It\u2019s like a Norwegian Hunger Games, like a Scandinavian Lord of the Flies, like Nordic skiing\u2019s version of Survival of the Fittest. Norway just announced eight members (5 men, 3 women) of its Olympic Team for Milano-Cortina. Those eight are in, while the committee has the opportunity to choose eight more skiers (3 men, 5 women) in weeks to come. Those already chosen can relax a bit, get back to training, stop worrying about what they might need to prove in the Tour de Ski. For all the other would-be Norwegian Olympians, the highest pressure\u2014and the hardest racing\u2014starts now. Prove your worth in the exhausting Tour de Ski, and you might be chosen for the Olympics . . . though you might find yourself too physically exhausted and mentally spent to ski like a hero when Olympic events get going in Val di Fiemme. That\u2019s the dilemma: it\u2019s an old-school, winner-take-all qualification strategy that seems a bit strange to have been instituted by ski-dominant Norway. But Norway is a nation that\u2019s likely to sweep many of the individual Olympic podiums in cross-country skiing\u2014especially in the men\u2019s field\u2014regardless of which Norwegians are nominated to the Olympic Team. The selection committee can pretty much do whatever it wants, and things will still turn out just fine.<\/p>\n
In January, I\u2019ll be attending the US Speedskating Olympic Trials in West Allis, Wisconsin. It\u2019s like a family reunion for me, a bit of a walk down memory lane: I competed in those Trials numerous times (though never achieving the desired result) and coached numerous athletes to success on many other winner-take-all days. The holding of an actual Olympic Trials<\/em> always seemed like a fair, but brutal, enterprise. Fair in that team selection processes were plain and simple\u2014top four skaters in each distance earn the right to march into the Olympic stadium, to wear USA on their chest, to compete in an Olympic Games. Do well at the Trials, go to the Olympics. Pretty straightforward.<\/p>\n Years later, Olympic selections have become more subjective\u2014certain athletes must be protected in the process. The stars and potential medalists in Americn speedskating (Jordan Stoltz, Brittany Bowe, Erin Jackson, and members of USA\u2019s world-record Team Pursuit team) will still be competing at the Olympic Trials, but their results will matter less since they\u2019ll already have achieved protected status earned through last season\u2019s performances and\/or early season brilliance on the World Cup circuit. There are spots on the team that can still be won at the Trials, but those spots will be claimed by skaters who are less likely to contend for medals in Milano-Cortina. The potential medalists are protected in the process (I\u2019m all for that), and there are opportunities for dreams to come true for others who skate the race of their lives at just the right moment on just the right day (and I love that). It\u2019s an old-fashioned way of doing things . . . one that definitely limits the ultimate Olympic potential of athletes forced to run this qualification gauntlet. That\u2019s why it seems so strange that Norway is utilizing a similar system to select the remaining spots on its Olympic cross-country roster.<\/p>\n Eight athletes<\/a>\u00a0have already been named to the Norwegian Olympic Team:<\/p>\n Harald \u00d8stberg Amundsen, Asker Ski Club Kristine Stav\u00e5s Skistad, Konnerud IL The winner of the last two Men\u2019s World Cup individual races\u2014Einar Hedegart\u2014is in. The winner of the most recent Women\u2019s World Cup individual race\u2014Karoline Simpson-Larsen\u2014not yet. That\u2019s kind of crazy: she\u2019s the only Norwegian woman with a win this season in a World Cup distance race, though the selection committee suggests she\u2019s not yet proven enough to warrant a place on the Olympic Team. Norwegian Sprinter, Skistad, has stood on top of a World Cup Sprint podium this season, and she\u2019s been given a spot on the team\u2014granted, Skistad has been a dominant sprinter on the international scene for a couple of seasons, especially in Classic Sprints (which is the format in which the Olympic Sprint will be conducted). We understand making Skistad an early announcement for the Olympic Team. What we don\u2019t understand is the early announcement that leaves Larsen off of it. Now Larsen will be forced to fight her way through the exhausting Tour de Ski in order to claim her spot. Unfortunately, she might leave her Olympic potential strewn along the course that climbs up Alpe Cermis.<\/p>\n How ironic is it that a team with the potential to secure medals from any individual member of their team has decided to protect only the top few, while forcing the remaining medal contenders to swim with sharks and battle to exhaustion through the often-debilitating Tour de Ski (which many fans continue to wish would not be staged during Olympic and World Championship seasons)? Team Norway has the ability to pick five more women, and three more men. The remaining contenders will be expected to race it out in the Tour de Ski. With that in mind, the Tour de Ski entries<\/a> have been announced. Klaebo, Amundsen, and Valnes are set to compete. Evidently, either they\u2019re each still coveting World Cup Crystal Globes (in addition to Olympic medals), or they just don\u2019t think the Tour de Ski will be all that taxing. It seems like a heady roll of the dice, but they\u2019re big boys: I hope they know what they\u2019re doing. They\u2019ll be joined in this multi-day endurance slugfest by Simen Hegstad Kruger, Mattis Stenshagen, Emil Iversen, Iver Tildheim Anderson, Oskar Opstad Vike, Lars Heggen, and Ansgar Evensen\u2014all hoping to prove that they deserve one of the few remaining spots on Team Norway.<\/p>\n Having already been named to the Olympic Team, Nyenget and Hedegart won\u2019t compete in the Tour de Ski\u2014kicking back in their newly-distributed Olympic uniforms, comfortably watching while every else scrambles for the few remaining prizes. Such is the depth of Norwegian supremacy that a number of legitimate medal contenders weren\u2019t even selected to compete for a spot on the team. The Tour de Ski offers limited entries: Even Northug and Andreas Fjorden Ree didn\u2019t make the cut. They\u2019ll sit at home where their World cup medals hang on the wall, wondering how circumstances transpired in such weird ways that they weren\u2019t even allowed to compete.<\/p>\n In the Women\u2019s Tour de Ski field, all three Norwegians who were recently named to the Olympic Team are entered (including Skistad, who will likely drop out after the second Sprint day). With regard to selections affecting the women\u2019s team, Norway will choose the remaining five Olympic spots from among Kristine Austgulen Fosnaes, Julie Myhre, Mathilde Myhrvold, Lotta Udnes Weng, Eva Ingebritsen, Ingrid Bergene Aabrekk, and Julie Bjervig Drivenes. Five Women\u2019s Olympic Team spots are still to be named, meaning two of the ten Norwegians entered in the Tour de Ski will see their Olympic dreams end on Alpe Cermis. For other consistent World Cup performers, their Olympic quest is over: Nora Saness, Ane Appelkvist Stenseth, Anne Kjersti Kalvaa, and Tiril Udnes Weng have not even been offered spots in the Tour de Ski, as the committee underestimates their chances of performing at medal-winning levels in Olympic events in Val di Fiemme. They\u2019ll stay home and watch.<\/p>\n Norway\u2019s selection process is a bit of a throwback. As a long-ago athlete who once chased Olympic dreams on the windswept backstretch of an ice oval in suburban Milwaukee, I kind of love that. But for the many Olympic medal contenders among Norway\u2019s crop of cross-country skiers, it must be terrifying. One way or another, Norway is likely to collect many medals from the Olympic podiums of Milano-Cortina. It remains to be seen which Norwegian heroes will be wearing those medals on the flight home.\n<\/p><\/div>\n https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1<\/a> He\u2019ll be there . . . Norway\u2019s Johannes H\u00f8sflot Kl\u00e6bo. (Photo: NordicFocus) It\u2019s like a Norwegian Hunger Games, like a Scandinavian Lord of the Flies, like Nordic skiing\u2019s version of Survival of the Fittest. Norway just announced eight members (5 men, 3 women) of its Olympic Team for Milano-Cortina. Those eight are in, while the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Agony-and-Ecstasy\u2014Norways-Olympic-Team-Selections-\u2013-FasterSkier.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14306,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14304\/revisions\/14306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fasterskier.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2022\/02\/Klaebo09022022fm00920.jpg\")
<\/a>Men<\/h6>\n
Einar Hedegart, Inder\u00f8y IL
Johannes H\u00f8sflot Kl\u00e6bo, By\u00e5sen IL
Martin L\u00f8wstr\u00f8m Nyenget, Lillehammer Ski Club
Erik Valnes, Bardufoss and the surrounding area IF<\/p>\nWomen<\/h6>\n
Astrid \u00d8yre Slind, Oppdal IL
Heidi Weng, IL in BUL<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"