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Olympic Cross Country Skiing

Bernie Nelson and When Control Changes Hands

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. At some point before every race, there is a moment when the conversation ends. The skis are ready. All the questions have been answered. The athlete has described, more than once, how the ski felt through the camber, how it released, and how it held when needed. Their part...

Eli Brown – The Ski Caddy

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 race mornings, when the athletes are still quiet, and the stadium hasn’t yet decided what kind of day it wants to be, Eli Brown is already working through choices that won’t appear anywhere in the results sheet. Brown is a technician for the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team, a...

Hunter Wonders, Flying by Instrument

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...

Matintalo First, Diggins Second: A Classic 20 K Test Before the Olympics

This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence 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 sky above the Goms Nordic Centre on Sunday morning had the washed-out look of winter at altitude — pale and reflective. Snow had fallen overnight —...

Svahn Returns to the Top as Olympic Stakes Sharpen in Goms Women’s Classic Sprint

This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence 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 women clicked into their classic skis in the upper Rhône Valley on Saturday morning, the sprint course in Goms had already made its...

Olympic Preview, Sort Of—USA Third in Goms Team Sprint

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 the skiing stars of Norway, World Cup victories are commonplace—almost expected. For the skiers of most other nations, any World Cup podium appearance is a career-defining event. That said, some of...

Goms Wasn’t the Answer — It Was the Test

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. There are World Cup races that arrive like answers, and others that arrive like mirrors. The women’s freestyle Team Sprint in Goms belonged firmly to the second category — not because the...

U.S. Names Eight Women and Eight Men to 2026 Olympic Cross-Country Team

U.S. Ski & Snowboard has announced its Olympic cross-country ski team for the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games, naming eight women and eight men to represent the United States in Val di Fiemme, Italy, from Feb. 6–22, 2026. While the women were allocated eight Olympic starting positions outright, the men’s team was originally allotted seven. That number increased to eight after another nation declined to use one of its quota spots, allowing the United...

The Cost of Being the Best: Norway Finally Locks In Its Olympic Squad

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. Norway’s greatest competitive advantage in cross-country skiing has always been depth. In an Olympic selection season, that depth becomes a headache. When the federation gathered to finalize its 2026 team, the conversation was not about who belonged at the Games — those results and calculus had been logged. It was...

Zanden McMullen’s Closing Argument

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 quiet that settles in before a decisive weekend—not the calm that follows certainty, but the stillness that comes when outcomes are no longer yours to predict. Zanden McMullen arrived in Oberhof, Germany, this week carrying that quiet with him. Period Three of the World...

Steep Climbs to Olympic Dreams

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. So, Norwegian Olympic selection continues to be a stressful and chaotic process for Team Norway. After eight exhausting days of Tour de Ski competition—and six grueling events—it seemed the only result that mattered to the committee selecting Norway’s Olympic Team was a win in the final stage atop the Alpe...

Klaebo Wins Classic Sprint in Val di Fiemme as the Tour de Ski Heads for Alpe Cermis

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. There are places in cross-country skiing where the scenery tries to soften the message. Val di Fiemme is one of them: chalets tucked into the folds of the valley, the geometry of...

A Sprint Built for February, Raced in January with Tour Fatigue

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 women arrived in Val di Fiemme for Stage 5 of the Tour de Ski, the race had already narrowed in a way that had nothing to do with...

Stenshagen Sets the Pace in Toblach as the Men’s Tour Takes Shape

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 final seeded skier pushed through the finishing straight in Toblach, the race had already revealed what interval starts always do best: not who looks fastest, but who stays...

If This Was a Preview, February Will Be Wild: Sweden 1–2, Diggins Third

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. There are winter mornings when a World Cup feels like a World Cup, and there are winter mornings when the sport seems to slip into its future tense. Today, in Trondheim, was the...