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Information about the United States Ski Team.
US Ski Team Announces Team for Period 2 – Tour de Ski

Dear Cross Country Community, We are pleased to announce the Team for Period 2 of the 2025-26 World Cup season – the Tour de Ski: 2025-26 Tour de Ski Men Hunter Wonders                       Objective          25-26 Overall SuperTour Leader Ben Ogden                                Objective          5th 25-26 Sprint World Cup Jack Young                                Objective          18th 25-26 Sprint World Cup Zak Ketterson                           Objective          22nd 25-26 Distance World Cup Gus Schumacher                       Objective          28th 25-26 Distance World Cup JC Schoonmaker                        Discretion         27th Davos Sprint...

The U.S. Ski Team Star You Won’t See on Snow This Weekend

On Friday afternoon, as World Cup sprinters snap into their skis in Trondheim and the SuperTour fields gather in Fairbanks, one of the United States’ most electrifying young Nordic athletes will step onto an entirely different stage. Stanford University, the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Women’s Soccer Tournament, is marching toward the College Cup—and at the center of it all is a player who, in just a matter of days, will also begin her...

Novie McCabe’s Winding Trail to the Olympic-Season Start Line

When Novie McCabe spoke with FasterSkier early last month, she was looking out the window of her place in Anchorage, waiting for winter to finally take hold. “We’re patiently waiting on snow,” she said. “But today might be the day.“ Outside, the ground was still in its in-between phase—too brown for grooming, just white enough that fish-scale skis could work if you were stubborn and optimistic about it. Alaska in November often asks skiers to...

The Road to Ruka: A Sunset Bus Ride into the World Cup Winter

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. For six hours on Tuesday, the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team watched Finland scroll past the windows of a northbound bus, the day’s thin slice of sunlight slanting low across the snow. The sun...

Jack Young: Against the Template

On the Wednesday before the World Cup season opens in Ruka, Jack Young sits in a small condo, looking out at over a foot of new snow that’s been drifting down all morning. The air is much warmer today than it was before he and the U.S. Ski Team loaded onto a six-plus hour bus ride yesterday — “Muonio was friggin’ cold,” he says — and the mood is calmer, quieter, the way he wants...

The Hilltop Lesson: How Second Place at the NCAA Championship Became Hagenbuch’s Guiding Philosophy

On a bright March afternoon at Dartmouth’s Oak Hill, with a soft and slow course under his skis and a band he himself had organized blasting in the stadium above, John Steel Hagenbuch approached the final climb where he learned something that would shape the early years of his career far more than any podium ever could. He had come into the NCAA Championships with the weight of a thousand private dreams — a home...

Blueprinting Beliefs: Ben Ogden’s Mind, Mechanics, and the Engineering of a Community

Somewhere over the Atlantic, on a red-eye to another winter in Europe, Ben Ogden opens his laptop and stares at a grid of digital joinery. Tiny posts, miniature knee braces, angled mortises — a small timber-frame sauna, scaled down to the dimensions of an airline tray table. He sketches in precise strokes, clicking through angles and offsets, rotating the model the way he rotates race courses in his head: looking for structure, looking for flow....

Three Frames: Jessie Diggins and the Art of What Endures

The Zoom room filled slowly, one journalist after another blinking into existence in a grid of small rectangles. Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Helsinki, Colorado, New York — not just the coordinates of U.S. skiing scattered across time zones, but also NPR, NBC, and European reporters, over 60 media outlets, all converging on a November morning. Jessie Diggins appeared in the largest box, glowing as she does all the way from Muonio, Finland, where she had arrived...

The Last Lunge: Jessie Diggins to Retire at the End of this Olympic Season

After 15 years on the World Cup circuit, three Olympic medals, seven World Championship medals, and a career that rewrote every line of the American cross-country skiing record book, Jessie Diggins has announced that the 2025–26 season will be her last. Beginning with the World Cup opener in Ruka on Nov. 28 and ending on home snow at the Stifel Lake Placid Finals in March, the most decorated U.S. cross-country skier in history will take...

Holding Her Own: Rosie Brennan’s Quiet Mastery of Independence on the World Cup

The first flakes had finally settled on the branches behind Rosie Brennan’s window in Anchorage. “Yeah, finally,” she said, turning from the screen toward the light outside. “God, it was slow to come, but we are getting there.” Snow matters in November for any cross-country skier. Still, for Brennan—now entering her fifteenth season on the U.S. Ski Team—it has always represented something deeper: familiarity, grounding, the landscape she moves through on her own terms. Independence,...

The Norwegian Experiment: Sophia Laukli’s Back-to-Basics Reboot

By the time Sophia Laukli picks up the phone from Lillehammer, it’s raining again. “There is, like, a small 1k loop up at Sjusjøen,” she says, “but it’s… yeah, it’s, like, raining every day, so it’s not really great conditions.” On paper, Laukli is one of the most intriguing dual-sport athletes in endurance sport: a U.S. Ski Team member and Olympian who has also become a force in international trail running. In person—or over Zoom—she’s...

The New JC Schoonmaker: Sharper, Calmer, and Ready for the Moment

When JC Schoonmaker talks about his earliest memories of ski racing, he doesn’t begin with speed or snow conditions, or the particular magic of gliding across winter trails. He starts, instead, with raffles. “I just remember as a kid, there’d be raffles after every race that I would be so stoked for,” he says. “Trying to get a prize, like a new pair of gloves or a hat.” It is an unexpectedly tender snapshot of...

The Secret Weapon Is Fun: Inside Kristen Bourne’s Collaborative Coaching on the U.S. Ski Team

When we spoke, Kristen Bourne was sitting on the couch in her living room in Truckee, California, a small ski town she now calls home. Tibetan prayer flags hung loosely behind her, shifting gently in the morning light that poured through the window. The room felt warm and calm — the kind of quiet space that comes from someone who spends much of her year on the move. Bourne smiled easily as she spoke, her...

Rooted in Vermont: Tabor Greenberg’s Steady Rise from the Mad River Valley to the U.S. Ski Team

The hills above Moretown are the kind that teach you to move without thinking about it: long grades through maple and birch, a tangle of dirt roads, a thousand sneaky rollers perfect for running shoes or a classic stride. From the valley floor, you can see Sugarbush and Mad River Glen, their lifts still in October and their trails crisscrossed by hikers who’ll be skiers in a few short weeks. This is the terrain that...

The Energy Equation: Julia Kern’s Formula for Olympic Success

On a late-October morning, Julia Kern sat in San Diego, sunlight spilling through the window after cradling her infant nephew. “He’s a cutie for sure,” she laughed. In a few short weeks, she’ll trade baby giggles for the squeak of ski pole baskets on the cold Finnish snow, but the warmth in her voice already says a lot about where she is mentally this Olympic year: grounded, grateful, and still having fun. “It’s been a...

Corners and Confidence: Kate Oldham’s Steady Rise to the U.S. Ski Team

At the World Championships last winter, a slushy, rutted corner near the finish line became a proving ground for precision and poise. The turn was taking down skiers all week — an icy edge here, a soft patch there — the kind of technical trap that can shake even the most seasoned racers. On the U.S. team’s final course preview, Jessie Diggins, Julia Kern, Rosie Brennan, and newcomer Kate Oldham took turns testing different lines....

Balancing Books, Labs, and Laps: Inside Newly Named U.S. Ski Team Member Lucas Wilmot’s Routine

When Lucas Wilmot sits down after morning intervals, there’s no long nap or lazy lunch ahead. “This fall, it’s kind of all back-to-back—training in the morning, then eating, then class, then trying to eat and train again, and then do homework,” he says. “It’s tight.” That understatement is classic Wilmot: composed, analytical, quietly focused. At just 19, the Jackson, Wyoming-raised skier is already juggling NCAA racing for the University of Utah, kinesiology labs that might...

21 Athletes Named to 2025–26 Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team Ahead of Olympic Season

U.S. Ski & Snowboard has officially announced the 21 athletes who will represent the 2025–26 Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team, a roster that blends seasoned World Cup veterans with emerging NCAA and junior talent — all gearing up for the Olympic Winter Games this February in Milano-Cortina, Italy. The team features a familiar core of Olympians and World Cup standouts returning to lead the charge, supported by a wave of rising collegiate stars and...

Finding Flow: Gus Schumacher on Training Smarter, Staying Healthy, and Loving the Process

This World Cup 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. When Gus Schumacher talks about training these days, he sounds more like a craftsman than a workhorse. There’s less emphasis on grinding and more on rhythm — on knowing when...

US Ski Team Announces XC Team for Period 1 of the 2025-26 World Cup Season

Dear Cross Country Community,   We are pleased to announce the XC Team for Period 1 of the 2025-26 World Cup season: Ruka, FIN 10 km C Men John Hagenbuch                       Objective          24-25 Overall SuperTour Leader Gus Schumacher                       Objective          14th Distance World Cup 24-25 Ben Ogden                                Objective          22nd Distance World Cup 24-25 Zanden McMullen                     Objective          35th Distance World Cup 24-25 Luke Jager                                Discretion         21st Les Rousses 20 km C JC Schoonmaker                        Discretion         23rd Falun 10 km...