Nordic Nation: All Criteria Considered with Grover and Kaeding

In late August, U.S. Ski Team (USST) Head Coach Chris Grover broke his own news, releasing three new sets of criteria on behalf of U.S. Ski & Snowboard, the national governing body for cross-country skiing. The three separate documents discussed by Grover and linked in his blog disclosed the selection criteria for World Cup and World Cup Period 1 team selection,  2019 World Ski Championships (WSC) in Seefeld, Austria, and the 2019/2020 national team.
U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover (front) with (from left to right) Simi Hamilton, Paddy Caldwell, Erik Bjornsen, and Ian Torchia on top of the Roc Cornafion above Villard-de-Lans, France, during a training camp this summer. (Photo: Chris Grover)
Grover and new USST development coach Gus Kaeding spoke with FasterSkier for its podcast on Sept. 11 to highlight some of the updated criteria and provide context for the modifications.
(A lightly edited conversation with Grover and Kaeding is available on the Nordic Nation podcast. Warning: you may want to time your listening for a 1.5-hour road trip or dish duty after a crowded dinner party. It’s a lengthy discussion.)
New U.S. Cross Country Development Coach Gus Kaeding. (Photo: Sarah Brunson/U.S. Ski & Snowboard)
World Cup Selection Criteria
Considering World Cup Period 1 starts, Grover stated in the following interview and in accordance with the selection criteria, the discretionary picks were made in consult with a larger working group. That group is comprised of four national-team staff coaches — Grover, Matt Whitcomb, Jason Cork, and Kaeding — as well as Dakota Blackhorse-von Jess (athlete rep), August Teague (chair of the cross-country coaches sub-committee), and eight senior club coaches: Chris Mallory (Sun Valley Gold Team), Erik Flora (Alaska Pacific University), Joe Haggenmiller (Central Cross Country), Pepa Miloucheva (Craftsbury Green Racing Project), Austin Caldwell (formerly of the Bridger Ski Foundation, now assisting the University of Colorado-Boulder Ski Team), Dragan Danevski (BSF), Pat O’Brien (Stratton Mountain School T2 Team), and Dan Weiland (Ski Club Vail).
According to Grover, this 14-person working group was tasked with helping develop WSC and World Cup selection criteria. Further, this group, which again includes the four USST staff coaches, remains responsible for nominating the discretionary picks for each World Cup period this season.
Once those World Cup Period 1 nominations were made, they were sent to a three-person discretionary selection review group with the authority to approve or disapprove those nominations.
The language in the World Cup selection criteria, as it refers to this smaller group, reads as follows: “All discretionary selections will be reviewed by a discretionary selection review group comprised of the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Nordic Program Manager, the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Chief of Sport, and the athlete representative from that sport who is a member of the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Board. If the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Board Athlete Representative is also a currently competing athlete then another athlete, who is not actively competing, will be selected by the Athletes’ Council to be the representative in this group.”  
In a follow-up email, Grover clarified who serves on the discretionary selection review group. “This would normally be Bryan Fish, Luke Bodensteiner, and Rosie Brennan. Because Rosie is an active athlete, Dakota has replaced her,” Grover explained.
The other changes to World Cup selection that Grover cited in his original blog post are as follows and discussed in the podcast:

The standard by which men advance from one World Cup period to the next from top 30 to top 40 to reflect the greater depth in the men’s WC field.
Addition of SuperTour leaders as guaranteed starts to the Tour de Ski.
Addition of language to the past criteria for selecting a World Cup Finals team in Quebec City, including:

Top-30 individual performance at the Seefeld World Champs (the previous standard was top 25).
Created a best 11 of 14 SuperTour results selection to round out the World Cup Finals team, to encourage athletes to continue to race in Europe mid-season, rather than feeling the need to attend every SuperTour competition.



World Ski Championships Criteria
Come late February, the World Championships begin. In a personal blog published on FasterSkier, Grover noted the key changes to the current WSC selection criteria.
The World Cup remains the most direct path to meeting objective criteria for WSC team nomination.
Discretionary selection is divided into two phases: Phase 1 and Phase 2. The phases refer to the use of coaches’ discretion once ...