Lucky 13th World Cup victory for Sweden's Karlsson in Ruka

Frida Karlsson (SWE) continued her love affair with Ruka, winning the season-opening race of the 2025/26 FIS Cross-Country Skiing World Cup in north-east Finland, the 10km Women's Interval Start Classic, in impress style, despite spending most of the off-season training on rollerskis.

After winning the gold medal in the 50km Freestyle Mass Start at the Trondheim 2025 World Championships, the 26-year-old opted to prepare for the new campaign in the sunshine of Tenerife. But the tanned star looked perfectly at home back on the snow on what is comfortably her most successful track.

This was Karlsson's fourth victory in Ruka and third over 10km, including last season when she also began with a dominant victory, beating the great Therese Johaug (NOR) by 46 seconds.

All the talk pre-race was about Jessie Diggins (USA). The reigning two-time World Cup Crystal Globe champion, also a winner here in Ruka last season (in the 20kn Freestyle Mass Start) announced last week that she would be retiring at the end of the season. So too home favourite Krista Parmakoski (FIN). The five-time Olympic medallist will bow out after her fifth Winter Games, Milano Cortina 2026. A third 34-year-old, Heidi Weng (NOR) also hinted this would be her final campaign.

But it was Karlsson everybody was talking about after she finished 10.5 second ahead of Weng (NOR). Moa Ilar (SWE) took bronze, 18.3 seconds behinds her compatriot. Another Swede, Ebba Andersson was a further 3.1 seconds back in fourth, ahead of Diggins in fifth.

A fast track in Ruka - hosting the season curtain-raiser for the 24th time in a row - greeted the athletes with fresh snow on the higher sections and icy patches lower down, which made getting the waxing just right particularly difficult for the ski technicians.

Over two laps of the 5km course, this would be particularly important when it came to the athletes achieving perfect grip on the course's signature uphill section, a lung-burning 600m of climb around the 1km mark.

Karlsson looked to have the balance between grip and glide just right. She was three seconds faster than her nearest rivals by the 3km mark; at the halfway point the gap was 10.2s on Ilar.

Weng made a burst at the start of her second lap, making up nearly six seconds on Karlsson. But the veteran Norwegian couldn't maintain it, although it was enough to leapfrog Ilar and Andersson.

"It was super fun competing today," Karlsson said after claiming the 13th World Cup win of her career. "I was just super focused on my own skiing. I don't know what I've done [since competing in the Swedish championships a week ago]. Last week, I felt I was going to do better than I did so it feels good that I haven't been fooling myself; that the shape is quite good.

"I don't think that much about how important it is to show form this early in the season as I haven't aimed for this race. I've been training pretty hard and it's really fun to compete when the body answers like today, so I'll keep on riding that flow."

Weng said: "When I was warming up, I didn't realise there would be so many people, so there was crazy yelling out there. Maybe it's because it's the last time they will see Krista [Parmakoski] here in the World Cup, so it was a good atmosphere.

"I have never been so good in classic skiing here in Ruka so I am very happy. I feel like it was a little bit hard to go uphill today, it was like a mirror in the snow, so not the best grip. It was good to have this podium for maybe the last time here."

Even Diggins was "super happy" happy with fifth. "I think this might have been the best 10K Classic in Ruka of my whole life which is ironic - I say I'm gonna retire then I finally learn how to classic ski. I was having a lot of fun, it was a good day.

"My goal was to go for it, super aggressive, then hang on. I probably died a little at the end. It's a good wake-up call."

The action continues in Ruka on Saturday with the Sprint Classic.

For the full results from Ruka click here.