Alright, winter is officially here.
Fresh snow. Fresh grooming reports. A few Ffesh scratches on fresh grinds.
And speaking of fresh, I gave myself a fresh start on the running front, with eyes set towards 2025 summer FKTs and another go at various uphill races.
But that’s a ways away. Right now, we’re just a few weeks away from the opening World Cup and I feel like I’m starting to drink from the firehose of ski news.
We’ve got NCAA and USCSA previews hot off the press (and more coming). Plus, I got a pretty important scoop last Thursday:
FIS TV presents new, centralized viewing vision
Changes are a comin’.
Seder-Skier.com reported last month that skiandsnowboard.live will still be the place for North American ski fans to watch the World Cup this winter — albeit with a small twist.
Last year, English-speaking ski enthusiasts had two options for taking in cross-country ski races. Most North Americans drifted towards the skiandsnowboard.live commentary team of Chad Salmela and Kikkan Randall or individual voices in Ryan Sederquist and Andrew Kastning. Meanwhile, ‘dark markets’ — countries currently without a rights deal in place (Australia, New Zealand and Middle Eastern countries for the most part) — tuned into Simon Goulding, David Goldstrom, Richard Drew, Ian Woods and Patrick Winterton on FIS TV.
On Thursday, Nick Fellows, Director of FIS TV, confirmed the consolidation of the English commentary teams — which will be simultaneously broadcast on skiandsnowboard.live and FIS TV — and also laid out the International Ski Federation’s (FIS) long term vision to enhance viewer experience and globally grow the sport.
“The first stepping stone to achieving that goal,” he said. “Is making sure you can watch (events) anyplace, any time.”
Missing the moment
Fellows said he’s felt the pain — and read the letters — of Canadian fans unable to watch their winter sports heroes win world championship medals.
“They can’t see it live on the TV,” Fellows said. “And to me and our president, that is not right. That’s wrong.”
How does such injustice occur?
Broadcast rights are bought in a bundle, Fellows explained. That means, while networks might play the Ruka opener and a major Nordic event, like the Tour de Ski or World Championships, they’ll occasionally swap out an obscure World Cup weekend for a more viewer-friendly soccer match or football game. When NBC is put in a pinch — like choosing between a Duke-UNC March Madness matchup and the 50k at Holmenkollen — they opt to show the money-making major sports.
“We understand that broadcasters have so many sports that they’re trying to squish into this weekend that some of our smaller winter sports get pushed out,” Fellows said. “And therefore, we want a platform to make sure that winter sports fans never lose and we want to develop a team of commentators that will develop and grow with us.”
The aim of FIS TV is to make sure viewers never miss a moment, Fellows said.
“If you can’t find it on Peacock, or if you can’t find it on Norwegian TV, you know that in an English language, it will always be available on FIS TV,” he stated.
Basically, if a subscription service doesn’t show an event in its entirety — or at all — it could be found for free on FIS TV. (On the flip side, if it is on the original platform in its entirety, it wouldn’t be on FIS TV). Fellows hopes to roll out this ‘use it or lose it’ plan in full in the next couple seasons.
“Certainly after the Milan Olympics,” he assured.
“It’s a simple tweak of a deal that nobody really has a problem with,” he continued. “And so therefore, what we are developing is to make sure that when that process comes into play — I’d say 2027 — FIS TV is ready with good commentators, good knowledge and a good plan to make sure we can service every one of our 15 disciplines within the FIS family.”
The 2024-2025 season will act as a soft launch. Fellows and his team have touched base with all of the skiandsnowboard.live voices and plan to book commentary talent on a month-by-month basis. Thanks to additional financial support from U.S. Ski and Snowboard, Randall and Salmela will appear as a play-by-play and color commentary duo. Kastning and Sederquist will still be solo acts.
“We’re going to see how it goes this season and then either amalgamate skiandsnowboard.live into FIS TV or keep them running separately until the time is right.”
FIS TV won’t compete with NBC, Norwegian networks or any other channel. The free nature of the site means it won’t act as a profit center for the governing body, either, Fellows said.
“It’s there as a service to make sure fans can follow the whole season and that events don’t get left off,” he added.
The move could help preserve sports like Nordic Combined.
“People at the IOC think, ‘well, you can’t even watch this anywhere, so it’s not going to be a problem if we drop it from the Olympic program,’” Fellows said.
In order to grow all the FIS disciplines, Fellows knows it’s essential to cater to the current crop of fans. That means splicing up clips for athletes’ Instagram and TikTok profiles and creating highlight packages for Youtube.
“Behind FIS TV — and it’s getting bigger and better figures at the moment — is a full digital program that breaks it all down into a three-minute clip, a one-minute clip, a ‘wow factor clip’…all trying to maintain interest, which will hopefully draw people in to watch a full 50k or 10k,” he said. “This is sort of the start of that process.”
“We are developing the sport all of the time,” Fellows concluded. “But if you think you’ve got a couple of magic answers, we’re all ears. Send it in.”
Did you catch our latest podcast?
Emails from the week
***send us a story, hot take, special training insight, reaction to a podcast/story/whatever at sederskier@gmail.com
Hi Ryan,
Hope you’re doing well. Just thought I’d forward along some info you might find interesting. Gunde Svan’s son Ferry is an elite timbersports athlete (yes, that’s a thing). Ferry was apparently a talented skier when he was young but decided to not pursue it as seriously and ended up choosing timbersports instead. There was recently a documentary released about him: https://youtu.be/gkUoGomfhrw?si=_hQTznZqqZSNcGuV
It has a look into the life of Gunde Svan’s son and the family dynamic if you’re interested. Here’s some sections you might want to look at:
8:50 – 13:25 – growing up in the Svan household
24:55 – Gunde getting emotional thinking about his son’s achievements
41:24 – 49:12 – Gunde’s training philosophy that has been applied to his son’s training
46:15 Footage of Ferry rollerskiing
Just interesting to think about what would have happened if he had kept pursuing skiing instead of timber sports. It’s also cool to see how committed, supportive, and emotional both his parents are when it comes to his pursuit of this sport despite its obscurity and how different it is to cross country skiing. Lastly, I don’t know how I only realized now that Linn Svahn isn’t related to Gunde Svan. You would think the difference in spelling would’ve given it away.
Anyway, not sure if any of this is relevant to cover on the podcast but it’s one of those things that you otherwise may not have heard about.
Thanks for reading,
Leif
Leif – Thanks for sharing! This is definitely going into the weekly wax!
Warmest regards,
Ryan
Below is an email in response to our recent post “My shoulder season skiing secret”
This sparks so many fond memories of my first cross-country ski outings with Harrison . . . One great skier and coach I know had impressed upon me the importance of getting kids on skis at an early age. The theory being that connecting neuro-muscular pathways early on would train them for life. He had his kids skiing on the carpet in the living room as soon as they were walking. That seemed a bit extreme to me. Besides, the living room in our plus-sized tiny home is so small even a child could not turn around on skis. Here in Westcliffe we don’t have reliable snow like Leadville but we do have two small parks where it doesn’t take a lot of snow to cover the grass. I would take Harrison after school to one of these big lawns when it snowed. Often the most difficult part was getting the boots and skis on in the cold. I would give him a few pointers then leave him to his own designs while I skied loops around the park. It was a great way to let him learn balance and movement on his own while I could ski. Also he is a visual learner so I’m sure he picked up some technique (maybe not all of that was perfect
)) But I was typically able to ski 3-5K in circles while he played on his skis
-Hal Walter
(Hal Walter is a world champion pack-burro race and writer. He’s the author of ‘Wild Burro Tales: 30 years of Haulin’ Ass,’ ‘Full Tilt Boogie: A Journey into Autism, Fatherhood and en epic test of Man andBeast,’ and ‘Endurance: and selected essays on autism,neurodiversity and deep sport.’ He also coauthored “American’s Ultimate Challenge: The Pikes Peak Marathon” with Harald Fricker in 1995….his current writing projects can be found on his substack page. )
Hal –
First of all – I’m honored that you arrived at my site! We need to have you on the show at some point! Second, what beautiful memories. I know many of our readers will appreciate your email. Thanks for sharing! See you at City on a Hill or running up 7th street soon, I’m sure!
Warmest regards,
Ryan
Stories I wrote that you probably should read
Some final thoughts…
Did you see this event? It’s called “Last Nordic Skier Standing.”
Jan. 31-Feb. 2 (I guess Alley Loopers are out of luck) at Jackson XC Nordic Center.
From the site: ~5.75mi, warm-up 1k lap to start each lap. We will evaluate what the proper course length should be as we approach the event date. The goal is to have the lap take 50 minutes for the average skier, allowing plenty of interloopal time for self-care. The concept is simple, participants must complete one lap on the course within an hour. They can’t start the next lap until the next hour and the event is over when there’s only one person left.
Seder-Skier.com 
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