The American Gus Schumacher surprisingly won the brand new format in the mass start over five kilometers in freestyle at the Tour de Ski in Toblach. The Norwegians surprisingly lagged behind on New Year’s Eve (December 31, 2025).
The Austrian Benjamin Moser took second place behind Schumacher, followed by the first Norwegian, Lars Heggen. Little went for the Germans in Toblach: Janosch Brugger ended up as the best of the DSV quartet in 27th place, ten places behind Florian Notz in the rankings.
National coach Peter Schlickenrieder said on ZDF: “It was a very fast format, I saw more light than shadow, our runners behaved well tactically. But the format ultimately didn’t play into our hands.”
For the first time in the new Heat format
The heat mass start was held for the first time as part of this Tour de Ski. In this new format, the total of 102 starters were divided into four groups (heats), each of which ran its own mass start with 25 or 26 participants. The groups were mixed and not sorted according to performance, so that there were strong and less strong runners in each heat. The winner was the athlete with the fastest time of all four runs, so the trick was not only to be at the front in your own heat, but also to ensure that your own race was faster than the other three.
The two Norwegians Harald Oestberg Amundsen and Emil Iversen had a lot of steam in the first of the four mass start groups. The Canadian Thomas Stephen also took on a lot of leadership work. Amundsen and Stephen then ran out of steam, and on the home straight Iversen and his compatriot Andreas Fjorden Ree arrived almost at the same time – but in the photo finish, Iversein had the ski tip in front. The first benchmark times that the two set were enormous: 9:42.5 and 9:42.6 minutes – both of which were faster than a 30 km/h average.
The second run started a little slower, but really got going in the last third. At speeds of around 75 km/h, the athletes raced down the slope with one kilometer to go. And because there was a group at the front that worked very harmoniously across countries, the running time in the end was even faster than in the previous heat: The American Gus Schumacher ran the top time in the end in 9:35.4, just ahead of the Austrian Benajmin Moser, who even kept the Norwegian Emil Heggen in check.
Everyone relies on Klaebo – but he’s behind
The danger of this new format became apparent in the third run. The race started at a vigorous pace, but in the end there was too much tactics. The field relied on the tractor and World Cup frontman Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, who then won. In a time comparison with the previous two rounds, the Norwegian superstar was, quite surprisingly, only in twelfth place with his time of 9:44.0 minutes.
Johannes Hosflot Klaebo in the mass start in Toblach
The final run should have learned from this, initially the Swede Edvin Anger had to set the pace all by himself for a long time. Although he had two compatriots with him, it didn’t look like good teamwork – and after two thirds the field was already several seconds behind the comparative time of the fast second heat. In the end, this race had no chance against Schumacher – the American won the second World Cup of his career.