January 04, 2026
Welcome back to The Ski Saga, where the snow is firm, the opinions are firmer, and the rulebook is apparently printed on a moving treadmill.
Over at the Tour de Ski’s pursuit stage, Norway’s sprint comet Kristine Stavås Skistad discovered a timeless truth: if you poke the bear, the bear will ask you to please stop double-poling in the no-pole zone. Another yellow card followed, which means she’s now one stern glance away from disqualification. She says officials are “out to get” her; officials say they’re just out to get… the rules followed. Either way, it’s getting spicy enough to melt klister.
Meanwhile, the Tour has turned into a polite parade of strategic exits. Norway’s Erik Valnes pulled the plug because he’s tired and not recovered the kind of honesty that makes you want to hand him a blanket and a cup of something warm: Valnes pulls out of the rest of Tour de Ski. Germany’s Coletta Rydzek also stepped off early for the most Nordic ailment imaginable: a “dry throat”. If you’ve ever lived through January, you know this is either nothing at all… or the opening scene of a three-week cold.
In ski jumping, the Four Hills Tournament is having one of those years where the drama tries to qualify for the second round. Expert Sven Hannawald wants the officials to keep tossing people out “until the last one realises the cheating is over,” which is a sentence that sounds harsh until you remember it’s being said about fabric and millimeters: Hannawald’s midterm assessment. And yes, the equipment gossip is bubbling including a fresh round of side-eye about bindings and who’s “hiding it”: a new Four Hills scandal.
Still, not all of it is scandal and sniffles. Germany’s Felix Hoffmann is quietly becoming the kind of hopeful who makes a whole country start speaking in careful, superstitious sentences “if he just keeps doing exactly what he’s doing and no one mentions it”: what makes Hoffmann tick. And veteran Karl Geiger is giving the most bracingly honest self-review in sports essentially, “I’d like the Olympics, but I’ve seen me jump lately”: Geiger criticises his form and Olympic chances.
So that’s the week: the Tour de Ski is thinning out like a wool sock in a hot wash, Four Hills is measuring everything that doesn’t run away fast enough, and somewhere in Val di Fiemme the live tickers are warming up their typing fingers: women’s sprint classic live ticker and men’s sprint classic live ticker. If you need me, I’ll be practicing diagonal stride in a clearly marked diagonal-stride zone.