2024-25 Preview Part 3: Breakthrough and Age Analysis

Breakthrough Potential

In Part 3, I will be going over the skiers most likely to breakthrough this year, give an age analysis of the field, and predict what it will take for Klæbo to lose the overall World Cup.

By breakthrough I mean people who score more than 50% of the the maximum possible World Cup points in a given season. Since 2002, this has only been done by 41 men and 62 women. For this analysis, I looked at the characteristics (age, experience, Elos, etc.) of all skiers who broke that 50% barrier for the first time in their career, and then created a model to apply to the current skiers who have not accomplished the feat. Here are some of the top contenders.

Men

William Poromaa (SWE)

Poromaa always seems to be knocking on the door of a breakthrough, so this shouldn’t be too surprising. At 23 years, Poromaa has been consistently near – but never at – the top. 2023-24 didn’t see the gains one would hope for after a World Championship 50km podium in 2023. However, if his distance skiing improves again and he can consistently make the heats for sprinting, Poromaa has a solid chance of breaking into the upper echelons of the sport.

Ben Ogden (USA)

Ogden, 24, seemed destined for a breakthrough in 2023-24 after winning the U-23 title in 2022-23, and an 8th overall finish in the Overall World Cup. At times, it seemed likely he would too, with his first ever podium finish at a Tour de Ski sprint stage. However, a Mononucleosis bout finished his season early and killed any chance of being near the top of the standings. Like many good overall skiers, Ogden is good at both distance and sprint. His distance freestyle racing needs to improve if he wants to shore up any shortcomings.

Edvin Anger (SWE)

Anger, winner of the U-23 in 2023-24, is built much more like sprint specialist Lucas Chanavat than any hybrid skier. Despite this, his distance skiing showed much improvement last season. Look for continued progress in distance this upcoming season and the major boost in points that comes with it. One thing that will always hurt his chances of being at the top of the overall is his size and the implications it has in the Tour de Ski overall. On the Alpe Cermis he finished 49th, nearly 5 minutes behind the stage winner. With so many World Cup points riding on the Tour de Ski with the time of the final stage being so significant, it will be difficult for Anger to bank enough points to clear that hurdle.

Friedrich Moch (GER)

Moch has shown significant progress each season since 2021 and at 24 years old has a lot of career remaining. The pros for Moch is his distance skiing (especially the final stage of the Tour de Ski), and that he is German (meaning he gets all the World Cup starts he wants). The cons are that he can’t sprint, and that usually does not improve much with age. I’d expect to continue to see Moch near the top of the distance standings, but never in podium contention for the overall.

Honorable Mentions

Michal Novak, Hugo Lapalus, Gus Schumacher, Jules Chappaz

Ladies

Johanna Matintalo (FIN)

To be frank, there are not any women who have a significant chance at breaking out this season. All of the top women have already made the 50% mark and the remaining ones either are not good at any one discipline to get enough points consistently, or are too one dimensional to have a shot. However, of these skiers, Johanna Matintalo has the highest statistical likelihood. Although at 27 years old, Matintalo is the only over-25 skier I’ve listed, her classic skiing is so strong that any improvements to her distance freestyle give her a shot at being near the top of the leaderboard. Matintalo has three podiums in her career, two sprint classics, and one distance classic. At the end of last season, she had a 12th position in a distance freestyle race, a lifetime best by quite a margin. If she can consistently finish around there or better, she may find herself near the likes of teammate Kerttu Niskanen.

Margrethe Bergane (NOR)

Bergane was the U-23 champion last year. Currently, her distance skiing is not where it needs to be to compensate for her poor sprinting to compete for a Tour de Ski podium, something needed to land near the top of the overall standings for a distance specialist. Bergane races in the Johaug style of pushing from the front, but without the ability of Johaug to make uncoverable gaps on the field. With Johaug back in the fold, mass starts have changed and may favor the likes of Bergane to find herself near the front of a strung out field and not have to contend at the end with a subpar sprint. I think she is still a couple years from a breakout season, but look for Bergane to move up the distance standings again this season.

Kristin Austgulen Fosnæes (NOR)

Fosnæs had a solid season in 2023-24 and is the closest thing Norway has to an all-arounder for their younger women. By virtue of competing in both distance and sprint, Fosnæs has an advantage of gathering points. However, her ability must improve by a significant margin if she wants to compete consistently with the top-10 pack.

Honorable Mentions

Laura Gimmler, Teresa Stadlober

Age and Season Predictions

Age as a variable is much better at giving adjustments after the model has been calculated than it is as an independent variable in the model. I wanted to examine what the results would look like if each skier progresses like someone for their age normally would in Elo scores from one season to the next. For men, skiers peak around 28/29 with sprint peak coming about one year earlier than distance peak. For women, the peak is around the same time, however, sprint peak comes around 27 and distance peak around 30.

Men

Klæbo is such an outlier that it’s reasonable to ignore his results. In terms of improvement, Ogden and Anger look to gain significantly, largely due to developing distance prowess. On the other hand, Pål Golberg and Calle Halfvarsson may not be as sharp on the sprinting side causing them to slip in the standings.

Ladies

This may be the season of utter Swedish domination. Development of distance skiing for Karlsson, Sundling, and Svahn will make it super tough for Diggins to bank points in those events. Victoria Carl also stands to gain a lot from the fact that Distance Freestyle usually continues to improve for women into her early 30s. Since that has been a growing part of her arsenal, points there could lead her to contend for the podium.

Therese Johaug

Therese Johaug is by far the most interesting case of the season. She hasn’t raced in two years, and no one knows how much she will race. However, let’s assume that she races like a normal athlete would of her caliber and that her performance deteriorates like someone who normally would from ages 34 to 36, here is what we get. Please note that the Predicted Points for 2022 is what she actually got. However, as you can imagine she skipped many races in 2022, including the Tour de Ski.

As we can tell from the table, there is a steady decline expected across the Distance Elo scores. The graph also shows that if Andersson and Karlsson progress like most do for their ages, Johaug is in trouble. However, if they all stay steady from their 2024 levels, 2025 Therese Johaug is still the best in the world, albeit, by a smaller margin than it was in 2022.

So what would it take for Klaebo to lose?

Clearly Klaebo is the best skier in the world. He has the highest Elo scores in everything except for distance freestyle, and even his performance there is improving, and will likely improve as he ages. The only way he loses the World Cup is if his form fails to hold like it has for the past 5 years, if another skier improves a ton, or if he has to miss a lot of races like he did last year due to illness or injury. To answer this question, I pulled from my race predictions work and ran simulations from his predicted race score for different types of races. So using the schedule from this year we get the following. The Klaebo with TDS column assumes he does the Tour de Ski. The other column assumes he skips it. For example if he skips the Tour de Ski, he has to miss just 2 random races more than Amundsen or Valnes to be favored over them in the overall World Cup.

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