An Olympic reporter’s wrap-up: An epic U.S. Ski Team road trip, a cheese factory tour and Klæbo’s wings

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Ciao a tutti!

Greetings from Torino, where this fatigued Olympics correspondent has retreated to recover through bike rides and repeated doses of pizza with family.

I had the chance to attend the closing ceremonies — mostly as a spectator — in Verona on my trip down from the mountains. After more than a dozen Olympic features, not to mention podcasts and race coverage, I’m now about to unplug for a couple of weeks. 

But first, I couldn’t resist one last quick post: a roundup, in abbreviated, Reader’s Digest form, of some of the stories that were still on my list as the Olympics ended.

That’s below. In the meantime, I wanted to reiterate my gratitude to the many readers, fans and news organizations who stepped up to support my on-site Olympic coverage. The money you provided was enough to make a real difference in what I was able to do, and gives me the confidence that there’s the support to do this again in the future. 

While the past few weeks were  a lot of work, it was also an enormous, ravioli-filled privilege and pleasure — one where I made new friends, drank innumerable espresso macchiatos and got to cross-country ski downhill to the “office” every morning. 

As I told a friend yesterday: If anyone ever offers you an assignment in Italy, take it.

With that, and with these brief items, we’ll see you next year. Or maybe, in Lake Placid.

American road warrior ski techs grind on

If you thought the work stopped once the Olympic torch flame was extinguished, think again.

That’s definitely not the case for the indefatigable crews that do the work of waxing, cleaning and tuning skis for Olympic cross-country teams.

Top teams, including the U.S., each have their own massive semi truck that they use as a mobile work quarters while traveling all winter around the European World Cup circuit. Those trucks were all in northern Italy for the Olympics — until the last race ended Sunday afternoon.

Soon afterward, the American truck — named Yolanda, after a character in the cult classic film Pulp Fiction — pulled out of the Olympic venue in Lago di Tesero. Or, at least, it tried to: With the warm weather, the truck got stuck in the mud, and required a tractor from organizers to pull it out, said Chris Hecker, one of the U.S. team’s service crew.

After a four-hour drive Sunday through the Dolomites, Yolanda and its three staff members  rendezvoused with a secondary truck driven by two other ski service technicians in Munich. A six-hour drive on Monday took them to an overnight ferry from northern Germany to Sweden — which would be followed by a nine-hour drive to the Swedish community of Falun, where the World Cup circuit resumes this coming weekend.

The distance, according to Hecker, adds up to 1,100 miles. 

One key pit stop was a McDonald’s in a mountain pass leaving Northern Italy known for its beautiful view.

The trucks were also well-stocked by the U.S. team’s nutritionist, Hecker said: sandwiches, water, gummies, chips, Red Bull and cookies. 

“All the important things a tech needs to keep driving throughout the day,” he added.

A diminished Chinese team

The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing were marked by an enormous investment by the Chinese government in training and building up the nation’s cross-country ski team.

Well before the Beijing Games, China hired a huge number of veteran European coaches and support staff that included retired Olympic athletes like Russia’s Nikita Kriukov and Norway’s Terje Langli. The country also spent freely on equipment and even built an indoor ski tunnel for summer training.

This time around? China’s Olympic cross-country ski team was a shadow of its former self, with just a single coach in Italy. Wang Qiang, who during the 2022 Olympic season became the first-ever Chinese athlete to stand on the podium in an elite-level World Cup race, placed 37th in his best event, the sprint, at this year’s Games.

Meanwhile, the government has asserted “serious violations of discipline and law” by Zhang Bei, the bureaucrat who led the cross-country ski team effort at the last Olympics, and Chinese news sources report that she’s been “taken away” by police amid an investigation for “suspected economic crimes.” 

Meanwhile, Gou Zhongwen, the Chinese sports minister who’d prioritized government investment in cross-country skiing, has been purged from power. In 2024, the government placed Gou — the former chair of the Chinese Olympic Committee and of the 2022 Winter Olympics organizing committee — under investigation, then expelled him from the party.

In December, he was sentenced for taking what the government said was more than $30 million in bribes, among other alleged transgressions. Gou’s official sanction was the death penalty, though it comes with a two-year reprieve, and experts say such a sentence is typically converted to life in prison.

A spokesperson at the U.S.-based Chinese embassy said in an email last week that the country has “consistently placed high importance on the development of winter sports.”

“Chinese cross-country skiing and biathlon have achieved and will continue achieving significant progress,” the spokesperson said.

Klaebo’s post-Olympics: a return to World Cup, chicken wings and a trip to America

Norwegian Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, the winningest winter Olympian in history after sweeping six golds in this year’s games, says he plans to compete at the season-ending World Cup races in Lake Placid, New York.

At a news conference Saturday after winning his last event, the 50-kilometer classic race, Klæbo said he needs a “couple of weeks, now, to really recover,” but after that it’s his goal to participate in March in Lake Placid — only the second weekend of World Cup racing in the United States in more than two decades.

“My personal opinion is that we should have a World Cup event (in the U.S.) every single year, but I’m not in charge,” Klæbo said. “I think we are all looking forward for Lake Placid. I think it’s going to be a fun weekend to finish up this amazing season.”

Klæbo is also on the Norwegian team for this upcoming weekend’s World Cup races in Sweden. 

But he did let himself indulge, at least briefly, in a break from his notoriously fastidious diet following the Olympic closing ceremonies in Verona, where he acted as Norway’s flag bearer.

Afterwards, an NPR reporter, Pien Huang, spotted Klæbo and some teammates “putting in a big order for chicken wings” at a local McDonald’s.

In a text message, Klæbo’s father Haakon confirmed Huang’s report, saying his gluten-intolerant son had turned to fast food “when I said I was not able to order gluten-free pizza.” 

An Olympic cheese tour

What’s the point of a reporter traveling to Italy if he can’t con his way into a tour of a cheese factory?

Yes, dear reader, after these Olympics, I am not just a ski correspondent. I am also now an expert on a raw milk cheese called Puzzone, which is native to the area, Val di Fiemme, that hosted the Olympic cross-country ski races.

The backstory: One morning at the competition venue, I was having a chat with an Italian ski industry professional, whom I was told was from the town of Asiago. Ah, I said, you guys have some good cheese. Yes, the guy responded, I’m not really a cheese guy, but here in Val di Fiemme, you should really try the local delicacy called Puzzone — an Italian word that translates roughly to “stinker.”

This being a busy assignment at the Olympics, I filed this fact into the corner of my brain where stories go to die. 

A day later, though, I was taking a walk from my apartment to a nearby cross-country ski trail when I stopped dead: There was a sign on the side of the road that said: Puzzone di Moena. (Moena is a nearby village.) It was next to a nondescript building that, upon further inspection, contained a cheese shop and a workspace that looked to me like a cheesemaking area.

I tasted some Puzzone in the store — it was sharp and pungent, especially the more aged varieties — then left with a chunk that I shaved onto eggs and toast. But feeling a little unresolved, the next time I passed the building, I knocked on the door to the workspace, and asked if I could check it out.

Which was how, a few days later, I ended up exchanging some messages with the “boss” — Andrea Morandini, the son of one of the farmers in the local cheese coop. He told me, in his Italian accent, to meet him the next morning at “da place.” I did, where he walked me through the history and current status of Puzzone — which, he said, acquired its name when an agricultural expert, on a national radio program in 1974, was tasting and describing area cheeses.

“They are trying and smelling it — the one from Cavalese, the one from Predazzo. And when they are speaking about the one from Moena…they say, ‘Wow, it’s strano (strange), this is Puzzone,’” said Morandini. “So, it’s born live.”

Puzzone, Morandini told me, had its roots in Val di Fiemme’s agrarian history, when families would keep a cow or two and trade milk to local dairies in exchange for a share of the cheese produced. In a diet that otherwise depended on potatoes and polenta, cheese was a welcome addition of flavor, Morandini said.

The particularly stinky character of Puzzone is because it’s what’s known as a “washed rind” cheese — with its rind brushed regularly with salty water that encourages the growth of bacteria.

After my history lesson, Morandini took me backstage. What I thought was a workroom was actually a dressing room, where I donned a hairnet, slippers and vest; we then walked through a cavernous industrial space with vats and tanks, where cheese had been made earlier that morning.

Down a flight of stairs, we found the racks where wheel upon wheel of cheese is stored. In the deepest, darkest room, I hit a wall of ammoniac haze that made my eyes water and my lungs tickle.

The cooperative, Morandini told me, includes 11 farmers, most of whom own some 50 cows each. In the winter, the cows stay close to home, but in the summer, they’re sent outside to feast on grass, which gives the cheese made in that season a special flavor, according to Morandini.

One full wheel of aged Puzzone, a foot or so across, will set you back about 300 euros, or some $350. A wheel of younger cheese goes for some 170 euros, Morandini said. Some 70% of the factory’s production is consumed in the region, while a portion of it goes to customers in the United Kingdom and France, he added.

In a subsequent taste test I conducted with U.S. Olympic silver medalist cross-country skier Ben Ogden — a Vermonter who grew up eating raw milk cheese — Ogden described the young Puzzone as a solid “daily driver” cheese he could eat on the regular.

The aged stuff?

“Oh, God, that has got a taste,” Ogden said. “Holy crap.”

He added: “There are acquired tastes out there. And this is not one that I’ve acquired; it tastes like compost, a little bit.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope the Italians don’t listen to this.”

Schumacher eyes medal celebrations — and maybe some free drinks

Anchorage’s Gus Schumacher, who last week became only the third ever American man to win an Olympic medal in cross-country skiing, says he’s looking forward to sharing his silver hardware with the next generation of U.S. athletes when he arrives back in Alaska.

“I’ll do whatever anyone asks me to do — but I’m excited to get some wear and tear on that thing,” Schumacher said in an interview a few days after his medal, which he earned with his podium finish in the team sprint with Ogden. “Not that I’ve not been a role model at home, but to have that carry a little more weight is pretty exciting.”

Schumacher, who grew up inspired by Alaska Olympic gold winner Kikkan Randall, said he’s seen how beat up and worn her medal is, along with those won by Jessie Diggins, the star American skier from Minnesota, “and I think that’s the coolest thing ever,” he added.

“I’m really glad they make them heavy — it could be lead in there for all I care,” said Schumacher, 25. “But you feel the weight when you touch it. And I think for people to be able to see it in person is cool.”

Schumacher will also race in Lake Placid before finishing his season, and it’s possible he could take a vacation in Central America after that. But he also likes being home, he said.

His life hasn’t changed much, Schumacher added, and even if a big sponsor showed up at his doorstep, he might still turn it down if it required too much work. He makes enough money from prize money and ski sponsorship, he said, to cover his expenses — especially since he still lives at home with his mom.

One thing he will be accepting: An offer of free water or beers at Creekbend, a popular concert venue in the community of Hope, outside Anchorage, that Schumacher has visited occasionally.

“I’ll definitely be cashing that one in,” he said, adding: “If I’m really milking the whole medal thing, I probably won’t have to pay for a ton of beers this spring.”

 

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