As we showed last year, NCP loves the Grand Final or mini-Tour de Ski or whatever you want to call it. My only quibble is that the Stockholm sprint is a day too far away from the other three events. Move the sprint to Thursday, get to racing in Falun on Friday, and let 'er rip.
One twist to this year's Grand Final is that the prologue is being run in classic technique. At Bormio in 2008 and then at Falun in 2009, the prologues were freestyle races; Claudia Nystad won both women's races while Pietro Piller Cottrer won at Bormio and Axel Teichmann at Falun. The prologue events in the Tour de Ski are usually run as skate races, too; the exception was in 2007-08, when Nove Mesto hosted classic prologues won by Kuitunen (ahead of Saarinen and Kowalczyk) and Bauer (ahead of Teichmann and Hjelmeset).
Things will turn out differently this year, given that the Mordarbacken will be a tough bastard in classic technique. My picks:
1. Bjørgen
2. Kowalczyk
3. Johaug
1. Bauer
2. Northug (please please please, Petter: double pole the whole course!)
3. Hellner
3 comments:
Dobbel pole up Morderbakken ? i don`t think anyone can do that.
The double pole plead made me chuckle. Northug seems experimental after securing the world cup. While I don't expect a double pole prologue, it'll be interesting to follow him in the WC-final. Perhaps we'll see a break away from the Petter, instead of the usual explosion at the finish.
Hahaha, glad you included the double-pole chirp.
I loved his effort in the sprints on Wednesday, made things ridiculously interesting. I was pretty sure it was an awful tactic, but he made it work.
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