'Chicco Pelle!' Lake Placid cheers retiring legend to famous Sprint victory

Federico Pellegrino (ITA) enjoyed a fairytale ending to a glittering career on Saturday by winning the Sprint Freestyle in Lake Placid, USA, the final stop on the 2025/26 FIS Cross Country Skiing World Cup calendar.

With 18 victories, the Italian, now 35, is the second-most successful sprinter in World Cup history. He was also the 2017 sprint world champion and a two-time Olympic sprint silver medallist. But he has spent much of his career skiing in the shadow of Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR), the sport's GOAT (Greatest Of All Time), particularly over the shortest distance.

But with Klaebo having already secured this season's Sprint and Overall titles, he chose to skip Saturday's race, having won the 10km Interval Start Classic on Friday, in order to concentrate on Sunday's 20km Freestyle and secure the Distance title that would complete a clean sweep of this season's Crystal Globes. Klaebo is also still recovering from the concussion he suffered during a fall in Drammen, Oslo on 12 March.

So the stage was set for Pellegrino, and boy did he step into the limelight, winning his first individual World Cup race for more than three years in dramatic style.

Heavy snow on Friday made way for overcast conditions on Saturday but left underfoot conditions challenging on an already difficult course, full of twists, turns and undulations.

The weekend crowd was out in force in, but with Klaebo absent, Jessie Diggins (USA) failing to make it past the semifinals of the women's event and Olympic sprint silver medallist Ben Ogden (USA) - who was born three hours east of Lake Placid - not even progressing from the quarterfinals, the noisy spectators were happy to adopt Pellegrino as their favourite.

But despite claiming team sprint and relay bronze medals on home snow at the recent Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, Pellegrino has struggled for form in his final season before retirement, with just two individual podiums.

He made it through a tough second quarterfinal after Jules Chappaz (FRA) crashed out and Ogden lost position and left himself too much to do. And in the semifinal, Pellegrino had to rely on a Lucky Loser position behind 21-year-old Anton Grahn (SWE) and Lars Heggen (NOR), who finished second in a photo finish.

In the final is was Grahn and Lucas Chanavat (FRA) - like Pellegrino, a sprint freestyle specialist - who set the early pace, with Harald Oestberg Amundsen (NOR) caught in the starting blocks. The field soon bunched up, but up the final climb, Pellegrino went for broke, in the type of burst Klaebo would have been proud of.

By the time he came skating down into the stadium section, the lead was ten metres. Pellegrino crossed the finish line in two minutes, 35.01 seconds, roaring in ecstasy, arms aloft, before collapsing spread-eagled on his back.

As the veteran Pellegrino celebrated, it was fitting that the new generation were left fighting for the other podium places, Heggen eventually finishing 1.24s back, just four hundredths of a second ahead of Grahn.

"Thank you, Lake Placid," Pellegrino said, close to tears. "The energy in the warm-up lap before qualification, I stopped in the climb and I got this feeling of power coming from the public, cheering for me - 'Chicco Pelle!' - and then in the final I could not wait."

"This victory means a lot to me, because the last month has been really hard. I could not enjoy it exactly how I wanted, how I deserved, and today I got back all the good feeling that I was missing in the last month. Next week in my home place, to enjoy and party with all the fans, will be the best way to finish my career."

The season concludes on Sunday with the Men's and Women's 20km Free races.

For all the results from Lake Placid, click here

For the full World Cup standings, click here