PyeongChang 2018

• Four different women have podiumed in the 2017-18 season, including sprint podiums from Sophie Caldwell, Kikkan Randal and Sadie Bjornsen. Jessie Diggins podiumed in the Tour de Ski.
  
  

• Jessie Diggins leads the U.S. team with 11 world cup podiums and four world championship medals. She’s also the team choreographer, designing the dance moves that have led the cross country team to create viral videos year after year.

• Simi Hamilton continues to lead the U.S. men, scoring two sprint podiums in 2016 and another in 2017. Newell remains a threat in sprint with Erik Bjornsen—Sadie Bjornsen’s brother—making waves as a top distance skier.
  
  

• Veteran Kikkan Randall scored her first podium in December after giving birth to her first child. The most decorated skier on the U.S. cross-country ski team, Randall has been to four Olympics, has three overall world cup sprint titles and three world championship medals.
  
  

• The team features three sibling pairs - Erik and Sadie Bjornsen, Scott and Caitlin Patterson, and Logan and Reese Hanneman, plus a pair of cousins in Sophie and Patrick (Paddy) Caldwell.

Erik Bjornsen
Since his world cup debut in 2013, Bjornsen (Winthrop, Washington) has established himself as a consistent top sprint finisher and a very capable mid-distance racer who is at home with both classic and freestyle technique. In his Olympic debut in 2014, he combined with teammate Simi Hamilton to finish an impressive sixth in the classic team sprint. His sister Sadie Bjornsen is also on the U.S. Ski Team.

Sadie Bjornsen
Bjornsen (Winthrop, Washington) came out of the cross-country rich Methow Valley in Washington. In her first major international championship event in 2011, she teamed with Kikkan Randall for a top-10 classic team sprint finish at world championships. The next season, she and Randall teamed up for a freestyle team sprint world cup podium. Since then she has established herself as one of the most consistent performers in both freestyle and classic technique with more than 20 top-10 world cup finishes, breaking through on the 2017 Tour de Ski with her first podium finish and then winning her first world championship medal with teammate Jessie Diggins in 2017. This season, she has had three podium finishes and has been a vital member of the U.S. women's three world cup podium relay teams, skiing a classic leg. Her brother Erik Bjornsen is also on the U.S. Ski Team.

Sophie Caldwell
Descended from one of America's foremost cross-country ski racing families, Caldwell (Peru, Vermont) recorded the best American women's Olympic finish with her sixth-place performance at the Sochi 2014 Olympics in the freestyle sprint. She came back two years later to record a classic sprint stage win in the Tour de Ski. She has a strong history of top-10 world cup sprint finishes in both freestyle and classic technique and has logged two podiums in 2018 in the freestyle sprint.

Jessie Diggins
Diggins (Afton, Minnesota) came out of a somewhat untraditional ski racing background as a successful high school racer. Since finding her way to the international tour, she has raised eyebrows with her outstanding results. In 2013, she teamed with Kikkan Randall to win the freestyle team sprint gold medal at the world championships in Italy. At the world championships in 2015, she won silver in the 10-kilometer freestyle. And at the world championships in 2017, she captured two medals – a silver in the sprint and a bronze in the team sprint. She won stages at the Tour de Ski in both 2016 and 2017, and set the U.S. record of third with her 2018 tour ranking. She also finished 6^th in the season-long FIS Cross-Country World Cup in 2017, matching the American mark set by Kikkan Randall.

Simi Hamilton
Hamilton (Aspen, Colorado) made his mark with a surprise win in a Tour de Ski freestyle sprint in 2013. At Sochi 2014, he and Erik Bjornsen combined to finish sixth in the classic team sprint. Since 2014, he’s added three sprint podiums to his resume.

Andy Newell
A three-time Olympian and five-time world championship team member, Newell (Shaftsbury, Vermont) has played a pivotal role in the growth of the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team over the past decade. His 2006 freestyle sprint podium in China was the first for an American man in more than 20 years. With three world cup podiums and more than 40 top-10 finishes, he will be looking a strong finish in his fifth Olympics.

Kikkan Randall 
Team USA’s first modern day cross-country star, Randall (Anchorage, Alaska) made her Olympic debut at Salt Lake 2002. Since then, she has transformed the sport and inspired a generation of cross-country ski racers. In 2012, she became the first American woman in nearly 30 years to win a world cup title – finishing first in the sprint and fifth overall – and went on to win three season-long world cup sprint titles. She was also the first American woman to have success in the Tour de Ski. She took the 2016 season off for the birth of her and husband Jeff Ellis' first child, a son named Breck. She rejoined the world cup tour for 2017 and posted strong results in the January 2017 Tour de Ski before capping off her comeback by winning her third world championship medal in the sprint.  She has one podium in 2018 in a freestyle sprint and looks forward to a strong performance in PyeongChang.

Ida Sargent 
An Olympian and three-time world championship team member, Ida Sargent (Orleans, Vermont) has been a strong and consistent performer in sprint and distance. Since her debut on the world cup for the 2011 season, she has recorded over 20 top-10 world cup finishes in both classic and freestyle technique and podiumed at the classic sprint test event in PyeongChang in 2017.  She recently teamed up with Sophie Caldwell in a podium performance in a team freestyle sprint in 2018.

Liz Stephen
A successful veteran and three-time Olympian, Liz Stephen (East Montpelier, Vermont) has made her mark in distance racing, becoming one of the most successful American athletes on the Tour de Ski. Four times she has finished second in the final Tour de Ski hill climb up Alpe Cermis. In 2015, she finished fifth overall in the Tour de Ski.  She has collected nearly 30 top-10 world cup finishes – including placing second in a 10-kilometer freestyle in Rybinsk, Russia, in 2015, and at the Olympic test event skiathlon in 2017 – and has skied a critical freestyle leg in the Team USA’s four world cup team event podiums in the last few years.

The Olympic selection procedure for cross-country skiing was approved by the U.S. Ski & Snowboard board of directors and the U.S. Olympic Committee in the summer of 2017. Criteria includes selection from world cup results during the Olympic season of 2017-18 along with race finishes on the U.S. Ski & Snowboard SuperTour and at the 2018 U.S. Cross-Country Ski Championships.

Click here to view the U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s 2018 Olympic selection criteria.

Editor’s Note: This selection process overview is designed to provide general information only. The selection process is formally governed by selection procedures published by each National Governing Body.