You know you missed us. Devon and Nat return with a soft launch into the 2025 winter season. We cover off-season developments and other hijinks, from the still-missing Russians to Therese Johaug’s return. Read here and here if you want to understand wth the references are in the show title. We’ll be back soon. Hit us up at nat@fasterskier.com and devon@fasterskier.com; we’re psyched to be back.
This story was first published by Northern Journal, Nat Herz’s news site and newsletter in Alaska. Subscribe here. Gus Schumacher, the Anchorage Olympic cross-country skier, arrived at his first-ever congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., knowing he could be a target. The Senate Budget Committee’s chairman, Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, invited Schumacher to testify last week in one of a series of more than a dozen hearings about the harm climate change is inflicting on...
Jessie Diggins should not need an introduction at this point, but for anyone who needs a quick reminder: This episode of the Devon Kershaw Show features the best American cross-country skier of all time. Diggins has three Olympic medals to her name, a gold from the last World Championships and, most recently, a crystal globe she was awarded a few days ago as the past season’s overall World Cup champion. Diggins joins us for a...
Reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated. Apologies for the tardiness of this episode, but we’re back with a wrap from Falun, the last World Cup weekend of the season. It’s just Devon and Nat kicking it old school again here, but we’ll return soon with some guests. Seriously. Send us your 2025 predictions, Russian troll comments and Gjøran Tefre memes: devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com. Thanks for hanging out with us for the whole World Cup...
Long distance in Oslo, city sprints in Drammen. The World Cup takes its late-season swing through Norway and Devon and Nat have a full breakdown, with special guest Sam Hendry, a Canadian athlete who’s had some standout results late this season. We’re sprinting to the finish of the 2024 podcast season. Send your long-shot requests for off-season content to devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com. We’ll be back in a few days.
No frills, no guests, just Devon and Nat breaking down six races from Lahti, Finland, as the World Cup returns to Scandinavia. Two more weekends to go after this one — stick with us. Send feedback, comments and anything else at devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com.
It’s been a minute. We, and the World Cup circuit, took a break from racing, and podcasting, last weekend, but things are about to heat up again in Lahti, Finland, and we thought now was the perfect time to bring you an interview Nat did in Canmore with up and coming Swedish talent William Poromaa. Nat and Devon will be back with a recap after the races in Lahti this weekend. Send us your questions,...
MINNEAPOLIS — After Gus Schumacher’s upset win at an international cross-country ski race here last week, one of his first moves was not to celebrate at a bar, but instead, to stand in front of the crowd and talk about climate change. With hundreds listening to the panel discussion from the grandstand, Schumacher, his teammate Jessie Diggins and activist and author Bill McKibben passed a microphone back and forth. The subject, for Schumacher, is immediate...
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. CANMORE, ALBERTA — With his fanny pack of kick wax and Kia minivan, you could have easily mistaken Alvar Johannes Alev for a weekend warrior cross-country ski dad in this Canadian mountain town....
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. MINNEAPOLIS — Gus Schumacher, a 23-year-old from Anchorage, accomplished something Sunday that no American man had done in 40 years: he beat every single Norwegian, Swede, Finn and all other comers in an...
What a weekend. If you weren’t able to make it to Minneapolis, we had the good fortune of taping this episode of the podcast in front of a live audience at a local brewery, and we think it brings through a little of the amazing atmosphere. British skier Andrew Musgrave joined us in-person, Ben Ogden zoomed in from mono jail and a very special guest whose name ends with Schumacher joined us mid-pod. The audio...
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. Most of the athletes competing Saturday on cross-country skiing’s World Cup circuit in Minneapolis arrived at the venue on a bus, chartered by organizers to carry racers from the official event hotel. Then,...
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. MINNEAPOLIS—The suspense and the nerves built all morning at Theodore Wirth Regional Park, where America’s cross-country skiers were set to contest their first World Cup race—the sport’s top competition circuit—in 23 years. By...
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. MINNEAPOLIS — The last time cross-country ski racing’s most elite race circuit, the World Cup, traveled to the United States from Europe, Jessie Diggins was nine years old. At the time, in 2001,...
MINNEAPOLIS — All winter, cross-country ski race organizers in this midwest metropolis faced weather that just wouldn’t cooperate. Heading into the weekend, it had not snowed in Minneapolis in nearly a month, with daily high temperatures above freezing every single day since late January. All this as a local nonprofit, the Loppet Foundation, was set to host the first cross-country World Cup events in America in more than two decades — after a last-minute, coronavirus...
We’re back, with our fourth? Fifth? episode in the past week. It’s been a whirlwind, but we’re still here to wrap up the last day of World Cup racing in Canmore. Amazingly, Nat is posting this podcast from a moving airplane between Calgary and Toronto, with Victoria Carl and Katharina Hennig sitting a few rows up. We’ll be back with more action from Minneapolis, including a show with a live audience late Sunday afternoon at...
CANMORE, ALBERTA — The World Cup circuit, cross-country skiing’s top level of racing, has officially finished its visit to Canmore, and now heads to Minneapolis for the first events in the U.S. in more than two decades. A number of teams are on a direct, early morning flight Wednesday from Calgary to Minneapolis, while others are taking an extra day in Canmore and waiting to travel until Thursday. The events in Minneapolis are sure to...
We’re grinding on with our third episode in four days. Hope you’re still listening. If you don’t get the hat reference, read our coverage. We’ll be back with another episode after the last race in Canmore. To keep you from podcast withdrawal later in the week, we’ll roll out some interviews we did with a couple of international athletes here. Then we’ll be back again from Minneapolis this weekend. Speaking of Minneapolis, if you’ll be...
CANMORE, Alberta: We’re three days into a six-race series of World Cup racing in North America and I’m just one guy, which means there hasn’t been time to share all the fun little stories and subplots that have been filling my notebook. I’m summarizing a few of the better ones here. Stay tuned for more notes and some feature stories after Tuesday’s final race in Canmore. If you have ideas for stories, tips or feedback...
CANMORE, ALBERTA — Jack Young’s home in Vermont is two miles from the Canadian border. So it makes sense that he skied like he was right at home in Canada on Saturday, in a smoking fast finish in his first-ever race on the World Cup—the top-level circuit that saw him lining up against a bevy of Olympic medalists. Young, 21, placed 11th in the qualifying round of Saturday’s sprint race in Canmore, and 23rd in...