Zak Ketterson Wins the Overall Title at Toppidrettsveka 2026
Zak wins the 3-Day Rollerski Race Weekend in Trondheim, Norway
Photo by Toppidrettsveka: Zak Ketterson taking the overall win in front of two of the best skiers in the world, Leopold Strand and Mattis Stenshagen in a sunny Trondheim.
Zak Ketterson capped off a huge weekend of rollerski racing in Norway, winning the men's overall title at Toppidrettsveka, one of the most prestigious events on the international summer ski calendar.
Now in its 22nd year, Toppidrettsveka has grown since its 2005 founding into one of the largest and most competitive rollerski competitions in the world. Each August it draws a field that rivals a World Cup start list, with national teams and top individual skiers from Norway, Sweden, France, and beyond using it as the marquee test of summer fitness heading into the Olympic winter. It's the first real chance for the sport's best athletes to race each other since the World Cup season wrapped the previous spring, which is exactly why the results carry so much weight inside the ski world.
The 2026 edition ran across three days and three venues in Trøndelag county: a 53km classic mass start on the island of Hitra, a mix of sprint and uphill events in Aure, and a 20km classic pursuit in Sverresborg to decide the overall title. Zak sealed it on that final day, starting outside the front group and working his way up to win the pursuit outright in 44:43.7, edging Norway's Leopold Strand by three tenths of a second in a sprint finish, with Mattis Stenshagen third.
Beating a stacked Norwegian field, on their own roads, in a race that came down to fractions of a second, at an event this competitive, is a significant result for a Snø Racing athlete. It's also a strong signal on the training environment Zak has built training out of Oslo this year.
Zak summarizes the weekend this way:
“It may just be rollerskiing, but winning Toppidrettsveka is definitely one of the biggest accomplishments of my career. A ton of hard work over many years went into being able to pull it off, and I hope it inspires skiers back home in the Midwest to see that they could do this one day too.”
