Readers of this blog know that we love ourselves some ski throws. The end of today's men's team sprint offered a killer example. Here are Ola Vigen Hattestad and Tobias Fredriksson putting their best feet forward as they try to win the men's team sprint today in Dusseldorf:
As it happens, the win went to Hattestad, giving him four straight sprint wins (three individual events and this team event, paired with Tor Arne Hetland). Remarkable. Just out of frame, but evident in this (unembeddable) clip from Norwegian TV, is Andy Newell bringing the US team in for fourth. Fourth! That's almost third! In this case, third went to Russia's team of Petukhov and Morilov.
If you were wondering, these results line up well with my predictions the other day: I had Norway winning and Sweden in second. (Germany, which I tabbed for third, wound up twelfth.)
In the women's race, Russian Korosteleva and Matveeva skied strongly to take the win, edging the Norwegian team comprising the hot young Norwegian sprinters Brun-Lie (second at Davos) and Falla (third yesterday in the individual sprint). The German team of Nystad and Boehler took third, though only because Italy was DQ'ed for an illegal exchange. I had predicted the opposite order for those top two teams, and - assuming that Majdic would race on Sunday - picked Slovenia for third. Since Majdic did not race, SLO was slow, finishing 11th.
On to the Tour de Ski, which starts on Saturday with 3.0/3.3km freestyle prologues in Oberhof!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Dusseldorf Team Sprints
Posted by Christopher Tassava at 1:25 PM
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2 comments:
Haven't you yet learned that the German men kind of suck this year? (at least so far, and compared to previous years)
My pick for the German men was based on the presumption that Josef Wenzl - who won at Dusseldorf last year and has placed well in other years - would be on the team. He was, but still went slow. From here on out, I'm following a strict "Only Axel" policy with respect to German men.
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