France always serves up a good time, and this weekend of World Cup racing in Les Rousses was no different. Katherine Stewart-Jones of Canada joins us amid a breakout season for an interview and some race recaps. We’ll be back after next weekend in Switzerland. Send your diss tracks and letters of appreciation to devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com.
We’ve reached the summit of the Alpe Cermis. The Tour de Ski has concluded. Nat needed a break after covering U.S. Nationals, so Jess Cockney jumps on to guest co-host with Devon. Send us your feedback at devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com. We’ll be back soon.
ANCHORAGE — The winner of two of three U.S. National Championships races in Alaska this week is just 24 years old, and poised for what could be a long career in cross-country skiing. But instead, Andreas Kirkeng is considering retirement. The explanation is simple: The star University of Denver athlete is not American. He’s Norwegian. And in Norway, aspiring to be a top cross-country skier is like trying to become an astronaut: Many, many try,...
ANCHORAGE — Alaskans like to think of their home state as the center of American cross-country skiing. Minnesotans might quibble. But consider the more than 200 volunteers who turned out to help host the U.S. National Championships in Anchorage this week, and the dozens of local athletes who signed up to race. There was just one problem: Through five of six of the championship events, athletes from Norway, Sweden, Colorado and Idaho had denied the...
ANCHORAGE — Luke Jager spent most of his cross-country ski career training and racing with a tight group of talented, up-and-coming American men — the first ever to win a gold medal in the relay at the World Junior Ski Championships. Two of Jager’s teammates on that relay squad, Gus Schumacher and Ben Ogden, have made the leap to the top-level, international World Cup, where both have collected podiums in the past two seasons —...
Racing was tight on the first day of the U.S. National Championships at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park, with winners in both the men’s and women’s events decided by less than 15 seconds. The real drama, however, was in a quintessential Anchorage wildlife standoff — one that may have even altered the women’s podium. Along a willowy downhill stretch toward the end of the five-kilometer race loop, volunteers and coaches engaged in a tense showdown with a moose...
ANCHORAGE — Kate Oldham wasn’t expecting to win Thursday’s opening race of the U.S. National Championships. It was her first competition of the season, after focusing on training in December, and she’d never placed better seventh at previous national championships. Her coach at Montana State University, Adam St. Pierre, had other ideas about the 22-year-old senior — though he was keeping them to himself. “I have been predicting Kate as a dark horse national champion...
It’s the most wonderful time of the year — or is it? The Tour de Ski has returned, but Devon has some beef with this year’s watered down format. Plus, recaps of the four races we’ve been through so far, including Jessie Diggins sprint win from heat five. Send feedback, hate mail and love letters to devon@fasterskier.com. You can send love letters to nat@fasterskier.com. See you in a couple of days. `
In cross-country skiing, sprinting is a notoriously inconsistent discipline for a single competitor to dominate. The short distance leaves little time for racers to recover from even small mistakes; sharp corners and tight spaces often produce race-ending crashes. Which makes the track record of Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo almost impossible to comprehend. Klæbo, a five-time Olympic gold medalist, has won the last 10 straight sprint races he’s entered on the World Cup — the highest...
It’s vacation time. We hear from some of the U.S. Ski Team men holed up in their Christmas cottage in Davos, Switzerland — featuring a new lightning round quiz segment — and Devon and Nat take us through the weekend’s results. Happy holidays: We’ll be back during the Tour de Ski. Questions, comments, want us to use less (or more) profanity? Reach us at devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com.
Norwegians are born with skis on their feet, blah blah blah, we know. They’re good at skiing and they won pretty much all the races on home snow this weekend…but they were still fun events to watch. Devon reports from Norway while Nat tunes in from melting Alaska; they don’t need any stinkin’ guests this week. Got questions for us? New cross-country skiing meme accounts we should follow? nat@fasterskier.com and devon@fasterskier.com. We’ll be back soon....
Devon has a cold, but don’t let that deter you — he perseveres, and we welcome special guess Zanden McMullen after his breakout weekend in Ruka. We’ve got recaps of the astonishingly entertaining racing in Finland, plus bonus discussion of sponsorship feuds and other news. Send us your questions, comments, fan mail and hate mail: nat@fasterskier.com and devon@fasterskier.com. We’ll be back after Lillehammer.
It’s race season, baby. It’s also Thanksgiving week, at least in America. Tune in to learn how to avoid turkey legs while you’re racing and for a full recap of last weekend’s competitions in Sweden and Norway. Didn’t know the name Andreas Ree before Sunday? We’ll catch you up. Julia Ystgaard, Canada’s World Cup coach, joins us to break down her team’s solid performances, as well. It’s also the time of year when we remind...
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,...