Dear Cross Country Community, We are pleased to announce the XC Team for Period 1 of the 2026-27 World Cup season: Ruka, FIN 10 km C & Trondheim, NOR 10 km C Men Zach Jayne Objective 25-26 Overall SuperTour Leader Gus Schumacher Objective 12th Distance World Cup 25-26 Zak Ketterson Objective 36th Distance World Cup 25-26 Ben Ogden Discretion 11th Lake Placid World Cup 10 km C Zanden McMullen Discretion 18th...
The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) unveiled its proposed 2026/2027 cross-country skiing World Cup calendar this week at the FIS Spring Meetings in Portorož, Slovenia. The schedule — first shared publicly through FIS social media and still pending FIS Council approval — builds the season around the 2027 World Championships in Falun, Sweden, with three pre-Christmas stops, a nine-race Tour de Ski, a stretch of three weekends between the Tour and Worlds, and a...
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. Okay, who else didn’t sleep last night? It felt like waiting for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve — that fizzy, restless anticipation you can’t shake, even as an adult who should know better....
On the Wednesday before the World Cup season opens in Ruka, Jack Young sits in a small condo, looking out at over a foot of new snow that’s been drifting down all morning. The air is much warmer today than it was before he and the U.S. Ski Team loaded onto a six-plus hour bus ride yesterday — “Muonio was friggin’ cold,” he says — and the mood is calmer, quieter, the way he wants...
Somewhere over the Atlantic, on a red-eye to another winter in Europe, Ben Ogden opens his laptop and stares at a grid of digital joinery. Tiny posts, miniature knee braces, angled mortises — a small timber-frame sauna, scaled down to the dimensions of an airline tray table. He sketches in precise strokes, clicking through angles and offsets, rotating the model the way he rotates race courses in his head: looking for structure, looking for flow....
BONUS ARTICLE: 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. In the early morning hours of any FIS World Cup race day, messages are bouncing back and forth among a team of diligent FasterSkier writers, doing their best to craft illuminating articles on the race coverage flitting across our screens. And on...
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. Ruka, Finland is an area known for challenging race courses and rapidly changing conditions. As the women’s field wrapped up the morning race, the men took on the course under snowfall and near-freezing...
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. It’s been two full seasons since Therese Johaug last toed a starting line in a FIS World Cup distance event. In that time, the field has been able to convince itself that they...
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. Learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award—or about supporting FasterSkier coverage—by contacting info@fasterskier.com. It’s hard to believe, but the start of the World Cup ski season is upon us. The weekend opener in Ruka, Finland begins November 29th. While many of us will be bemoaning our Thanksgiving excess and recovering from NFL binge...
We’re back, with some incremental improvements to our audio production and full stoke for a new season of the Devon Kershaw Show. On this first episode of the new season, Devon and Nat break down the winter’s opening races in Sweden, Finland and Norway, and prime the pump for the World Cup kickoff in Finland next weekend. As always, email us at devon@fasterskier.com and nat@fasterskier.com.
This World Cup 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. Women’s 20K Pursuit. Today, Ruka, Finland was home to the inaugural running of the women’s 20K pursuit. The format is now a 20-kilometer skate race with interval starts based upon...
This World Cup 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. Women’s 10K Interval Start: Today began a new chapter in World Cup racing as women and men competed at the same distances on the same course for the first...
This World Cup 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. Ruka Men’s 10K Classic Individual Start Ruka presented less challenging conditions this year compared to last year for the athletes. Temperatures were in the high teens (-8.0 Centigrade) with...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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 temperature was a balmy -11℃ (12℉). A glow hung in the sky and new snow decorated the trees; a welcoming winter scene in Ruka, Finland. With the FIS Cross-Country...
We’re back with this week’s episode of the Devon Kershaw Show! Devon and FasterSkier’s Nat Herz break down the World Cup’s exciting season-opening weekend of racing in Finland, along with a special guest: U.S. Olympian Sadie Maubet Bjornsen, who retired in the spring. The trio breaks down Ruka’s frigid temperatures, legit results from North American racers, Frida Karlsson’s surprising victory over Therese Johaug, and some Russian men’s distance domination — with the inevitable aside about...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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 Ryan Sederquist It was another very cold day in Ruka, Finland. Temperatures hovered between -19 and -23.2 degrees Celsius around the course, rising to -18.6C by the start...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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 Ryan Sederquist If Friday’s sprint signaled a potential changing of the guard, with 22-year old Alexander Terentev displacing Johannes Høsflot Klæbo atop the podium, the men’s 15-kilometer...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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. Aerial views of Ruka, Finland showed a venue coated in thick rime, a visual representation of the temperatures and conditions on the course. At nearly 66 degrees North, Ruka...
This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and the 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. And so it begins. The first round of World Cup racing took place in Ruka, FIN today with conditions one might expect in late November at...
The first weekend is in the books, and we can cross off a top 10, top 5, and technically a top 3 off of the to-do list. Being behind the scenes and waxing in the wax truck is a whole different perspective. It is far more stressful but also incredibly fun. I am mainly a part of the glide team and will help with testing, picking, and applying waxes for any given day. The conditions...