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Skiing is an activity divided into seasons of the year: summer is when fast skiers are made; winter leaves us feeling like it went by all too fast; spring is for politics.
This week in Park City, the annual US Ski and Snowboard (USSS) Congress meets to discuss broad-based visions for the future of US Skiing, and to hammer out the necessary logistics that make the sport go ’round. New rules and initiatives are discussed, while some of the best minds in US Skiing mesh the International race calendar, US Skiing development pipeline, and the predicament of predicting where the snow will be in December to create the US Skiing calendar for the next season.
Here’s a couple of highlights from Days 1 and 2 of the USSS Congress:
Lake Placid to Host 2026 World Cup Finals
In an interview earlier this spring, Stifel US Ski Team Head Coach, Matt Whitcomb, expressed that one of the appraisals from the success of the 2024 Loppet Cup in Minneapolis was a question: “Which US ski venue is next?” On Tuesday, Lake Placid answered that call. The former Olympic venue tucked within New York’s Adirondack Mountains has a tentative agreement with the International Ski Federation (FIS) to host World Cup Finals at the end of the 2026 World Cup season.
Lake Placid’s long-term development toward the 2026 World Cup Finals is a phenomenon to note. A decade ago, Lake Placid looked to re-develop its core competition venue at Mt. Van Hoevenberg accessing funds from the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA). The result was a set of world-class ski courses that double-up as challenging rollerski trails in the summer. Since then, Lake Placid has hosted a SuperTour in 2022, World University Games in 2023, Junior Nationals this March, and recent bid looks to have them hosting Spring Nationals in 2025. With Lake Placid’s organizers having taken taken every opportunity to fine-tune facilities and gain experience, the current bid to host World Cup Finals makes good sense.
There are sure to be logistical challenges. Snow conditions in late March can be fickle in the East. The village of Lake Placid offers very different logistical challenge compared to metro-area Minneapolis. If any American winter sports venue has a track record of success with international competition, though, it’s Lake Placid and it’s century-long legacy of international and Olympic events.
SuperTour 2024-25: Alaska for Nationals, and a Couple of Trips to Birkie-land
SuperTour scheduling was discussed on Wednesday, with much of the tentative scheduling revolving around implications for Trondheim World Championship qualifying and the realities of supporting a domestic circuit for resource-limited pro athletes and clubs. One thing is certain: the US Cross-Country Ski National Championships will take place the first week of the New Year in Anchorage, Alaska. With a trip to Alaska already set in stone, the need to balance out the regional race schedule in the lower 48 followed.
Cable, Wisconsin—home of the American Birkebeiner—appears set to host the SuperTour opener before Christmas while the Birkie, itself, is on the SuperTour calendar as it was in years prior to last season’s North American World Cups. The possibility of adding a sprint race to the Birkie block of SuperTour races in February was discussed (a concept previously explored by the Birkie with its Elite Sprints), but that is pending discussions with the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation (ABSF) and is unlikely to feature next season.
The tentative SuperTour schedule thus far:
- Cable Opener, December
- US Nationals, January
- Bozeman, February
- The Birkie, March
- Spring Nationals, Lake Placid.
USSS Coach Development Makeover
Discussions have been in the works for a couple years surrounding a re-vamp of the USSS Coach Development model. Looming changes have been aimed at making coach certification through the governing body a requirement, with USSS L100 certification becoming a requisite standard for all coaches whether professional or volunteer. The aims are clear: create a more definitive national credential while focusing national coach development around the same concepts.
In response to those goals and intentions, USSS unveiled plans to implement its new Sport Education Academy (SEA) in the 2024-25 season. The SEA comes not only with a re-vamped curriculum, but also a new L100 requirement for all USSS coaches, and subsequently, a new pricing model. The requirement for L100 means that all current USSS coaches now will have to maintain L100 certification (if currently held), or enroll to work towards L100 certification this season. With that requirement comes a new subscription model, of which practically all coaches will need to enroll in the gold at $100/year ($80/year this season).
The pitfalls in implementing and enforcing such policies are many. Currently, buggy USSS software hinders many coaches’ attempts at online training, education, and certification. A shortage of Coach Developers (required to obtain L100 certification) drastically limits the scheduling of requisite training events in many regions of the US. Few local teams have the resources to pay for the training and certification of volunteer coaches, many of whom work only a few hours a week. Those combined challenges have been enough to delay for years the implementation of changes to coaching certification policies. It remains to be seen how these newly-implemented policy changes will be received by the American ski community.
Ben Theyerl
Ben Theyerl was born into a family now three-generations into nordic ski racing in the US. He grew up skiing for Chippewa Valley Nordic in his native Eau Claire, Wisconsin, before spending four years racing for Colby College in Maine. He currently mixes writing and skiing while based out of Crested Butte, CO, where he coaches the best group of high schoolers one could hope to find.
