Monday, February 22, 2010

Team Sprint

The team sprint is a wacky event, neither fish (an individual event) nor fowl (a true one-leg-per-racer relay) and rarely contested (just once or twice a season). But damn if it doesn't have some exciting racing every time. The round-and-round format is a good way to generate plenty of lead changes, the duration of the full event - amounting to 3-by L5 intervals - nullifies the advantage of pure sprinters, and yet the short(ish) laps takes away some of the advantages of the long-distance racers. My picks, even as the first heats are being run:


women's freestyle team sprint
1. Sweden (Kalla & Haag)
2. Italy (Genuin & Follis)
3. Finland (Roponen & Sarasoja)
Canada: 7; USA: 11

men's freestyle team sprint
1. Sweden (Hellner & Peterson)
2. Norway (Pettersen & Northug)
3. Russia (Morilov & Petukhov)
Canada: 5; USA: 7

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder why the team sprint don`t work the same way as a regular relay with 4 guys going one stage each.

Think that would be way better. Such as it is the format is kinda wierd and probably the least prestigious race of the games.