US Nationals – FasterSkier

Calculations and Consequences: The Men’s Classic Sprint at U.S. Nationals

Matthew VoisinJanuary 10, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. The last day of the U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships in Lake Placid arrived the way honest days in this sport often do. The snow at Mt. Van Hoevenberg had been churned and scoured by a week of racing and changing weather, its surface no longer pristine but revealing,...

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A Quiet Argument, Made Loud: The Women’s Classic Sprint at U.S. Nationals

Matthew VoisinJanuary 10, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. On the morning of the women’s classic sprint at the U.S. National Cross-Country Ski Championships, the quiet around Mt. Van Hoevenberg felt deliberate. Not calm — no one was calm by Friday — but restrained. The week had already taken its toll. Distance races had piled fatigue into legs...

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A Narrow Door, Held Open: The Men’s 20 k Freestyle at U.S. Nationals

Matthew VoisinJanuary 9, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. There are moments in endurance sport when the noise falls away—not because the stakes are small, but because they are too large to announce themselves loudly. The men who gathered on the start line at Mount Van Hoevenberg on Thursday afternoon understood that kind of quiet. The banners said...

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Where the Race Breaks Open: Women’s 20 k Freestyle at U.S. Nationals

Matthew VoisinJanuary 9, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. There is a particular moment in a long mass start when the race quietly declares what it will be. It does not arrive with a surge, a crash, or even a decisive move. It arrives when the pack thins just enough that the edges of the course begin to matter—when...

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Smith and Melbye Win U.S. Nationals Freestyle Sprint as Qualification Shapes the Day

Matthew VoisinJanuary 7, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. There is a particular kind of pressure that lives in a sprint qualification. It isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce itself with theatrics. It sits in the quiet places: the moment you realize the warm-up loop is over and you’re headed back toward the start; the thin stretch of time...

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Where the Margins Speak: U.S. Nationals Opens with Questions, Not Answers

Matthew VoisinJanuary 5, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. On a January afternoon in Lake Placid, Mt. Van Hoevenberg did what it has always done best: it asked skiers to be honest. The 10-kilometer classic individual start is not a format that rewards theater. It doesn’t care how good you looked in warm-up, how confident you sounded the night...

Continental Cup Feature News Racing US Nationals US Ski Team

He’s 24 years old and just won two U.S. championship races. Here’s why he could retire at the end of the season.

Nathaniel HerzJanuary 5, 2025

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,...

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U.S. Nationals, Day 3: Kramer thrills Anchorage crowd with first Alaskan win at Kincaid Park

Nathaniel HerzJanuary 5, 2025

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...

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US Nationals Day 2: Jager stops chasing his friends and breaks through, while multi-sport Smith takes women’s title

Nathaniel HerzJanuary 4, 2025

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 —...

Feature News Racing US Nationals

The National Championship Ski Race Was Set for Kincaid Park – Then the Moose Showed Up

Nathaniel HerzJanuary 4, 2025

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...

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2025 US National Championship – 10 k Individual Start Freestyle – from the Lens of Tobias Albrigtsen

FasterSkierJanuary 3, 2025

ANCHORAGE — The 2025 US National Championship started yesterday at Kincaid Park in Anchorage, Alaska, with the 10 k Individual Start Freestyle. Photographer and coach Tobias Albrigtsen (@untraceableg) gives us a look through his lens. (click on the first photo and then click on ‘start’ just above the image to play the slideshow)

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One familiar face and one new one notch wins as U.S. Nationals opens in Alaska

Nathaniel HerzJanuary 2, 2025

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...

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Hagenbuch and McCabe Win Snowy Spring Nationals 40 k

Ben TheyerlMarch 26, 2024

Out like a Lion: the old adage seems to apply to March in Duluth, Minntesota. At the end of March—during the only true snowstorm that season has delivered to Duluth—the last race of the 2024 SuperTour season and Spring Nationals was set to be a ten lap, 40 kilometer mass start skate race. It was a big race, marking a big end to a big season for a pair of America’s best young skiers....

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Winter Comes to Spring: Snowy Duluth Hosts SuperTour Finals and US Spring Nationals

Ben TheyerlMarch 24, 2024

It’s the most welcome irony of the 2023-24 North American ski season so far: As “Spring” Nationals started Thursday at the Spirit Mountain Nordic Center in Duluth, Minnesota, the newly coined “lost winter” of 2023-24 in the Midwest looked to have at-last been found. Snow, from the sky, and not from the end of the snow gun, floated onto that pretty little hillside city near the shores of Lake Superior following the 10 k Classic...

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Individual Efforts and Collective Strengths—US Nationals 20 k

Ben TheyerlJanuary 7, 2024

We all work better when we work together—that would seem to be the credo being employed by American skiers these days. At the conclusion of US Nationals at Utah’s Soldier Hollow, American skiing has rarely looked better, whether internationally or domestically. The warm temps and blue skies of early week at the US Cross Country Ski National Championships gave way to, of all things, snow. Morning light came up on Soldier Hollow; snow drifted in...

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Fast Snow, Fast Sprints—Day 2 of US Nationals

Ben TheyerlJanuary 5, 2024

Though temperatures hadn’t dropped much at Soldier Hollow on Thursday, things felt different. The pure blue skies that had been a reliable fact of life at this year’s US Cross Country Ski National Championships (US Nationals) were clouded over as skiers took to the course for Skate Sprint qualifying. Temperatures hovered just below freezing creating fast, abrasive, consistent snow. The result was consistent wax conditions between morning qualifying and afternoon heats. Men’s Skate Sprint Two...

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Warm, Fast, 10 k Classic Opens US Nationals at Soldier Hollow

Ben TheyerlJanuary 2, 2024

Race day at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah offers a microcosm for the role the venue has played in US skiing. The once, and possibly future, Olympic venue is consistent, stark, and starkly consistent in its conditions, its terrain, and in the quality of the events the crew at the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center put on. The typical SoHo day starts dark, dry and frigid, before the sun crests the Wasatch Mountains and gives way...

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2024 US Cross-Country Ski National Championships Awaits At Soldier Hollow

FasterSkierNovember 1, 2023

Join us January 1-7, 2024 for the US Cross Country Ski Nationals. See schedule below. Registration is live and wax cabin rentals are now available. Please click on the link below for registration and wax cabin rental. Schedule Schedule is subject to change. Monday, January 1 Official Training Tuesday, January 2 10k Classic Interval Start Wednesday, January 3 Official Skate Sprint Training (8 am-11 am) Sit Ski Sprint (Qualifying 1pm, heats 1:45-2:15 pm) Thursday,...

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Swirbul Sweeps Houghton–Karsrud Takes Men’s Sprint

Ken RothJanuary 7, 2023

HOUGHTON, MICHIGAN: Welcome to FasterSkier’s on-location coverage of the United States National Cross-Country Ski Championships from Houghton, Michigan. This week, Houghton hosts the U.S. National Cross-Country Championships on the Michigan Technological University’s trails system. Today’s event was the freestyle sprint. Even though the race was held under the organizing umbrella of the national championships, today’s event was not a national championship race; as it is part of the US. SuperTour. U.S. Ski and Snowboard has...

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Swirbul Three-Peats, Jager Triumphant in U.S. Nationals

Ken RothJanuary 6, 2023

HOUGHTON, MICHIGAN: Welcome to FasterSkier’s on-location coverage of the United States National Cross-Country Ski Championships from Houghton, Michigan. This week, Houghton hosts the U.S. National Cross-Country Championships on the Michigan Technological University’s trails system. Today’s event is the 20-kilometer classic mass start. There were several questions to be answered at the beginning of the day: the women’s side has been dominated by Hailey Swirbul. Swirbul has won the two previous races, the 10-kilometer individual start...

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