This Nordic Nation episode has some old and new content. From the start until just after 33 minutes in, our interview with Kris Freeman, of Team Freebird and Ski & Snowboard Club Vail, was conducted last August. The after part, from 33 minutes on — that’s all new. It’s from an interview with Freeman last Wednesday, June 14.
Here’s what we wrote about Freeman when we originally posted his audio interview:
“Few athletes remain at the top end of endurance for five years, let alone a single decade. New Hampshire native Kris Freeman, at 36, has been chasing fast times and fast skiers around cross-country ski loops for 16 years as a professional.
For much of that time, Freeman was a staple on the men’s US Ski Team (USST). He posted the best results for a US skier in over two decades when he was fourth twice, in 2003 and 2009, at World Championships. (Both results were in the 15 k classic.)
Type 1 Diabetes is not something one associates with four-time Olympians. Yet Freeman has dispelled the physiological odds of a diabetes diagnosis at the age of 20. Flagged for blood sugar anomalies as a U.S. Ski Team Development skier during a routine blood test, Freeman and his tight-knit cadre of coaches and endocrinologists have been managing his disease ever since.”
None of that has changed. At the end of this May, Freemen penned an op-ed for FasterSkier, in which he expressed his thoughts about the USST team-nomination process. In addition, since the 2017/2018 USST national-team announcement, U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team’s Head Coach Chris Grover spoke to FasterSkier and later wrote a blog post about this year’s nominations. The U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association also recently published its selection criteria for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.
Always a straight talker, our new interview with Freeman gets his take on the Olympic selection criteria and the response he received for his op-ed.
(To subscribe to the Nordic Nation podcast channel, download the iTunes app. If you have iTunes, subscribe to Nordic Nation here.)
Have a podcast idea? Please email nordicnation@fasterskier.com.
Jason Albert
Jason lives in Bend, Ore., and can often be seen chasing his two boys around town. He’s a self-proclaimed audio geek. That all started back in the early 1990s when he convinced a naive public radio editor he should report a story from Alaska’s, Ruth Gorge. Now, Jason’s common companion is his field-recording gear.