This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers who have helped put our Nat Herz on the ground at the Olympics. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. When Hailey Swirbul logged onto a Zoom call from Italy last Monday, she was already living inside uncertainty. “I’m in Livigno right now,” she said. “Yeah — the higher one.” The U.S. team held two pre-Olympic altitude...
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. When U.S. Ski & Snowboard released its roster for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, Hunter Wonders’ name appeared without emphasis. No asterisk. No parenthetical explanation. Just another line in a list that had already absorbed months of speculation, anxiety, and arithmetic. To most readers, the name represented a straightforward...
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,...
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...