Under the supervision of the Head Coach, the purpose of this position is to use athletics as a tool to educate college students.  By using inter-collegiate competition and all activities related to such competition, this position serves as a teacher and mentor to help build student character, prepare students for a constructive and effective life, and teach valuable life lessons including work ethic; discipline; resilience; persistence; teamwork and selflessness; goal-setting and goal achievement; overcoming adversity; and leadership. This position typically influences student-athletes for their entire four years at Harvard and plays a key role in shaping their personal development.

This position assists in planning, directing and coaching the Men’s/Women’s inter-collegiate Nordic Skiing program. Typically works with all student-athletes in the program.

This position plays a key leadership role for the Nordic skiing program. Will fill in when the Head Coach is absent. May play a role as liaison with Athletics administrative departments. Requires experience coaching at the collegiate level or comparable experience, which may include coaching/teaching at the club or professional level or competing in a professional or other high-performance environment.

This is a one-year term position renewable at the discretion of the Head Coach and the Athletics Director. Full-time, partial year (11 months).

Position Description

Athlete Team Management

• Assists Head Coach in developing, coordinating, and planning practices and competition to develop student-athlete skills and helps team perform at competitive levels.
• Develops, coordinates and plans assigned portions of practices and competition management consistent with Head Coach’s strategic vision.
• Analyzes video to develop strategies for athlete development.
• Executes a student-athlete talent recruitment plan and retention strategy consistent with values of excellence and inclusion.
• Effectively leads and communicates with students by generating enthusiasm for the team through credible coaching.
• Supports culture of education through athletics. Assists in academic integration with team.

1. Operational Complexity

• Assists in the development and execution of team strategy, logistics and operational direction.
• Operates within budget.
• Maintains compliance with University, Ivy League, NCAA and other rules and regulations.
• Coordinates with less-experienced coaches in implementing objectives.
• Participates in professional development activities; follows trends and embraces innovation opportunities.
• Assists head coach in problem resolution.
• Requires the ability to communicate effectively with the Head Coach and athletics administrators.

Communication & Influence

• Assists Head Coach in maintaining and building viewership, and maintaining and creating positive media interest, consistent with the sport.
• Supports the Head Coach in influencing public interest where applicable.

In addition, the Assistant Coach will be responsible for:

• Coordinating with Head Coach to maintain team equipment, organize equipment orders, and assist in ski preparation for training and competition.
• Assisting in the planning and organization of home competition events.
• Assisting with travel planning.
• Assisting with recruiting of potential student-athletes.
• Working with Head Coach to develop training schedules and annual training plans for the team.
• Assisting Head Coach in team training sessions, and occasionally leading training sessions when necessary.
• Operating team vehicles safely, including in winter weather conditions.

The Assistant Coach may lead some travel independently from Head Coach when academic or competition schedules require and will need to be capable of testing wax and preparing skis for high-level competition.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required.
• Requires at least 2 years of Nordic Ski coaching, or experience Nordic skiing at the collegiate, professional, or Olympic (or equivalent) level.

Additional Qualifications and Skills

• Requires substantial mastery of Nordic skiing knowledge and relevant issues.
• Understands the philosophy, principles and policies of Harvard and Ivy League athletics (including the University Conflict of Interest and Commitment policy).
• Requires moderate management and leadership knowledge.

Certificates and Licenses

• Valid driver’s license needed.
• CPR and First Aid required.

Physical Requirements

• Must be able to lift equipment associated with the sport.

Working Conditions

• Evening and weekend work required.
• Frequent travel is required.
• Job requires work in extreme environmental conditions, including extreme heat and cold, rain, and high levels of noise.

Work Format: On-Site
The health of our workforce is a priority for Harvard University. With that in mind, we strongly encourage all employees to be up-to-date on CDC-recommended vaccines.

To apply: bit.ly/66567BR

Last May, FasterSkier wrote about the retirement of University of New Hampshire’s (UNH) legendary ski coach Cory Schwartz, who had been with the University for 42 years. This summer, UNH named Shane MacDowell— the team’s former assistant coach— as Schwartz’s replacement. Following in the footsteps of a person whose career stretches back to the Reagan administration is a daunting task. Doing so at a university which has a dedicated and passionate alumni base is even more of a challenge. Shane MacDowell was generous enough to take time to speak with FasterSkier about taking on the challenge of following the career of a legend, and the difficulties involved in coaching a high profile ski program.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

FasterSkier: First off, congratulations are still in order. You’re still kind of in the early honeymoon phases?

Shane MacDowell: Thanks. Yeah, summer was kind of the perfect time for this to happen. So, it’s kind of easing into it before the chaos begins.

FasterSkier: Shane, where do you call home?

Shane MacDowell: The past three years my family and I’ve been back and forth between Lake Placid, NY and New Hampshire. But now we’re going to be living in Somersworth, New Hampshire.

FasterSkier: Let’s start with one of the harder questions right off the bat. You’re obviously following in the footsteps of Cory Schwartz, who was at UNH for over four decades, and that has to be a challenge— following in the footsteps of a person who has become pretty much an institution. So how are you approaching that aspect of it, if you’re even considering that aspect of it?

Shane MacDowell: Yes, I’m considering that aspect of it. I’m definitely trying to be my own person, and my own coach, with that thought, I feel as though I’ve had an incredible experience running up to this point. Right out of college I worked for Boulder Nordic Sport with Roger Knight and that set me up on the waxing side of things. From there I worked at Green Mountain Valley School and then at Northern Michigan University (NMU) which gave me some really unique perspectives on coaching and leading a program, especially with Northern Michigan under Sten Fjeldheim. I got to really see what a top tier program is like, and then obviously working with Cory (Schwartz). Like you said, he’s an institution, and I had the pleasure and ability to ski for him when I was in college and then to come back and to be able to work with him and see how things work on the other side from being an athlete. I think that helped. It really set me up to be in this position because at UNH it’s not just about being a coach. We do a significant amount of fundraising, and our alumni outreach and alumni engagement are a huge part, which is great. I think what makes the entire ski program unique is because all the alumni are so engaged with the current team and how the program is doing. They want to give back and they want to still be a part of the program. Following in Cory’s footsteps is my goal, and not disrupting the foundation that he has laid, but also adding my own layer to it or my own character to it by doing things just a little bit differently. I think if somebody would come into this program after everything Cory has done to make it what it is — saving it on several occasions—and then to change everything about it, would be making a massive mistake.

FasterSkier: Whenever there’s a coaching change in any collegiate sport program after a long term coach has left, there are inevitable comparisons which get made and you’re going to face that as well. Is that something you’re prepared for?

Shane MacDowell: I think I’m prepared for it, and I think it makes it a little bit easier in that transition because it’s not like I’m coming from the outside as a new hire. This will be my 4th year coaching with UNH. I wouldn’t say it’s as stark as like, a Division One football program coach coming in from a whole different program and those comparisons being made … I’ve been part of the program.

FasterSkier: So you think having been an assistant coach at UNH for the last three years, is going to make the transition easier for you?

Shane MacDowell:  I think that makes it a little bit easier. There’s obviously a lot more things that I need to take on, with being a program director as well, that it’s going to take me a little while to get up to speed on. Cory did an amazing job of that alumni outreach that I spoke of before. And, getting up to speed on that and keeping that engagement going is definitely going to be one of the biggest … I hesitate to say hurdles to overcome, but it’s a big step to add on to, trying to run the Nordic program and oversee Alpine as well. So yes, on some of it, it is going to make it easier to transition, but there’s definitely going to be challenges along the way as well.

FasterSkier: Let me follow up with that. Your official title is director of Skiing and Head Nordic coach, which is the same title that Cory had. That includes directing and supervising downhill as well. Do you feel that position holds or creates any tension between the downhill and cross- country programs, especially when you have the head coach whose background predominantly is cross country?

Shane MacDowell: I don’t think it creates tension. There are a couple of other programs around the country that do it the same way and in certain cases, the Alpine coach is the director of the Nordic program. When Cory was in the position, or when I’m in the position, it’s not like we’re telling the Alpine program what they can or can’t do or how they should be training or anything like that. We’re one team that is headed by the director of the program. We’re not looked at as Alpine and Nordic. So to have one person, whether it be the Alpine head coach, or the Nordic head coach be the lead on that, I think it’s beneficial. Because I think when you separate the two, we would start competing for fundraising dollars within our alumni base and this way, when it’s looked at as one program, we’re doing it all as one unit.

FasterSkier:  In your position, will you actually be involved in coaching the Alpine athletes at all or working with them in any capacity?

Shane MacDowell: Coaching No. I won’t be on the hill coaching them, going through gates, that’s what Brian Blank and Parker Costa are doing. Interacting, yes. I said we’re one team, so we certainly interact as a team. Our Alpine and Nordic are very close with one another. Sometimes we’ll have training sessions together for dry-land, usually like our more explosive workouts, doing plyometrics, or sometimes we’ll get a speedball game going. I’m not sure if you know what speedball is?

FasterSkier: I don’t.

Shane MacDowell: It’s kind of a combination of two hand touch football and soccer. But you know we have those engagements where we get the two teams together and it keeps the team close and reminds them that we are in this together. It’s not just one team or the other. So, in that regard, I hesitate to call it coaching, but definitely coordinating to get together and keep that initiative going that we are one team working towards the same goal.

FasterSkier: In your remarks at your introductory press conference, you mentioned the time you spent at NMU (Northern Michigan University) under Sten Fjeldheim— who I think it’s fair to say is another legendary coach. You’re in a unique position where you’ve worked under both of these legends. Can you expound a little bit on what coaching lessons you learned from Sten and maybe if you can make a comparison of Sten’s methods versus Cory’s?

Shane MacDowell: I strongly believe that when I went and worked with Sten at Northern Michigan, I very much went to school with him on training methods, and technique. Sten is a technician when it comes to all of that, and I had the opportunity to work with him, who I think was probably one of the most successful coaches that the U.S. has ever had— so many national champions and some pretty incredible teams. Let me go on with Cory before I kind of compare the two. With Cory I had the background of the training and being able to write plans and have confidence in it and evaluate technique when I came to UNH. But with Cory I think I learned— and this isn’t to say I wasn’t learning it under Sten either—I learned how to find my coaching style a little bit more, work on the coach-athlete interaction, a little bit more patient scenarios and how to approach certain situations. And then also the other aspect of the program too is with fundraising, and I keep coming back to that which for our program is just huge. They have two pretty distinctly different styles, but I think it’s by necessity of the program. With UNH, fundraising and alumni engagement is huge for us because it has to be. Fundraising and alumni engagement was present at Northern Michigan, but it wasn’t as much of a must, so you could certainly focus a lot more time on the training aspect of things.

FasterSkier: I think it might be fair to say that NMU might have a little higher name recognition when it comes to attracting international athletes? Is that something that played into how the coaches handled athletes or affected the coaching at all?

Shane MacDowell: It’s actually kind of funny because it surprised me when I was working for Sten that his first international athlete wasn’t until when I was actually skiing in school in 2005, 2006. Up until then, he had only had Americans. And even when I was working with him, we had a couple of foreign athletes, but I would say the majority of the team was all Americans. My first year there, we had the best men’s team in the country at the NCAAs and they’re all from the Midwest which is pretty unique. You can’t take anything away from Sten and Northern on how successful they were. But to compare the Northern program to the UNH program or any program that has an Alpine team as well is like comparing apples and oranges. Because when you have an Alpine team as well, all of a sudden, your scholarships get cut in half for both programs. You’re allowed to have X number of scholarships, but then that gets split between Alpine and Nordic. With Northern they’re allowed the same number of scholarships, but it’s only for Nordic, so the power of having that many more scholarships just on the Nordic side, might play into being able to entice that foreign talent a little bit more.

FasterSkier:  NMU has an Alpine program but it’s a separate entity, right?

Shane MacDowell: Yeah, it’s a club team, so they don’t even compete in the same league.

FasterSkier: Working with Sten, can you put your finger on one or two major takeaway coaching lessons that you learned from him?

Shane MacDowell: The biggest takeaway from him was writing a training plan; writing one that can help the athletes be successful and improve throughout their time on the team. He was just incredible at knowing what an athlete needed and prescribing the right training and holding them to it and making them accountable. So, I would say, a combination of knowing training, but then also having that ability to get the respect from the athletes because they know that you know what you’re talking about and holding them accountable to get that work in to reach their best potential. And then the second is probably his ability to analyze technique and really hone in on where an athlete’s deficiencies are and being able to relay that in a way that the athlete understands is probably another big take away.

FasterSkier: Moving back to something else that you were talking about earlier regarding the importance of alumni outreach. UNH’s Nordic fan base is different than it is at a lot of other schools—it’s more involved. The importance of fundraising is high on the list of things that you have to do. As the head coach having to be involved with the fundraising, the training of athletes, and the administration of the program … it’s a lot for one person. What’s your strategy for tackling all that, because it seems like it’s just so much?

Shane MacDowell: It’s not really just all on one person. For the Nordic program we just hired a new assistant coach to replace myself with Brandon Herhusky, who was the assistant at UVM the past few years. So, it’s not all just falling on me. As mentioned before, we’re working as one team so we’re not engaging just the Nordic program, we’re engaging all of our alumni. Having our Alpine staff there to assist with that and help our program to have even greater outreach is great because then all of that responsibility isn’t necessarily just falling on one person’s shoulders.

FasterSkier: When you were an assistant at UNH, were you able to kind of sit back and watch how Cory processed and worked with the alumni and alumni relationships and saw how he managed it?

Shane MacDowell: Yes, and I think that’s been one of the biggest advantages of stepping into this role. I’ve had that experience of being able to see how Cory engaged with the alumni not only through email and social media, but to try to have at least one alumni event a year. During the Carnival season this past year we had it at the Dartmouth Carnival. So, we had as many alumni that wanted to come and had sort of a little banquet style dinner with everybody, and they actually got to come and watch the races as well. So just having that sort of engagement with them, keeping alumni involved as much as possible and up to date with who’s on the team, what the team’s doing— their successes both on the ski trails and in the classroom goes a long way. Our alumni obviously look at the team and their time on the team as being very special and still want to be involved with that and give back in in any way that they can.

FasterSkier: You don’t see it as quite the same daunting task as an outsider does looking in terms of managing all these different aspects of the program. It seems that there is an infrastructure in place, with people, to help manage all that?

Shane MacDowell: There’s definitely the infrastructure in place and like I mentioned earlier, Cory did an amazing job of laying that foundation. I would be sorely mistaken, if I were to say I’m not going to screw this up a little bit at one point or another. There’s going to be growing pains for me because it is new, but there are those other aspects to the program that help you tackle all the tasks that we do have.

Please revisit FasterSkier for part II of our interview with Shane MacDowell.

It’s been 14 years since I became an Olympian, competing as a cross country skier in the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.

Since then, it hasn’t been easy to get to the Olympics as a spectator. The Winter Games have been in Sochi, Pyeongchang and Beijing, while the summer games have been in Rio and Tokyo, with an interruption by the Covid pandemic. The Paris Games were finally an opportunity for me to attend my first Olympics as a spectator. My wife Catherine speaks fluent french and has spent lots of time in Paris, so she planned out an incredible long weekend for us, striking the perfect balance between Olympic events, Parts attractions and local flavors.

We caught the opening Ceremonies and many of the early competitions on TV, so we had a pretty good orientation and impression of the experience before arriving last Thursday night, August 1 for three days in Paris.

Public transportation was plastered with Olympic branding and volunteers to direct visitors. Our accommodation in Paris’ 9th arrondissement was located right on the cycling road race route with views up to the Sacré Coeur Basilica atop Montmartre – one of the highest points in Paris. We arrived in time for a late dinner – almost all restaurants in France have strict seating times and require reservations – and an evening storm poured rain just outside the restaurant’s open facade, bringing a welcome breeze on a hot night. Parisian steak frites, paired with a bottle of Bordeaux and a fresh side salad offered a quintessential start to the trip.

Most events start later in the day, so our aim on Friday was to discover Paris. What better place to kick things off than the Eiffel Tour? Adorned with the Olympic rings, I wanted to visit the iconic landmark on the Seine and site of the Opening Ceremonies, Beach Volleyball and finish of the triathlon and road races. I wrote my Master’s Thesis about “visitor flows” and the movements of tourists through cities. Not surprisingly, one of the first places tourists go when they arrive in a new city is the highest point. In Innsbruck, the destination I studied for my thesis, that’s the Nordkette mountain range overlooking the city below. In Paris, the highest point is the Eiffel Tower.

I was surprised that there was practically no line for the elevator to the top, so we hitched a ride and were rewarded with an Olympic panorama of Paris. The festive atmosphere of the beach volleyball match carried to the top of the Eiffel Tower. BMX racers practiced at the race track on the other side of the Seine. 3 x 3 basketball courts were surrounded by spectators. The iconic Grand Palais museum, with its vintage art deco style, hosted the fencing competitions. The Louvre, Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame – all places I knew only from photos and textbooks – came to life amidst all the Olympic venues. I didn’t get to visit any of the famous sites during my first trip to Paris, but I’m already looking forward to my next trip when I can go inside. This trip, after all, was to celebrate the Olympic Games!

And that’s exactly how it felt: a celebration. I was a bit self-conscious before my first day in Paris, so I decided to leave my USA Olympic rings shirt at home, instead opting for an unbranded neutral green t-shirt. Once I was out in the city, I realized I was probably the only person without a national flag or Olympic rings of some sort. People’s clothes were an opportunity to open conversation, congratulating sport’s fans on the achievements of athletes from their country.

Some countries with large Olympic teams even have “houses” in Paris. The houses are more like embassies. The “Team USA House” was in the Palais Brongniart, an impressive building originally built in 1826 as home to one of the world’s first stock exchanges. The Team USA House is a gathering point for athletes, their families, sponsors and even US Olympians from previous Games. At the Vancouver Olympics, the cross country skiers stayed in Whistler, so I never visited the Team USA House. One of my highlights in Paris was visiting the Team USA House and the opportunity to connect with other Olympians and share the experience with my wife Catherine and best man, Dan. Dan and I ski raced both in high school and college together. Dan is in Paris for the Olympics in his role working for Airbnb.

A couple of the highlights in the Team USA House were catching up with 5x Bobsled Olympic medalist and 2022 USA flag bearer Elana Meyers Taylor, her husband and Olympian Nic Taylor and Olympian Lauren Gibbs. Elana won her first medal at the 2010 Games (I was at the awards ceremony!) and is still competing, currently training for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games. Wow!! I’m looking forward to cheering on Elana, Nic and Lauren when they compete at the Bobsled World Cup in Innsbruck this winter. Another highlight was meeting LaShawn Merritt, 3 x Gold Medalist in the 400m Sprint and 4x400m Relay. We connected on the focus and intention it takes to achieve big goals and the power of sleep. LaShawn currently runs Nike Speed Clinics for high school athletes and runs the LaShawn Merritt Foundation, dedicated to enhancing the well-being of youth in underserved communities.

We haven’t even made it to the competitions yet! Getting tickets was definitely not the easiest or most affordable part of the games, but spending Friday night under the lights of the Stade de France, France’s national stadium, was definitely worth the effort. All 80,000 seats were sold out and the crowd was waay into it. Fortunately, there was still enough flexibility to get up and move around, so we could catch different events from different vantage points. We met the families of a few different athletes competing and had fun cheering on their athletes. The US team dominated the 4 x 400m mixed relay qualification. The women’s 5000m qualification heats featured a master class in strategy, with team tactics, rabbits and sprint finishes all coming into play. Many of the decathlon events offered an opportunity to see a variety of field sports. The highlight of the evening was the men’s 10,000m final. The crowd had a wave going around the stadium at the same pace as the runners. Grant Fisher from the US brought home an historic bronze medal on the 10k which prompted lots of texts with past running teammates of mine watching the races from home in the US.

If I had one wish for my time in Paris at the Olympics, it’s that more friends and family could join me to experience the Games. One person would be my sister Martha, who is an NCAA DI Champion rower. We went to the Rowing finals on Saturday morning thinking of her. The women’s and men’s Eights and Single Sculls featured medal finals. Rowing had a fun atmosphere with a lot of freedom for fans to walk along most of the 2 km course.

The rowing medal ceremonies finished with enough time for us to get back to our neighborhood for the Men’s Road Race. We didn’t plan this part of the trip beforehand, but the course went right past our accommodation in Paris – twice! The crowd was already starting to line up behind the fencing when we arrived, so we staked out our spot next to a crew of Irish fans, in Paris to cheer on Ben Healy and Ryan Mullen. Surprisingly, the two Irish cyclists were having a great race and the Irish crew was ecstatic, sharing updates with us from the course. I really enjoy capturing photos from events like the Olympics. At the track and rowing events, most of my photos were capturing the crowd and atmosphere, but because the athletes were so far away, it was almost impossible to get any close-up action shots. That changed when I lined up next to catch the lead pack of the cyclists. One of the absolute highlights of the Games for me was capturing a close-up of Remco Evenepoel, en route to his Olympic Gold Medal, less than 5 km from the finish and right before his dramatic bike exchange after getting a flat tire. Looking at the photo, I think you can even see a little smirk on Evanepoel’s  face as the reality sinks in that he’ll likely win his second gold medal of the Paris Olympics. A big grin is definitely apparent on French rider Valentin Madouas, en route to a silver medal. What an exciting event.

Our trip wrapped up with more exploration in Paris. Restaurants and bars were packed and patrons overflowed onto the streets watching various events on the big screens. Cheers erupted in different places from different crowds and there was a genuine joie de vivre from everyone in Paris.

As I reflect on my long weekend in Paris, I am so glad that I took the time to attend the Olympics. After this experience, there’s no doubt that the Paris Olympics will go down as one of the best ever, especially with how Paris’ cultural sites were incorporated into the venues for the competitions and how well everything was organized. I am already looking forward to the Milan-Cortina Games and feel much more knowledgeable about the Olympic system as we develop Lumi’s trip to the 2026 Games.

If you’d like to attend a World Championship event, we still have a few spots available on Lumi’s trip to the 2025 Nordic World Championships in Trondheim, Norway and the Tour de Ski trip in Val di Fiemme, Italy. The World Championships in Trondheim, Johannes Klaebo’s hometown, will be an historic series of races. The Tour de Ski in Val di Fiemme will be on the same trails as the Olympics in 2026. If the Paris Olympics have you inspired to take a trip to France, we still have a few spots available on Lumi’s France Jura trip. One of Lumi’s trip leaders in France is the mother of an Olympic Gold medalist with some incredible Olympic stories herself.

Our Olympic sale with $300/person savings for the 2025 World Cup and France trips ends this Sunday, August 11. Reach out soon for more information and to sign up!

The Nordic Assistant Coach assists the Head Coach in the administration of all aspects of the program, including, but not limited to, coaching, recruiting, event scheduling, supervision of program personnel, budget management, Student-Athlete mentoring, team travel, equipment, meals, technical logistics (software), marketing, and compliance with NCAA and the RMISA rules/regulations. The Assistant Head Coach will embrace and model a positive coaching philosophy and associated techniques, insisting on a culture of respect and positive communication, as well as collaboration with internal departments of the division and the university. The Associate Head Coach will also demonstrate an on-going commitment to the principles of multiculturalism and diversity through hiring practices, training and development programming, campus collaborations, or involvement and participation in university/divisional multiculturalism and diversity projects of initiatives.

Application Deadline

For consideration, please submit your application materials by 4:00 p.m. (MST) August 23, 2024.

For more details and to apply please visit: https://jobs.du.edu/cw/en-us/job/497505/assistant-nordic-ski-coach

For questions, contact Rogan Brown at rogan.brown@du.edu

Finnegan Bailey—a resident of Landgrove, Vermont, and team member of SMST2 and the University of Vermont—was selected this spring to become one of the newest members of the Stifel U.S. Ski Team at the staggering age of 18. So how’d he do it?

In the last twelve months, Finnegan (Fin) Bailey has received quite the accolades in the competitive nordic skiing scene. To name a few: he was named to the SMST2 club team, he won his first Super Tour race and he demolished the field at the 2024 Junior Nationals U20 sprints. So it’s no surprise that Fin was amongst the latest batch of rising athletes selected to the Stifel U.S. Ski Team. While technically it’s this last year’s performances that led to Bailey’s selection, his journey to the top level of American skiing is a lifetime in the making, and it’s been filled with highs, lows, and lessons.

Fin’s father Jack is an alpine ski coach, so his exposure to snow sports didn’t begin on nordic skis. He started skiing at the age of two—alpine, that is—before exploring the nordic world a year or two later. And he played other sports, too.

“I played both soccer and baseball quite competitively. I’ve played baseball since fourth grade, and I love it. I also played soccer all through my time at Stratton,” Bailey said. Through last spring, Fin was a competing tri-sport athlete, and “pretty happy that [he] wasn’t solely focused on Nordic…because (he) doesn’t think that’s the best way to do it.” During their respective seasons, Bailey said he was “a lot more focused” on those sports than he was on skiing.

Still, despite his diverse athletic experience it’s no secret that time on skis is a key ingredient to success, Bailey had plenty of it. But forget specific speed or endurance training: Bailey largely spent his time on skis having fun “jibbing.” What’s jibbing? It can essentially be defined as hitting makeshift jumps and rails and doing things on nordic skis that aren’t meant to be done on nordic skis. (Technically, there was one pair of nordic skis made with jibbing in mind — the discontinued Fischer Jibskates — but they were the exception rather than the rule.) 

Asked how his “jibbing career” impacted his success on skis, Bailey lit up. “That’s huge! That’s all I remember and it’s how I started,” he said. Fin skied for a ski club in the Bill Koch League (BKL) called West River up through the end of elementary school, and following every BKL race — which he’d typically have won — Fin could be found handling the more important business of building and hitting massive jumps, throwing impressive grabs, spins, and even backflips. He credits his ability to move on skis largely to his youthful jibbing career.

As he moved into the later years of elementary school, Fin, along with his group of friends dubbed “The Peru Crew” — Fin and his friends Wyatt Teaford, who skis for Bates College, and Chip Freeman, who skis for Williams College — began to take skiing and training more seriously under the tutelage of Vermont coaching legend Sverre Caldwell.

“The way he got me into nordic skiing was probably the best way I could have been introduced to it,” Bailey said. He credits Caldwell for guiding him from one step on his pathway to the next. Caldwell broadened his horizons from a passionate jibber into a more multi-dimensional skier who could have just as much fun in rollerski agility sessions that mixed “training” with the fun of jibbing. These sessions were also the first exposure that Bailey had to training alongside the Stratton teams. With Caldwell’s guidance, Bailey began climbing SMS’s ladder of programs, from winter-term all the way up to SMST2. Caldwell’s influence, he said, was huge.

“There was no forcing or anything like that. He truly guided me into the SMS team.”

When Bailey arrived at the Stratton Mountain School, he kept a wide array of athletic interests but gradually became more serious about a future in skiing. He began to focus on training year round, and with this shift in mentality, his goals shifted beyond an aerial career and towards making it, as he remembers, “as far as I can.” 

Fin describes himself as a “hugely competitive” person, among other things, so it is no surprise that he aspired to the next level. But he was also exposed to that level early on, thanks to his upbringing in the stomping grounds of some of the best American nordic skiers of all time. During his time at West River and during the coined “Sverre agility sessions,” he found himself surrounded by the likes of Simi Hamilton and Sophie Caldwell. More recently, during his time at SMS and later on SMST2, Fin has had the opportunity to train with Jesse Diggins, Ben Ogden, and Julia Kern, among other massive names in American skiing.

If they served as Bailey’s inspiration, it was largely subconscious. 

“I think I probably took it for granted,” he said. It would really only hit him when he’d take a step back and think, “Wow! I’m training behind Jessie or Ben.” But mostly it was just normal. Bailey does acknowledge that just being around professional skiers was massively influential in his development as a skier.

“Even if you aren’t thinking about it, you’re looking at what they do, watching their technique. Even if you aren’t trying to, it’s just that when you look up to somebody like [I do], it’s natural. So, I think that without even thinking about it, just being around them made me better, my technique a lot better, and me a lot more invested in the sport.”

As he gains a greater understanding of the influence that high-level skiers have had on him, Bailey understands his own impact more, too, and wants to emphasize to younger, aspiring athletes the value of using knowledgeable, experienced, and more established (while still cool) skiers like himself as a resource.

“I think that it’s just great to reach out to anybody. Jessie and Ben and Julia—they’re so easy to talk to and they love sharing their experience,” he said. “Everybody loves talking about themselves and what they know.” Still, he stressed that young athletes should trust their instincts, too. “Find what works for you, but you can base that off of what the more professional athletes do.”

Bailey also made sure to note that even pros still have lessons to learn when asked about his skiing idol. His answer was Dartmouth junior Jack Lange, a teammate of his this summer as well as at SMS for a few years prior. Lange is an incredible distance skier, and splits from a large spread of races will tell you that he tends to get faster and faster throughout races. Bailey, on the contrary, is best known for his sprinting ability, and he made note of a dynamic between them.

“He gains sprinting knowledge off of me, and I gain distance knowledge off of him.” 

Improving his distance skiing prowess is one of Fin’s big goals for the future, especially as he overcomes a strange set-back from over-lifting. Yes, over-lifting is a thing in nordic skiing. “Two years, five-plus days in the gym a week, and I was just way too big to move my body in a 10k or a distance race,” he said. “The gym has been like my safe space… and I’ve had to totally dial it back. I’m now at two times a week in the gym, just to translate that strength that I have now into using it in nordic skiing.” 

This, believe it or not, has been “super hard” for Bailey, but as much as he loves the gym, he also understands that “you eventually get to a point where you are building too much muscle, and you don’t necessarily need that for nordic skiing.”

 Staying consistent with an interview he gave at Junior Nationals a few years back, Fin also mentioned UNH incoming freshman David Shycon as one of his idols, noting that David is “such a happy kid” and “always himself.” “I love that about him,” Bailey said.

It’s clear that Fin has done a lot right. What’s the one thing he feels he’s done exceptionally well in developing as a skier? As it turns out, it has nothing to do with training or nutrition.

“I think I’ve had fun. I think that’s the biggest thing,” he said.

As Bailey heads off to the University of Vermont in the fall, he hopes that this next year skiing on the EISA circuit will mark another step in his competitive skiing progression. But he understands that there is more to life than just skiing. “Making the [US] Ski Team this year has been a pretty good step,” he said. “If I keep going, that’s great. If not, that’s also great.” He’s looking forward to everything else college has to offer; Bailey is going into the academic scene undecided but would love to get into some sort of study in sports physiology. And he has really enjoyed playing around with photography and media.

But come wintertime weekends it’ll be worth watching out for Bailey in the black, green, and yellow of UVM this Winter. Most of his competition might just be watching from behind.

Clarkson University is the nationally ranked research institution of choice for more than 3,400 enterprising, high-ability undergraduate and graduate students who launch remarkably successful careers. 

The Department of Athletics, a Division III member of the Liberty League and USCSA, is seeking a graduate assistant for Cross Country and Nordic Ski; This graduate position includes a $10,000 stipend plus tuition (employment is contingent upon proof of acceptance into graduate school at Clarkson University). Responsibilities include but are not limited to: assisting the head coach in the daily operations of a collegiate cross country and nordic ski program, fitness center duties, and other duties assigned by the athletic department of the University. 

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the positions are filled. To submit your application send your cover letter and resume to lkane@clarkson.edu. 

An equal opportunity /affirmative action employer, Clarkson University actively seeks and encourages applications from minorities, women and people with disabilities. 

Bachelor’s degree and competitive running and/or skiing experience at the collegiate level required. Coaching experience at the collegiate level is preferred.

France is one of the most beautiful countries for cross-country skiing, blessed with breathtaking landscapes that attract winter sports enthusiasts. The country caters to skiers of all levels, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned one looking to discover the scenic beauty of the French Alps. 

From the extensive trails of Courchevel to the picturesque routes in Morzine, here are the best destinations for cross-country skiing in France.

Courchevel

At the heart of the French Alps is a picturesque mountain resort town called Courchevel, considered one of France’s best destinations for cross-country skiing. It’s within the vast Three Valleys ski area and boasts an extensive network of meticulously groomed trails that cater to all levels of cross-country skiers. 

Courchevel has over 67 kilometers of scenic trails, winding through enchanting snow-covered forests, open meadows, and along the serene banks of the Rosiere stream. These trails allow you to experience the scenic beauty of the French Alps to the fullest, with breathtaking panoramic views of the surrounding peaks and valleys.

One of Courchevel’s standout features is its variety of routes. The easy Boucle de Bellecote trail is perfect for novices seeking leisurely glide through picturesque landscapes. On the other hand, the more challenging loops, such as the Route des Creux, offer steep climbs and exhilarating descents that thrill even the most experienced skiers.

Courchevel is also known for its top-notch facilities. The resort provides well-equipped rental shops, professional ski schools, and dedicated areas for biathlon enthusiasts. In addition, the resort has regularly maintained tracks for optimal skiing conditions throughout the season.

Meribel 

Meribel is another ski resort in the Three Valleys ski area of the French Alps and a fantastic place to visit for cross-country skiing enthusiasts. The resort has an impressive network of well-groomed trails, making it a paradise for skiers of all levels, from beginners to experienced skiers.

Meribel boasts over 33 kilometers of dedicated cross-country skiing tracks. These trails take you through stunning alpine scenery, including serene forests and open valleys. The Altiport area, in particular, is a favourite among cross-country skiers for its gentle slopes and scenic routes, perfect for those looking to enjoy a peaceful skiing experience. 

One of the highlights of Meribel is its excellent facilities. The resort provides top-quality rental shops, professional ski schools, and regular trail maintenance, ensuring you have everything you need for an enjoyable and safe experience. The village is charming, with traditional Alpine architecture, cosy restaurants, and lively apres-ski options.

There are plenty of incredible villa rentals in France, and some are in Meribel. These villas provide the perfect home base for cross-country skiers and give easy access to the trails. Many of these villas are equipped with modern amenities, including private saunas and hot tubs, allowing you to unwind in style after a day on the slopes.

Chamonix

Sitting at the base of Mont Blanc in the French Alps, Chamonix is another excellent destination for cross-country skiing in France. Renowned for its dramatic scenery and rich alpine heritage, Chamonix lures avid skiers with its challenging trails, stunning landscapes, and exceptional amenities.

The resort boasts over 40 kilometres of groomed cross-country skiing trails. Beginners can enjoy the gentle, scenic routes in the Chamonix Valley, such as the Bois du Bouchet trail, which has breathtaking views of Mont Blanc. The more experienced skiers can tackle the challenging trails in the Argentiere area, with steep climbs and thrilling descents.

Chamonix has diverse trails to cater to everyone. You can glide through dense pine forests, across open meadows, and along the banks of the Arve River while surrounded by the stunning alpine scenery. These well-marked trails have regular maintenance to ensure excellent skiing conditions.

Chamonix has all the facilities for an enjoyable skiing holiday, including rental shops, ski schools, and biathlon ranges. The resort’s vibrant town has a wealth of après-ski options, from gourmet restaurants and lively bars to luxurious spas and boutique shopping.

Val d’Isere

Nestled in the Tarentaise Valley of the French Alps, Val d’Isere has the perfect setting for cross-country skiing. With over 21 kilometers of well-maintained trails that cater to all skill levels, it promises excellent cross-country skiing opportunities. The resort’s scenic routes meander through pristine alpine meadows and dense forests, with breathtaking views and a serene landscape.

The Manchet Valley is a highlight for cross-country skiers, offering diverse trails that range from gentle beginner tracks to challenging routes for seasoned skiers. Its tranquil setting and meticulously groomed trails ensure an exceptional skiing experience.

Val d’Isere has top-tier rental shops, professional ski schools, and biathlon areas, which enhance its appeal. The village is charming, featuring traditional alpine architecture and modern amenities, including cosy cafes, fine dining restaurants, and luxurious spas.

Expatriate travellers should consider opting for expat travel insurance when cross-country skiing in France. This specialised insurance provides comprehensive coverage tailored to the unique needs of expats, ensuring peace of mind and protection against unexpected events.

Morzine

Situated in the Portes du Soleil region of the French Alps, Morzine is an exceptional destination for cross-country skiing in France. This charming alpine village has over 45 kilometers of meticulously groomed trails. The routes wind through stunning landscapes, including snow-covered forests, serene meadows, and along the banks of the Dranse River. 

One of Morzine’s standout features is the variety of its trails. Beginners can enjoy the gentle loops around the village, while more experienced skiers can challenge themselves on the more demanding routes in the nearby Pléney and Nyon areas. 

Morzine also boasts top-notch facilities, including well-equipped rental shops, professional ski schools, and dedicated biathlon areas, making it easy for skiers to find everything they need. The village boasts a warm and welcoming atmosphere with cosy chalets, fine dining options, and relaxing spas, perfect for unwinding after a day on the trails. 

Additionally, Morzine’s range of luxury chalets and villas provides ideal accommodation options for those seeking comfort and convenience during their cross-skiing adventures. With its diverse trails and excellent facilities, it’s no wonder Morzine stands out as a prime destination for cross-country skiing in France.

Please go to the following link for job details and application instructions:

www.uvmjobs.com/postings/74565

For all other questions please contact Patrick Weaver at:  

patrick.weaver@uvm.edu

FasterSkier: Your backstory is interesting. You’re a mechanical engineer and have a master’s in economics. You wrote your thesis about the price theory of ski lift ticket pricing. Can you summarize your thesis about ski lift pricing?

Andy Gerlach: My thesis analyzed why you still pay for a day of skiing rather than per ride. In a perfectly competitive industry, the economic models say you should be paying per ride. I argued the reason you pay for a one day lift ticket, is that they’re monopolistic. I showed that the skier who pays the most is a local, the person who pays the least is a tourist who has competition and can ski anywhere, so the areas package their lift tickets and give discounts to the far off skiers, so the locals pays the most. So, there is no competition at the local level. It’s more monopolistic the closer you are to the ski area. Lift area pricing is unique and only an economist would care about it.

FasterSkier: So, given your background, do you have conversations with cross-country ski trail operators about their pricing?

Andy Gerlach: No. But the one thing I’m hearing over and over is we want to be selling skiing, not groomed trails … trying to sell skiing as a lifestyle, maybe selling memberships instead of trail passes. Cross-country skiing is a complicated sport. It’s very scary to get into because of the amount of gear involved, from the consumer perspective. We don’t do enough to make it simple. We need to package it in a better manner so we’re selling the sport and the lifestyle rather than individual products.

FasterSkier: Does that argue for an all in one venue where you ski, buy equipment, and stay in one place?

Andy Gerlach: Areas like that are fabulous, but many of our skiers don’t need them. If you live in Minneapolis, you stay at your home, but they still need to be able to happen across cross-country ski equipment. We make it difficult for a person to get into the sport. In the 1970s there were sporting goods stores that sold cross-country ski equipment everywhere. You could buy ski equipment even at Dayton’s (a former department store). Now you have to know about the shops. Compare it to snowshoeing, which sells a limited proposition … you look at it (the snowshoe) and it says it will work for you and fit you. You can impulse buy snowshoeing. It’s difficult in America to impulse buy cross-country skiing.

FasterSkier: How do you get that to happen?

Andy Gerlach. My next goal is to simplify cross-country ski purchasing to find ways to make it more readily accessible to the masses.

FasterSkier: Do you have ideas on how to implement that?

Andy Gerlach: Yes, but I can’t go sharing them (laughing). Everyone asks if the sport is growing or shrinking? Covid helped grow the sport, it was a boom sport, and has now receded. This past winter was terrible because of the lack of snow. I’d like to find ways to make everything about selling the sport, rather than selling the equipment. We want to sell solutions. Remember those pocket guides?

FasterSkier: Yes, I still have them.

Andy Gerlach: I plan to relaunch those and am relaunching the Factory Team.

FasterSkier: What is the need to bring back the Factory team?

Andy Gerlach: Since we closed the Factory Team, most every Loppet in America has coincidentally shrunk in size, in the last 15 years, other than the Birkebeiner. I’m not saying that caused it. But bringing it back can help. I’m also bringing it back because too much in American ski racing has been about “how did you do; rather than how do you do?”  We want the Factory Team to be about “how do you do?” our athletes meeting other skiers, and about skiing rather than what place did you get.

FasterSkier: Personally, I’ve grown frustrated with the how did you do mentality, and the injury reports everyone seems to give you when you say hello?

Andy Gerlach: Of course they do! Because if all we can discuss is how did you do, then you have to make your explanations of why you didn’t do it. But if you can sell the sport for the joy of gliding across snow, and the winter landscape, then we’re selling the spirit that most of us are really in it for. I felt some of it at the Birkie this past year. People didn’t think there was going to be a Birkebeiner, and when there was one with barely any timing— everyone was so overjoyed— they were thankful to be able to ski with their buddies, get together, and have their goal they could still accomplish with even less pressure. They weren’t really being timed so they could just go ski it for their joy. Like skiing was way back when.

Annika Landis— who was our first athlete on the Factory Team relaunch— came on board with the proposition of racing with skiers instead of against skiers. We also want skiers to realize that there are great races and tours all over America. You can see this joy of cross-country skiing rather than this “how did you do?” Last year we relaunched the team with one skier, Annika Landis. This year there will be two, with Simon Zink joining her. It will be called EnjoyWinter-NTS Factory Team. The NTS is Nordic training solutions run by Andy Newell. His company is the co-title sponsor. NTS is the training technique expert. We hope to keep doubling the size, but you have to start by putting one foot in front of the other. Back in the day I had 14 athletes on the Factory Team. The goal of the athletes is allowing them to chase their athletic dreams but with the passion of skiing with skiers rather than against them.

FasterSkier: You see it as more than just a brand building mechanism, but more of a way to change the mindset of participants?

Andy Gerlach: It’s to be more engaged with the community of skiers, dealers, and clubs, and sharing expertise and passion. Racing gets the attention, but there are more people who don’t race than do race. Also, look at the Ski Classic racing in Europe, there are the top teams whose names you know, but there are like 60 teams! What I’d love to do, is to do American Ski Classics. The exciting thing isn’t the top team, but the 60^th, team like Sven’s Welding shop (I just made that up). They’re not trying to compete with the winners, they’re just people who love ski racing, and employees can join our team. Wouldn’t it be great if at the Birkie, or Tour of Anchorage, had five businesses where the owners love skiing, or want to market to skiers could say hey this is our business and we’re sponsoring this race team run by our employees?

FasterSkier: There’s a little bit of a chicken and the egg problem here though, right?

Andy Gerlach: Yes. One of my goals is to launch with a few marathons this coming winter and a few businesses; a way where a business can say we’re supporting our athletes and we’re going to start a team. Clubs are great for junior racing, but there should be ways where master skiers can feel enthused and training for a purpose. If you say you’re skiing the Birkie, you’re a hero at your local shop, at your work place for just doing the Birkie. People just say, “I’m skiing the Birkie, it’s like doing an Ironman— if you put the sticker on your car, you’re a hero. Skiing in America needs to have some accomplishment of doing a skiing adventure without having the pressure of how did you do? As soon as our Factory Team athletes start affecting the local Loppet community, then our competitors; they’ll start investing more again into their trade teams, and suddenly there will be a bit more energy and enthusiasm for Loppet racing. This ties in with a longer goal. How can you make cross-country skiing an impulse buy again, where someone could be in Costco and instead of grabbing a sled, they could instead again grab a pair of skis for themselves and their kids?

FasterSkier: If you can sell cross-country skiing equipment at Costco that would be amazing!

Andy Gerlach: That’s been a goal of mine for a long time. I’ve proposed it to every ski brand that I’ve worked with and there were always many reasons for why it can’t be done, rather than finding ways to do it. Our goal is to provide these simple solutions to selling skiing instead of selling skis. If we can do that, then larger merchants can sell skiing, rather the skis, we can make skiing more accessible.

FasterSkier: Isn’t some of that moving away from the model of very specific weight correlations for skis? If you’re selling at Costco, you need small, medium, and large sizes only, right?

Andy Gerlach: Yes, and we have that. You go to Europe and it’s much easier than it is here. Americans have been taught that every one kilogram on a ski matters, and in Europe they don’t. Skis are much more versatile than Americans are led to believe. For the majority of skiers, the fitting process isn’t as delicate as we’ve been told. We need to provide solutions that work at the basic level more, rather than what is necessary for a World Cup skier to make up two seconds in a 10-k. When it’s that complicated, you’re too scared to buy anything. We’re trying to get someone to walk into a store with their family during a big storm, and then you can go home and glide across snow in your backyard. We want them to think about skiing as a lifestyle rather than a piece of equipment.

FasterSkier: Anything else you want to talk about?

Andy Gerlach: If I read the tagline from the original Factory Team; I’m still using the same one today; “without ski equipment snow is something you shovel. With ski equipment snow is something you glide on. Wouldn’t you rather glide than shovel.”

FasterSkier: That’s a great tagline.

Andy Gerlach: For the skier we have the hard goods. But just selling equipment and not sharing the expertise and the joy doesn’t do much good. So, we have Ski Post, our email newsletter—which we’ve had for 30 years—that exists to share, and it’s not just about our new products, but how people are using the products. There’s a lot I want to accomplish, we are getting a little bit done, day by day, for the sport.

FasterSkier thanks Andy Gerlach for taking time to speak with us about EnjoyWinter and his goal to change the ski world.

Last month, the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation sprang into registrants’ inboxes with a summer announcement: Ben Popp, Wisconsin native and ABSF Executive Director since 2013, had been elected President of the Worldloppet International Ski Federation. Replacing Finland’s Juho Viljamaa, Popp will serve a four year term, effective immediately.

He already has the regalia to prove it. The Federation’s gavel, a relic of the Tony Wise Era, has taken a circuitous path through Central and Northern Europe—but Popp’s election returns that artifact, and the Presidency, to the site of the Worldloppet’s establishment some five decades ago. “It’s literally inscribed: ‘Telemark Lodge, Wisconsin USA, Feb. 23 1978,’” Popp tells me.

To any skier who has made the trek from Cable to Hayward in the last eleven years, Popp cuts a familiar figure. Energetic, upbeat, and faster-paced than a sprint finish, he’s become a fixture of all things Birkebeiner—churning out trail-grooming update videos, fundraising initiatives, and ambitious projects ranging from a revitalization of the once-derelict Telemark Property to the Team Birkie, the Midwest’s professional racing team. Moreover, he’s brought the event safe to shore through three great calamities: the Canceled Birkie (politely remembered as “BirkieFest”; 2017), the Covid Birkie (2021), and the Manmade Miracle Birkie (2024).

It therefore comes as no surprise that Popp has assumed the Worldloppet Presidency with characteristic vigor—and lofty goals. FasterSkier spoke with Popp to discuss what they are, and how he plans to achieve them.

“What skiers needed back in 1978 is very different from what we need right now.”

Despite “representing popular skiing around the world,” the Worldloppet is a small operation, with two full-time employees headquartered in Tartu, Estonia. As Popp describes it, their efforts to coordinate ten events across five continents are “Herculean.” Countries tend to concentrate on their own ski federations, and on their respective flagship races. “It’s hard for them to focus” on the collaborative, international mission of the Worldloppet.

That’s where Popp sees himself differing from presidents past. When it comes to filling the Worldloppet’s two primary goals—providing support for member nations as they host “pre-eminent events,” and providing support for the more than 130,000 skiers who tackle Worldloppet races each year—the organization has gotten “really good at doing the same things over the years, and doing them really well,” like the Worldloppet Passport.

But Popp recognizes that “what skiers needed back in 1978 is very different from what we need right now.” It seems he views the Worldloppet of the past as catering to those already enamored with the sport and its signature marathons. The Worldloppet of the future can do more to expand the range and reach of popular skiing—even if that requires a course correction. “I know change can be really hard,” Popp says, “But believe it or not, I think the Worldloppet and global, popular skiing can be even bigger than FIS. Instead of focusing on getting a young skier from the U.S. to travel to Japan, we should be asking, ‘How can Japan engage its own young skiers?’”

Popp’s electors seem to agree: In fact, the Scandinavian delegations nominated Popp because of the athletic inroads he’s paved with the ABSF. “The Scandinavians know that the United States is seeing skiing grow in leaps and bounds, from the success of Jessie Diggins to almost 15,000 skiers at the Birkie. They know something’s going on here. They asked me, ‘Can you take it to the world?’”

An “absolute recipe for growth.”

What is Popp’s plan for growing cross-country skiing—for engaging new skiers at Worldloppet events?

In his own words, it’s a page from the NFL’s playbook: To get incoming athletes excited, “We need to marry skiing’s role models to everyday skiers. This is what the NFL does; it’s how they sell out stadiums every Sunday”—connecting the sport’s elite to their fans. The stars of the FIS World Cup are, currently, “just not part of what we think of as popular skiing.” Popp wants to change that—and wants the Worldloppet to take the lead “plugging in” Crystal Globe-chasers to the marathoning masses. “We can negotiate and create connections. We can get these role models to our races.”

He cites the Birkie’s recent collaboration with Jessie Diggins and Gus Schumacher (its 2024 champions) as proof of concept. The median age of a Birkie skier has fallen from 47 to 43.7, and young athletes are increasingly participating in ABSF events for a chance to meet these avatars of America’s Nordic ambitions. At this year’s Birkie Bash, an annual pre-race fundraising dinner, “half the room was kids, 18 or younger—they were there to see Jessie and Gus!” With the encouragement of the Worldloppet, the same could be true of New Zealand’s Merino Muster or Australia’s Kangaroo Hoppet (which Diggins has won multiple times): Popp sees more summer-training elites competing in these Southern Hemisphere marathons as a clear way to build enthusiasm in host nations.

Popp has his eyes on names from beyond the U.S. Ski Team as well. “I was talking with Haakon Klæbo last week, discussing how we can bring [Johannes Høsflot] Klæbo more into popular skiing.” Having charmed crowds of adoring young fans from Park City to Minneapolis, it should come as no surprise that the Norwegian phenom “wants to be engaged. He wants to be a role model and to bring more people into the sport.”

This involvement could go beyond racing Worldloppet events when the World Cup schedule permits, to incorporating these events into the World Cup itself. It’s happened twice before (La Transjurassienne in 2000 and the Birkebeinerrennet in 2002). Popp’s American Birkebeiner floated a bid for the 2024 World Cup schedule immediately after Minneapolis, with Main Street sprints on Wednesday and the Birkie itself on Saturday. A price tag pushing $3 million thwarted that effort, but Popp sees elites and popular skiers, tackling the same races, as the key to the longevity and financial viability of both worlds. “It’s a proven model. Look at the New York Marathon, the Boston Marathon. Who doesn’t want to run those—they’re iconic races, and you’re on the same course, the same starting line, as the best athletes in the sport. There will be concessions on both sides, and it will take some creativity,” but “if we can marry the popular consumers of skiing with the elite, it’s an absolute recipe for growth.”

Sustainability and support from “the hub of the wheel.”

Popp’s new direction for the Worldloppet goes beyond his hopes of exciting wider audiences. He sees the organization facilitating resource and knowledge-sharing between world-class events that have, thus far, largely remained “in our own unique silos. We’ve all learned through trial and error. But we haven’t necessarily come together as a group.” A unified timing and registration system, for example, has seemed like a phantasmic “pipe dream on paper,” but each race is “spending an enormous amount of money on data collection, registration, and data storage.” In addition to reducing costs, the data could be leveraged to secure event sponsors. While the Worldloppet cannot be “the whole wheel,” it can be “the hub of the wheel”—a central source of direction, activity, and coordination around which individual races organize, and around which skiers structure broader cultural experiences.

Snowmaking is another prime example. This year’s “Miracle Birkie” took place on 10k of man-made snow; the 2024 China Vasaloppet was on 25k, hand-moved to the course. Fed by the guns of eight local alpine resorts and maneuvered into place by the Italian National Guard, the Marcialonga has been almost entirely on man-made snow for the last decade. Other events may not have that infrastructure—but they’ve developed their own strategies for coping with low snow that the Worldloppet can help systematize. Trails can be manicured in the off-season to maximize their ski-ability, even with minimal coverage; Norway and Switzerland have perfected long-term snow-storage with cement basins, drains, and coverings. Each nation’s Worldloppet race “wants to put on an amazing experience. That means we have to be the best at what we do,” even in a warming climate.

It’s with respect to climate that Popp also sees a distinct role for the Worldloppet. This is despite his recognition that there’s pronounced tension between the organization’s globetrotting ethos and any desire for more sustainable practices. Reusable gear bags—of which the ABSF has sold over 20,000 since 2017—could be one avenue for promoting conservation. So could carbon offsets, or broader opportunities for group travel to race events, including through partnerships with independent, curated trip coordinators. But the goal, Popp says, is to transform every Worldloppet skier into “an advocate, and to get them to get others to be advocates” for “green futures.” Telling the story of the reusable bag, or of a mass-transit journey to the start line, can create a network of climate-conscious athletes. While there’s “a long tail on that horse, we have to start somewhere,” Popp says. “We can’t get paralyzed with ‘what-ifs.’ We’ll get nowhere.”

Pedaling ahead.

Reflecting on his 11 years at the head of the American Birkebeiner, Popp is approaching his four-year presidency with an ambitious vision for the Worldloppet. “The Birkie has an amazing, storied history, and it’s been super successful.” But directing one of skiing’s signature marathons—let alone an international federation of such events—is “like riding a bicycle. If you’re not pedaling forward, you’re going to fall over. The challenge is to remain relevant.” What the Worldloppet “has been doing is awesome, and we have a lot of people that love skiing,” but the organization needs to “take a critical look and better evaluate whether we are doing the things that allow us to grow.” This will require closer dialogue with athletes, engagement with elite skiers, and coordination of FIS’ Popular Skiing Subcommittee, where Worldloppet representatives occupy a “huge majority” of the 20 seats. Popp expects a “day-to-day challenge.” But, “I think it’s worth the time and effort because we can have a real impact on global skiing.”

Ben Popp will continue to serve as Executive Director of the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation. FasterSkier thanks Popp for taking the time to speak with us about his new role at the Worldloppet International Ski Federation.

We live in an era where product lines are often dominated by several large companies. More and more, small companies are bought up by large corporations as soon as the small company shows an innovation or growth pattern which its lumbering competitor can’t duplicate. Consolidation, just shy of monopoly, is standard practice for many industries.  Fortunately for skiers, this pattern hasn’t held true for cross-country ski wax. There are the big two—which is really the big one—but there are lots of small “mom and pop” wax companies putting out shockingly good products which are every bit as good, and sometimes better than their major competitors.

FasterSkier has previously taken an up close look at family run wax companies, when we profiled Rex, Fast Wax, and Rode. We now turn our eyes toward another family run operation, STAR Ski Wax. STAR is the definition of a family run business.  STAR was founded in 1978 in the Italian town of Asiago by Roberto Mosele while he was employed in an Astrophysics laboratory where he was responsible for the design and implementation of a new digital orientation system for the observatories’ telescope. His occupation at the time as an observatory employee is how the company’s name was derived. Like many great ideas, STAR wax was the result of a dare taken on by Roberto Mosele over 45 years ago.

If there is something vaguely familiar about this story it’s probably because you might remember that Rode ski wax was also founded and manufactured in Asiago (population approximately 6,500). Whatever murky forces are at work in Asiago leading to the confluence of wax manufacturing is a mystery; perhaps it’s the cheese? But as wax consumers, it’s probably best to leave that puzzle to the ages and focus on the great products coming out of this small Italian town.

Davide Mosele the product manager of Star was kind enough to answer FasterSkier’s questions about the family wax business. Davide, 48 years old, is Roberto’s son, and is now responsible for the day to day operation of the business. His mother—Roberto’s wife— also works in the company along with Davide’s wife Cristina. With a grand total of six employees, it’s truly a family affair.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

FasterSkier: How was the company started and what was it like in the early days?

Davide Mosele: Star was founded in 1978 by Roberto (Davide’s father). Roberto was out cross-country skiing with friends, gliding through the snow-covered landscape. As they paused to wax their skis, one friend exclaimed, “Wow, it must be really difficult to make these products.” With a spark of determination in his eyes, Roberto declared, “I can do it!” What started as a lighthearted challenge among friends soon became a journey of passion and perseverance.

Over the next two years, Roberto poured his heart and soul into the project. It was far from easy, with countless trials and errors, but his unwavering dedication paid off. He eventually crafted an almost complete line of high-performing ski waxes. It was then that he began to dream of turning his new found expertise into a business.

At that time, Roberto was working for the Astrophysics Observatory of the University of Padova in Asiago. This connection to the stars inspired the name STAR for his burgeoning company.

Like many legendary startups, STAR began in the most humble of settings: a garage. As a child, I vividly remember his first laboratory being none other than  my mother Donna’s kitchen. It was a whimsical sight, finding spaghetti pasta and ski wax sharing the same stove.

In those days, ski wax was often seen as a mystical product, but Roberto approached it with scientific rigor. What began as a garage project has now grown into two thriving buildings, and the playful bet with friends has evolved into a globally recognized company.

Today, STAR stands as a testament to Roberto’s vision and determination, a shining example of how a simple challenge can spark the creation of something extraordinary.

FasterSkier: As product manager, what is your role?

Davide Mosele: I deal with “products” at 360 degrees, from developing to testing them on snow. I follow races, talk with wax technicians, skiers, and share information. At the same time, I am present in the production area when we are “ cooking/ melting” product lots.

In a small family company we all know about all the things that are happening. Our coffee break in the morning is what  a big company would call a “ general meeting” where many people, probably even located in different countries,  have to make decisions and share information.

Roberto is still following production and new product development as well, and can share a lot of experience.

FasterSkier: Are there other family members involved?

Davide Mosele: Donna (Davide’s mother, and Roberto’s wife) has been working in the company in the sales and accounting department for 40 years. I have been working in the company since I was 18. I graduated in  Engineering at Padova University in 2003 (which is the site of the observatory). My wife Cristina is managing the accounting office and sales for 15 years. My best friend Riccardo is also an important part of the company, taking care of all the mechanical department and running production machines.

FasterSkier: Do you see yourselves as underdogs battling the big two wax companies?

Davide Mosele: I believe that the size of a company is not always the key to success. In many industries, we often see large companies acquiring small start-ups that are able to innovate much faster.

STAR has carved out its space in the market thanks to the quality of our products and our ability to innovate and react quickly to market changes. While I respect the big companies as well as all other competitors, I do not feel like an underdog!

FasterSkier: What does your Research and Development (R & D) look like in terms of the skills and background of the people who work there and the size?

Davide Mosele: Research and Development (R&D) is the heart of our company; everything evolves around it. With over 40 years of experience, we approach each day with a curiosity that drives us to improve our products continually. We seek out anything that can help make skis faster.

Many of our products originate from specific customer requests—sometimes seemingly crazy ideas that turn into the perfect inspiration for a successful product.

I closely follow World Cup races, Ski Classics, and junior races. I am in contact with numerous professional ski technicians, and I gather all their insights to enhance our products. As a serviceman at these races, I know exactly which ingredients are used in our products. This firsthand knowledge helps me understand the effects of different ingredients on snow and enables us to respond quickly to any requests.

FasterSkier: What kind of seemingly crazy ideas do you get which lead to success?

Davide Mosele: Often, technicians find that a product works even in conditions for which it was not designed, or that when applied in a different way, the result seems better. Based on this information, I work on the formulation to optimize it for the new conditions of use. In other cases, the requirements are very specific. For example, last year we received many requests from Ski Classics teams. They needed a product that could last for their “long distances”… even 70-100 km. From this particular request, the “Durable” powder product was born, which was very successful. Later, they also asked us to develop the same product in liquid form! Durable Liquid proved to be very effective in extremely cold, abrasive, and dry snow conditions.

FasterSkier: Do you look to other industries to see what new compounds are available, or are you trying to invent new compounds?

Davide Mosele: As a product manager, I am always on the lookout for new material and innovative ideas. My curiosity, combined with my academic background, helps me understand the scientific advancements in materials.

I don’t just focus on new ingredients; I also explore how to achieve the best performance through different application methods. The same ingredients can perform differently when applied in various ways. For example, our fast-drying Next liquid, applied with a wool roller, has become a market benchmark. It’s not just about the chemistry but also about the application technique.

At STAR, we help our customers find simple yet highly effective methods to apply ski wax, ensuring optimal performance on the slopes.

FasterSkier: From the point of view of the wax industry, is the move away from fluoros a good thing? Has it been harder for small companies to adapt to this change?

Davide Mosele: When a new regulation comes into effect, it’s pointless to argue whether it is right or wrong; you just need to react and find a new solution. For those following the EU/EPA regulations, it was clear that fluorocarbons would have a short lifespan.

In 2019, I stopped considering fluorocarbons as an ingredient for ski wax and immediately began developing products using other material. It has been hard work, but also fascinating. This challenge opened up a new universe of opportunities, and I enjoy it!

FasterSkier: Are we close to having ski waxes without fluoros which are as good as fluorinated waxes in warm wet conditions?

Davide Mosele: Unfortunately, the chemical and physical characteristics—primarily the hydrophobicity and affinity to the ski base—of fluorocarbon waxes were exceptional, making them the “perfect” material.

This doesn’t mean we can’t have good working ski wax, but for now, it seems quite challenging to achieve the same performance offered by fluorinated ski waxes particularly in these specific conditions.

FasterSkier: What’s harder to develop, a really good kick wax or a really good glide wax?

Davide Mosele: Creating a good kick wax requires extensive experience and knowledge of raw materials. Achieving the best kick with the best speed is not easy; it’s a compromise. Since fluorocarbons are no longer available, developing a good glide wax has also become more challenging. We are exploring a large number of new ingredients/application methods, which consumes a lot of time and energy.

FasterSkier: Wax products seem to come and go and sometimes it seems like change just for change sake. But, it looks like smaller companies stick with proven products longer than larger manufactures. Is that perception accurate?

Davide Mosele: Changes are necessary whenever better solutions are found. Changing the packaging to make customers believe the product is new is not a good strategy. We aim to introduce new products to the market only when we are confident that they are better than their predecessors. Big companies can invest much more in marketing, in our company we believe that the best way to promote our  products is to have satisfied customers,  meaning we must have the “best” product and then the word will spread.

FasterSkier: Are we close to the point where people can throw away their wax irons for glide waxing?  Do you think we’ll see a day soon when ski bases evolve to the point of never needing to be treated with glide wax?

Davide Mosele: We conduct extensive research on application methods. I believe the use of a waxing iron is essential for treating ski bases.  Some liquid products deliver excellent results, and the use of wool rollers is becoming popular even for applying blocks. However, these products are a complement and do not replace the use of a waxing iron at a professional level.

For customers who do not compete, the use of liquid products and wool rollers is an excellent solution. Skis still need to be periodically waxed with an iron. Often, these customers turn to workshops or friends for hot waxing and use liquid products every time they go skiing, enjoying all the benefits of easy application while still achieving very fast skis.

FasterSkier: What’s the favorite product your company makes?

Davide Mosele: We love all our products and believe each one has special qualities that makes it unique. The fast-drying liquid products are very versatile and high-performing. Blocks applied with wool are widely used even in World Cup races and allow for easy layering of different products. The powders are perhaps the ones we cherish the most for sentimental value. In 1985, STAR introduced the first complete line of micronized powders to the market, long before fluorinated waxes. At that time, only blocks were used to wax skis. The easier and faster application with low waste was already a revolutionary idea. Of course during the years, raw materials have  changed a lot … but still the powder aspect is our favorite.

We also have excellent kick waxes in our catalog that, especially in recent years, have won over many ski technicians.  Many of these products were conceived together with a  valuable collaboration in the United States. Ten years ago, we introduced 70mm rotary brushes to the market, which are becoming a standard not only for their size but also for the absolute quality of the materials used.

FasterSkier: You mention the pride of introducing micronized powders. Was that your father’s invention?

Davide Mosele: Yes, STAR was the first company to introduce a complete line of micronized powder products (emphasis added). The idea was to simplify the application process. Until then, ski waxes were based on very soft paraffins, and the waxing irons were not as efficient as they are now. Using harder products made it necessary to simplify the application… the micronized powder form was a good solution to these problems. Nothing is easy, but Roberto’s persistence made it possible for a small lab like his to create that formulation of waxes and additives in powder form.

FasterSkier: What is the hardest part about being in the ski wax business?

Davide Mosele: I love my job, so there is no hardest part. I feel lucky to do what I like!

FasterSkier: What’s the wildest idea your research department ever came up with that never got the go ahead?

Davide Mosele: Over the years, we have developed products that have never reached  the public. Fortunately, as a company, we have decided never to release a product to the market before thoroughly testing it. We have a  trial program where we are supplying  product ideas to “professional people” who help in testing, knowing that some of these products may not turn into a valid ski wax proposal. The important thing is to never get discouraged and to learn from our mistakes.

FasterSkier: Are there any other products, other than wax, which you make which would surprise people?

David Mosele: Maybe people do not know that STAR waxing irons are produced in our factory in Asiago. It is 100 percent our project, and we are proud that it is highly appreciated in the market.

If you check our website, www.starwax.com, you will discover that we also produce a complete line of bike care products! This helps to keep us busy during the summer. We started producing bike care products 30 years ago, and our products are well known throughout Europe.

FasterSkier: Why did STAR get into bicycle maintenance equipment? Is there a lot of similarity between ski wax and bike products?

David Mosele: The idea is that skiers often cycle to train, so the brand remains in use even during the summer. Often, bicycle workshops become ski workshops in the winter. The chemistry used is not the same, but it is very similar.

FasterSkier: You are located in Asiago, Italy, which is also the home of Rode ski wax.
How did it come to be that Asiago is the home to two great wax companies?
Is there a big rivalry between the two companies?

David Mosele: Our relationship with Rode is the same as with all other companies in our industry. There is obviously rivalry, but at the same time, respect. I believe that all of us “small” ski wax producers share the same passion: making skis faster and helping athletes achieve their goals.

One funny thing is that whenever a team comes to Asiago to visit STAR, they end up visiting Rode as well—and vice versa. If you come to Asiago, you will certainly leave with the best ski waxes on the market!

FasterSkier thanks Davide Mosele for taking the time to share his family’s story and give us a glimpse into the life of a family run ski wax company.

The SMST2 Team is proud to announce this year’s Gap Grant program to support elite World Cup skiers in their pursuit of excellence on the international stage.  This initiative provides financial assistance to unfunded (D Team and non-USST) athletes that qualify to race on the FIS World Cup for any period of time.

Gap Grants were made possible by the generous contribution of an anonymous donor and will be available to SMST2 skiers for the 2024-2025 season. The $50,000 gift will be distributed among select World Cup skiers who have demonstrated a commitment to the SMST2 mission – international excellence and local inspiration.

SMST2 Program Director, Maria Stuber says, “We are going to use this money to directly subsidize World Cup racing expenses for unfunded athletes (USST D Team or non-USST athletes) and to cover some staff and travel expenses associated with the SuperTour so that getting to the World Cup is more accessible.  Our hope is that athletes will be able to combine this additional funding with grants from the National Nordic Foundation to have 100% of their World Cup expenses covered in the 2025 World Championship year.  Providing this to our skiers has been a long term goal and rolling it out this year is a dream come true”

The SMST2 Team has several Olympians on its Advisory Board who competed for Team USA and worked to cover the cost of racing and support their families.

1984 Olympian and SMST2 Advisory Board Member, Sue (Long) Wemyss stated, “I couldn’t have pursued my ski goals without outside help from acquaintances and family friends who generously chose to donate towards my ski racing campaign. The costs of racing and preparing to reach the highest levels of competition have only sky-rocketed over the decades! The financial support of our most generous anonymous donor will go a long way to enabling some of the U.S.’s most promising skiers to pursue their potential in cross-country skiing.”

Bob Gray, a US Ski Team athlete from 1962 to 1974, and VT native, reflected on his career saying, “Having spent 12 years on the US Ski Team and struggling to compete at the World level it has been inspiring to see the successes of the SMST2 Team!  This team is now competing at the highest level in the sport and winning.  It brings tears of joy to my eyes!  SMST2 includes young skiers just getting started in the sport and gives them a chance to train with the best in the world.  Now, these inspired athletes will have enough financing to take more international opportunities.  Having the necessary support to devote all of your energy and attention to the task at hand is absolutely necessary.”

Bill Koch, who also sits on the SMST2 Advisory Board, is perhaps the most significant figure in the history of American cross-country skiing, known for both his competitive achievements and contribution to the sport’s evolving technique.  Bill was the first and only American prior to Jessie Diggens to win an Olympic medal (1976) or the Overall World Cup title (1982).  Bill sees this grant help expedite the development process stating, “To get better at World Cup racing, you need to race on the World Cup. SMS T2’s commitment to support its unfunded athletes and help them get this experience will help expedite their development and raise the bar! It has been a thrill to watch the depth of US skiing explode over the last few years, and making European racing accessible to up-and-comers will help continue this trajectory.”

This initiative reflects the SMST2 Team’s commitment to its mission.  SMST2 athletes are training hard and have already started expanding community projects.  Gap Grants will ensure that financial barriers do not hinder athletic progress.  The SMST2 team is committed to supporting skiers on the world stage, with pride in both the US Team and their club and local community.

About the SMST2 Team:

SMS T2 Team is an elite cross-country ski team based out of Stratton Mountain, Vermont. We were founded in 2012 by a board of local people who believe Vermont to be the best training location in the World and to keep our athletes engaged in the local community.  The team’s mission is international excellence and local inspiration.  We value collaboration and foster an environment where athletes and coaches work together within the US Ski Team and College system to create development and opportunity for individual athletes.

Our first World Championship medal race was in 2013 when Jessie Diggins surprised the world, winning gold in a team sprint at the Val di Fiemme Championship.  Since then, the team has brought home 10 additional Olympic and World Championship Medals, achieved 54 Olympic and World Championship top 10 finishes, 94 regular season World Cup podiums and 1,293 World Cup starts by 22 different skiers.

SMST2 Alumni Andy Newell, Simi Hamilton, and Sophie Caldwell are all generationally significant skiers who helped to blaze this trail.  Andy competed on 4 Olympic teams and 9 World Championship teams, landing on the World Cup podium in 2006 as the first American male skier to accomplish this in over 20 years.  Simi Hamilton and Sophie Caldwell both ended their careers at SMST2 with World Cup wins and top 10 finishes at the World Championship or Olympics, Simi 9th in 2019 and Sophie 6th, 10th, 6th and 8th in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018 respectively.

In 2018, Jessie Diggins brought home the first Olympic Gold Medal in our sport’s storied history.  She solidified herself as the greatest American cross-country skier of all time with a Silver and Bronze in Beijing in 2022.  Since then, Jessie has been the first American to win an individual World Championship Gold, and she’s won the Overall World Cup crystal globe and Tour de Ski, both twice.

The success of the SMST2 Team doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon.  Current SMST2 teammates, Julia Kern and Ben Ogden have both been on the World Cup podium in the past 2 years.  Julia earned a bronze in the team sprint at the most recent World Championship in 2023 and was in 7 World Cup semifinals in 2024. Ben Ogden was the top U23 skier in the overall World Cup standings in 2023.  Lauren Jortberg notched her first World Cup top 20 finish last year and Sydney Palmer-Leger found the top 30 two times.  The team racked up 4 individual National Championships and youngsters Ava Thurston and Jack Lang were in the top 10 at the World Junior Championship this year.  Eight SMST2 members were named to the 2024-2025 US Ski Team, 5 of which are under 23 years old in a sport where many athletes peak in their 30’s.

The SMST2 Team has long been a dominant force in the world of cross-country skiing, consistently producing world-class athletes who make history.  Their enduring success is attributed to a passionate board of directors, a supportive community, rigorous training, the best dryland surfaces in the world, a coaching staff committed to collaboration, and the relentless pursuit of excellence by their athletes.  SMST2 athletes are highly engaged in the local community, hosting open workouts, visiting school and youth sporting events, public speaking, and sharing their love of the sport.  The SMST2 Team continues to set the standard in cross-country skiing success and community engagement.

The man’s name is Andy Gerlach, and he’s the owner of EnjoyWinter. You may know them from their ubiquitous “EnjoyWinter” e-mail newsletters, which have information ranging from new products to travel ideas. But Gerlach has a larger mission than just selling gear. For those who have been in the sport for a while, you may remember the Factory Team. The team was run by Gerlach with athletes who were sponsored and travelled around the country competing in races. The team broke up in the late 2000s, but Gerlach is resurrecting it one skier at a time. His revival of the Factory Team isn’t necessarily about winning races, rather it’s about being ambassadors to local skiers, not for a particular brand, but for the sport. Gerlach has noticed—along with many people who have been in the sport for a while—an unsettling trend which can best be summarized like this: How many times have you walked up to someone at the ski trailhead, asked them how they are doing, and the response is an immediate recitation of their most recent training schedule, injury report, and race results? It seems to happen a lot. Gerlach thinks it’s because the sport has developed a mindset which needs a reset. He believes people are asking themselves the wrong question.  Instead of asking yourself—or others— “how did you do,” he wants to change the framing to thinking about “how do you do?” It’s a small one word change of verbiage, but gets to a big change of mind set. Instead of thinking always about performance and results, think more about the experience. That’s what the  guy who is selling ski stuff is trying to do; change American’s mindset about skiing, one cool product at a time.

Andy Gerlach was generous enough to devote several hours to a discussion with FasterSkier about his interesting personal history, importing ski goods into the U.S., and how he’s determined to change the way people think about skiing and buy skis. Gerlach has a unique perspective with a degree in engineering and a master’s degree in economics.

This interview has been edited and condensed from a two hour conversation with Andy Gerlach.

FasterSkier: Let’s talk a little about your history and how you started in the business.

Andy Gerlach: I started out in 1996, I was in Bozeman having skied for Montana State University. I took over what had been the Fischer Marathon Team, which I managed, and I created what was known for 14 years as the Factory Team. At the time it was the biggest professional team in the world, with the goal to promote brands through ski racing. We closed it down in 2008 during the auto crisis when we had just signed Saab as our title sponsor. Then I worked for Salomon in race service and athlete management. In the Vancouver Olympics I saw athletes wearing Bliz so I reached out to them and in 2011 started importing Bliz.

FasterSkier: Did you move away from engineering and economics because of your love for skiing?

Andy Gerlach: Yes. When I graduated with my engineering degree I tried getting jobs in a ski factory, but I didn’t end up getting the job, and engineering didn’t seem to be my passion. I was involved in ski racing, and got a job as an investment banker, but Fischer kept pulling me back in to help with race service. Then I was able to turn the program into the Factory Team and it just took off.

FasterSkier: What’s the name of your business now?

Andy Gerlach: EnjoyWinter.

FasterSkier: What does EnjoyWinter do?

Andy Gerlach: EnjoyWinter is America’s largest independent importer and distributor of cross-country ski equipment. We distribute over 20 brands that each specialize in one product category for cross-country skiing. For example, Bliz is our sunglass brand, and they specialize in sunglasses. Peltonen is our ski brand, and they make skis. 4KAAD is our pole brand and they specialize in poles. Rottefella is our binding supplier, and they only make bindings— which is the only product where we’re not the exclusive distributor. We sell through 200 cross-country ski dealers throughout the country, which is our primary distribution network, and we also sell through our showroom and Enjoywinter.com. Many of the brands we compete with are category generalists, and they’re selling their brands. They are great companies, but they are in the business of selling their brand. Our brands specialize in one product category. That’s what differentiates us.

FasterSkier: Does that make your brands better?

Andy Gerlach: All the brands in cross-country skiing love cross-country skiing. The people driving their brands are passionate about it and make great stuff. But our brands really specialize in one specific thing. I don’t want to come across as saying any of these brands don’t care about the sport. The good thing about cross-country skiing is that it’s so specialized that any company involved in it has to be making good stuff. But, for example, Peltonen only makes cross-country skis, and they make every one of their skis in one factory in Finland. So, their $180 kid’s ski is on the same production line as their top end World Loppet skis. The other major brands can’t say that.

We are providing cross-country skiing solutions. When a dealer comes to us and says I have “x” problem … they come to EnjoyWinter and we can solve their needs. We’re the only place a dealer can come to and get everything from one supplier, and the expertise from us and from the brands. We’re selling the sport of cross-country skiing and skiing solutions rather than a brand. What also makes us different is if we don’t have a solution, we try and make one. When we need something different in a product, our brands make it. Peltonen just launched some touring skis, which they haven’t needed in Finland, so we now have American styled touring skis.

FasterSkier: I used to love Peltonen skis, and I miss them.

Andy Gerlach: Your story is common. We’ve only been distributing it for a year. But the number one story has been everyone coming up to us and saying, “I used to ski on Peltonen, it used to be my favorite.” There’s a big affinity for Peltonen. The rest of the brands we carry were unknown when I launched them.

FasterSkier: One of the solutions you sell is Anti-freeze face tape. Did EnjoyWinter create that?

Andy Gerlach: That’s my own brand and my own creation, my son’s face is the logo.

FasterSkier: Are there lots of knockoffs?

Andy Gerlach: What you’re seeing across the U.S.— if it’s pre-cut and cut well for the nose and cheeks, it’s my stuff; Anti-freeze face tape. Ours holds up to the moisture that can come from snow and is pre-cut for the face and cheeks.

FasterSkier: Were you your own guinea pigs for that?

Andy Gerlach: Oh yeah! Back in the day we even used duct tape, but that can make things even worse. You can even use face tape on your fingers if you have old frostbite spots. Our tape has been on the faces of Olympic champions and happy kids across the world. It’s just about trying to find solutions that Nordic skiers need, and making it ourselves if it’s not already made.

FasterSkier: Let’s talk about another product. You carry Ogasaka skis from Japan. What’s their story?

Andy Gerlach: Those are perhaps the most beautiful hand crafted skis in the world. During Covid when we couldn’t get enough skis in the U.S. I was searching for a ski brand to add to our quiver. I reached out to them and got the skis and was blown away by the precision and how exact every ski was; and the base finish was the nicest I had ever seen. Every 192, for instance comes out of the mold exactly the same as designed, there’s no variation in flexes due to manufacturing. Every ski comes out as designed or it’s not accepted. They use Japanese carbon fiber with the most precise manufacturing. And the bases are the softest, freshest most wax absorbent I’ve ever seen in production skis. Everyone who’s gotten them has loved them. They’re not inexpensive. I wish I could do it more service and sell it more, but right now our focus is on Peltonen with a wider and more affordable solution. All these fluctuations in flexes in skis aren’t design variations, they are inconsistencies in the manufacturing. Most manufacturers don’t know what a ski is going to flex at until after it’s made. Ogasaka knows before it’s made, what the skis are going to flex at. This is part of EnjoyWinter existing to sell cross-country solutions rather than to sell a brand. We love the sport for the sport’s sake and not for the equipment’s sake. We have a great dealer—Start Line Inn—right at the Birkie start, is one of the places to demo them.

FasterSkier: How bad were supply disruptions during Covid and how have recent big price increases in shipping containers affected you?

Andy Gerlach: I’m moving stuff constantly; we have small shipments coming all the time. We’re more flexible than the big guys. It hasn’t dramatically changed the way I do business. But shipping costs are the biggest driver of inflation in the industry. And the logistics of having orders coming in from over 20 brands is an ongoing process every day. But, my biggest risk is dealers going out of business due to the boom and bust of Covid and the lack of snow last winter. My biggest threat is getting dealers to pay us on time when we’re delivering them small brands. We have no way of collecting.

Please return to FasterSkier when we go in depth with Andy Gerlach and talk about his plans to sell skiing to the masses and changing skiers’ mind set.

We are pleased to announce the XC Team for Period 1 of the 2024-25 World Cup season:

Ruka, FIN Sprint C

Men

Michael Earnhart                      Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

JC Schoonmaker                        Objective          10^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Ben Ogden                                Objective          15^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Gus Schumacher                       Objective          27^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Kevin Bolger                             Objective          30^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Zak Ketterson                           Objective          35^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Zanden McMullen                     Discretion         17^th Drammen Sprint C 23-24 WC

Luke Jager                                Alternate          24^th Canmore Sprint C 23-24 WC

Women

Alayna Sonnesyn                       Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Jessie Diggins                            Objective          23-24 Overall World Cup Winner

Rosie Brennan                          Objective          10^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Julia Kern                                  Objective          12^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Sammy Smith                            Discretion         28^th Oberhof Sprint C 23-24 WC

Erin Bianco                               Discretion         35^th Oberhof Sprint C 23-24 WC

Renae Anderson                       Discretion         36^th Canmore Sprint C 23-24 WC

Novie McCabe                          Discretion         43^rd Ruka Sprint C 23-24 WC

Lauren Jortberg                        Alternate          43^rd Canmore Sprint C 23-24 WC

Ruka, FIN 10 km C & Davos, SUI 20 km C

Men

Michael Earnhart                      Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Gus Schumacher                       Objective          16^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Scott Patterson                         Objective          28^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Zanden McMullen                     Objective          37^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Ben Ogden                                Discretion         8^th Trondheim 10 km C 23-24 WC

John Hagenbuch                       Discretion         1^st American SuperTour Finals 10 km C 2024

Davis Norris                              Discretion         33^rd Canmore 20 km C 23-24 WC

Hunter Wonders                       Alternate          34^th Canmore 20 km C 23-24 WC

Zak Ketterson                           Alternate          40^th Oberhof 20 km C 23-24 WC

Luke Jager                                Alternate          40^th Trondheim 10 km C 23-24 WC

Women

Alayna Sonnesyn                       Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Jessie Diggins                            Objective          23-24 Overall World Cup Winner

Rosie Brennan                          Objective          7^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Sophia Laukli                            Objective          15^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Novie McCabe                          Discretion         19^th Davos 20 km C, 23-24 WC

Julia Kern                                  Discretion         26^th Canmore 20 km C, 23-24 WC

Sammy Smith                            Discretion         26^th Val di Fiemme 15 km C 23-24 WC

Sydney Palmer-Leger                 Discretion         US National Champion 10 km C 2024

Haley Brewster                         Alternate          12^th U23 World Champs 10 km C 2024

Margie Freed                            Alternate          2^nd American, US Nationals 10 km C 2024

Ruka, FIN 20 km F & Lillehammer, NOR 10 km F

Men

Michael Earnhart                      Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Gus Schumacher                       Objective          16^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Scott Patterson                         Objective          28^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Zanden McMullen                     Objective          37^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

John Hagenbuch                       Discretion         13^th Östersund 10 km F 23-24 WC

Ben Ogden                                Discretion         25^th Gällivare 10 km F 23-24 WC

David Norris                              Discretion         27^th Canmore 15 km F 23-24 WC

Peter Wolter                             Alternate          36^th Canmore 15 km F 23-24 WC

Luke Jager                                Alternate          39^th Minneapolis 10 km F 23-24 WC

Hunter Wonders                       Alternate          40^th Canmore 15 km F 23-24 WC

Women

Alayna Sonnesyn                       Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Jessie Diggins                            Objective          23-24 Overall World Cup Winner

Rosie Brennan                          Objective          7^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Sophia Laukli                            Objective          15^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Novie McCabe                          Discretion         11^th Falun 20 km F 23-24 WC

Julia Kern                                  Discretion         18^th Gällivare 10 km F 23-24 WC

Sydney Palmer-Leger                 Discretion         23^rd Falun 20 km F 23-24 WC

Sammy Smith                            Discretion         23^rd Val di Fiemme Final Climb 23-24 WC

Haley Brewster                         Alternate          25^th Minneapolis 10 km F 23-24 WC

Margie Freed                            Alternate          29^th Canmore 15 km F 23-24 WC

Mariah Bredal                           Alternate          30^th Canmore 15 km F 23-24 WC

Lillehammer, NOR Sprint F & Davos, SUI Sprint F 

Men

Michael Earnhart                      Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

JC Schoonmaker                        Objective          10^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Ben Ogden                                Objective          15^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Gus Schumacher                       Objective          27^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Kevin Bolger                             Objective          30^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Zak Ketterson                           Objective          35^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Logan Diekmann                       Discretion         16^th Canmore Sprint F 23-24 WC

Jack Young                                Alternate          23^rd Canmore Sprint F 23-24 WC

Zanden McMullen                     Alternate          25^th Davos Sprint F 23-24 WC

John Hagenbuch                       Alternate          3^rd Planica U23 World Champs Sprint F

Women

Alayna Sonnesyn                       Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Jessie Diggins                            Objective          23-24 Overall World Cup Winner

Rosie Brennan                          Objective          10^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Julia Kern                                  Objective          12^th 23-24 Sprint World Cup

Lauren Jortberg                        Discretion         19^th Canmore Sprint F 23-24 WC

Sammy Smith                            Discretion         21^st Goms Sprint F 23-24 WC

Erin Bianco                               Discretion         29^th Canmore Sprint F 23-24 WC

Haley Brewster                         Discretion         1^st US National Champs Sprint F Qual.

Novie McCabe                          Alternate          34^th Davos Sprint F 23-24 WC

Renae Anderson                       Alternate          40^th Canmore Sprint F 23-24 WC

Lillehammer, NOR 20 km Skiathlon

Men

Michael Earnhart                      Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Gus Schumacher                       Objective          16^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Scott Patterson                         Objective          28^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Zanden McMullen                     Objective          37^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Ben Ogden                                Discretion         17^th Trondheim Skiathlon 23-24 WC

John Hagenbuch                       Discretion         13^th Östersund 10 km F 23-24 WC

David Norris                              Discretion         27^th Canmore 15 km F 23-24 WC

Women

Alayna Sonnesyn                       Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Jessie Diggins                            Objective          23-24 Overall World Cup Winner

Rosie Brennan                          Objective          7^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Sophia Laukli                            Objective          15^th 23-24 Distance World Cup

Novie McCabe                          Discretion         23^rd Trondheim Skiathlon 23-24 WC

Julia Kern                                  Discretion         18^th Gällivare 10 km F 23-24 WC

Sydney Palmer-Leger                 Discretion         23^rd Falun 20 km F 23-24 WC

Haley Brewster                         Discretion         25^th Minneapolis 10 km F 23-24 WC

The above discretionary selections were nominated by a 15-person working group that included:

James Southam                         Athlete Rep.

Ida Sargent                               Athlete Rep.

Cami Thompson-Graves            Dartmouth College

Andy Newell                             Bridger Ski Foundation

Eliška Albrigtsen                        University of Alaska Fairbanks

Erik Flora                                  Alaska Pacific University

Chad Salmela                            Team Birkie

Chris Mallory                            SVSEF Gold Team

Pepa Miloucheva                      Craftsbury GRP

Maria Stuber                            SMS T2

Sophie Caldwell Hamilton          Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Clu

Kristen Bourne                          U.S. Ski Team

Jason Cork                                U.S. Ski Team

Matt Whitcomb                        U.S. Ski Team

Chris Grover                             U.S. Ski Team

The nominations were then approved by a discretionary selection review group comprised of:

Tyler Kornfield                          U.S. Ski & Snowboard Athlete Rep

Anouk Patty                              U.S. Ski & Snowboard Chief of Sport

Bryan Fish                                 U.S. Ski & Snowboard Development Director

The above discretionary selection process will be repeated for each period of World Cup this coming season.  As always, if you have questions or concerns about this process, feel free to contact me directly.

Sincerely,

Chris Grover

Cross Country Program Director, U.S. Ski Team

chris.grover@usskiandsnowboard.org

Anhelina Hryhorenko is a typical 14-year-old girl in many ways—she loves art and isn’t a fan of math. And she’s excited to have her freshman year of school over.

But she’s got a lot of unique qualities, too. For one, she’s a junior national champion with more medals than she can hold in two hands. She’s also the daughter of a former national cross-country ski team member team and the niece of a three-time Olympian.

She lives and trains in Bend, Oregon, and races in a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian national team suit. Since she’s only been in the U.S. since December, she speaks little English, but she’s gotten very savvy with Google Translate. She has also made friends with classmates and teammates on the Mt. Bachelor Sports Education Foundation (MBSEF) nordic ski team.

Anhelina, known by her teammates and coach as “Angelina,” is a quiet teenager most excited about training this summer. She moved to Bend with her family in February, thanks to a family who offered to host them and Mila Shelehoff, a fellow Ukrainian who’s been living in the U.S. for the last 30 years. Shelehoff has been serving as the translator and local liaison for the Hryhorenko family, which includes Anhelina, her mother, Yuliia, her father, Oleksandr, and her 10-year-old brother, Ivan.

An art and outdoor educator, nonprofit founder, and instructor at the Mt. Bachelor Nordic Center, Shelehoff created Bend For Ukraine. This community initiative supports displaced Ukrainian families by helping them resettle in Central Oregon. She’s known as “Mamma Mila” and has assisted the Hryhorenkos since they relocated to Bend. She’s also helped several other Ukrainians in Bend as they navigate the challenges of housing, employment, education, and cultural integration.

The Hryhorenkos met Shelehoff a few months ago, and they’ve already become fast friends. Ivan is the same age as her son, Lukian, and the two go to school and ski together with MBSEF.

“I moved to Bend about for the same reason they moved to Bend,” Shelehoff said of moving to the area two years ago. She and her son were drawn to the downhill skiing at Mt. Bachelor, which has the longest natural ski season in the U.S., with snow lasting into June. They ultimately switched to nordic and never looked back.

The Hryhorenkos had a different “coming to Bend” story. When they arrived in the U.S. in December 2023, they knew nothing about Mt. Bachelor or Bend. They initially landed in Salem, Ore., about 2 ½ hours northwest of Bend, to stay with friends who sponsored their humanitarian parole from Ukraine through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Uniting for Ukraine program.

They came seeking refuge in a foreign country, uncertain about their future. Anhelina brought her ski boots and little else.

Life Before

About two and a half years ago, Anhelina was training at a Ukrainian boarding school and racking up medals as a promising young cross-country skier. Her family lived in Central Ukraine, about an hour south of Kyiv, while Anhelina lived at a private academy and trained for skiing. She was chasing a dream and had the genetics to back it up—her father, Oleksandr, raced on the Ukrainian national team, and her aunt, Kateryna Gryhorenko, was a three-time Olympic cross-country skier.

On Feb. 24, 2022, everything changed. Russia invaded Ukraine, and Anhelina’s school evacuated its student-athletes to Poland. Meanwhile, her father, mother, and brother sheltered inside their home’s root cellar for two weeks while their country was under siege.

When they felt safe to leave, Yuliia fled to Poland with Ivan. They spent three months with Anhelina in Poland before returning to Ukraine and Oleksandr, a carpenter by trade. Kyiv had installed anti-missile systems while they were away, and their region wasn’t under occupation, so they felt it was safe to go home.

But life was far from ordinary. Anhelina returned to boarding school, but her family slept in their cellar and lived in constant fear.

“It creates a lot of anxiety, especially when you hear the explosions,” Yulia told the Bend Bulletin. “The bunkers are truly root cellars. They’re not bulletproof; they’re not bomb-proof.”

They continued to live this way until October 2022, when Anhelina survived a massive air raid while commuting to school. With that, the Hryhorenkos resolved to leave.

It took the Hryhorenkos a year and a half and several attempts to gain approval to enter the U.S. Eventually, with the help of their sponsors in Salem, their third application was accepted, and they landed in Oregon in December 2023.

Once in Salem, Oleksandr started working to support his family. Yuliia, a former physical education teacher, reached out to ski clubs across the U.S., hoping they could find a place for Anhelina.

“After arriving in America, we immediately started looking for a club for Angelina,” Yuliia explained in an email to FasterSkier. “She had to continue to practice so that there were no gaps in training. Salem could only give us running training, and we needed [ski] training. There was even a question about ending our career if we didn’t find anything, [after] almost 8 years of training.”

Despite not speaking English, Yuliia sent about ten inquiries. One responded.

“At first, when the email came through, I thought it was spam,” MBSEF Nordic Program Director Reitler Hodgert told FasterSkier.  “But as soon as I opened it, it made a lot of sense for us to offer them a space to land and do what we could to support that.”

Knowing very little about MBSEF—one of the premier nordic ski clubs in the country—the Hryhorenkos signed her up. By mid-January, she began training with the team in Bend. Their Salem friends assisted with transportation, lending a vehicle with winter tires so the Hryhorenko family could drive to Bend each weekend for Anhelina’s training. On Monday mornings, they’d drive three hours back to Salem in time for school.

After witnessing their long commute, Anhelina’s teammate, Maddie Carney, and her family invited Anhelina to stay with them on weekends. In early February, Sarah Max offered to host the family for free, and Yuliia and Ivan joined Anhelina in Bend while Oleksandr worked in Salem. The kids started school at Bend-La Pine and lived at Max’s home until late March.

They were also hosted by another nordic family, Dr. Sondra and Mike Marshall, who ultimately helped them find an apartment.

“They put a lot of effort into finding us housing among their acquaintances,” Yuliia wrote. “They are currently helping us pay for an apartment for a certain period of time. During our entire stay here, we are surrounded by fantastic people, whom it is rare to meet.”

Life After

United for Ukraine grants Ukrainian citizens and their immediate family members two years of temporary stay in the U.S. Through Shelehoff, who translated, Yuliia told FasterSkier that she was hopeful they could make the move permanent but uncertain whether that was possible.

“[I hope] my children can discover themselves here in this country versus in Ukraine,” Yuliia said. “They have many more opportunities to find themselves and do something they love in the future.”

In addition to other community members, Mt. Bachelor and MBSEF are sponsoring the Hryhorenko family so they can continue settling in Bend. Fischer and One Way have pledged to provide Anhelina with equipment for the coming season.

“When they first arrived in town, we had a huge outpouring of support,” Hodgert explained. “Mt. Bachelor reached out to support Anhelina’s family with trail fees and whatnot, and that was largely through [Mt. Bachelor Nordic Manager] Sydney [Powell] and was huge.

“… They moved here with basically just Anhelina’s ski boots, and so we had families giving gear, jackets, snow pants, gloves, hats…” continued Hodgert, a Bend native. “[That was] one of the proudest moments for me of our community here locally, just to see the number of people stepping forward to give what they could to get them on their feet here in town.”

One local bought Anhelina and Ivan new bikes.

“I’m in awe of how they were received and how much help they got,” Shelehoff said. 

Asked about Anhelina as a skier, Hodgert said that considering her age, she’s one of the most talented technical skiers he’s ever worked with.

“She has a very innate sense of body awareness, just like where each of her limbs are and how she’s moving them,” he noted. “Even while working through a language barrier … she picks up technical feedback and applies it to her skiing faster than any athlete I’ve worked with.

“She’s universally adored on our team,” Hodgert added. “Anhelina, as a person, is fairly quiet, so there were definitely some concerns that she’d feel … a little bit isolated around the team. And thus far, that hasn’t at all manifested. She has jumped right in with things.”

He laughed that his athletes “spend a significant time on Google Translate” while riding in the team van.

“Unsurprisingly, all of our athletes are super curious about what life in Ukraine is like, just her being from somewhere else, and they’re all super eager to introduce her to all the things that they love about being here in Bend or the U.S. in general,” he said.

Compared to Ukraine, Anhelina said the trails and facilities were “much better,” and the training was “different.” Asked what her skiing goals were, she said she just wanted to train. She prefers skating in the winter and classic ski training in the summer.

“I like that it’s a very long ski season,” Anhelina said of Mt. Bachelor specifically.

Her mother elaborated on their U.S. experience so far.

“First and foremost, as a mom and as a former athlete, I want safety for my kids, which is above and beyond what we experienced in Ukraine,” Yuliia said. “Second, the equipment and the facilities and, of course, the trails… the availability of all of those, to provide opportunities for children to train in a safe and enriching environment.”

She explained that when Anhelina was a child, she and her teammates built their own trails, carrying tools to practice.

“In the winter, a little wall of the kids would line up and groom the trail with their skis so they could skate,” Yuliia added, explaining how the kids side-stepped to pack down the snow. They had never experienced grooming like at Mt. Bachelor.

“We’re in awe of the level of the trails here and just really appreciate that they’re groomed and ready every morning,” she said.

“The people we’ve been in contact with are all very wonderful and good-hearted,” Yulia said of the Bend community. “They really care for our family and situation. I’m sure they also care about the rest of the world the way they care for us.”

Hodgert described Anhelina as a “fantastic addition” to the MBSEF program, which boasts over 200 athletes.

“Having Anhelina join our team has been a great worldly learning experience for the athletes, and in exchange, we’ve been able to provide her with a space where she can hone her craft,” he said. “We intend to support [her family] as long as they’re here. That might be just this year, it might be two years, three, five, we don’t really know. But as long as Anhelina wants to be skiing and wants to be in Bend, we’ll be supporting her.”

This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.

All of us need to take a break from our jobs every now and then and do something a little bit—out there— which challenges us. For many, that’s going for a long ski, or some other outdoor activity like a hard bike ride or a tough hike. The physical break provides a nice and often essential mental refresh.

But what do you do if your profession already involves physical challenges, say like being a professional skier? What happens when the world’s reigning cross-country skiing champion needs a refresh? For Jessie Diggins, that refresh comes in the form of an annual event which she has dubbed, “the big stupid.” Basically, it’s an extremely hard physical challenge involving a sport other than skiing.

For Diggins, her “big stupid” this year was racing the 46 kilometer category Broken Arrow Skyrace (Diggins ran 69 kilometers *), which is a mountain run held June 22^nd. The race, which takes place in Palisades Tahoe— near Lake Tahoe— has seriously steep sections with slopes hitting 30 percent, huge elevation gains, and hits almost 9,000 feet in altitude. It’s a major challenge for even serious runners. What would motivate the current Crystal Globe Overall Champion to decide to throw down an effort at such a difficult event in an area outside her specialty?

Jessie Diggins was kind enough to answer this and other questions about the “big stupid” events she does every year. (This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity).

FasterSkier: You began doing these “big stupid” events several years ago. Why do you still keep doing them?

Jessie Diggins: I still keep doing these because it does have more meaning than just one big epic day. Although I love running for the sake of running … the reason I love these big adventures is it fills up my soul in a different way. It challenges me and really forces me to push deep and see how I confront challenges when they come up. You’re going to have low points when you’re running for ten hours (*the race was two laps, but Diggins opted to do an extra third lap giving her 69 k total and an overall time of 9:53:09, which even including her ‘bonus’ lap put her 48^th in her age group out of 70 participants and 391^st overall. An indicator of the race’s difficulty was that there were 13 DNFs in her age group. The age group winner’s time was 4:52:34 (for two laps)). I want to see what I say to myself in these moments, how do I get through them, and use what I learn in ski racing. I learn so much about myself and really grow my mind when I do these events.

FasterSkier: What are the qualities an event needs to be worthy of obtaining the “big stupid” label?

Jessie Diggins: It’s just something I feel will challenge me. So, some years it was a 100 kilometer roller ski, one year it was the Presidential Traverse (an 18.5 mile hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire). They tend to keep getting bigger and stupider as I get older and have more training under my belt. But I do want to say that they have stepped up gradually, and I’ve always done them in a way where I feel like I’m going to be safe. While I want to challenge myself, I don’t want to actually risk my ski career.

FasterSkier: How challenging was this year’s? Was it the hardest “big stupid” ever?

Jessie Diggins: Gosh. I think it was the hardest. It was the furthest I’ve ever run because it ended up being 59 kilometers. It was 14,000 feet of climbing, which for sure was more than I’ve ever done. I have run for ten hours before … but this was probably the hardest one that I’ve ever done.

FasterSkier: Is it important for you to have a sense of accomplishment in a physical challenge which doesn’t involve skiing?

Jessie Diggins: Yes. I think what’s really nice about this, when I’m skiing it’s all about needing to go really fast … there are a lot of eyes on me, and there’s a lot of pressure and expectations, and it’s all about how fast can you do this? It’s never a question of can I finish this 10 k race. With my “big stupid” the goal is just to finish. Because doing it is challenging in itself. I really like that. I love that it’s challenging me in a mode that’s not “my sport.” I find that really satisfying.

FasterSkier: The day after the event you worked at a pancake breakfast and did a book signing. Any regrets about being on your feet that much after a ten hour run through the mountains? How sore were you after the race?

Jessie Diggins: I don’t have any regrets. Serving pancakes to kids was incredibly fun. It was a really good way to get my day started. The book signing was so cool. I met so many amazing people. I was pretty sore. I think walking around the vendor village helped me out with a little bit of active recovery. If I had just laid in bed all day, I probably would have felt worse.

FasterSkier: The race hit 8,900 feet altitude. Was it tough to deal with the altitude? Was that the highest you’ve ever raced.

Jessie Diggins: That was for sure the highest. I purposely didn’t even try to acclimate to the altitude. I just rolled in two nights before and then raced, because I know if I do something hard on the second or third day, I usually feel ok. But day four through seven feel pretty bad for me. I knew I wasn’t going to have time to acclimate … so that strategy worked pretty well for me.

FasterSkier: Do you set any goals for yourself for doing these events, or is it just to participate, finish, and have fun?

Jessie Diggins: It’s just participating, finishing, and having fun. This is the first time I’ve done my big stupid in a race format, but I figured with this challenge, with the altitude, the dryness and heat … having aid stations and support … was amazing. It allowed me to pick something that was so much more physically demanding than I’ve ever done before.

FasterSkier: Did you have any goals for time, distance, or place?

Jessie Diggins: Nope. Anything except the cutoff time … I made it by two minutes! So, I was looking at the clock, but that was the only kind of race that was happening for me.

FasterSkier: You posted about doing a 32 mile trail run to train for the event. Did you do any other specific training for this event? 

Jessie Diggins: Normally I don’t specifically train for my “big stupid.” But for this, I knew it was going to be so much climbing, 14,000 feet … so I did a lot of runs just to make sure that I was getting my legs used to being on for that long. The weekend before I went for my O.D. (over distance). Instead of roller skiing, I went up and down Stratton for 4 ½ hours. So that helped as well. The other thing I did was I got some collapsible poles from Swix so I practiced going up and down Stratton with the poles, so I could offload some of my weight onto my arms, and save my knees a little bit more.

FasterSkier: At some point, do you say to yourself that “yeah this really is a big stupid idea?”

Jessie Diggins: Yes! There were several points where I was, “wow, I’m really dumb for loving this.” But I did honestly love it. There were only a couple of low points. It was something I’ve been looking forward to for so long. I decided last October that I wanted to do this. When you look forward to something for so long, even though it’s hard, there’s a sense of “wow I finally get to be here and get to challenge myself with this.”

FasterSkier: Any other big epic training days this summer?

Jessie Diggins: No. From here on out it’s kind of normal training. We are going to go down to New Zealand, with Julia (Kern) and Jason Cork … for a training camp on snow for three weeks like we have done in years past. So, I hope we get good conditions for crust cruising. We like to end the camp with a big long ski. I’m hoping that comes around for us. For now, it’s just normal training in Stratton which I love.

FasterSkier thanks Jessie Diggins for taking the time to speak to us about her “big stupid.”

On Saturday, June 29, the best cyclists will set off from Florence, Italy for the first stage of the 2024 Tour de France. For the next three weeks, they’ll be riding around 200 km of often hilly or mountainous terrain every day. This devilishly grueling stage race serves as a model for the winter equivalent – Tour de Ski – where cross-country skiers are pushed to their infernal limits day after day. This seems like it could only be dreamed up in hell, right? Then it may come as no surprise that the initial, demonic idea for the Tour de Ski was hatched in a sauna during a conversation between Olympic Gold medalist Vegard Ulvang and Jürg Capol, FIS head of cross country ski competitions.

While most mortals spend the holidays and celebrate the New Year with friends and family, World Cup cross country ski racers are in training camps the week leading up to the Tour de Ski – a 7 day stage race traveling through several countries to ski venues across the Alps, from New Year’s Eve to through the first weekend in January. The event was first held in 2006 as a way to incentivize athletes to participate in races during a time of year that generally draws large TV audiences in Europe. Racers give their all to entertain the rest of the hungover world on New Year’s morning. Generous World Cup points, a purse of close to $1 Million and the prestige of winning are used to make sure the top cross country skiers attend this grueling week of back-to-back racing and traveling.

Similar to the Tour de France, points and time bonuses are earned and awarded for different events and classifications: a sprint bib for the most points in sprint races, a U-23 bib for the most points of a young athlete, an award for the best climber and even a yellow leader bib for the most overall points – just like the Tour de France. If you were at the Minneapolis World Cup this past winter you likely saw Diggins skiing laps of the Wirth Park course in her yellow leader bib.

Over the past 18 years, the Tour de Ski events have taken place in iconic venues such as Munich, Prague, Toblach / Dobbiaco, Oberstdorf and Val Müstair. Venues and countries come and go in the itinerary, but there is one constant: the Alpe Cermis Hill Climb in Val di Fiemme.

There is no better test of a skier’s determination than the Alpe Cermis Hill Climb. The 7-race tour ends with a 9 km skate race, starting in the Val di Fiemme Stadium – site of the 2026 Winter Olympic Cross Country Ski events – and finishing at the mid-station of the Alpe Cermis Alpine ski hill. The climb is just 3.6 km, but the average gradient is 12% with a maximum of 28% – steep enough to bring even the world’s best skiers to collapse at the finish as lactic acid burns like fire in their legs. Simply finishing the Tour de Ski is a tremendous accomplishment even for a World Cup cross country skier.

That’s why we are thrilled to bring Lumi guests this winter to cheer on athletes at the 2025 Tour de Ski. Every year, our Lumi trip leaders travel to Cavalese, Italy on a Dry Run before hosting guests on our two trips to the Marcialonga. The weekend when our trip leaders do their Dry Run always overlaps with the Tour de Ski Hill Climb and they plan their day in order to watch the World Cup racers as they head up Alpe Cermis. It is the trip leaders who rave about the Tour de Ski, saying how much they would love to share the Tour de Ski experience with Lumi guests.

But this trip is about more than the Tour de Ski. It visits two of our most popular destinations: Cavalese, Italy and Seiser Alm – in the heart of the Italian Dolomites. When you’re not cheering on the racers, you’re out skiing on the panoramic Passo Lavaze plateau. When you’re not out skiing, you’re with your hotel’s chef / owner learning to make her family’s centuries-old Apple Strudel (hint: as it’s in Italy, it’s made with olive oil, not butter – a Lumi guest favorite, especially vegan travelers). After the Val di Fiemme World Cup events finish, your own personal Tour de Ski continues on the famous Seiser Alm plateau. 80 km of immaculate trails rolling beneath Dolomite spires await you. It turns out, many of the World Cup athletes also head to Seiser Alm for their recovery week after the Tour de Ski. It may be one of the only opportunities for you to actually pass Johannes Klaebo on the trail.

Of course, it’s up to you what ideas you might dream up as you relax in the heavenly sauna at your Seiser Alm hotel on the 2025 Tour de Ski trip this January… Or if touring through France by ski is more up your alley, there are still a few spots left on our France Transju trip this February. 

We’re offering $300 off both trips through the final stage of the Tour de France. Reach out to info@lumiexperiences.com by July 31 to receive a detailed trip itinerary, sign up and save!

See you on the trail,

Garrott

garrott@lumiexperiences.com

This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.

In part I of our interview with Julia Kern we talked about her summer training changes, and what was a very challenging winter of racing. Please continue reading for Part II of our interview.

Race Strategy

Kern has had a lot of success, but she’s still searching for regular World Cup podiums. What will it take to get to the podium more? “What’s really exciting is women’s Sprinting is at an incredibly high level,” says Kern. “There are so many contenders on a given day for a podium. There are lots of ways to go about doing it (improving). There’s more fitness, more end speed— tactical, and a lot of it is how do you approach heats and heat selection and what’s your strategy there. You can play the safe game and go lucky loser and just try to get into the semi-finals and maybe that reduces your chance of a podium at the end of the day. Do you decide to play more of the game and go with earlier heats that are harder to move on, but then you have more energy to move on? That aspect comes down to confidence and what your skill set is. A lot of it comes down to confidence. Being able to be fit enough to then be relaxed in the early heats so you can save energy for later. For me, if I’m more fit at a base level, then I can accelerate on top of that and make the moves when I need to.”  Last year’s illness affected this strategic calculation for Kern. “Last year I was missing my pep in my step. My top end just wasn’t there. Normally if I’m rested, that is there, then I can have more strategies in my toolbox.”

Heat selection is unique to Sprinting and it becomes a significant factor in outcomes. But does going in the first or last heat of a round really make that much difference? “It depends on the course. At altitude it matters a lot more. It also depends on the round. Semi-final two to the finals is a really hard turnaround. Quarter-final five to semi-final two is not so bad. It’s also a little personal. I’ve gone quarter-final one to semi-final two, and that’s too much time. You have to cool down and warm back up. So, you expend more energy. It depends a little on the type of athlete you are.”

And not everything is always within one’s control. “Jonna (Sundling) and Skistad always go in quarter-final one so it kind of takes that out of the cards. If you go there then it’s going to be really hard. So, there’s a little bit of seeing what other people are doing. But coming from semi-finals to finals, it matters for sure, especially if you feel like you’re already skiing at your limit in the semi-finals. The more you’re able to reserve in the early rounds, the better because if you’re burning a lot of your matches in semifinal two it’s really hard to bounce back up for the finals, and that’s where semi-final one definitely helps. But semi-final one tends to be really competitive and really hard to move on from. It’s a gamble. But the more you develop all those tools in your toolbox the more likely you are to move on. That’s why you see the fastest sprinters are consistently making the final no matter what path they take, and consistently on the podium. Ultimately, that’s the goal.”

Experience Matters

Kern is now at the point in her career where her experience and tactical knowledge have become a valuable asset. “On World Cup we generally watch footage from previous years during the week leading up to it, and people share their experiences. Then when we go out and do race prep, our coaches are filming too, and in a pack we might try out different positions in a group. Can you slingshot, can you pass? We talk about all of that. The way I approach sprints after that is to have main takeaways. Like this is the only passing opportunity or these are my opportunities to make a move from the back, or ideally at this point on the course I’m in second. But you don’t have full control. The best sprinters are aware and see different options. Then sometimes you get tangled up and your plan goes out the window. There are a lot of different strategies.”

Unintended Consequence of Fluoro Ban

Strategy has also been affected by the fluoro ban. Because of ski inspection, the amount of warmup time before races has changed, and glide wax can’t be adjusted in between heats. “It definitely changed our warmup time. Now we’re out there an hour and forty minutes before the race testing (skis). If the day before the testing is accurate, we’ll do a lot of testing ahead of time. Each athlete has their own method, but we definitely changed our own testing routine. Sometimes my tech will have two similar skis prepared with two different wax jobs. I might have those two different wax jobs on my warmup skis and ultimately decide right before the race which ones to go on because you can check in two different pairs of skis. The other thing to note is you take a freshly groomed course, you test it when the track opens, then you have an hour of people zooming around on the same sprint course and everything completely changes. It can go from bullet proof ice to sugar. So, a lot of times you’re really not testing what’s representative of the race, so our techs are having to predict that. It complicates things a little bit more.” Not being able to have skis freshened between heats also made a difference. “You really noticed it. The extra juices were definitely nice, but it wasn’t something I was thinking about on race day, everyone was in the same boat and that’s just the way it is. Things definitely slow down by the final.”

Kern is known mostly as a sprinter, but she does have longer distance chops. “Some of my best distance races have been 30k. I haven’t been consistently good in distance, but I’ve raced entire World Cup seasons the last few years both distance and sprint. I’ve had some strong distance races, but for distance to go well, everything needs to be pretty dialed in, whereas in sprint … even if you’re not in peak form, you can use other aspects to do well. It’s a tough balance. If you put a 50k two days before Drammen (City Sprints), it only makes sense (to do the 50k) if you’re fighting for the Overall. I definitely would love to develop on the distance side.”

Balancing a World Cup Schedule

This is a World Championship year which leads to long term strategic planning. “The sprint obviously is the event I’m targeting. The Team Sprint and the relay are also really big goals. Our team has been searching for that Championship medal in the relay for a really long time. That’s a big team goal of ours. The rest depends upon how the season’s going. The thing our team really has some goals for is the Nation’s Cup. Last year we were in a battle for third (team USA ultimately lost the podium spot to Finland on the last day of competition). We’ve come from tenth to fourth in the world. I feel like that’s a great reflection of a full team effort. That was really fun this winter. It keeps us hungry to get even better together.”

The World Championships demand attention, but there’s also the entire rest of the race season including the Tour de Ski. Some observers and athletes feel like it’s too much. Kern has a unique perspective on this as she is one of the athlete representatives to FIS (International Ski Federation). “I don’t think it’s too much. I think it’s a personal decision ultimately. It depends upon what your goals are and how you respond to racing. For me, I have historically peaked after Tours and a lot of racing. That’s been an important part of my peaking plan. My physiology responds well to a lot of consecutive racing and then rest. For me, I’m stoked that it’s a Championship year. I tend to race my way into shape, but for some people it can tank their season. It’s a really personal thing. It’s also one of the most watched pieces of our sport (the Tour de Ski) … so I think that’s important to continue to grow the sport. As an athlete representative I work closely with the FIS team on the calendar. I think the content will change over the years, but ultimately the athletes always have a choice to race or not to race. We’ve worked really hard on making the calendar better. You’ll now see more of these three day weekends, but then bigger blocks of breaks. There are more breaks built in, and that’s the model the athletes wanted. It is a lot of racing. Racing a full season is really really challenging. But generally, people were happy with the race calendar this last year.”

The tight schedule has also been a point of discussion regarding racing in North America. With Lake Placid anticipated to be a host venue for 2026 it has brought the issue more sharply into focus. “We had an all athlete meeting, discussing this topic and surveyed the athletes. It was over 90 percent who said they wanted to go (to North America). Everyone’s favorite World Cup was Minneapolis, and everyone was so impressed, that they want to go back to the U.S. The challenge is financial for the Europeans who are not used to traveling across the ocean to add a weekend. But it’s important. We saw the impact that Minneapolis had. It’s been really cool being an athlete representative, connecting with the FIS team and the athletes and understanding how the system works, trying to make it as smooth as possible. If something doesn’t make sense (on the schedule), there’s probably a reason why.”

The pressure is on for Lake Placid and Kern sees it as another great chance for North American venues to shine. “It’s not Minneapolis, it’s Lake Placid, and there’s a lot of Olympic history there and incredibly cool new courses. I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunity. People will see that there is excitement in the U.S. (about cross-country skiing), and they are excited to continue to grow the sport here. People are seeing the value of coming to North America.”

Thanks to Julia Kern for taking the time to speak with FasterSkier.