Midway through the Tour de Ski

With the Tour de Ski resuming on Wednesday with individual-start classic races in Nove Mesto, I offer a few quick "halftime" takes on the racing so far. Maybe Colin will chime in, too...

Most Surprising Racer

Dario Cologna. He's been a solid racer from a few years now, but he's also been largely anonymous, overshadowed on the Swiss team by skate specialist Toni Livers. But he's now showing that the early-season form that put him into the distance World Cup leader's jersey is no fluke. On Sunday, he used some hard and smart racing to beat Teichmann in the 15k classical pursuit and take over the Tour de Ski lead.

Most Disappointing Racer

Claudia Nystad is my pick here. As her win on home snow in Saturday's prologue showed, she can race well. But as her sixteenth place in Sunday's pursuit also showed, she can also ski terribly - so badly that she basically reduced her very long shot at the podium to no shot at all. She went from +1s to -68s in that one race - the worst performance of anyone in the two pursuit races. (Her sixth in Monday's sprints helped a bit. A tiny little bit.)

Best Racing Performance

I'm going to go with my new favorite North American, Devon Kershaw, in the 15k pursuit on Sunday. Starting third, he skied out of his mind, holding position at the head of the massive pack trying (and failing) to chase down Cologna and Teichmann, and then putting on the jets to nip Jauhojarvi for third - Kershaw's first distance-race podium of his World Cup career. Kershaw wrote a great pair of race reports on his blog about the pursuit and the next day's rather less amazing sprint.

Worst Racing Performance

Though it wasn't spectacularly bad, I have to go with Virpi Kuitunen in Monday's sprints in Prague. She qualified well, but her #6 jersey didn't help her survive the quarterfinal round. After leading some of the race, she was passed by half the field and finished fourth, failing to advance and, crucially, missing the chance to earn bonus seconds that would help her stay high in the standings. As it is now, she's sixth on GC, exactly 40 seconds out of first. It's not impossible that she could close that gap, but it is unlikely.

Best Crash

The Prague city sprint had some good crashes, of course, but my money is on Marthe Kristofferson, the young Norwegian, who ate it twice in the Oberhof prologue, once catching air on a downhill corner and once turning a snowplow into a faceplant so bad she broke her ski and limped home in third-to-last place. Not an auspicious debut.

Overall TdS Winner, Men

I think this is Cologna's race to lose. Unless "Super Dario" (gag) misses the wax in Wednesday's classic race, or bonks badly in the final climb, I just don't see a spot for anyone else - even Teichmann - to take enough time out of the Swiss to win the whole thing.

Overall TdS Winner, Women

Arianna Follis is the sexy pick here (in both senses, perhaps), but I think the workhorse Aino-Kaisa Saarinen will grind out enough high places and earn enough bonus seconds in Wednesday's and Saturday's races to go into Sunday's final climb with an insurmountable advantage.

The best quote of the Tour so far comes, suprisingly, from Mr. Effusive, Axel Teichmann, in talking about Petter Northug's claim - much publicized in Norway - to have been obstructed by the German at the end of the Gallivare relay: "In Germany I would have needed to bury Petter Northug in the snow to collect the same publicity. But there is nothing more to the story."