Today's freestyle sprints at Drammen have to rank up as the best-ever day for North American cross-country skiing: Canadian Alex Harvey took second behind only Emil Jönsson and ahead of Petter Northug in the men's race, and American Kikkan Randall won the women's race, which included an out-of-the-running Marit Bjørgen. And both results sheets had plenty of other good results. On the men's side, Len Valjas (CAN) finished ninth and Andy Newell (USA) finished eighteenth; on the women's side, Chandra Crawford (CAN) finished fourteenth and Dasha Gaiazova finished twentieth. (Minnsotan Jessie Diggins finished 46th, failing to make the heats but winding up ahead of some serious skiers, like Norwegian Marthe Kristoffersen.)
The only way Sunday's results will be eclipsed if Harvey, Randall, or others take medals on Thursday in the freestyle sprints at Worlds.
Oddly enough, the top four women all had double-L names: Randall, Falla, Kalla, Follis - what do you make of that, Statistical Skier?
(Photo courtesy of Swix Nordic.)
2 comments:
It's kind of funny, one of the worst days of the year followed by one of the best. However it was still kind of dissapointing overall. Newell, Crawford and Gaiazova failed to move on (surprise, surprise Newell). Hamilton didn't qualify, neither did Kuhn, Widmer or Kershaw (had high hopes for him). It was a fast, flat course, which certainly suits someone like Crawford and Randall, for example, and is one of the reason why Panzhinskiy qualified (just my opinion). How about Latheenmaeki!?! You've got to be pretty pumped up bout' that Tassava!
It's in the queue; Wednesday probably.
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