ANCHORAGE — The winner of two of three U.S. National Championships races in Alaska this week is just 24 years old, and poised for what could be a long career in cross-country skiing.
But instead, Andreas Kirkeng is considering retirement.
The explanation is simple: The star University of Denver athlete is not American. He’s Norwegian.
And in Norway, aspiring to be a top cross-country skier is like trying to become an astronaut: Many, many try, and nearly all of them fail, because the field is so deep and talented.
“I genuinely believe he could be one of the best World Cup skiers in the world. It’s a bummer that it’s just so hard to be Norwegian — any other country on Earth and they’d greenlight you for the Olympics for the next 10 years,” said Luke Jager, one of the Americans edged out by Kirkeng at nationals this week. “I’ve been telling everyone in the world: Everybody who knows that guy needs to tell him to not quit skiing next year.”
Kirkeng won his second race at U.S. Nationals on Sunday in dominating fashion, dropping the top Americans in the field on the last of four five-kilometer laps in the classical technique.
Because Kirkeng was ineligible for the U.S. championship, Dartmouth College’s John Steel Hagenbuch claimed the title by finishing second, narrowly edging Jager, who skis for Alaska Pacific University. Will Koch, skiing for the University of Colorado, was third.
But Kirkeng has been the undisputed star of the week at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park, where he also won Saturday’s classical technique sprint race by beating Jager on the homestretch.
In Thursday’s 10-kilometer skate-technique distance race, he finished second, less than a second behind Hagenbuch.
After Sunday’s event, Kirkeng conceded that he hasn’t made up his mind about his future — and noted that his girlfriend told him the day before that it would be “sad” if he retired.
But, he added: “I’ve been ski racing for 13, 14 years. At some point you have to do something else.”
Observers offered mixed opinions about the significance of Kirkeng’s results in Anchorage, with U.S. Olympian Scott Patterson saying that they might not have translated into a top-30 finish on the World Cup, the top international circuit.
But Jostein Vinjerui, who coaches an elite professional team based in Norway, Aker Daehlie, said he thinks Kirkeng’s results show some promise.
“It would be very sad if he gives up now,” Vinjerui said in a phone interview Sunday. “He should at least test one year in Norway, what he can do there. Because the U.S. level now is pretty good.”
Kirkeng grew up in Lier, a community not far from Oslo and just a few miles from Drammen — the city that long hosted an iconic World Cup sprint race every year, with loads of snow trucked in and smoothed over its streets.
“When I was in elementary school, I would walk straight out of class to Drammen to watch,” Kirkeng said.
There were numerous areas with snowmaking to cross-country ski near his home, and Kirkeng’s family also had a cabin in the mountains.
He joined a club program in elementary school and made junior national and regional ski teams. But Kirkeng lost some of his motivation after a tough first year as an adult competitor, when a high-intensity block training program “sort of killed” him, he said.
It was time for Kirkeng to try something new and different, he said, and he decided to follow his brother to the University of Denver. Kirkeng is now a senior studying finance on a full scholarship — and has broadened his horizons.
“It’s actually crazy — I’m telling all my friends in Norway it’s the best thing you can do,” he said. “You get everything covered, you have chances to train, and you get an education and ski at the highest level.”
The dilemma confronting him at the end of the season is stark.
To make a career of ski racing back in his home country, he’d have to fight his way into the elite Norwegian men’s field — the strongest in the world.
Organizers cap the number of skiers from each country who can start each race on the World Cup. But even so, Norway’s male athletes regularly take five of the top six places in distance events — beating the best competitors from all other nations, including the U.S.
Dozens of other Norwegians toil in relative obscurity on the country’s domestic race circuit, fighting to earn a single chance to prove themselves on the World Cup. Kirkeng has never gotten a World Cup start, even as some of the U.S. athletes he’s beaten have been racing on the circuit for years.
Just last week, the Norwegian team had an athlete drop out before the start of one of the season’s marquee World Cup events, the Tour de Ski. The first alternate declined his spot because he got sick, and the second alternate, Haavard Moseby, finished on the podium in one of the stages.
“For Andreas, it’s almost impossible, as a Norwegian,” said Florian Knopf, a German athlete who races with Kirkeng in Denver. “He’s super strong. But the Norwegians have 10 other guys like that, even better.”
Knopf is in a similar position in his home country, where, if he returns to full-time ski racing, he’ll be on the bubble to qualify for international events.
“You have to be brutally honest with yourself, and also ask yourself what you want in life. Being 25 years old and still being able to ski among the best is making me really happy,” Knopf said. But, he added: “I know many Germans who are Olympians who are not happy.”
Knopf and Kirkeng will also leave Denver with college degrees — meaning that continuing as ski racers would require them to forsake other professional opportunities. Both have applied for jobs on Wall Street.
“The only struggle is his brain is almost as good as his ski talent,” said Selma Anderson, Kirkeng’s girlfriend and a teammate at Denver.
Kirkeng said he’s been contemplating his options to continue ski racing. There’s a marathon circuit in Europe; he could also try to work part-time and ski part-time. But he’s not sure he wants to ski race if he can’t fully dedicate himself to training.
“It would be really cool to give it a shot and see where it brings me,” Kirkeng said. “And I’m definitely open to it. But at the same time, I feel I’ve been doing it for so many years now.”
Jager, the American skier, is still making his pitch. He said he thinks that Kirkeng’s intellect and education serve as a fallback that can allow the Norwegian to keep ski racing for longer without risking his future.
“I know he’s got the whole finance thing going on. But for me, that’s all the more reason to postpone that as long as possible,” Jager said. “He can go be the Wolf of Wall Street when he’s in his 30s.”
Full results from Sunday.
Nat Herz is an Alaska-based journalist who moonlights for FasterSkier as an occasional reporter and podcast host. He was FasterSkier’s full-time reporter in 2010 and 2011.
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