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US Ski Team

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

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...

One Final Climb: Diggins Victorious in Tour de Ski

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 does not end so much as it compresses. By the time the women turned onto the ribbon of snow climbing Alpe Cermis, the race had already been going...

Klaebo Controls Toblach as Schumacher Anchors the Chase in Men’s 20 k Classic Pursuit

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 mid-morning in Toblach, the cold had settled into the valley in that particular Dolomite way—dry, bright, and unforgiving. The stadium clock read 10:30 a.m., the tracks were hard-packed, and the Tour...

Kris Freeman—Performance, and the Cost of Standing Still

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.   A few weeks ago, I sat down with Kris Freeman expecting a fairly general conversation about his skiing career. What I got instead was a clear-eyed, detailed account of two decades inside U.S. men’s distance skiing, performances, missed opportunities, technical evolution, and the political forces that...

The Devon Kershaw Show: Slugging it out in Davos with guest Bill McKibben

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.   Climate activist and author Bill McKibben joins the show this week to recap some surprising results in Davos, including standout performances from a pair of Vermonters. We’re hoping to land some interviews before the Tour de Ski kicks off, and we’ll be back with more recaps once racing resumes....

The Devon Kershaw Show: the world champs of Norwegian Olympic qualification, and a Kersh mea culpa

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.     We’re back to recap three days of racing in Trondheim and for Devon to eat some of his words from last weekend’s podcast. We’ll have more after the World Cup swings to Switzerland this weekend. Reach us at devon[at]fasterskier.com and nat[at]fasterskier.com, and if you’re interested in supporting the...

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...

The Trial 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. The men’s 20-kilometer Skiathlon at Granåsen never felt like an ordinary World Cup. From the moment the athletes stepped into the start pen, there was a tension in the air that didn’t match...

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 Devon Kershaw Show: Buckle Up for a Six-Race Ruka Recap

It’s on — the 2026 Olympic season, that is. Devon and Nat break down six season-opening races from northern Finland, including a thriller in Sunday’s men’s race. Contact us with fan mail, hate mail and everything in between: devon[at]fasterskier.com and nat[at]fasterskier.com. We’re looking for title and other sponsors for our Olympic coverage; email matthew[at]fasterskier.com with inquiries.

A Breakaway, a Broken Pole, and a Biathlete’s Bet: Amundsen Wins a Wild 20 k in Ruka

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. Sunday morning in Ruka had the look of a place holding its breath. The sun sat low over the trees, the air hovered just on the warm side of freezing, and the men’s...

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...

Blueprinting Beliefs: Ben Ogden’s Mind, Mechanics, and the Engineering of a Community

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....

Holding Her Own: Rosie Brennan’s Quiet Mastery of Independence on the World Cup

The first flakes had finally settled on the branches behind Rosie Brennan’s window in Anchorage. “Yeah, finally,” she said, turning from the screen toward the light outside. “God, it was slow to come, but we are getting there.” Snow matters in November for any cross-country skier. Still, for Brennan—now entering her fifteenth season on the U.S. Ski Team—it has always represented something deeper: familiarity, grounding, the landscape she moves through on her own terms. Independence,...

2024 Stifel Season Awards

Last week, the Stifel U.S. Ski Team announced the 2024 recipients of the Stifel Awards, named after the team’s title sponsor for the 2023-2024 season. Awardees for the “Athlete of the Year” and “Best Comeback of the Year,” among other categories, were nominated and voted on by team members and staff; with Stifel’s backing, those categories were awarded with a monetary prize attached. The 2023-24 season is the first time each discipline represented within the...

Matt Whitcomb: Reflecting on a Special Season with Stifel U.S. Ski Team Head Coach

Asked for a reflection on the 2023-24 World Cup season, US Ski Team Head Coach Matt Whitcomb pointed straight towards one place; Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a sunny February day, filled to the brim with 20,000 people cheering loud and clear.  “We often talk about athletes peaking for big events,” he said. “But I’d never considered that our American ski culture could peak for an event.” The specific dynamics between performance and...

“What Makes a Champion” . . . US Ski Team Video Campaign

  U.S. Ski & Snowboard is launching a new campaign called, “What Makes a Champion” which will highlight an athlete from each of our teams, and focus on what makes them a champion. Jessie Diggins kicks it off. What Makes a Champion:  Jessie Diggins Leann Bentley—Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team Press Officer—informs FasterSkier that a new “What Makes a Champion” video will be introduced each month leading into the 2023-2024 World Cup season. We’re...

U.S. Cross-Country National Team Announced

U.S. Ski and Snowboard has announced the members of the 2023-24 National team, now officially known as the Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team. With a few notable retirements this spring a couple of shakeups were going to occur. The team uses a selection criteria which it has developed to try and balance proven performers with budding talent. It is a somewhat complex set of guidelines. Women’s Squad The women’s A Team members come as...

Olympian Swirbul Announces Retirement from World Cup Cross Country Skiing

PARK CITY, UT (March 27, 2023) – Hailey Swirbul of the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team is ready to say goodbye to World Cup ski racing. The 2022 Olympian has formally announced her retirement from the World Cup circuit hours after crossing the finish line at the 2022-23 World Cup Finals in Lahti, Finland. 24-year-old Swirbul, an El Jebel, Colorado native, has been on the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team for years, represented her country at two World...