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Matt Whitcomb

No One Lives Here,” They Said. Then 10,000 Plus Fans Showed Up in Lake Placid

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. Lake Placid, N.Y. — The French coaches had questions. Two days before racing began at Mount Van Hoevenberg, they were standing in Saranac Lake — 55 degrees, windy, woods in every direction...

The Case for More American World Cups

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. LAKE PLACID, NEW YORK — Ten kilometers into the second World Cup on American soil in as many decades, and the verdict is already clear: We need more racing in the United...

Who’s cross-country skiing the most at the Olympics? It’s not the athletes.

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. LAGO DI TESERO, ITALY — A day before Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won his fourth straight gold medal in cross-country skiing at the Winter Olympics, a strange sight was unfolding next to the race trails in Northern Italy....

Schumacher and Ogden claim an Olympic silver built on community

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. TESERO, ITALY — After Gus Schumacher and Ben Ogden on Wednesday won only the third-ever U.S. men’s medal in cross-country skiing at the Olympics, one of the biggest grins in the stadium was on the face of...

The Devon Kershaw Show: A Tesero team sprint slugfest

This episode 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 highs were high and the lows were low in the Olympic team sprint in Italy, with the Ogden-Schumacher men’s team claiming silver and the Diggins-Kern women’s pair finishing out of the medals. Devon and Nat break the whole thing down. We’ll be back after Saturday’s men’s 50 k....

Sweden Wins Gold, America Shows Heart in Exciting Women’s Team Sprint

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers who have helped us put our Nat Herz on the ground reporting at the Olympics. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. PREDAZZO, ITALY — Eight years ago, on a different continent, the words “Here Comes Diggins!” by Chad Salmela vaulted American cross-country skiing into a new era. On Wednesday in Val di Fiemme, the event...

US Head Coach, Matt Whitcomb—Excited, Centered, Prepared

This reporting costs money. Please support this coverage with a voluntary subscription (below) so FasterSkier can provide this level of access to the sport we all love year-round. On the eve of the opening event of the Olympic cross-country program, U.S. head coach Matt Whitcomb sounded equal parts energized and grounded. Speaking with FasterSkier’s Nat Herz in the mixed zone, Whitcomb touched on everything from ski exchanges and early-Games logistics to the long arc of...

Where the Snow Hardens and Decisions Stick

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. By the time the stadium lights fully took over in Oberhof, the snow had begun to change its mind. What started as a pliable winter surface—the kind that both softens and creates...

Schumacher Wins in Toblach as New Four-Heat 5K Format Turns the Race into a Clock-Chasing Puzzle

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. The Tour de Ski has always asked skiers to live with imperfect information. You race hard when you’re tired. You make decisions based on feelings and instincts, while coaches are screaming ‘splits.’...

In Davos, the Second Lap Always Tells the Truth

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. Davos doesn’t reward urgency. It tolerates it, sometimes — lets it flirt with the clock through the opening kilometers — but it never forgets. Like a mysterious, wispy cloud, the altitude sits quietly...

Klaebo’s 100th: Norwegian Sprint Cauldron Boils Over in Trondheim

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. Johannes Høsflot Klaebo’s 100th World Cup win did not arrive with the roar he’d grown used to on this course. Granåsen last March had been a cauldron—tens of thousands of fans in plastic...

The U.S. Ski Team Star You Won’t See on Snow This Weekend

On Friday afternoon, as World Cup sprinters snap into their skis in Trondheim and the SuperTour fields gather in Fairbanks, one of the United States’ most electrifying young Nordic athletes will step onto an entirely different stage. Stanford University, the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Women’s Soccer Tournament, is marching toward the College Cup—and at the center of it all is a player who, in just a matter of days, will also begin her...

The Road to Ruka: A Sunset Bus Ride into the World Cup Winter

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. For six hours on Tuesday, the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team watched Finland scroll past the windows of a northbound bus, the day’s thin slice of sunlight slanting low across the snow. The sun...

The Hilltop Lesson: How Second Place at the NCAA Championship Became Hagenbuch’s Guiding Philosophy

On a bright March afternoon at Dartmouth’s Oak Hill, with a soft and slow course under his skis and a band he himself had organized blasting in the stadium above, John Steel Hagenbuch approached the final climb where he learned something that would shape the early years of his career far more than any podium ever could. He had come into the NCAA Championships with the weight of a thousand private dreams — a home...

The New JC Schoonmaker: Sharper, Calmer, and Ready for the Moment

When JC Schoonmaker talks about his earliest memories of ski racing, he doesn’t begin with speed or snow conditions, or the particular magic of gliding across winter trails. He starts, instead, with raffles. “I just remember as a kid, there’d be raffles after every race that I would be so stoked for,” he says. “Trying to get a prize, like a new pair of gloves or a hat.” It is an unexpectedly tender snapshot of...

Rooted in Vermont: Tabor Greenberg’s Steady Rise from the Mad River Valley to the U.S. Ski Team

The hills above Moretown are the kind that teach you to move without thinking about it: long grades through maple and birch, a tangle of dirt roads, a thousand sneaky rollers perfect for running shoes or a classic stride. From the valley floor, you can see Sugarbush and Mad River Glen, their lifts still in October and their trails crisscrossed by hikers who’ll be skiers in a few short weeks. This is the terrain that...

The Energy Equation: Julia Kern’s Formula for Olympic Success

On a late-October morning, Julia Kern sat in San Diego, sunlight spilling through the window after cradling her infant nephew. “He’s a cutie for sure,” she laughed. In a few short weeks, she’ll trade baby giggles for the squeak of ski pole baskets on the cold Finnish snow, but the warmth in her voice already says a lot about where she is mentally this Olympic year: grounded, grateful, and still having fun. “It’s been a...

Old skis? No problem for Johannes Høsflot Klæbo at World Championship sprint

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers.  If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription.   TRONDHEIM, NORWAY — After winning Thursday’s world championships-opening sprint here, Norwegian superstar Johannes Høsflot Klæbo posed for photos with the new model of Speedmax cross-country skis recently unveiled by his sponsor, Fischer, the giant Austrian winter sports company. But if you looked carefully at Klæbo’s...