Legends of the Birkebeiner (not the ones you think)

We’d been promised powdered sugar donuts. We’d need them . . . it was a long, long way to the finish line. A bit over 50 kilometers (the original race-distance, before it got shortened to a nicely rounded 50 k), plenty far enough to test the will, the patience, and the endurance of even the hardiest skiers. It’s as far (so we’re told) as the original Birkebeiners carried the young Prince Haakon across the mountains to safety during the murderous ragings of the Norwegian Civil War. That young prince’s survival is the reason, today, that Norway is a stable Scandinavian monarchy. It’s the reason, today, that Norway is absolutely bonkers about cross country skiing. It’s their sport, it’s their tradition, it’s their passion, it’s their national origin story. Cross country skiing belongs to Norway in a manner unrivaled by any other northern nation; the legend of the Birkebeiners is how it started.

Back to the donuts; they’re never far from memory. In 1981 (or 1982, I can’t remember which), we lined up to be part of a still-evolving neo-tradition in the north woods of Wisconsin. The American Birkebeiner was the fairly wacky brainchild of a fairly wacky individual (the inestimable Mr. Tony Wise) who sought to develop public fascination in an underdeveloped sport on the trails of an underdeveloped resort (Telemark Lodge). Somehow, it worked. By 1981, the race had become a legitimate stop on the World Loppet tour (an associated grouping of the world’s great ski marathons: Norwegian Birkebeiner, Sweden’s Vasaloppet, Switzerland’s Engadin, Italy’s Marcialonga, etc.). Wise developed the American Birkebeiner to appeal to Midwestern sensibilities: the race was too far, the course was too hard, the weather was too unpredictable, and the venue was just too far away. The Midwest ate it up. Nearly 7,000 showed up on the starting line in 1981 (or ’82, I can’t remember which). I was among them. All I knew was that we’d been promised powdered sugar donuts at each of the race’s feed stations. I could eat a lot of donuts . . . and if there were enough of them available trailside, I might just be able to finish that race. I did finish, but in a manner that left certain marks, certain scars, certain memories, certain pride. And I never did get any donuts (that’s the “scars” part). Even so, my little story left a skiing legacy that affected more than just me . . .

Randy “Jabo” Jablonic had been Head Coach of the University of Wisconsin Crew Team since 1968, guiding his teams to NCAA championships in 1972 and 1975. There was no lightweight crew in those days, no junior varsity. There was one big boat filled with eight big guys (and a tiny little coxswain). Jablonic’s job was to build them into a team that could make an eight-man rowing shell fly. But no one grew up rowing in Wisconsin: no rowing clubs, no youth programs, no prep schools. Heck, the waters of most Wisconsin lakes are only ice-free for six months a year. the UW needed rowers, and recruiting was going to prove to be something of a challenge. Fortunately, Jablonic considered rowing to be a sport, while dependent on exacting technique, that could be learned by near-adult athletes. If they could sit up straight, if they could drive the legs without “shooting the slide,” if they could apply full power to the oar without “catching a crab,” then any strong farmer kid could learn to row for the UW. In order to find them, Jabo stalked the autumn class-registration lines on the UW campus. Clipboard in hand, he signed up any boy 6’2″ or taller. I know because I was in the line when Jabo and his hulking captains came along. They signed up the kid in front of me in line. They signed up the kid behind me. Their captains looked right over the top of my head, searching for other candidate cowlicks bobbing above the crowd, but I grabbed hold of the clipboard and added my name to the list (though at my first practice, an assistant coach whispered to me that he worried I was too tall to be a coxswain). I wasn’t really what the UW Crew Team was looking for. What was needed were guys with more reach—and more talent—than I had. What was needed were a few freaks of nature with lungs the size of beer kegs and fairly wide athletic mean streaks. I was like a terrier among the clydesdales, but I was strong and fit. And the rough waters of Lake Mendota left space in the boat for a light-weight, light-handed man in the bow seat. I’d be able to stay with the team through the autumn and winter, until serious selections were made for the smooth-watered season of spring championships. And winter is when things got interesting. That’s when Wisconsin’s team of clydesdales put on the cross country skis . . .

Randy Jablonic employed some old-fashioned training strategies (not entirely original or revolutionary, just quaint by modern standards), including the circuit training on the ramp of the boathouse, the 10 mile run (which varsity crew members were expected to complete in under an hour—pretty fast running for some pretty big guys). The final element in the Randy Jablonic’s training strategy was cross country skiing the rough trails through the UW Arboretum. He figured if it was hard, if it got your heat pumping, if it worked up a sweat, then it was good for his rowers. Skiing fit the bill.

Not enough snow fell in 1981 (or ’82, I cant remember which) for the UW Crew Team to have any days on the trails, so the entire holiday season passed with no way to try out our skis. November passed, December, January, February—while our training remained confined to the steamy rowing tanks inside the boathouse on the south shore of Lake Mendota. When finally the snow arrived, there was only enough time to enter the famous Birkebeiner race, and drive north.

I had never been on cross country skis . . . the results were predictably awful on that day, predictably comical all these decades later. A tragically ill-advised klister mix, the spread-eagled snow-ball on nearly every downhill, the UW Athletic Department cotton sweatshirt and sweatpants that weighed 200 pounds by the finish line, and not one powdered-sugar donut left at any of the feed stations. Bits, corners, and shards of powdered-sugar donuts lay strewn in the klister-spoiled snow of every feed station, winter’s white stained lurid green with the splashings of emergency-gatorade. Even all these years later, I think a part of me is still out on that trail.

I thought mine was a pretty unique story. Turns out, it’s a fairly common every-year occurrence. Over time, the odd American Birkebeiner tradition that’s developed among practitioners of endurance sports is one in which athletes from non-skiing sports strap on skis and take on the American Birkebeiner . . . thinking it’s just a test of endurance (of which those athletes have plenty). I think most of their stories end very much like my own: prolonged suffering, gritty endurance, and lasting memories.

I’ve been a writer, a teacher, and a coach of young athletes for many years, and my “Crew Team Birkie” is a story I’ve related to so many young minds who populated my teams. Every few years, one of them takes the bait. 2025 was one such year.

Tanner is a force of nature: brilliant, playful, fearless, and possessed of a wacky quality of which Tony Wise would’ve been proud. He was a part of my school’s cross country ski team in high school—a 6’4″ senior walk-on who had never skied before. He flailed gleefully through that transformative season, then hung up the skis for good, replaced by the oars of Dartmouth’s varsity heavyweight crew. He’s stayed on the water ever since, even claiming victories at last year’s Master’s Championships. But skiing was far in his past. Until 2025.

I received a text from Tanner a month ago—seeking advice on how to prepare for the Birkebeiner. He and some rowing friends were getting ready for it, and they hoped a few pointers would allow them to use their fearsome  rowers’ fitness to fly toward the finish line. Well, anyone who’s ever learned to cross country ski knows things just don’t work that way. It’s an exactingly technical sport that puts a high value on balance and timing . . . a somewhat different set of demands from a sport (rowing) where the athletes are literally sitting down. Rowers are definitely tough and fit—it’s a brutally hard sport—and they’d need all that toughness and fitness just to make it to the finish line.

“You should write about all these guys Greg Myhr brings out here for the Birkie,” Tanner said. “They’re all rowers who have never been on skis. We bought two guys gloves today, and three guys did a “try on their skis and slide around on the lake. They were wearing jeans . . .”

Tanner did make it to the finish line, though he described his before and after photos as a “do-it-yourself Portrait of Dorian Gray.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “I realized with 5k to go that I should have gone harder!” Rowers . . . tough kids.

Traditions abound in Wisconsin’s northwoods, none more enduring than the American Birkebeiner. And Legends of the Birkebeiner persist, perhaps in more forms than we originally realized. Jessie Diggins and Gus Schumacher won last year’s 50th American Birkebeiner in glorious victory laps following the Minneapolis World Cup of 2024. This year’s winners were Gérard Agnellet and Sydney Palmer-Leger, who wrote their names into the book of Birkebeiner champions.

2025 American Birkebeiner, Men’s

1. Gérard Agnellet, 2:03:01.1
2. David Norris, +1:30.6
3. Michael Earnhart, +2:10.2

2025 American Birkebeiner, Women’s

1. Sydney Palmer-Leger, 2:25:06.7
2. Jessica Yeaton, +1.6
3. Lauren Jortberg, +3.0

Tanner’s follow-up text arrived son after the finish: “166 heart rate for five #%&*@ hours!” he said. “Those good guys have it easy. It’s over so fast!” In the 2025 Birkie, the fastest skier (Agnellet) finished in 2:03.01. Back in 1981 (or ’82) I wouldn’t even have been to the disappointment of the first donut stop yet . . .