STORY AND PHOTOS BY BERIT CAMPION

Six weeks after making their Olympic debuts at the Milan-Cortina Games, Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation Gold Team members Sammy Smith and John Steel Hagenbuch skied back into the international spotlight--this time on home snow at the FIS Cross-Country Skiing World Cup Finals in Lake Placid, N.Y.

After heavy snowfall complicated race conditions for the men’s and women’s 10k, interval-start classic races Friday, the next two days of Stifel Lake Placid Finals presented strange (even cruel) twists of fate for Smith and Hagenbuch--both U.S. Ski Team standouts--and legendary Jessie Diggins, who was racing in her final World Cup event.

 For the men’s and women’s 1.5k sprint events on Saturday, skies were gray, the air temperature bone-chillingly cold and the track fast after new snow set up overnight.

A French skier moves in front of Sammy Smith.

Johannes Hosfløt Klæbo, the Norwegian golden boy, was not in the mix, having suffered a concussion in the World Cup sprint in Drammen, Norway, one week earlier. Olympic silver-medalists Ben Ogden and Gus Schumacher of the U.S. also skipped the final sprint event of the World Cup season. 

But none of this did anything to dissuade 14,000 cheering, cowbell-ringing fans from showing up in Lake Placid on Saturday. They packed the stands of the Olympic stadium and lined the sides of the course from the time the morning qualifying rounds started to the afternoon sprint finals.

Smith Gets Edged in the Sprint

The Stifel Lake Placid Finals are the only North American stop on the 2025-2026 FIS Cross-Country World Cup calendar. As such, home field advantage for elite U.S. and Canadian cross-country skiers is a rarity. So, when the announcers introduced Sammy Smith before her quarterfinal heat, the crowd went wild. 

Fans await the start of the men’s 20k mass start.

Smith was one of eight U.S. skiers--and one of only three U.S. women--to advance out of qualifying and into the heats in the 1.5k freestyle sprint, her best event.

After the gun went off, Smith and her five European competitors charged out of the start. They furiously double-poled to the end of the classic track then started skating. Eager to cheer on the lone American in the quarterfinal, shivering fans shouted, “Sammy!” and “Go, Sammy!” as Smith hammered across the stadium flats.

Léonie Perry, a young French sprinter, veered sharply left, moving over into Smith’s line and clipping her right ski boot. Smith checked her balance and recovered quickly. But the “racing incident” cost her precious time before the first turn and serpentine climb out of the stadium at Mt. Van Hoevenberg, site of the 1932 and 1980 Olympic cross-country skiing and biathlon events.

Scrambling to chase down her competitors all vying for a semifinal berth, Smith displayed textbook technique skating up the long, hard climb to the top of the course. Then she tucked down the fast but tricky descent, drafting off the others before passing under the bridge that leads back into the stadium. 

Urged on by the predominantly pro-American crowd, Smith fought valiantly all the way to the line, finishing fourth in the heat. Linn Svahn and her Swedish teammates swept the podium.

Smith finished 17th overall, the second-best placement by an American and the second-best result of a U23 skier in the event (age 23 and under). Smith finished the 2025-2026 FIS World Cup season 29th out of 126 in the women’s sprint rankings and seventh best in the U23 overall rankings.

Jessie Diggins, one of Smith’s teammates and star of the Stifel US Cross-Country Ski Team, was the only American woman to make the sprint semifinals. She did so the day after clinching the FIS World Cup overall title for the 2025-2026 season. After the men’s sprint finals, Diggins climbed to the top of the podium to claim her fourth and final Crystal Globe,

Hagenbuch Crashes in the 20k Freestyle

Competitors, coaches, ski techs and fans endured a steady drizzle of rain throughout the men’s and women’s 20k mass-start freestyle races on Sunday, each of which consisted of five laps around a hilly, 4k course that started and finished in the Olympic stadium at Mt. Van Hoevenberg.

The weather made the snow on the course “grabby” at times.

In the men’s 20k race, five Norwegians at the front of the pack, including Klaebo, controlled the pace from start to finish. At the first split, 12:3 minutes into the race, Klaebo was in the lead followed by four other Norwegians and an Italian.

Gus Schumacher was the only North American in the top 20, followed by Zak Ketterson (21), Ben Ogden (39) and John Steel Hagenbuch (44).

Then disaster struck. In the second half of the first lap, Hagenbuch got caught up in a crash and broke both of his ski bindings—one during the fall. Scrambling to get up and resume racing, Hagenbuch borrowed a ski from one of the coaches on the side.

But then the binding on his other ski gave way, possibly the result of impact after hitting a rut on the course before or during the pileup. Hagenbuch ran uphill on one ski to get a mismatched, second ski from a Finnish coach before rejoining the race. He aggravated a lingering shoulder injury in the process.

Making things worse, Hagenbuch had to change skis in the stadium not once more but twice during the 20k race--a nightmare scenario for any competitor. Hagenbuch showed incredible grit – and heart – throughout the ordeal. He finished the race with a time of 46:56.6, just shy of five minutes behind race winner Klaebo but ahead of 12 other competitors, none else of whom crashed or needed replacement gear during the race.

Diggins Unlucky in Final Race of Her Career

The last racing incident of note occurred in the women’s 20k mass-start freestyle race, the last event of the 2025-2026 FIS Cross-Country World Cup season and the last race in the storied career of Jessie Diggins.

On the third lap, two of her biggest rivals--Frida Karlsson (SWE) and Astrid Oeyre Slind (NOR)--crashed. Karlsson recovered to rejoin the race leaders on the last lap, including Jessie Diggins on what was supposed to be “her day” in front of a home crowd 10,000 strong.

As fate would have it, on her way down a technical descent into a left-hand bend, Diggins slipped, faltered then crashed, fading to 12th place by the time she crossed the line, 16.5 seconds back of race winner Jonna Sundling (SWE).

That’s ski racing, as they say.