Across the Pond: Skinnyski Overseas, Part 1
In late November Salomon reached out to us with an offer to cover a product event in Annecy, France, an offer we enthusiastically accepted. At the time, we looked at the calendar and realized that the World Cup circuit would be traveling to Davos, Switzerland the weekend before, so we quickly made plans to try and capitalize on both opportunities. The few days were a scramble, spent pinning down plane tickets, train schedules, hotel reservations, and media accreditation. So began our scramble, with the next few days spent pinning down plane tickets, ground transportation, hotel reservations, and media access.
On a Thursday just a few weeks later I boarded a flight out of MSP bound for Amsterdam and quickly got my first true taste of jet lag. My route had me taking two flights, one eight hours and the other two, with a three hour layover in between. This was followed by a three hour train transfer-fest to finally reach Davos. By the time I was finally able to sleep again it was Friday and I had been awake for well over 24 hours, but I couldn’t hit the hay before catching my first World Cup racing action in Europe, the team sprints.
An exciting event we rarely see on the World Cup circuit, the team sprints that Friday were held at night, which would normally be a dim atmosphere if not for Davos’ claim to fame when it comes to World Cup racing: pyrotechnics. With each lap completed, the leaders would trigger a wall of fire to shoot up as they passed the corner heading into the stadium, a thrill to the crowd and competitors alike. While there wasn’t an American team to root for in either the men’s or women’s division, the event still presented an excellent opportunity for me to get my first taste of World Cup racing in Europe and, more importantly, get my bearings as I would be shooting an awful lot of photos over the next two days.
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An early morning the following day had me heading down to the racing venue to get my media credentials and my first real glimpse of Davos. A sprawling ski resort town nestled in the Swiss Alps, it was pretty common to see downhill skiers making their way up and down the streets with their ski boots still on. Saturday’s event, more sprints, but individually this time around, were the first action for the American skiers that weekend, and the qualifiers were an exciting introduction to the team. Five qualified for the heats, a strong showing for the squad, and among those five were Jessie Diggins and Alayna Sonnesyn, two of our six Midwest representatives in Davos.
No longer subject to rumors, it was Jessie’s decision to mark this season as her last that was, in part, a deciding factor for us to make the stop in Davos in the first place. A storied career that has compelled us since we first had coverage of her while she was competing in high school, it only felt right that we make the stop, especially considering she has been skiing for Salomon for almost the entirety of that career.
The evening brought the start of the sprint heats, and another exciting experience as an American. While Jessie struggled to make the semis, two of the men who qualified, Jack Young and Ben Ogden, put on a spectacular showing, punching their tickets to the finals where they finished just off the podium in 4th and 5th respectively, a particularly massive breakthrough for Young. Young, a Salomon skier himself, joined the hometown hero Nadine Faehdrich, who finished 3rd in the women’s final, along with Maja Dahlqvist of Sweden and Laura Gimmler of Germany, who finished 4th and 6th in that same final, as a slew of Salomon skiers who shone out in the sprints.
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Before heading back to my hotel for the night to process photos I had the chance to catch up with Chris Hecker, head glide tech for the US Ski Team and a friend of mine going back to my high school racing days. Chris has been working on the World Cup circuit for the better part of a decade, more than half of those years spent with the team.
We talked about a lot of things including the state of the team this season, and in particular I asked what he thought was the reason behind the service team’s success in recent years. His response was that their results weren’t necessarily better or more bulletproof than in years past, but that they were more consistent. Chris felt this was in large part due to less turnover within the team, saying “the lows are not as low, and the highs are just as high.” Noting that day’s results in particular, he admitted “I wouldn’t say we had the best skis in the world, but we had competitive enough skis to be 4th and 5th.”
He also pointed out that “it’s not necessarily the quality of the wax. The athletes need to ski the skis, and that’s ultimately what’s going to prove to be the deciding factor in a race. You could give somebody the best skis in the world and they might not qualify. You need to still have good athletes, and a lot of the time, I think, especially on the women’s side, [they] do a good job of making our skis look better than maybe what they were or what they are. And today I think was another prime example of, like, Jack and Ben making the ski look super good. When you have strong athletes the skis always look good.”
The subject of it being Jessie’s last season also came up in regard to other rumors I had heard about his own career. Chris confirmed that this would also be a farewell tour for himself, bowing out after he heads home at the end of the season. “It’ll be really hard to leave the team,” he said, “but it’s been 10 years so it’s kind of like—at some point I’ve got to start staying home.”
Given my own experience on the way over, it became clearer why Jessie and Chris would be making their decisions. Selfishly, when I first heard the news that Jessie would be retiring I questioned why she would want to end her career coming off a season in which she won the World Cup and had been at the top of her game. There’s more to World Cup racing than winning though, and I can attest that the travel component is probably a huge part of it.
For European athletes, home is just a couple hours away by train or plane, and many do get to go home in between breaks. But for Americans, and Canadians too I’m sure, many athletes don’t get to see their friends and family for a majority of the season, if at all. And if they do travel home, it’s a minimum of an 8-hour flight over the Atlantic, with each subsequent connection via plane, train, or automobile compounding the chance that they fall ill, a result that can derail the rest of your season. At the end of the day, athletes, and the service staff that support them, are people that have a life outside of sport, and asking them to put that life on pause year in and year out has its pain points.
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My final full day in Davos was one for the books, and for Salomon. A beautiful bluebird day, the final World Cup event was an interval-start freestyle competition, the exact kind of competition that Jessie excels in. I spent the better part of the day on-course shooting photos of the men’s and women’s fields and stayed out about as long as I could before sprinting back to the stadium to catch Jessie’s finish.
Checking the results at the time, Jessie was within striking distance of the podium but would have her work cut out for her. What shocked me was that when she did come into view, despite being short on time with not enough room to make it up, the crowd still cheered for her as if one she was of their own, a scene that was lost on me until seeing it in-person in Switzerland.
Ultimately she would finish fifth, a great result nonetheless, joining three other Salomon skiers to put four in the top-5 which included the women’s winner, Karloine Simpson-Larsen of Norway, and second and fourth place finishers Moa Ilar and Maja Dahlqvist, both of Sweden. A Salomon athlete also captured the top spot on the men’s podium with Einar Hedegart of Norway earning his second World Cup win.
After the race I found my way to Florian and Fabio, the Salomon service techs who support their athletes when it comes to equipment and are notably the ones who deliver the podium skis, and congratulated them on their strong showing. They had just finished talking with Jessie who bestowed them with “Christmas gifts”, i.e. podium souvenirs, bouncing off to catch up with the final finisher in the day's event, an athlete from India who had just started competing on the World Cup circuit this season.
Turning to Fabio, who had glitter on his cheeks and has been supporting Jessie for over a decade now, I asked him what it has been like working with her. He answered, “she is special.” He added nothing more, and frankly there wasn’t anything more that really needed to be added.
On my way out of the media area I saw a sizable crowd still standing around and realized they were all there for Jessie. When the World Cup was in Minneapolis it wasn’t surprising to see how much of a superstar she was among people in her own country, but seeing the same effect in other countries that have their own strong Nordic programs and superstars was eye opening. To these people Jessie is special too.
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Monday’s arrival meant I was moving again, making my way through Switzerland to Annecy, France. More on that, and the other half of why we were in Europe, in the next post.
World Cup Recaps from Davos
World Cup Davos: Team Sprints
December 12, 2025Team sprints, the first of the season, were featured on Friday as the leadoff event for the last stop on leg 1 of the World Cup circuit: Davos, Switzerland. Clear favorites heading into the day, Norway's Erik Valnes and Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, and Sweden's Maja Dahlqvist and Jonna Sundling, easily defended their reputation, crushing their competition on the way to their respective wins in the men's and women's finals. It was a race for second in the end, as the men's final two podium positions went the way of the Italy I and Sweden I, while the Norway II and Norway I teams completed the podium in the women's final. Saving most of their athletes for the Saturday and Sunday races, the US only fielded one team, Ben Ogden and JC Schoonmaker, who did not manage to qualify for the final. Up next: more sprints on Saturday with a focus on competing individually and in the freestyle technique.
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World Cup Davos: Freestyle Sprints
December 13, 2025Sprints were back on the menu on Saturday for the second day of racing in Switzerland, with the courses signature climb deciding who won and lost each race. In the women's final, Sweden's Jonna Sundling made her return to the top of the podium by making a move on that very climb, although Norway's Mathilda Myhrvold wouldn't let her go easy, challenging her in a photo finish that saw Myhrvold take second by less than a tenth of a second. The hometown hero, Switzerland's Nadine Faehndrich would go on to take third. After a surprise early exit by Norway's superstar, France's Lucas Chanavat went on to win in the same fashion, besting Federico Pellegrino of Italy by an even slimmer margin of three one hundredths of a second. Third would go to Norway's Oskar Opstad who earned his second podium of the season. A fantastic day for American athletes, six qualified for the heats, with two making it all the ways to the finals, Jack Young and Ben Ogden, where they finished 4th and 5th respectively, a career best for the former. Sunday brings an end to World Cup racing in Davos and Period I of the circuit with an interval-start 10K freestyle race on deck for all athletes.
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US Ski Team: Vonn Strikes Again in Second
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World Cup Davos: Freestyle Distance
December 14, 2025Wrapping up Period I of the World Cup circuit, Sunday's interval-start 10K freestyle event was a close contest with only a handful of seconds, and sometimes less, deciding the podium in both the men's and women's races. Probably the most decisive finish of the day, Einar Hedegart of Norway won the men's race by almost 12 seconds, besting two of his teammates, Harald Oestberg Amundsen and Mattis Stenshagen, who completed the all-Norwegian podium. The winner of the women's race was also Norwegian, but not one of the usual suspects. Finishing first by just over two seconds, Karoline Simpson-Larsen took the win, her first World Cup podium, followed closely by Sweden's Moa Ilar in second, and another Norwegian, Astrid Oeyre Slind, in third. Top results for the US team today came from Jessie Diggins in fifth, and notably Luci Anderson in 25th, who finished just three places off of her personal best. Now the world Cup circuit goes on hiatus for a couple weeks before picking up again after the holidays for the start of the Tour de Ski.
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