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.

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

The finalized selection criteria for the 2025 Trondheim Nordic World Championships and the 2024-25 World Cup have been approved by the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Cross Country Sport Committee and can be found here:

https://usskiandsnowboard.org/sport-programs/criteria

You’ll notice the selection methods are the same as in recent past seasons.  As always, if you have any questions or concerns about the criteria, please reach out.  My contact info is below.  I wish everyone a productive and fun summer of training.

Sincerely,

Chris Grover

U.S. Ski & Snowboard Cross Country Program Director

chris.grover@usskiandsnowboard.org

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.

May 4^th through the 17th marked the return to the unofficial start of serious cross-country ski training for Team USA with their annual return to Bend, Oregon for their spring camp held at Mt. Bachelor. Over the years, Bend camp has become a rite of passage for Stifel U.S. Ski Team members who enjoy Mt. Bachelor’s unique ability to provide excellent snow conditions late into the spring on a reliable basis, and enjoy summer like weather while in the valley below. Skiing in shorts and t-shirts is a great way for the team to get back on snow while having a little bit of fun. It’s a low key atmosphere; a little more laid back than camps closer to race season.

Bend’s reliable spring snow has made it the venue of choice for many North American teams. Not only is the U.S. cross-country team in attendance, but also in Bend this spring are the U.S Biathlon Team and Craftsbury Green Racing Project team. According to Mt. Bachelor cross-country director, Sydney Powell, those teams will be joined by members of the U.S. and Canadian Para Nordic teams, some members of the Canadian biathlon team, and several other North American Nordic teams.

FasterSkier had the opportunity to speak with Team USA coach, Matt Whitcomb, for updates on what was going on in Bend, and to get the inside scoop on early season training.

This spring, Bend has lived up to its reputation as a skiing paradise. “Conditions have been great,” Whitcomb said. “When we arrived, we had two days of winter, the first day was below freezing and the second day was right around zero (Celsius) and still snowing. Waxing was a challenge, which is what we hope to run into. We need work skiing, waxing, and training in these tricky conditions. Since then, it’s been bluebird conditions; freezing overnight then warming during the day; universal and red klister all day.” The waxing fine tuning is carried out by coaches since the team is unable to have their regular season waxing support. In addition to Whitcomb, the World Cup coaches present included Chris Grover, Kristen Bourne, and Jason Cork. Also present were Greta Anderson and Brian Fish. Rounding out the group is strength coach, Tschana Schiller. Schiller sets up strength training sessions known as “garage training.”

There was an excellent turnout; 22 of 27 Team USA members attended for all, or part, of the camp. And joining this year’s camp was Swedish star Emma Ribom (friend of JC Schoonmaker). Having prominent visitors from foreign teams has also become a tradition of Bend camp.

The Format

Each day at Bend camp provides unique opportunities. “Every day is different,” Whitcomb said. “But the general plan is we ski in the morning, load up the vans at 7:30, and we’re skiing by 8:15. This is after we’ve gotten together and watched a little World Cup video to set the tone, and do a little visualization. We ski for 2-3 hours, not an incredible amount of volume this time of year. This camp is particularly early this year, the way it fell on the calendar, so we’re being a little more conservative. Then in the afternoons we do dryland training, running, roller skiing, biking, or doing strength training. The goals are getting a jumpstart on our fitness and strength and motivation to kick us off into another training year. Also, every hour we can log on snow is a very valuable hour for us. We do emphasize individuality. If there’s a workout that doesn’t work for an athlete, we work with them, if someone misses an interval session because they’re tired, we’ll run a separate one for them later in the week. We’re very flexible.”

There are many ingredients that go into making a good training camp. “One of the goals is that we set the stage for what our new team looks like,” said Whitcomb. “We get together in a room several times a day to eat and train. Some athletes are brand new. Every year this team feels entirely different…even if you exchange just one athlete, the dynamic feels different. This camp is really about setting the tone for what the new team is going to represent.”

Building Team Culture

The American squad is now well known for its team approach, but it doesn’t come by accident. “One of my favorite meetings of the year that we have is what we call our team culture meeting,” said Whitcomb. “We ask ourselves three questions, talk about them and build a document we can reference the rest of the year to remember at the beginning of the season what we intended to build.

Whitcomb shared the secret sauce of the content of the three question approach. The first question is: “What are we proud of as members of the U.S. ski team, as ambassadors for U.S. skiing? So, it will be things like we’re proud of the community we’re part of, which was in our face in Minneapolis.”

“The second question is: “If we wanted to, how would we wreck our team culture? That’s a fun one. Rather than calling ourselves out on things we don’t do well, we can talk about things we know will destroy the fabric of the team, like being late, creating cliques, being lazy, not having each other’s backs.”

“The last question is: “What are our action items; what are we going to do as a team? An example of that is we want to do one community event per camp. Another example is we want to review this document several times through the year, to make sure we’re on track.”

This type of candor can present a challenge for new members. “We don’t ever say that we want everybody to participate…just because not everybody is comfortable speaking in a group that they’re adjusting to for the first time. But generally, everybody does participate with something spoken. But simply to be present is to participate.”

The message of what skiers take home is different for everyone. “The one baseline concept I hope they get is a new level of confidence knowing that they have this other team, the national team, that has their backs that they are a part of and connected to. Also, individually we have worked on technical and training concepts that they can bring home to apply to their training.”

The American Way

The U.S. team’s approach to camp is different than many other countries. Since the American system is decentralized, the athletes also work with their own clubs when not training with the national team. “It’s no problem for a lot of these athletes to accomplish all of the training that they need to be able to sustain a great season in Europe, or at World Juniors,” said Whitcomb. “But at the end of the day, in particular for World Cup athletes, you’re not going to be spending that time with your club program. You need two teams. We are proud to be a decentralized program that depends on its clubs as important partners. This is an additional resource. It’s really necessary for an American athlete to have two teams…to have a club program and national team. If we’re not a connected group, we won’t perform well in Europe. We’re on the road for too long in too tight of quarters not to have team cohesion be a critical focus.”

Please return to FasterSkier for part II of our interview with Matt Whitcomb for more insight into the Bend/Mt. Bachelor training camp when he will discuss the team’s goals, integrating a new generation into the team, trying to be the best in the world, World Cup issues, and an update on Ben Ogden.

The story of how Colby College became the Mules traces back to years of listless play from their football team, before a season in which the team suddenly became one of the best in New England. That led the Sports Editor at the student newspaper, The Colby Echo, to remark that instead of “black horse” to win their conference, Colby was suddenly a “white mule.” A couple of creative undergrads took the cue, sourced the rural environs around Waterville, Maine, and the next weekend, a real live mule patrolled the Colby sideline.

A century later, the story seems allegorical for the story of Colby nordic skier Jack Young. The Jay, Vermont native and Colby Junior spent his winter chasing down World Cup starts as one of the country’s best sprint prospects. Then, in his first World Cup start, Young quickly put together a memorable performance in Canmore where he qualified for the skate sprint heats in 11^th place. In retrospect, it pointed to the potential of American skiers to leverage the relative home-field advantage of a rare North American World Cup tour into expectation-defying results. A week later, Gus Schumacher won in Minneapolis. Black horse to white mule-type stuff.

Earlier this month, as the buds of spring emerged on Colby’s Mayflower Hill campus, Jack Young’s performance proved to earn him a nomination to the D-Team of the Stifel U.S. Ski Team. He is the first Colby skier to receive a nomination while still enrolled at the small college of 2,200 undergraduates in Central Maine.

Young’s Colby College affiliation stood out among a nominee sheet that includes storied collegiate ski programs with more Team USA alumni in their history than one can count: University of Vermont, Dartmouth College, University of Utah, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and University of Alaska-Anchorage, among others. Young qualified for the team via objective criteria requiring him to be ranked in the top 175 skiers in the World in his birth year, a standard that speaks to his accomplishments as an athlete, and his embracing of a Colby College ski-culture that revels in the role of offbeat outsider.

A Whole New World…Cup

When Young woke up on the morning of his World Cup race in Canmore, he was focused on feelings more than results. “Once I got a World Cup bid, my complete focus changed to getting to the place that I race best, which is not just physically being rested, but in a place where I have carved out the space in my mind to just get excited to ski race.” When he finally got to ski the sprint qualifier, that feeling transformed into something like euphoria, “I hit the top of the course, and all I was focused on from there was riding the wave I got from imagining that moment and reaching it,” he said. “I didn’t have a thought of where I might stack up in the field. I think that’s when the qualifier fell into place for me.”

As Young crossed the line, where he was stacking up in the field came into view for everyone; it simply astounded. “[American] Murphy Kimball was in the finish corral and was cooled down enough to be processing what the announcers were saying, which I wasn’t, and he heard ‘Jack Young, in 11^th,’ and just immediately looked at me. So I stare back for like three seconds of silence, and then he just gives me the biggest hug ever. I started to get it then.”

Young had just started to process his achievement as others looked on with a mixture of awe and dis-belief. “My sister texted me asking if the result on the FIS App was correct.” His Colby teammates, camped up in Hanover, New Hampshire at the EISA Dartmouth Carnival also quickly got in contact. “They were like, it’s not just us that’s excited for you, EVERYONE here is excited.”

Meanwhile, Colby Head Coach Tracey Cote, was spelling it out in even more plain terms. In response to a text that said, “Mules in the Heats,” her response was an exuberant, “HOLY S***!” For Cote, the moment was a culmination of what she has always coached towards: not just an athlete reaching a goal they’ve worked at for years, but doing so in a way that reflected the unique intersection that happens when an athlete brings the character qualities they hold as a person to performing in the ever-complex sport of nordic skiing. “He started thinking about wanting to qualify for the World Cup in the summer,? said Cote. “And from that point forward, everything he did in training and life was centered around this goal.”

Looking back, Young sees Cote’s philosophy as key to his preparations to excel at the sport’s highest level. “She will always say, ‘[at Colby] we coach skiers, not just skiing’ and I think it took me a little bit to understand that,” said Young. “But I look at Canmore, and I think about how I was prepared to ski as well as I did. It wasn’t just because my training was good. It wasn’t just that I was physically rested. It was because I went in trusting that if I carried myself how I know I can carry myself, ski how I know I can ski, things would fall into place. I don’t get that without Tracey, or my teammates working everyday towards a culture that empowers that.”

To Cote, Young’s results on the World Cup and throughout the season were evidence of his personal capacity to be “exceptionally collaborative.”

“We meet constantly to talk about how we can incorporate what he needs into the team training and when he just needs something different,” said Cote. “I have so much respect for skiers who can achieve incredible results while also lifting up their teammates. Not every top-level skier can do this, but I have been lucky to coach a few in my career and Jack is definitely one!”

Cote and Young also have cued in on Young’s profile as a skier acting as a litmus test for the team-forward culture at Colby. The NCAA circuit in which Colby competes has traditionally been focused on distance-only racing. Young, who earned his World Cup bids on his sprinting ability, has needed to create a training and racing calendar that can look very different from that of his Colby teammates.

“The coolest thing about training at Colby is that in any given workout, one of our guys can do something special,” said Young. “I hope that in a sprint workout, guys like Zach [Nemeth] can push themselves off me, and in a distance workout, I learn a lot from Zach, and the others too.”

Still, there are times when Young strays to keep sharp for sprinting. “He is so intentional about not disrupting the team culture,” says Cote. “Everyone understands when Jack does a different workout.” Young too, has seen it as a would-be weakness that’s turned into a key strength for the Colby team. “The thing about our season is that we have all fall as a team to work out any tension around individualized plans,” Young explained. “When we hit winter, we’re all in lockstep, the whole team, and better for it.”

The process of creating a team culture comes with a necessary constraint in NCAA skiing that Young looks at as a continuing opportunity. “The reality is the team is different every year, because you lose guys to graduation, and you have freshman that come in. Which again, [what you] try to do is turn what might be a weakness into a strength. Every fall, we’re looking to create a team that’s going to work best for that season.”

With that challenge of creating a culture ahead of him for one more year, Young eagerly anticipating the opportunity. “I get to bring the World Cup experience back, that’s exciting.”

For Young, that’s the triumph of his sprint qualifier just as much as his “welcome to the Big Leagues” moment that came in his sprint heat at Canmore. In a heat with eventual World Cup champion Harald Oestberg Amundsen (Norway) and World Championship sprint medalist Jules Chappaz (France), he was competitive, but eventually lost ground in the final surge. “I’d talked [the heat] over with the US Team coaches, and we both agreed with it being my first time going in and trying to stay relaxed, [but] the reality of those World Cup heats is that being ‘relaxed’ per se means still jockeying for a good position so that when the heat goes…and they GO…you can react quick enough to adjust to the pace.”

Young sees the experience as a necessary learning ground, and knows what to adjust going forward. “I can’t wait to bring that back to training,” he said. “The idea that when you enter a World Cup heat, everyone thinks they can be in the top two in that heat. To me, that’s an attitude I need to have, and I want all my teammates to have too.”

Cote has no doubt those new lessons will combine with Young’s steady leadership. “He’s been a leader sine the day he stepped foot on our campus and always brings a level of positive and competitive spirit that infuses confidence into his teammates.”

A Match Made in Waterville, Maine

The success Young had this season may seem like the result of a serendipitous match with the Colby program. But for longtime observers, Young’s nomination to the Stifel US Ski Team is the logical outgrowth of a program built steadily over generations.

All great programs bear traces of their leaders. For Colby, that’s found in Tracey Cote, who has served as Head Coach for 27 seasons. Cote (née Theyerl—note the non-coincidental author’s byline of this article) grew up in the small Wisconsin village of Elkhart Lake, an hour and a half into the hills north of Milwaukee. Tracey and brother Ted took their first ski strides in the Schultz family cornfield behind their modest home on the outskirts of Elkhart Lake, and continued on into American Birkebeiners of the 1970’s. Her beginnings in the sport were literally out on the back forty.

Starting out skiing in the Kettle-Moraine forest was a far cry from the traditional skier development centers across the United States. Elkhart Lake-Glenbeulah High School certainly was not a ski academy. Fifteen miles west of Sheboygan wasn’t Aspen. Where Cote learned to ski, she learned to love skiing alone. When she did ski with others, it was a family affair. Those two elements continued through Cote’s own collegiate career at Northern Michigan University, her taking on the Colby program in its first year as a Division I ski program in 1997, and through NCAA Championship qualifiers, NCAA All-American finishers, World Junior Championship qualifiers, and now, a US Ski Team member. Her coaching is driven by a desire for every Colby skier to intensely pursue their own competitive skiing goals, while maintaining the perspective to intensely pursue relationships with their teammates, and the sport, that makes everyone feel supported. That’s a close approximation to the “team culture” often spoken about by Young and Cote. “Any one skier’s success is a success for everyone.”

That guiding principle has never come at the expense of letting some of Cote’s own background and quirks shine through. “Tracey will talk a lot about is how training is often a process of avoiding mistakes, more than finding a silver bullet,” says Young. “And that often translates into letting her athletes train on the terms that work best for them.

For years, Cote’s athletes have come from backgrounds in cycling, soccer, basketball, football, and even more esoteric pursuits. She also has a penchant for recruiting skiers who come from out-of-the-way talent centers, and keep to unconventional paths in the sport. The Colby program’s first World Cup skier under Cote came earlier this year when alumni Erin Bianco, who currently skis for Bridger Ski Foundation out of Bozeman, Montana, made her first World Cup starts in Oberhof, Germany. Bianco qualified for her first World Cup sprint heats on the same day Young put in his performance at Canmore. When Cote recruited the Iron Range, Ely, Minnesota native though, Bianco was out of skiing, running at St. Olaf College. Bianco transferred to Colby and became an NCAA All-American.

Further back, the Colby’s program milestones have been linked to out-of-the-way stories of success. Colby’s first All-American, Olivia Amber, came from the small outpost of Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin, where she and her sister constituted the entirety of their high school team. Colby’s most dominant skier during Cote’s tenure, Zane Fields, was a Woodstock, Vermont skier who came direct from that state’s high school league. The program’s first World U23 Championship qualifier, Andrew Egger, was a sprint specialist who was concurrently enrolled in Officer Training School for the US Marine Corps.

They all have come to Waterville, a post-industrial New England mill town in central Maine where they found an out-of-the-way approach to pursuing the sport at the highest level. Cote and Colby have made sure those skiers have all the resources to do so. A decade ago, Colby partnered with the town of Waterville to revive and expand an abandoned quarry, Quarry Road, down the hill from campus into a homologated 5 k course with snowmaking. Two years ago, Colby opened a $200 million-dollar athletic center boasting a full support staff, and arguably the best waxing facilities in the East. For Cote, there was a clear direction in the investments: “It’s made us an attractive place to support a collegiate ski career.”

All of which sets up to point towards an understanding of why Jack Young has not just excelled as a skier, but excelled as a Colby skier. Young has been nordic skiing since he was a little kid in Jay, Vermont’s Bill Koch Youth League (BKL). He didn’t connect with the sport competitively though until relatively late, joining up with the nearby Craftsbury Ski Club in high school. By then, he was more known around Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom as his high school’s starting quarterback than as a top junior skiing prospect.

He found success, becoming a Vermont State Champion skier five times over. However, he still went relatively under the radar to the college coaches casting a recruiting net over a national pool of skiing talent. In short, Young was a bit of an outsider going into college. Which made him the type of skier with whom Cote has had success in her tenure.

Young admits that his current list of accomplishments is something that he didn’t even fathom at this time last year. “This season was a sequence of things that just kept going,” he said. “I didn’t take that for granted, but I did have to learn to take it. You go from dreaming of winning a SuperTour qualifier, then you do it like I did in Anchorage, and then you start piecing things together from there. Oh, I could make the World Cup. Oh, I made the World Cup…things like that. I guess the US Ski Team is that too.”

His nomination to the Stifel U.S. Ski Team is something that both he, and the program he comes from, see as the realization of the groundwork laid over the course of decades. “I’ve always loved skiing,” he said. “But really I think the difference has been that I learned to love the competition and training aspect of skiing. When I was a kid in the BKL, it wasn’t on the forefront of my mind to compete on the world stage. Now it is.”

In Jack Young, the skier, there’s a parable for a program. No longer the black horse, with Young, the Colby mules are kicking on.

By Leann Bentley – Stifel U.S. Ski Team

In recognition of her outstanding performance and versatility, Sammy Smith of the Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team has been awarded the US Nordic Olympic Women (US NOW) Gold Rush Award. The Gold Rush Award is an annual award that celebrates exceptional achievements and versatility among cross country athletes and is awarded to a World Cup woman athlete who demonstrates outstanding qualities of grit and grace throughout the year.

The accolade celebrates Smith’s exceptional achievements, highlighting her as a standout athlete of the season. Previous winners include Smith’s teammates Novie McCabe, Julia Kern, Rosie Brennan and Jessie Diggins, who have demonstrated exemplary performance and dedication to their sport.

“The award is not meant to recognize what happens on the race course directly,” said Alison Owen-Bradley, the founder of the Gold Rush award and a pioneer of elite level women’s cross country skiing in the U.S. said in an interview with FasterSkier. “Rather, the recipient is selected for the award by exemplifying and showing grit and the grace that it takes to be successful. It’s what happened behind the scenes to get the result, not the result itself.”

Smith has firmly established herself as a regular contender on the World Cup circuit. Notable accomplishments include securing a silver medal at the World Junior Championships in Planica, Slovenia the 2023-24 season and eight top 30 finishes on the World Cup stage. In Smith’s first World Cup sprint, she made it to the heats, a feat rarely achieved by athletes so young on the circuit. From there, her results kept getting better, marking her as one of the team’s top sprinters. While Smith gives it her all out on the snow, she is constantly striving to be better and brings those with her in the process. Using her grit to turn her frustration into a learning opportunity is one of Smith’s many strengths.

“She is a teammate we knew we could always count on,” said Kern, a past-recipient of the award and a current teammate of Smith. “Her grit, grace and poise inspire us to believe we can chase after multiple dreams and always be present for the team.”

Smith’s ability to navigate challenges with composure and determination has been commendable. Smith is a once-in-a-generation athlete. Outside of skiing, she is an elite soccer player who will begin her college career this fall at Stanford University. In high school, Smith represented the U.S. at the Under-17 Women’s World Cup as a member of the U.S. Soccer Under-17 Women’s National Team and then competed with the U20 Women’s U.S. National Soccer team. She took home Idaho Soccer Player of the Year in 2022-23, Idaho Girls Cross Country Player of the Year and Idaho Girls Track and Field Player of the Year in 2020-21. Alongside her sisters, she is also a founder of GO BIG Inc., a nonprofit that provides resources and opportunities for underprivileged youth.

“I’m so grateful to have received the Gold Rush award,” said Smith. “It was such a privilege to get to compete on the World Cup circuit this season and to really get to know the other athletes. It truly is the most fun, inspiring and humble group of people I have ever been around, and I hope to have many more seasons competing with them!”

Balancing commitments between skiing, soccer and academic pursuits, she has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for time management and dedication, but beyond her achievements, Smith has proven herself to be a valuable team player, offering support and encouragement to her teammates at every turn.

“Sammy handled the pressure of racing on the highest cross country ski level, balancing school and soccer, traveling to a new country every week, all while being incredibly thoughtful and a present teammate,” said Kern. “She was always the first one to offer help to anyone needing an extra hand, join for a team jog or try out group tactics with teammates during race preparation. On the tough days, Sammy brought her positive energy to lift up the spirits and introduced soccer juggling circles to change up the monotony of life on the road for the team.”

In recognition of Sammy’s exemplary performance and dedication to her sport, she is a deserving recipient of the US Nordic Olympic Women Gold Rush Award. Congratulations, Sammy!

Last week, the Stifel U.S. Ski Team announced the 2024 recipients of the Stifel Awards, named after the team’s title sponsor for the 2023-2024 season.

Awardees for the “Athlete of the Year” and “Best Comeback of the Year,” among other categories, were nominated and voted on by team members and staff; with Stifel’s backing, those categories were awarded with a monetary prize attached. The 2023-24 season is the first time each discipline represented within the Stifel U.S. Ski Team nominated and awarded within its discipline, rather than the previous format in which awardees came from a pool of nominees across divisions, per US Ski and Snowboard’s press release.

STIFEL U.S. CROSS COUNTRY SKI TEAM AWARD WINNERS

• Athlete of the Year: Jessie Diggins, Gus Schumacher
• Rookie of the Year: Sammy Smith/Haley Brewster (tie), John Steel Hagenbuch
• Most Improved: Sophia Laukli, Zanden McMullen
• Best Comeback: Rosie Brennan, Gus Schumacher
• Staff Member of the Year: Kristen Bourne

With the Stifel awards all handed out, we’re taking the opportunity here to take a brief look back on the individual accomplishments of the awardees accounting for one of the most successful seasons in American skiing history.

Athletes of the Year: Jessie Diggins and Gus Schumacher

Jessie Diggins – The headline accomplishment of Diggins’ 2023-24 season was her second career World Cup Overall Crystal Globe. By winning, she built on her legacy as one of two Americans to ever capture the Overall classification of the World Cup (Bill Koch won the first official classification in 1981-82). Diggins became the first American skier to win the World Cup Overall multiple times.

In the most simple terms, Jessie Diggins was the best skier in the world this season. From a dominant early season win in a 10 k skate in Gallivare through to her victory in the season’s final race(20 k in Falun), Diggins was a factor in every race she started. Beyond just distance wins, she also skied to sprint podiums, and won her second-career Tour de Ski. For all of her accomplishments on the World Cup, Diggins realized a career accomplishment in where the World Cup was held, as well, leading a successful effort to bring a World Cup to her home state of Minnesota. Just one week later she won her first American Birkebeiner (and if you’re from the Midwest, like Diggins, you know that’s all that counts!).

“Athlete of the Year” designation doesn’t come without world-class results, but it doesn’t come exclusively because of them either. Diggins 2023-24 ski season was defined as much for her racing as for her vulnerability regarding her motivation to race. Last Fall, Diggins detailed her struggle to manage disordered eating, doing so in part to spell out the priorities she had going into the World Cup season. She was going to ski race because she loved to ski race. She was going to celebrate that she was capable of doing so by taking each day, and each race, as they came. As the World Cup season progressed—as Diggins’ results started to string together into a Crystal Globe-winning campaign—she let that approach to ski racing shine through. The result was a World Cup champion who wasn’t afraid to acknowledge that champions are human too; an empowering notion in and of itself.

Gus Schumacher – The biggest moment of Gus Schumacher’s season coincided with arguably the biggest moment of the season for the sport, when he won his first career World Cup in Minneapolis. That, of course, had a whole lot to do with Schumacher’s “Athlete of the Year Award” from the Stifel U.S. Ski Team. The 24 year old also scored other milestones on his way to the historic win in Minneapolis, including qualifying for his first World Cup Sprint Final during Stage 4 of the Tour de Ski. Overall, Schumacher made leaps forward in his consistency in World Cup racing, reflected in his Overall finish: Schumacher skied to 15^th on the final World Cup points list, his highest career finish, and a radical improvement from 62^nd the previous season. He was a consistent top-30 presence in every distance race, with the potential to put together an extraordinary result on any given day. As it turned out, the extraordinary result would be a milestone for more than just Schumacher, with his Minneapolis win being the first distance win for a male World Cup skier since Bill Koch in 1984.

Schumacher’s win in Minneapolis also brought a golden conclusion to a neat narrative arc for which his teammates awarded him “Comeback of the Year.” Four years ago, he became the first American man to win a World Junior Championship distance race, placing first in the 10 k Skate race at the 2020 Championships in Oberwiesenthal, Germany. He made the jump to primarily racing World Cups over the next couple of seasons, and was open about his struggles in doing so. Schumacher was learning though; training, resting, coping with the mental pressure of racing, working alongside a generation of talented US Skiers. The 2023-24 season was a sign of steady progress, until it was an exultant one, taking his first World Cup win in front of a home crowd, and reiterating why all the mistakes were worth working through.

Rookie of the Year

Haley Brewster – There’s always a vague hope that we’ll be able to pinpoint the moment an athlete’s potential coalesces into a result that is truly special. For Haley Brewster, that moment came during the final lap of the US National Championship 20 k in Solider Hollow, Utah in January. There, the University of Vermont Junior made a decisive up-tick in the pace that separated her from the lead pack, and won her first National Championship. A whole new world of possibility flowed from that moment, and as it would turn out, it would be the possibility for Brewster to be one of the best U23 skiers in the world. A month on from Soldier Hollow, Brewster was skiing alongside her countrywomen Novie McCabe in a lead pack of five skiers at the World U23 Ski Championship 20 k in Planica, Slovenia when again, she made a decisive up-tick in pace to help separate the pack, and skied to a World Championship silver medal. In doing so, Brewster became the second American woman to ever to medal in a distance race at U23 World Championships, after Liz Stephen did so in 2008. She also became the fifth American woman to medal outright, a list that includes Stephen, Laura Valaas, Julia Kern, and Jessie Diggins.

Her first World Cup starts followed in Minneapolis, where Brewster made her distance debut on the senior circuit with 25^th place in the 10 k skate. Two NCAA runners-up finishes back in March wound down the season for Brewster. The time and place circumstances of those Championships, held at Steamboat Springs right down the road from her hometown of Eagle, Colorado, helped ground the whirlwind that had seen her ski to the very top of the world. As the calendar turns towards 2024-25, the possibilities seem boundless.

Sammy Smith – Smith’s season started at the SuperTour in Anchorage, Alaska, where she promptly skied to victory in three of four of the Kincaid Park Opener’s races. From there, the Sun Valley junior spent the rest of the winter on the World stage. Her first World Cup top 30 distance performances soon followed at the Tour de Ski, and she became a staple on the list of qualifiers in sprint races the rest of the season. The only interim Smith took from the World Cup was to compete at the Junior World Ski Championships in Planica, Slovenia, where she became the first American woman to earn a Junior Worlds medal in a sprint race, taking silver, and the first individual American woman medalist since Hailey Swirbul in 2018. The full run-down of Smith’s season should come with the obligatory note that she accomplished all she accomplished at just nineteen years old, which only serves to make her season stand out even more. For a hint on what drove her teammates to bestow her “Rookie of the Year” honors though, one should look at her performance in the World Juniors Mixed Team Relay. After a strong opening leg from Team USA’s Zach Jayne, Smith started out her leg from eight place. On classic skis and in a driving rain, Smith skied to the fastest time in her leg, moving Team USA from eighth to third place and fighting for a podium. Team USA eventually finished fourth, but there was a clear winner within the race. For grit. For drive. For competitiveness, no one could beat Sammy Smith.

John Steel Hagenbuch – In the quarterfinal of the U23 World Championship sprint race in which he would eventually earn a bronze medal, Hagenbuch waited until the field hit the hardest part of the course. Then, he hit the hardest part harder than anyone else could. “That’s the move,” he said afterwards. The poise, confidence, and ability to make his move when the toughest part of a race came defined Hagenbuch throughout the 2023-24 ski season. When things got frigid in December at the World Cup in Ostersund, Sweden, Hagenbuch skied to his first career top 15 result. When falling snow started to slow down a crowded 20 k mass start US Nationals field, Hagenbuch took the cue to make a decisive move towards his first National Championship. When the time splits were tight at the NCAA Championship 7.5 k, Hagenbuch split the field to win. The Dartmouth Junior built a consistency in his approach to racing, while crossing as many venues and circuits as a young skier could this winter. With at least one more year at Dartmouth, Hagenbuch is unlikely to stop hopping from the NCAA to the World Cup and other circuits too. It’ll be a tough balance, but then again, when it comes to pushing hard in the tough spots, “that’s the move” for Hagenbuch.

Most Improved

Zanden McMullen – It was a winter where it was hard to keep up with the pace that members of the US Ski Team were reaching milestones on the World Cup. Ben Ogden and JC Schoonmaker skied to their first World Cup podiums. Sophia Laukli and Gus Schumacher to their first World Cup wins. Jessie Diggins and Rosie Brennan were in contention for a win nearly every weekend. The success was a sea change from a generation or two ago when top thirty World Cup results from American skiers would grab headlines. All of which is to say, that Zanden McMullen’s season was an accomplishment in the old-fashioned, stick-it-out variety, exhibiting the persistence that it takes to get results on the way to the headline grabbing finishes his older teammates skied to this winter. McMullen made starts at nearly every World Cup weekend this season, with his results stacking up consistently across discipline and distance. Skate sprint? Classic 20 k? McMullen could be counted on to turn in within the top twenty-five in either. In the Men’s World Cup, he was a crucial piece of US Skiing’s added depth, and at just 22 years old, there is a lot of directions for the versatile Alaskan to go as he looks to the World Cup again next season.

Sophia Laukli – The award of most improved for Laukli comes as a testament to her creativity. Laukli has been open with FasterSkier over the last year on how much has changed, and been changed intentionally, in her skiing career. After graduation from the University of Utah last spring, she moved to Norway and joined Team Aker-Daehlie, becoming the first American athlete on the innovative Norwegian club team. She also made the decision to pursue a budding running career, and subsequently won the Golden Trail Series, which included wins in some of the world’s most prestigious ultra-running events. When Laukli began the running season last year, she was considered a wild card within the Golden Trail Series. And as she put together her winning campaign, it led to another wild card prospect. Running, moving across the world, graduating – how would it all affect her skiing? A 14^th place in Ruka during the last race of World Cup opening weekend in November seemed to be an affirmative. Seemed to help. Laukli had her most consistent season on the World Cup to date. In the World Cup distance classification, she jumped to 15^th place this season from a previous career high of 35^th in 2021-2022. In a year where Jessie Diggins and Rosie Brennan were expectant top ten finishers in every race, Laukli was the reliable next name up, and never very far behind at that. That consistency would be enough to celebrate, but with Laukli, it also came punctuated, when she skied to her first World Cup victory at the Alpe Cermis Hill Climb. Laukli now gets the chance to do it all again, as she begins to fine-tune the mix and match of her running and skiing careers in 2024-25.

Best Comeback

Rosie Brennan – The definitive quote on Rosie Brennan belongs to her former teammate, Sadie Maubet Bjornsen, after Brennan’s near-miss on a podium finish at last season’s World Championships 30 k in Planica. “Ninety-nine percent of the time you’re fourth,” commented Maubet Bjornsen. “That’s just the reality of life. And the way you keep coming back from that is what is really inspiring. It’s such a theme of Rosie’s story: Knock me down, I’ll bend. But I don’t break.”

In the 2023-24 World Cup season opened in Ruka with a 10 k Classic race, and Brennan skied to her first career classic podium. Then Brennan’s results began trending the other way; throughout the 2023-24 season, she skied with a confidence that she could be on the podium in any race. She was on the podium in many—six to be exact—and among those, the real testament to Brennan’s accomplishments was that they were shared across distances and disciplines. She opened with a classic distance second place, went on the next day to take third in a skate distance race, and finished the season with a third place in a classic sprint. Well into a distinguished career, Brennan showed new and brilliant range that hammered home the principle of persistence at the heart of her skiing story.

Staff Member of the Year

Kristen Bourne – The current US Ski Team D Team coach got her first World Cup experience as an Women’s Sports Foundation Tara VanDerveer Fellow during the 2021-2022 season (when she was serving as the Assistant Coach for the College of St. Scholastica Ski Team). “[Having a moment where] my plane ticket [was] in hand and I was like, ‘whoa, I’m really gonna go to the World Cup and wax skis,’” she said. Two seasons on, Bourne has become a staple on the circuit for the Team USA, taking on the wholistic and varied role of coach, logistician, technician and tester that she first experienced then, and becoming a key component in bringing the world-class support required for skiers to get world-class results. Bourne’s journey in coaching has also left a unique imprint on US Skiing. Her initial fellowship on the World Cup circuit—an immersive two-week experience as part of the Team USA’s World Cup Staff—became the model for the The National Nordic Foundation (NNF)’s Trail to Gold Coaching Program, that saw eight more women coaches join the US World Cup staff for stints throughout the season. Team staff members, including Head Coach Matt Whitcomb, have been quick to point to the benefits of the Trail to Gold Program in not just providing another staff member week-to-week on the World Cup, but in bringing a more diverse set of coaching experiences throughout the season.

**Correction: An earlier version of this article asserted that Haley Brewster was the first American women to medal in a U23 World Championships distance race. In fact, Liz Stephen also medaled in 2008. The article has been updated to reflect this fact.**

Asked for a reflection on the 2023-24 World Cup season, US Ski Team Head Coach Matt Whitcomb pointed straight towards one place; Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a sunny February day, filled to the brim with 20,000 people cheering loud and clear. 

“We often talk about athletes peaking for big events,” he said. “But I’d never considered that our American ski culture could peak for an event.”

The specific dynamics between performance and culture may be something Whitcomb is ongoing in noting, but his reflections on this World Cup season show a clear comfort operating in the connected space between the two. In a season of many notable triumphs for American skiers, Whitcomb can trace each individual achievement to a team philosophy shared between each US Team member, extending from their roots in ski communities across the country.

In Jessie Diggins’ Overall World Cup title, Rosie Brennan and Sophia Laukli’s World Cup podiums and victories, JC Schoonmaker and Ben Ogden’s first World Cup podiums, Junior World Championship and Youth Olympic Games medals and, yes, that special Sunday in Minneapolis for Gus Schumacher, Whitcomb sees a consistent ethos. Put together in a single sentence, it’s hard to believe that all those things happened in just the last five months, and as our conversation with Matt Whitcomb shows, this one burst of success is reliant on a consistent thoughtfulness, put into athletes, development, and for the US, a ski community spanning a continent, in which he is a clear leader.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Ben Theyerl/FasterSkier (FS): We last caught up with you ahead of the North American World Cups. I was re-reading that interview, and was struck just by how many of the through-lines you traced in the development of US Skiing and a US Team culture shone through the overwhelming success of the Minneapolis World Cups. 

Things like “I want to stand along the course and see and hear what 10,000 people [feel like],” and “We made a goal this year as a team: stop taking podiums for granted. This year, you see us storm the podium and take a team photo with the one athlete who actually earned the award” look a little different when you know there were 20,000 people there, and what it looked like to celebrate Gus Schumacher winning his first World Cup at that World Cup.

How do you look back on that weekend in Minneapolis and what it meant for the US Ski Team?

Matt Whitcomb (MW): I just feel grateful and lucky, so I’d like to say thank you to everyone in the U.S. cross country ski community, and especially to those who traveled to Canmore or Minneapolis. We often talk about athletes peaking for big events, but I’d never considered that our American ski culture could peak for an event. We shocked the visiting nations, and I’m just so proud of it all. A big thanks to Claire Wilson, Doug DeBold and everyone at The Loppet Foundation, including the hundreds of delightful volunteers who ran the event of a lifetime. This World Cup was very expensive, so thanks, too, to The Loppet Foundation, U.S. Ski & Snowboard, Share Winter, the event sponsors, the vendor tents and trucks, and those who chipped in from the grassroot level when the funds were tight. 

“If you build it, they will come.” And they did. 

FS: There was a lot more to celebrate back in Europe at the end of the season as well. Jessie’s Crystal Globe, of course, and then also a second consecutive year taking fourth place in the Nation’s Cup, which you’ve highlighted as being a very big deal for the team in the past. 

When the last ski had been waxed, and the last athlete crossed the finish line this season, what struck you initially about what made this year special for American skiing?

MW: The first thought was one of dread: The staff relay starts in five minutes! When that was finally over, and I was on my flight out of Stockholm, I was thinking about how many American athletes raced a World Cup this season. I believe the number stands at 40, and 7 of them stood on 22 podiums. 

We were fourth in the world as a team, losing to Finland by a painfully small margin on the last day of the season. Our women finished the season in third, and our men finished in fifth, when we moved ahead of Italy on the final day. If you look beyond the World Cup too, it was a phenomenal season for US Skiers; we had a podium at the Youth Olympic Games, one at World Juniors, and two at U-23 Championships. 

I get more excited about the reasons behind the results than I do about the results themselves, and I’m proud of the club system we’ve all built in this country. We are a decentralized national team, which means we don’t bring the athletes to live in Park City, Utah as soon as they make the team. Instead, the clubs and the national team work together to build a team around each athlete that covers the whole year. It feels good to see that working.

FS: As you’ve had a little time to reflect, are there any other aspects of this season that have risen to top-of-mind as being clearly special? Maybe it was a specific performance, or a particular principle that really shone through about this year’s group…

MW: Take a look at our three men’s podiums. Also, re-read that sentence! In each instance, there was a special sort of human connection, which ultimately points to the fact that our success requires so much more than just good training. 

• JC Schoonmaker toes the line in the skate sprint final in Östersund, Sweden. Five minutes earlier, he watched his girlfriend, Emma Ribom, win the women’s race. And not only that, his brother and teammate, Ben Ogden, is in the heat with him. They have something to defend. A mission. There’s some fuel to burn, and he finishes third, Ben fourth. This was JC’s first podium, and our first men’s podium in seven years (dating back to Simi Hamilton’s 2nd place in Toblach in 2017).
• Ben Ogden makes the podium in Toblach, Italy, just three weeks after watching JC break the barrier for our men’s team. There’s a different vibe now: We’ve transitioned from knowing we could do it, to doing it. Our young men’s team has come alive, and Ben is at the center of it today. He and his boys are building something together, and today, he intends to showcase it. And in the crowd, hanging over the fence at the top of the last climb, is his mom, his sisters, his girlfriend, all there to support him in what has been the hardest year of his life. He finishes third, and lands on his first career podium. 
• Gus Schumacher starts bib 35, and heads out on the 3.3k loop in Minneapolis, which is a tunnel of 20,000 Americans, who have essentially created a particle accelerator loop for our skiers. With a reasonably low bib number, his “race leader” splits are somewhat empty, as he knows he should be winning at this point, because the big boys are yet to start. And Gus is now the target. One by one, the rest of them start and are clear of 6.6k. Gus is still the leader, but nine men know that he is only eight seconds ahead of them, and it will be nearly impossible for him not to be overtaken…unless you were there, and you heard how American fans support their skiers. It was actually impossible for him to be beaten. If you saw Gus’s final 2k in Minneapolis, you saw something special. This wasn’t just about a lot of smart preparation and grit. You saw what inspired skiing looks like, which happens when there is something to ski for. 

FS: Five months is a long season, so this is intentionally a kind of absurd question: is there a single moment that sticks out to you as having been an especially good distillation of this season for the US Ski Team?

MW: This jumped out immediately. One of our Trail to Gold coaches during the last part of the World Cup season, Julia Hayes Forbes, had a birthday while we were in Oslo, so we all met at the wax truck, affectionately nicknamed Yolanda, before dinner to celebrate, and basically regroup for the final week of Drammen and Falun. We were a tired staff. We had not had the best two weeks of racing, and the pressure was now very high. In Yolanda, our staff has a few trophies we pass around when someone feels like acknowledging exceptional work. I won’t get into the bylaws that govern how the primary, back-up, and secret trophies are awarded, but this night, for two hours, we sat in a camp-chair circle and took turns celebrating each other. We dug in deep for two hours, tossing the back-up trophy—which is a hockey puck—from this person to that. We laughed a lot. There were some tears, too, because we all took the chance to slow down and appreciate each other. We felt lucky, and that was it. 

Two days later, Rosie hits the podium in Drammen. She was back. We were all back.

FS: A lot of us who work as coaches are into feeling that post-ski season haze and relief and are curious for you, What do you do to get yourself some rest after the season?  Is there a point each spring where you start to get really excited about re-convening with the US Team in Bend? 

MW: I always expect my first couple of weeks back from the season to be relieving and restful, but in truth, it’s a tough time of year for me. Coaches have the wonderful job of feeling purposeful, and being required to ski as a profession. We’re goal directed, and each weekend we get to test our progress against those goals. Suddenly that’s gone, and we’re supposed to decompress with time away from it all, and it’s hard for me. We do our planning in early April, and that’s when I start to get excited again. I do miss the team and our staff, and I have a lot of unaccomplished goals yet to meet, so it’s been fun to get back to work. 

In terms of what I do, I spent 10 days in Austin and New Orleans with my girlfriend, Caitlin, going on ghost and gator tours, eating everything, including gator. Before Bend, I’ll get out to a Lake in Nevada with my brother, Jake, and former ski racers, Cam MacKugler, and Hunter Karnedy, for a few days of fishing. 

FS: Last time we talked with you, you emphasized how “[building and maintaining a great team environment] will always be my number one focus,” and pointed to the group of US Women who really elevated US Skiing to its current run of historic results that started in the 2010s with Kikkan Randall, Holly Brooks, Liz Stephen, Jessie Diggins etc…

How have you observed that great team environment evolve over the last couple of years, especially as there’s been a couple different groups of young skiers – first Ben Ogden, JC Schoonmaker, Gus Schumacher, Luke Jager, Julia Kern, Novie McCabe, and Sophia Laukli, and now John Steel Hagenbuch, Zanden McMullen and Sammy Smith, among others, join and find World Cup success?

MW: We had some great years during the second half of the Kikkan era, and while all but Jessie and Rosie have moved on from ski racing since those days, the expectation of what it means to be a member of the U.S. Ski Team is as clear as it ever was. Each skier and staff member has a responsibility to the team. The return one gets from that investment is one of the keys to a great career. I think that’s the legacy of those skiers from 2006-2018. As we all expected, the young American men’s squad from the Goms, Oberwiesenthal, and Lahti World Junior Championships have arrived.  Given the nature of their success as three-year relay medalists, we didn’t just expect to receive fast skiers, and we figured they were going to be pretty invested in the team element of cross country skiing, too. To have that is critical. We’ll go backwards if we ever lose it. 

FS: Finally, well there’s still snow on the ground (even in New England!) and memories of the season are still fresh, here’s a way to early question: what hopes do you have for the Stifel U.S. Ski Team as it looks towards 2024-25?

MW: We are trying something different this year, which is to travel less in the summer. We will have big camps in Bend, Oregon  in May and in Park City, Utah in October, but for June, July, August, and September, the emphasis will be on stable training at home, really leaning into the club system. We’ll have small projects inNew Zealand and Norway, and coaches will make some club visits, but most skiers will travel less, and I’m excited to test this new plan.

The goal for the next year is to have success in Trondheim at the World Championships, and those championships come very late in the winter compared to previous World Championships, February 26th-March 9th. To succeed there, we need stability. And of course, as a team we plan to break our two-year pattern of being fourth in the World. We want that top-three badly. 

FS: You mentioned that April ends up being the time for “planning” for next season and beyond for you, and for all of American skiing. You also implicitly mapped out where that planning pays off – the guys that were medaling at Junior World Championships a couple of years ago worked persistently and diligently, and got the support they needed, and now JC, Ben, and Gus all have been on World Cup podiums.

When you look at translating the developmental success US Skiing had this year into that next generation of World Cup podiums, where are you looking?

MW: I don’t think most people realize that we are the only team in the top-10 in the World who doesn’t receive government funding. That’s why you hear us asking for money every year. Each year, the U.S. Ski Team invests over a million dollars in our cross country program. That money comes from sponsors and partnerships, and from private donations. It is spent largely on our A and B Team athletes, and the coaches and techs that run the team. The National Nordic Foundation, on whose board I serve, raises money exclusively from private donations. We invest in the athletes below the A and B Team level, down to the U-16 level, to ameliorate the financial barriers of our development system. While that amount invested in our younger athletes varies from year to year, it has hovered around $350,000 for each of the last three years. Every development camp in the U.S., including U-16, REG, NEG, and NTG are subsidized to the tune of about 70k by these funds. We invest 23k in the SuperTour hosts, so they can afford to organize the races, and 28k in our Trail to Gold women’s coaching grant, to close the gender gap disparity in elite coaching. 47k has just been sent to the 26 World Cup athletes who are not A or B Team athletes, but who still earned World Cup starts.

So, when you hear about the NNF’s online auction in July, or our Drive for 25 in November, or some scheme to sell athlete bibs or hats for an event, this is why. We truly need your help. We are working hard for the athletes, so they can afford to participate in our great sport. There are over 2,000 people who donated to the NNF in some way last year, and I’d like to end this interview as it began, with a thank you.

Jessie Diggins should not need an introduction at this point, but for anyone who needs a quick reminder: This episode of the Devon Kershaw Show features the best American cross-country skier of all time. Diggins has three Olympic medals to her name, a gold from the last World Championships and, most recently, a crystal globe she was awarded a few days ago as the past season’s overall World Cup champion. Diggins joins us for a conversation about racing and her life as a professional athlete.

A note: This episode includes some frank discussion about eating disorders. If this is something you or someone in your life is struggling with, we suggest taking a look at Project RED-S, which stands for Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport. Their site has athlete-focused information and references if you’re trying to find help. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa & Associated Disorders has a Helpline you can call at 888-375-7767 from Monday to Friday between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Central Time, and you can text HOME to 741741 if you’re in a crisis. And the Alaska Eating Disorders Alliance has an informative video that features Diggins and retired Olympic cross-country skier Holly Brooks.

You can reach Devon and Nat at devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com. Thanks for listening.

Reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated. Apologies for the tardiness of this episode, but we’re back with a wrap from Falun, the last World Cup weekend of the season. It’s just Devon and Nat kicking it old school again here, but we’ll return soon with some guests. Seriously.

Send us your 2025 predictions, Russian troll comments and Gjøran Tefre memes: devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com. Thanks for hanging out with us for the whole World Cup season.

No frills, no guests, just Devon and Nat breaking down six races from Lahti, Finland, as the World Cup returns to Scandinavia. Two more weekends to go after this one — stick with us. Send feedback, comments and anything else at devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com.

We are pleased to announce the Team for Period 4 of the 2023-24 World Cup season:

Lahti 20 km C, Holmenkollen 50 km C, & Falun 10 km C

Men

Michael Earnhart                      Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Gus Schumacher                       Objective          16^th Distance World Cup Standings

Scott Patterson                         Objective          30^th Distance World Cup Standings

Ben Ogden                                Objective          39^th Distance World Cup Standings

Zanden McMullen                     Discretion         29^th Trondheim 10 km C

David Norris                              Discretion         33^rd Canmore 20 km C

Hunter Wonders                       Discretion         34^th Canmore 20 km C

Luke Jager                                Alternate          1^st US Nationals 10 km C

Peter Wolter                             Alternate          2^nd US Nationals 10 km C

Zak Ketterson                           Alternate          40^th Oberhof 20 km C

Women

Margie Freed                            Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Jessie Diggins                            Objective          23-24 Overall World Cup Leader

Rosie Brennan                          Objective          4^th Distance World Cup Standings

Sophia Laukli                            Objective          15^th Distance World Cup Standings

Novie McCabe                          Discretion         19^th Davos 20 km C

Julia Kern                                  Discretion         26^th Canmore 20 km C

Sammy Smith                            Discretion         28^th Davos 20 km C

Haley Brewster                         Discretion         12^th World Junior Champs 10 km C

Sydney Palmer-Leger                 Alternate          31^st Canmore 20 km C

Lahti Sprint F

Men

Michael Earnhart                      Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Ben Ogden                                Objective          10^th Sprint World Cup Standings

JC Schoonmaker                        Objective          13^th Sprint World Cup Standings

Gus Schumacher                       Objective          24^th Sprint World Cup Standings

Kevin Bolger                             Objective          26^th Sprint World Cup Standings

Zak Ketterson                           Objective          33^rd Sprint World Cup Standings

John Hagenbuch                       Discretion         3^rd U23 World Champs Sprint F

Logan Diekmann                       Alternate          16^th Canmore Sprint F

Jack Young                                Alternate          23^rd Canmore Sprint F

Zanden McMullen                     Alternate          25^th Davos Sprint F

Will Koch                                  Alternate          38^th Minneapolis Sprint F

Women

Margie Freed                            Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Jessie Diggins                            Objective          23-24 Overall World Cup Leader

Rosie Brennan                          Objective          10^th Sprint World Cup Standings

Julia Kern                                  Objective          14^th Sprint World Cup Standings

Sammy Smith                            Discretion         2^nd World Junior Champs Sprint F

Lauren Jortberg                        Discretion         19^th Canmore Sprint F

Erin Bianco                               Discretion         29^th Canmore Sprint F

Haley Brewster                         Discretion         1^st US Nationals Sprint F Qualifier

Ava Thurston                            Alternate          2^nd World Junior Champs Sprint F Qualifier

Drammen Sprint C & Falun Sprint C

Men

Michael Earnhart                      Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Ben Ogden                                Objective          10^th Sprint World Cup Standings

JC Schoonmaker                        Objective          13^th Sprint World Cup Standings

Gus Schumacher                       Objective          24^th Sprint World Cup Standings

Kevin Bolger                             Objective          26^th Sprint World Cup Standings

Zak Ketterson                           Objective          33^rd Sprint World Cup Standings

Luke Jager                                Discretion         24^th Canmore Sprint C

Zanden McMullen                     Alternate          33^rd Canmore Sprint C

Women

Margie Freed                            Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Jessie Diggins                            Objective          23-24 Overall World Cup Leader

Rosie Brennan                          Objective          10^th Sprint World Cup Standings

Julia Kern                                  Objective          14^th Sprint World Cup Standings

Sammy Smith                            Discretion         28^th Oberhof Sprint C

Erin Bianco                               Discretion         35^th Oberhof Sprint C

Renae Anderson                       Discreton          36^th Canmore Sprint C

Alayna Sonnesyn                       Discretion         1^st US Nationals Sprint C Qualifier

Haley Brewster                         Alternate          3^rd US Nationals Sprint C Qualifier

Falun 20 km F

Men

Michael Earnhart                      Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Gus Schumacher                       Objective          16^th Distance World Cup Standings

Scott Patterson                         Objective          30^th Distance World Cup Standings

Ben Ogden                                Objective          39^th Distance World Cup Standings

John Hagenbuch                       Discretion         13^th Östersund 10 km F

Zanden McMullen                     Discretion         23^rd Canmore 15 km F

David Norris                              Discretion         27^th Canmore 15 km F

Peter Wolter                             Alternate          36^th Canmore 15 km F

Luke Jager                                Alternate          39^th Minneapolis 10 km F

Hunter Wonders                       Alternate          40^th Canmore 15 km F

Women

Margie Freed                            Objective          23-24 Overall SuperTour Leader

Jessie Diggins                            Objective          23-24 Overall World Cup Leader

Rosie Brennan                          Objective          4^th Distance World Cup Standings

Sophia Laukli                            Objective          15^th Distance World Cup Standings

Julia Kern                                  Discretion         18^th Gällivare 10 km F

Novie McCabe                          Discretion         21^st Ruka 20 km F

Haley Brewster                         Discretion         25^th Minneapolis 10 km F

Sydney Palmer-Leger                 Discretion         25^th Canmore 15 km F

Sammy Smith                            Alternate          23^rd Tour de Ski Final Climb F

Mariah Bredal                           Alternate          30^th Canmore 15 km F

Kendall Kramer                         Alternate          36^th Minneapolis 10 km F

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

Perry Thomas                           SMS T2

Sophie Caldwell Hamilton          AVSC

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:

Kelsey Phinney                          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

What a weekend. If you weren’t able to make it to Minneapolis, we had the good fortune of taping this episode of the podcast in front of a live audience at a local brewery, and we think it brings through a little of the amazing atmosphere. British skier Andrew Musgrave joined us in-person, Ben Ogden zoomed in from mono jail and a very special guest whose name ends with Schumacher joined us mid-pod.

The audio quality from this episode is…..mixed, but it seems to be workable. Thanks for sticking with us all season — we’ll be back with some bonus episodes in the next week before the World Cup resumes. Email us at nat@fasterskier.com and devon@fasterskier.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.

MINNEAPOLIS — The last time cross-country ski racing’s most elite race circuit, the World Cup, traveled to the United States from Europe, Jessie Diggins was nine years old.

At the time, in 2001, the fastest American woman on skis was Nina Kemppel, an Alaskan nearing the end of her career.

It’s hard to imagine the obstacles that athletes of Kemppel’s generation had to face.

Kemppel trained for most of her career without the support of teammates or a local club. On the World Cup, the U.S. team might have had a one- or two-man paid ski tuning staff, and sometimes, Kemppel had to wax her own skis herself.

“It was daunting,” Kemppel said by phone Friday. “But amazingly impactful, I think, in shaping my career.”

The World Cup returns to the U.S. this weekend, with a pair of races in Minneapolis. And the events mark an appropriate occasion to step back and reflect on just how far American cross-country skiing has come since the last time the circuit was here.

Let’s be honest: The sport is still on the fringes. The average resident of Manhattan or even Michigan would say, “Jessie Who?” if you asked them about the three-time Olympic medalist. But there’s almost no comparison between the U.S. Ski Team of 2001 and the squad that’s gathered to compete in the races here.

Today’s athletes travel across Europe supported by a paid crew of ski technicians who drive a converted semi trailer to work out of each race weekend.

An array of regional club teams provide groups of racers with structured training and coaching during the spring, summer and fall.

A nonprofit organization, the National Nordic Foundation, raises hundreds of thousands of dollars to subsidize expenses that elite racers rack up traveling to training camps and competitions.

And the Americans currently rank third in the International Ski Federation’s “Nations Cup”—a measure of a country’s success over the course of the season to date—behind Norway and Sweden and just ahead of Finland.

“I think when I came back to work for the U.S. Ski Team in 2006, we were 15th in the Nations Cup,” Chris Grover, U.S. cross-country program director, said recently. (The ski federation’s statistical database doesn’t reach that far back.)

“Consistency, and actually, investment—that’s really what it comes down to,” Grover added. “Gradually expanding the program, letting it be more comprehensive. The club coaches keep getting better, the clubs keep getting stronger.”

While the past few years’ Olympic medals from Diggins and Kikkan Randall have thrilled fans, perhaps the most exciting thing happening in the U.S. program today is its depth.

In the past, the Americans have had a few athletes at a time capable of mixing it up on the World Cup, or challenging for the podium. But now, there are multiple athletes of each gender who are contending for top 20s.

On the women’s side, veterans Diggins, 32, and Rosie Brennan, 35, have become regulars on the podium. Sophia Laukli, who’s just 23, won her first World Cup earlier this year, in a race up the Alpe Cermis in Italy, and she again challenged the sport’s fastest women at a race in Canada last week. Julia Kern, 26, has landed on the podium in previous years and regularly vies for the top 10 in sprinting, her strongest discipline.

On the men’s side, 24-year-old Ben Ogden was the International Ski Federation’s top-scoring young athlete last year, and had his first-ever top-three World Cup finish in December. That was weeks after another huge talent, 23-year-old JC Schoonmaker, also finished on the podium for the first time, in Sweden. Gus Schumacher, 23 and a former world junior champion, has had his own breakout season, including a fourth-place finish last month.

The list goes on. And even younger athletes than those have been scoring huge results at the junior level. No fewer than three Americans—Sammy Smith, 18, Haley Brewster, 20, and John Steel Hagenbuch, 22—notched medal-winning performances this month at the world under-23 and junior world championships in Slovenia.

“We just have so much more depth, in the women’s side and on the men’s side,” said Andy Newell, the retired U.S. sprinter who’s coaching in Minneapolis this week. “It’s a testament to the ski culture in the U.S.”

There’s still plenty of work to do. Some of the lower-ranking American athletes who competed on the World Cup in Canada last weekend had to shell out their own money, or resorted to crowdfunding, to cover some of their expenses. Innumerable children are still shut out from participating in the sport because of the steep price of equipment and limited capacity of coaching programs.

Nonetheless, this weekend’s races—expected to draw some 30,000 fans, with a strong likelihood of a Diggins podium—will be a new high water mark for the sport in America, and a reminder of the enormous progress it’s made in the past two decades.

“It’s everything, right?” Brennan said at a news conference at the Minneapolis race venue, referring to financial support, professionalism, and teamwork.

“I find myself telling some of these kids quite often what it was like back in the day. It’s truly insane, what’s happened,” Brennan said. “It’s really important to take a second and think about that. It’s something I try to do periodically, just to gain some perspective. And it allows me to have so much gratitude for all the work that everyone has put in—team staff, and support, and the community—to make something like this happen. And to make us be a team that actually has a chance of winning these races this weekend.”

We’re grinding on with our third episode in four days. Hope you’re still listening. If you don’t get the hat reference, read our coverage.

We’ll be back with another episode after the last race in Canmore. To keep you from podcast withdrawal later in the week, we’ll roll out some interviews we did with a couple of international athletes here. Then we’ll be back again from Minneapolis this weekend.

Speaking of Minneapolis, if you’ll be there in person, we’re hosting a live show where we’ll be taping Sunday’s episode in front of an audience — though we’ll need all 12 listeners to show up for it to really be an actual audience. More details soon — the event is at Utepils Brewery near the venue, with an exact time to be determined, but it will be after the last race of the day.

Questions? Comments? Email us: devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com. Thanks so much for listening.

CANMORE, ALBERTA — Jack Young’s home in Vermont is two miles from the Canadian border. So it makes sense that he skied like he was right at home in Canada on Saturday, in a smoking fast finish in his first-ever race on the World Cup—the top-level circuit that saw him lining up against a bevy of Olympic medalists.

Young, 21, placed 11th in the qualifying round of Saturday’s sprint race in Canmore, and 23rd in the final. His qualifier made him the second-fastest American, slotted him ahead of Norwegian stars like Erik Valnes, Even Northug and Harald Østberg Amundsen and earned him the adulation of his U.S. teammates.

“It was a lot of hugs, a lot of expletives,” Young said afterward. “It was a pretty fun, happy scene.”

His U.S. teammates were much more emphatic.

“That was insane,” said Murphy Kimball, a 17-year-old Alaskan who also made his World Cup debut Saturday.

“I was speechless to see that,” said Ben Ogden, a fellow Vermonter and sprinter. “Jack Young is crazy,” added Gus Schumacher, another proven American talent. “So sick to see a truly legit sprint result.”

“Oh, my God. Unbelievably stoked,” said Julia Kern, a veteran U.S. sprinter. “Popping off an 11th is just unreal.”

Young, a junior at Colby College in Maine, grew up in northern Vermont and was a football quarterback through high school.

He began skiing in a youth program called the Bill Koch League. In junior high school, he started training with the club at Vermont’s Craftsbury Outdoor Center—where coaches, he said, once helped motivate him through a long run by dangling gummy bears out a window of a team van.

His results have picked up in the past three years, he said, and early this season, he won a qualifying round at a national level SuperTour sprint race in Anchorage, which he called a huge confidence boost.

“Just knowing that I can be the best in the U.S. on a day—meaning that I can hopefully mix it up here,” he said after Saturday’s race.

At the World Cup, Young said he wasn’t expecting to make the heats, which required him to place in the top 30 in the qualifier. “But I knew I could do it,” he added.

Once he made it into the heats, Young got a little advice from Ogden, who shared some tactical insights from his own race.

Young’s heat included heavy hitters like Chappaz, Amundsen—who’s the leader of the overall World Cup standings—and Switzerland’s Janik Riebli, all of whom had slower qualifying times. He was waiting for those competitors to line up at the starting gates until he discovered that as the fastest qualifier, he was supposed to go first.

“I was just standing there,” Young said. “And someone was like, ‘Come on, Jack, get your skis on.’”

The racing itself, he added, felt much more normal.

His heat, like many others, started slow, with participants waiting until the top of the last hill to make their moves. Young finished fifth out of six, but he said he felt “in the mix.”

“It’s just a real validation,” he said. “I always have been looking at World Cup result, curious, like, ‘If I were to get this start, where would I be?’ And now, I know that I can mix it up with these guys.”

Kern, the veteran U.S. sprinter, said Young’s result is impressive not just on its own, but also underscores the level of skiing in her home country—and the value of bringing the World Cup circuit to North America, which provides opportunities to new U.S. talents.

“I think there’s a lot of people who, if they were given the chance—that can really just bolster your confidence and help you make that jump,” she said. “It’s so cool to see that the depth is there in the U.S.”

We’re back, in less than 24 hours since hour last pod. Devon is burning the midnight oil in Norway to bring you this new episode recapping the excellent sprint races in Canmore today. Stay tuned for another episode after tomorrow’s race and a bonus episode where Nat will interview Sweden’s William Poromaa.

Email us at devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com with questions, comments and race predictions. We’ll be back.

The World Cup gave us two great races in Canmore today to start a 10-day swing through North America. Devon and Nat recap the results, and hear from a couple of special guests at the tail end of the show. We’ll be back tomorrow.

Questions? Comments? nat@fasterskier.com and devon@fasterskier.com.

CANMORE, ALBERTA — Abbey Zimmer and Natalie Meinert peered over a railing out onto the course at the cross-country ski center here Thursday, where dozens of the world’s best athletes were amidst their pre-race routines.

The 14-year-olds had driven seven hours to Canmore with their parents from icy Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. They were there to ski on some snowy trails and for a weekend of watching racers that they normally only see on highlight reels.

“We just saw Klæbo,” said Zimmer, referring to Johannes Høsflot, the five-time Olympic gold-medal winner from Norway.

“Which was like, ‘Oh my god,’” said Meinert. “And we’re trying to find Jessie Diggins.”

Diggins, of course, was half of the team that won America’s first ever Olympic gold in cross-country skiing, in 2018.

And she is one of the stars of what is setting up to be a 10-day celebration of North American cross-country skiing, with fans expected to turn out in droves. Friday will be the first in a series of six races that mark the return of the top-level World Cup circuit to the continent for the first time since 2019 — and for the first time to the U.S. in more than two decades.

Four races are scheduled in Canmore. Two more sold-out events will take place the following weekend in Minneapolis, Diggins’ hometown, where organizers have already distributed nearly 30,000 tickets and are still getting countless requests for more.

“I wish I had a bigger urban park,” Claire Wilson, the lead organizer of the Minneapolis events, said in a message Thursday.

All the top Canadian and U.S. cross-country skiers will be competing in Canmore and Minneapolis. But one highlight of these races will be what’s known as the “nations group” — extra start spots for athletes that are granted to the countries hosting the events. (Canada and the U.S. will get the extra spots in both nations, because it’s rare that the circuit travels to either country.)

Instead of the half-dozen or so Americans and Canadians that typically compete in World Cups in Europe, as many as 12 men and 12 women from each country will start in each of the races over the next two weeks.

That means that a 17-year-old high school student from Alaska, Murphy Kimball, will be racing Saturday’s sprint alongside U.S. stars like JC Schoonmaker and Ben Ogden. Three American men — Graham Houtsma, Braden Becker and Reid Goble — and three American women — Mariah Bredal, Emma Albrecht and Margie Freed — will be making their World Cup debuts in Friday’s distance race.

In interviews Thursday, the World Cup debutants said they’re aiming to treat the events like any others — though that’s easier said than done when shuttle buses are filled with foreign languages, television cameras are everywhere and the race course is lined with banners advertising Swiss cheese.

“I’m trying to think of everyone as just normal people, because that’s who they are,” said Renae Anderson, an American racing her first World Cup on Saturday. But, she added: “It’s people I’ve been watching on TV for years.”

Anderson’s family, and some of their friends, will be in attendance in Canmore, she said, making them among the many spectators at the North American events with direct connections to athletes.

That support network will be one element of a rare home field advantage for the North Americans. Top athletes from Canada and the U.S. typically spend the full winter in Europe and face jet lag of up to 11 hours upon their arrival; this week, many of them have arrived on short flights from their homes, unlike their European competitors.

“The flight, it was really good,” said Edvin Anger, a 21-year-old sprinter from Sweden. “But the first three days were horrible for me. I woke up at 3 a.m.”

But home races also come with some complications.

The U.S. and Canadian service staffs — the crews who help athletes test skis and waxes — might typically work with as many as 10 or 12 athletes during a weekend of racing. Now, they’re trying to coordinate as many as 24 starters for each race.

Both nations are depending on regional and club coaches who have traveled to Canmore to help test skis and wax. In the case of Canada’s squad, the extra racers and staff, plus the regulars, are spread across different places in Canmore, including some who are in their own homes, said Chris Jeffries, the team’s high performance director.

That’s forced complicated logistics like a Zoom option for pre-race meetings, complete with breakout rooms.

“We have really small moments to be able to create that team culture and that team cohesion, which is not typical,” Jeffries said. “At the same time, the athletes, I think, are in a really good place.”

Not everything has gone smoothly in Canmore, however.

Early in Thursday’s training session, an up and coming Italian sprinter, Simone Mocellini, crashed on a notoriously challenging corner, flew over some protective fencing and “fell five meters down out of the track,” said Markus Cramer, his team’s coach.

Mocellini had just returned to the World Cup last month from a hand injury that kept him out of early season races. He left the venue in an ambulance and, Cramer added, has a “very complicated broken leg.”

The International Ski Federation was also forced to change the format of Friday’s race — from an individual start, time-trial style 10-kilometer race to a mass start, 15-kilometer race — after a ground crew strike at the German Lufthansa airline stranded World Cup timing equipment.

Late Tuesday, organizers began discussions with a timing company headquartered in Canmore, Zone4, about working Friday’s race, said Dan Roycroft, a former Olympic ski racer who founded the business.

The big challenge they faced was making sure that Zone4’s timing equipment would work with the television graphics systems operated by Swiss Timing, the company that typically handles both jobs.

“They normally take a month to create an interface, and we had to do it in two days,” Roycroft said Thursday, citing “amazing cooperation” with Swiss Timing. “Tomorrow, if everything goes well, then it should look like a normal World Cup.”

Roycroft said that the stranded timing equipment amounted to 18 pallets — 5,000 pounds of gear. The difference between his company’s system and the one typically used on the World Cup, he added, was underscored as he drove up to Canmore’s race venue with one Swiss Timing’s employees.

“He goes, ‘I can’t believe you can time a World Cup with stuff that just fits in one car,’” Roycroft said. He added: “It was very lucky that we’re based in Canmore, and obviously, it’s our hometown. We want this event to go as well as possible, to show what Canmore can do.”

Coming in hot from Canmore, Alberta, where the World Cup circuit makes its North American return after five years away. We’ve got a preview here of sorts, featuring an interview with JC Schoonmaker, the California-raised U.S. Ski Team member who made his first World Cup podium earlier this season. We cover his rude awakening to the demands of elite-level training, his affection for his adopted home of Alaska and get some fun details about his podium finish in Sweden.

We’ll be posting episodes frequently over the next couple of weeks, with Nat on the ground and Devon following closely from afar. We’re also excited to announce that we’ve locked in a live recording at Utepils Brewery in Minneapolis next weekend, after the race on Sunday, Feb. 18. Stay tuned for more details. In the mean time, send us your feedback and which World Cup athletes you want us to try interview while they’re here: devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com.