Changing Course: Getting Cross Country Skiing On The Right Track
By John Munger
To start, I’ll say that the International Ski Federation, or FIS, has done a great job of creating a World Cup circuit for cross country skiing. Thanks to FIS there is an expansive race circuit with a number of countries involved, and the series is successful enough to support regular television broadcasts.
That said, not many would describe the World Cup circuit for cross country as a smashing success. There are maybe a dozen nations that field competitive teams on a regular basis. While it is dubbed a World Cup, almost all of the events happen in Europe. The television broadcasts are really only carried in Europe; the North American broadcasts don’t include any commentary. At most events spectators are minimal and, except for the very top tier of athletes, the athletes do not make any real income.
While I am not privy to all the details, I did lead the efforts to bring a World Cup to Minneapolis in 2020, and from that experience I gleaned that sponsorship revenue for the tour is not very significant. Really, as I understand it the only reason the World Cup tour happens at all is that many governments are willing to pay for the cost of the World Cup events – including the cost of the television productions – almost in their entirety.
These do not seem like the hallmarks of a healthy and successful professional sport.
So how do we fix this? Cross country skiing is arguably the most grueling sport in the world. It requires incredible strength and agility. It is contested in harsh climates in the cold and snow. The athletes are often charismatic and inspiring. All great assets. But it seems like that is not enough.
I have a few thoughts and recommendations. Before I get to those, though, I want to take a moment to establish that I am not completely lacking in credentials here. I am a lifelong skier. I love the sport. I raced in college and I have raced in citizen races my entire adult life. I started and built the Loppet Foundation, which is, with the possible exception of the American Birkebeiner, the largest organization focused on cross country skiing in North America. As the executive director of the Loppet Foundation, I led the efforts to bring a World Cup to the United States in 2020 – which would have been the first time the U.S. hosted a World Cup in nineteen years. And, in doing so, I became more than a little familiar with the inner-workings of FIS.
All that said, I am not a high-level coach. I am not a technical delegate. I do not work for or represent a national governing body, like US Ski & Snowboard. However, I am not sure that these are deficits. To the contrary, I think that you may have to be “neutral” in order to have an opinion that is not burdened by the lenses of self-interest or “how things have always been done.”
And that gets me to my first, and most important, opinion/recommendation. Right now FIS is, as its name indicates, a true federation. Now there is nothing necessarily wrong with federations. The United States is a federation, as are many other successful countries. (I am not intending to make a political point here – whether you like the United States or not, it has endured for more than 200 years now . . .) But FIS runs more like the US confederation that operated before the United States Constitution was ratified. No strong leader, no president. No taxing authority. Mostly a debating society. In the United States, we replaced the articles of confederation with the Constitution because we recognized that we needed stronger centralized leadership in order to have a strong and effective country.
Like the early confederation in the United States, FIS has no strong leader. Decisions are made by consensus at bi-annual conferences. While there is a limited central staff, the staff takes direction exclusively from the confederation. The result? In my estimation there is no real leadership. No strong sense of direction. Not a lot of vision. Mostly an organization run on the principle of “this is how we’ve always done it . . .”
Compare this model to other, more successful, commercial sport enterprises. The National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and Major League Baseball are all led by a strong central leader – who creates a vision and has the authority to make that vision into reality. Certainly if your goal is to have as much “democracy” as possible, this is not the way to go. But if your goal is to grow your sport, if your goal is to grow your audience and your commercial success, if your goal is to help support athletes and coaches and to professionalize the sport, then, like the early United States, it might be a good idea to re-think the confederation approach. Indeed, it might be a good idea to find a strong visionary leader and give that leader the authority they would need in order to make their vision a reality.
Note that this argument does not depend upon the vision of the leader. My sense is that any vision would be better than the – in my eyes – bureaucratic and ministerial direction of the current FIS. In my experience, the strongest opinions promulgated in the current FIS framework invariably come from the technical delegate class; those in charge of creating and perpetuating the rules and regulations of the sport. These are important people; but as a class I’m not sure they are the right people to create the vision upon which a sport can grow and succeed. In my eyes, replacing this framework with a strong central visionary leader – whatever their vision may be – is critical to any idea of growth in our sport.
That said, I do have a few particular ideas on the direction cross country skiing should go. Let’s look at the Tour de France – a sport that might be the best analogue to cross country. It is not the NFL. But if cross country was even a tenth as popular as the Tour de France we would be very happy.
So what are some attributes of the Tour de France? Today’s Tour is built for television. There is tremendous variability in the stages of the Tour – with flat stages, and hilly stages, mountainous stages, time trials, and team time trials. The spectators have amazing access to the athletes – with spectators literally crowding the athletes as they pedal along various roads. The stages of the Tour are focused over a concentrated 23 or 24 day period. The teams really matter in the tour – with teamwork and team tactics of paramount importance in most stages. While there are convoluted secondary awards (King of the Mountain, Best Young Rider, etc.), the overall champion is crowned based on a relatively simple criteria – accumulated time.
Another element that is somewhat invisible but actually quite critical: safety and fairness are not the paramount concerns of the Tour. If they were, each rider would start separately each day, there would be no drafting allowed, and the victor of each stage would be determined solely by the speed and power of the athletes – with much less opportunity for elbowing, crashing, drafting, breaking away while your opponent is “napping,” etc.
What lessons might we take from the Tour de France? In my eyes there are many. Let’s start with the variability of the courses. In the cross country world “homologation” means that virtually all courses – with the exception of city sprints – are incredibly difficult, oriented almost exclusively to the climbers. Those with huge VO2 maxes, or, on the women’s side especially, those with almost zero body fat, are almost pre-destined to win. This leads to very predictable results. Distance specialists win the distance events, and sprinters win the sprints. There are virtually no analogues to the typical Tour de France day – a long flattish ride with a big sprint at the end.
And why not?
Fairness. “It would not be fair to the athletes to have a flattish course. The best athlete might not win.”
Safety. “Skiers could get tangled in a big messy sprint.”
It’s not clear to me that either of these concerns is significant enough to outweigh the idea of taking a long look at change for the sake of growing the audience and the sport..
If fairness was truly a big concern in the cross country ski world we would regulate the waxing of skis. All skiers would be required to ski on the same wax so that there would be no advantage for athletes whose teams have more funding. Regardless, too much emphasis on fairness is the enemy of growth in sport. The reality is the average fan wants some randomness – that’s what makes sport interesting: the balance between strength and endurance and a lucky break or a random occurrence. Without a little luck, the competitions can feel pre-ordained. Just look at distance races with Therese Johaug over the last few years. Yes, there is the occasional exception – but basically she just won all of the distance races by a mostly comfortable margin.
Without sounding too callous, I would venture to say that safety should not be an overwhelming concern in cross country skiing. Yes, I guess it is possible that skiers could hurt themselves. Maybe a sprained ankle. Or a scrape on the snow or ice. Maybe, under extreme circumstances, there might be an occasional concussion. But I think it is fair to say that overall cross country skiing is a pretty safe sport – even if skiers are on the trail jostling together. Now I’m not suggesting we intentionally make the sport more dangerous. I just don’t think that safety is a real significant argument against flatter courses, where all the skiers are jostling for position and can become entangled. If, as I suspect, more races like that mean more people watching, I say let’s go for it.
What other lessons can we learn from the Tour de France? I think the cumulative nature of the races – and the concentration of the races in a short period of time – are key to the success of the Tour. Drama builds up over time, with viewers not wanting to miss a day lest they miss an important development in the standings. Of course, cross country has an analogue – the Tour de Ski – which is, as I understand it, by far the most watched part of the season.
Why not expand on this concept? Instead of 15 separate weekends, with separate races – which are mostly just a re-run of all the other weekends – focus on two or three tours – like the Giro de Italia, the Tour de France, and the Vuelta a Espana. Hopefully make one big tour – say the Tour de Scandinavia – last upwards of 20 days, and contain a big variety of courses: some flat, some long and flat, some hilly, etc. Really, the Tour de Ski is on the right track, but there is not enough variability in the courses, the courses are in general too short, there are too many break days, and the Tour de Ski does not last long enough.
Probably one of the main objections to this idea would be that it would be difficult for the athletes. Admittedly this would be challenging. But in my mind that is actually the point. That is one of the central features that makes the Tour de France interesting. The point is not to be the fastest on day one. The point is to last through the whole Tour – and emerge as the best at the end. That is interesting. And that is how athletes will end up better compensated. Because if, indeed, a larger Tour like this gains more traction with the viewing public, that will mean more sponsorship and, ultimately, more funding and recognition for the athletes. In the end, I don’t hear Tour de France riders calling for a shorter and less grueling Tour . . . because they like the spotlight and the paychecks.
A corollary of this idea . . . don’t worry so much about the specifications of the courses. The roads used for the Tour de France were not constructed to be perfect for bicycle races. But they do just fine. And, in fact, the variability in the courses makes the races interesting – by adding an element beyond sheer aerobic ability. Scandinavia has ski trails winding between towns. Use those trails. Too narrow? Great; that just makes for more interesting tactics. Off camber? Do we really care? Again, more interesting. “This athlete just can’t handle variability.” Maybe the Russians are tough enough to deal with undulating courses. Maybe the Norwegians are primadonnas. I don’t know. But I think that the viewing public will thoroughly enjoy drama like that.
A footnote here. Bring the races to the spectators. Have the courses follow some streets right through town. Too narrow and too difficult of a corner? Too much opportunity for a fan to become entangled with an athlete? Take the risks. They are not that big. The consequences are minimal. And the opportunity is to actually grow the sport and generate fan support!
Okay, real sacrilege here: I would dump the sprint concept as it exists today. It’s just too sanitized. Just six athletes racing at a time. By creating longer flatter courses you will generate sprint specialists and you will have more interesting – no holds barred mass – sprints than the over-civilized-races-that-feel-like-repeats that we have now. And sprints as they are now don’t really work with a Tour de France-like format because all the times are essentially the same; you end up having to award time bonuses that make the overall competition too difficult for the average fan to understand.
Here’s an easy one. Eliminate almost all of the individual start races. Boring – with a capital B! I’m not even going to include much of the reasoning here. It is just too obvious that these have to go if you have any interest in growing the popularity of our sport . . .
Quick note on classical and skate style skiing. My sense is that it can be generally good for the sport to have two different disciplines. This gives us one more thing to talk about. It helps avoid the Johaug Effect (when one individual dominates everything). But enough with the technique zones and endless nitpicking about pole length and diagonal stride. If someone wants to double pole everything, great. Who cares? Not the viewing public!
I could go on. But the point is not to offer a complete formula for re-shaping and growing our sport. The point is to start a conversation and to demonstrate that there are lots of directions that we can go – all of which would require real vision to get there.
Quick summary: Acknowledge that cross country is, at best, stuck in a rut, and re-structure FIS (or start a new organization?) with a centralized visionary leader. Think about emulating successful analogues to our sport – like cycling and the Tour de France. Turn our decision-making on its head, so that it is driven by what will be interesting to watch rather than by concerns of fairness and safety. Ditch the weekend-by-weekend and race-by-individual-race format, and focus instead on longer cumulative tours. Make the courses much more variable in both distance, difficulty, terrain, width, and interest – with much more emphasis on some flatter courses. Ditch sprints and individual start races.
Focus on decision-making structures and lenses that are focused on helping our sport grow.
Now, on your mark, get set, start debating . . .
John Munger is an independent business consultant. He started the Loppet Foundation in 2002 and ran the organization as its first executive director from 2005 to 2020. The organization was within a week of running the first World Cup on US snow since 2001 when the world had to shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. These days John devotes his time to helping individuals and organizations reimagine themselves in order to reach their business goals. You can reach John at john@mungerconsultingservices.com.
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