Welcome to World Cup Windup, where we check in with the top-10 teams from last year’s FIS Cross Country World Cup tour before the season starts with the Ruka Triple in Kuusamo, Finland, on Nov. 24.
SWITZERLAND
Overall in Nations Cup Last Year: Sixth
Women’s Ranking 2016/2017: Seventh
Men’s Ranking 2016/2017: Seventh
Who’s Back:
Olympic gold medalist Dario Cologna, who finished seventh in last year’s World Cup standings and third in the Tour de Ski; Nathalie Von Siebenthal, eighth in the Tour de Ski; Laurien Van Der Graaf and Jovian Hediger, with two sprint top-10’s each; Nadine Faehndrich, third in the U23 standings; Seraina Boner, the long-distance queen who helped the Swiss women finish seventh in the World Championships relay, and Toni Livers, also sometimes a marathon racer but also with a World Cup top-ten last season; Jason Rueesch, Jonas Baumann, and Curdin Perl, who teamed up with Cologna for fourth place in the World Championships relay.
Who’s Missing:
No notable retirements.
Pre-Season Results:
The Swiss team strutted their stuff on home soil in Davos earlier this month, with Dario Cologna winning a distance race against the Italian and German teams and Laurien Van Der Graaf picking up a win in the sprint.
Cologna also finished third behind Evgeny Belov and Sergey Ustiugov in a 10 k skate in Gällivare, Sweden, and Nathalie Von Siebenthal finished fifth in the 5 k skate. One day later, Cologna was fifth in a 15 k classic behind a Russian podium sweep. Then on Sunday, Nadine Faendrich made the sprint final where she finished sixth.
Best Social Media Presence:
On Dario Cologna’s Facebook page, he posted all summer a series of nine videos of the “Cologna Challenge”, a series of sometimes-humorous competitions between himself and his brother Gianluca Cologna.
On the men’s team, Jason Rüesch also has a great Instagram feed.
Nadine Faehndrich occasionally posts training videos on her Facebook page. Of the three women who scored World Cup points last season, only Laurien Van Der Graaf is on Instagram.
And of course, there’s also Swiss-Canadian Heidi Widmer, who is a member of the SAS Pro Team.
