Saturday, November 29, 2008

Kuusamo Distance Races

The Kuusamo sprints were great races. You can read Fasterskier's recaps of the men's and women's races or just watch the races themselves via Norwegian TV (men's race // women's race - and a clip of an interview in English with Majdic). Sad to see that Universal Sports has already cut their coverage of the World Cup, after just one weekend.

My predictions for the sprint were excellent for the winners, terrible for everyone else, but I'll pay this little mind and fearlessly offer these predictions for Sunday's races:

women's 10km classic
Justyna Kowalczyk (Pol)
Therese Johaug (Nor)
Petra Majdic (Slo)

men's 15km classic
Tobias Angerer (Ger)
Tor Arne Hetland (Nor)
Lukas Bauer (Cze)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't say Universal has "cut" converage. As shown by their "complete schedule," they had any intentions of showing as much as WCSN did. Nothing against luge, but depressing that they are going to treat XC the same as luge (one event so far for each). Should we deluge their server with comments? I miss WCSN and their snowtime and Norwegian TV feeds, as absurd as they sometimes were.

Christopher Tassava said...

Thanks for the comment, Anonymous. I used that verb because Universal Sport's commentator, Peter Graves, had said in an interview, "The current cross country schedule calls for same weekend coverage of World Cups through the Tour de Ski. And hopefully it will continue through the end of the season."

Guess not.

Anonymous said...

Actually, sorry, I spoke too fast ... the video for the races today (the 30th) but not the 29th are buried in the video section on Universal (page 2). No audio -- like WCSN used to do. Yeah, I remember that comment from Graves, too; it would be nice if Universal would just tell us what we can expect. Actually, at this point, I would settle for merely separating out Nordic from their catchall "skiing" category. Thanks for the webpage. Nordic fantasy -- gotta love it.

Luke S said...

Yup-The races are there at universalsports, you just have to dig a bit. And no commentary, which was somewhat amusing, but the video ran much smoother without that and all the interruptions for stupid "commercial" breaks

Colin R said...

I couldn't find this weekend's sprints, just the distance races. Am I stupid?

Christopher Tassava said...

The judge disallows Colin R's leading question, on the grounds that it may prejudice the blog's readership. I myself couldn't find the sprints online at Uni Sports, though NRK did show the finals, the only round that matters if you're Norwegian.

Christopher Tassava said...

Oh, and I did some hella good picking on the distance races, huh? Missed everybody on the women's side, and put Bauer one place too low on the men's. Better luck in La Clusaz...

Anonymous said...

Universal now lists on its "Upcoming" link at the top of its homepage that last Saturday's sprints will be shown Thursday evening. I guess it's clear now what they are doing -- they are not going to show video of an event until it has run on TV. In the proud tradition of WCSN, btw, they now incorrectly state on their skiing schedule that Sunday's distance races took place on the 29th, not the 30th (http://www.universalsports.com/SportSelect.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=23000&KEY=&SPID=12760&SPSID=105981). And on their all sports schedule, they incorrectly claim that the sprints took place on the 30th, not the 29th!(http://www.universalsports.com/main/Schedule.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=23000&KEY=)
I love it -- I think they retained WCSN's proofreader.

Alex said...

Holy ski throw by kowalczyk!

Colin R said...

Wow she threw WAY early there! I can't believe that kind of worked.

Alex said...

It was like she threw her ski, realized it was early, and from her half-split, threw it even further.