okay plus also 5,000 more at Frognerseteren), so maybe we should have World Cups in the U.S. more often not saying just saying.
Diggins on course today. Skiing is fun. (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) Fifth on the results sheet, but first in many fans’ hearts, was one Jessica Adele Diggins. “Today they all came for her,” wrote FIS on its Instagram page. While I understand how marketing works, this felt a little harsh to me; I’m sure that American skiers numbers two through twelve also had fans out there who care about them, too.
That said, Diggins was the highest-placing American today, so let’s start with her and run down from there.
“I had so much fun out there,” exulted a joyous and buoyant Diggins after her race. “It was so cool. The crowds were amazing. The fact that so many people came out here in a snowstorm and were out in the woods just cheering, screaming, it was so exciting. I felt so loved, and my big goal was to have fun and to just go as hard as I could one last time in a classic race and to really be present in any moment and just feel all the love and excitement out there.”
“I truly had a great day out there,” Diggins continued. “It was so fun and exciting. I’ve got four little nephews out here, and I wanted to show those young boys what it is to be a professional woman in sport and to get to have them see and experience this excitement. So it was fun being Auntie Jessie today and getting to do my job one more time.”
Conditions were, shall we say, variable today, with heavy snow pelting down throughout the afternoon. Diggins started 58th in a field of 61, behind all seeded athletes save for Maja Dahlqvist in bib 60.
“If I was worried about the conditions being completely stable and fair every single time across the board, I should have stayed a swimmer, right?” was Diggins’s post-race take on snow conditions.
“Or like track and field. But this is part of it. That’s what makes it so magical; that’s what makes it so exciting. It’s a partnership with the weather, the conditions, the wax techs, the coaches. … It is tricky out there, and I thought I had a great kick. And of course it’s a little like that second lap was kicking pretty tough, but that’s part of the sport. And some days you get really lucky, and some days you’re less lucky. And you just crawl out there and you do your best anyway.”
Rosie Brennan (photo: @rylanhphoto, rylanh.com/photography) On to Brennan, who finished 19th today.
You look like you’re a bit worked over, a reporter gently suggested. How do you feel?
“I’m worked over!” Brennan said, laughing. “It’s a brutal, brutal day out.”
“You never know” about the implications of an early start position said a sanguine Brennan, bib 15 today. “Those are one of those things that we’ll never know. But we’re outdoors. So it is what it is.”
“I tend to like these conditions,” said Brennan of a day that was rough for everyone. “I think they suit my grindy style. I just was trying to focus on being relaxed and skiing the best I can.”
Finally, it is no secret that Brennan has had a rough few years of working through health challenges. “I’ve been continuing to navigate it,” Brennan said. “Just trying to do the best I can every day. It was really nice to be out here and just have so many people cheering no matter what. So it meant a lot to me to be able to make it here and be able to race.”
Next up for the U.S. today was Kendall Kramer, who finished 25th. Speaking of variable conditions out there: Kramer had bib 5 today.
“It was a lot of muscling on this course,” said Kramer of her day. “Especially I was number five, out number five, but I came in as the second girl to finish, and so it was a lot of breaking trail. So the first girls out there were breaking a lot of trail, and that was a whole other piece to navigate. Like, you had to go where the people had gone and broken the trail before you, so you had to look for that as you were going, as opposed to just not thinking about it.”
This is… not typically something on an athlete’s list of concerns during a World Cup race.
Kramer raced here two-plus months ago for U.S. Nationals, and raced well, securing her first career Olympic berth in the process. She said that this experience gave her an advantage relative to the Europeans who were encountering the course for the first time.
“I know where there’s gonna be rest,” Kramer said, “so I know where I can push a little harder. I know what the hills feel like already, so I’m not surprised when they feel hard. So I do think it’s an advantage.”
The capacity of our man on the ground to speak with all twelve American finishers today became a bit compromised at this point, so let me be sure to note all Americans here: After Diggins in fifth, Brennan in 19th, and Kramer in 25th, the home team also saw Novie McCabe finish in 28th, Ava Thurston in 33rd, Hailey Swirbul in 34th, Alayna Sonnesyn in 35th, Sammy Smith in 47th, Emma Albrecht in 48th, Renae Anderson in 50th, Emma Reeder in 53rd, and Katey Houser in 58th. As noted above, it was the World Cup debut for both Reeder and Houser.
Hailey Swirbul was the final American whom Peter Minde caught today.
“It was such cool energy out there,” were the first words out of Swirbul’s mouth. “Getting to start in a little sandwich with me then Jessie then Novie [in bibs 57 through 59], you could feel the energy for Team U.S.A.”
“I thought my skis had really good kick,” Swirbul said of her boards today. “It’s hard to tell speed when you’re not around anyone else, but it was really fun to stride up all the hills here again.”
“I think with this course it’s such a long working section,” was Swirbul’s take on how the 5km lap skis, “and if you have a lot of extra energy on the second lap, there’s plenty of time to leave it all out there. So I think it’s important to pace this course well and then see how much time you can make, or not, in the end.”
One athlete who made up time today was winner Linn Svahn; the relatively early starter (bib 10) laid down a prodigious time off a fast start, only to watch Karlsson, bib 32, slowly erode the entire gap. By the 8.8-kilometer mark Karlsson was the virtual leader, by 3.1 seconds, but she faded slightly over the return to the stadium to finish second by 1.4 seconds.
“It didn’t feel like it went so fast,” Svahn said of her ski that culminated with a slow-for-World-Cup time of 29:04 for 9.8km, “but I held up a really good speed.”
“It’s hard to get a good feeling when the weather is like this, but it felt like I could just push on the way to the finish line,” she continued. “So apparently it was a good day for me and Team Sweden. We had really good skis in these difficult conditions.”
Difficult conditions, indeed. That concludes things for now for women’s racing out of Lake Placid. The article on the men’s race will be up later today (TLDR, Klæbo won, followed by four teammates; Gus was seventh, 40.5 seconds back, but also second on the non-Norge podium). Thanks to Peter for his fine work from the venue today and to @rylanhphoto for the images.
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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