Point-to-Point, But Mostly Down

Wednesday afternoon's stages in the Tour de Ski are odd ones: point-to-point skate races over fairly long distances - almost 16km for the women and 36km for the men (the longest race of the season so far), both winding up in the Italian mountain town of Dobbiaco.

Or rather, winding down to Dobbiaco, for both races - as the course profiles show - incorporate k after k of downhill terrain. In the women's race, in fact, only a snippet at the beginning and a bit at the end are not downhill. The men's race is tougher because that long descent (and a few ramps in the last 5,000 meters) is the sequel to a tough, relentless ascent from Cortina d'Ampezzo - site of the 1956 Winter Olympic Games - to about 16k. Then it's one long snowplow - and probably a goodly number of crashes, like the faceplant demos in the Oberhof sprints.

Tactically, anything could happen in these odd but probably-exciting races. As in the second stage at Oberhof, the races are pursuits from a handicap start. After the rash of abandons today, Saarinen will be staked to a 25s lead in the women's race while the top dozen men will start inside a minute.

In the women's derby, I expect a big group to form behind Saarinen early in the race, one including all usual suspects: Kowalcyzk (+25s), Follis (+32, and maybe Longa, though she starts at +1:47), Steira (+1:15), and especially Majdic (+30, and a good descender, as she showed in last year's Trondheim 30k). Though the longest descent I can ski here on the northern prairie is maybe 45s long, I'll venture that all that downhilling will make for some wobbly legs by the time the leaders hit those sharp little climbs at the end - and plenty of good crashes before that point. (If only Krashy Korosteleva hadn't abandoned today...) On the hills, the light climbers will move away to vie for a memorable win in this wacky stage:

1. Kowalcyzk

2. Steira

3. Follis

In the men's race, 16k of climbing will do a great job of separating any natural groups among the starters, but by the crest of the climb, the strong men will be bunched or nearly so: Northug, Cologna, Teichmann, Hellner, Jauhojärvi, Kershaw, Angerer. It'll be fun to watch them handle the descent, and to see if anyone can use the drop to chase onto the leading group, like certain cyclists can do on long mountain stages. (It's a shame that Wobbles Legkov has gone back to Russia to take care of his "sickness" - he'd be entertaining to see on the downhill.) The podium will come from the usual candidates, though a wipeout could screw up anyone's chance for a good place:

1. Northug

2. Hellner

3. Cologna

Kershaw: top 5; Harvey & Babikov: top 20

Prague Sprints

Why, hello, Eldar Rønning! Where have you been all season? Way to jump up the leaderboard! The Oberhof sprints had two other surprises (three, if you include the elderly Swedish unknown Teodor Peterson in fourth): Emil Jönsson ably following up his good 15k on Saturday, and Kristin Størmer Steira racing in a sprint final - a rather uncommon occurrence.

I think things will shake out more conventionally in the city sprints in Prague, which are being run on a substantially shorter course (1200m versus Oberhof's 1600m) that does not include any severe climbs but does have a long uphill to the finish line. My picks:

men's 1.2km freestyle sprint

1. Northug

2. Jönsson

3. Newell

Kershaw: semifinals; Harvey: quarterfinals

women's 1.2km freestyle sprint

1. Kowalczyk

2. Follis

3. Majdic

Renner: quarterfinals

TdS: Shorter and Faster

The classic pursuits was great, great races - maybe the best races we've seen this winter so far. (Our friend at Nordicxplained recapped the races well, and posted video summaries of both Northug's incredible win and Kowalcyzk's slightly easier victory; Fasterskier's coverage of the men's and women's events is worth reading, too.)

The prologue and pursuit put Northug and Kowalczyk at the tops of their respective leaderboards, and I expect that to hold true through both Sunday's classic sprints (the first such events in the history of the Tour, amazingly) and Monday's freestyle sprints in Prague. The classic sprints are being run on a looping course that has a 180 soon after the start, a downhill left-hander, one 35m climb, and a shorter, sharper ramp about 100m from the finish. Picks for Oberhof:

men's 1.6km classic sprint

1. Northug

2. Cologna

3. Legkov

Newell and Kershaw: semifinals; Harvey: quarterfinals

women's 1.6km classic sprint

1. Majdic

2. Saarinen

3. Kowalczyk

Renner: quarterfinals

Tour de Ski Prologue Picks

The Tour de Ski prologue was as interesting as I hoped. In the women's race, Petra used her sprint power to take a convincing victory by 2.1s over Korosteleva and three times that much over Kowalczyk. Miriam Goessner of Germany held the top spot for a long time and eventually wound up a surprising fifth, with Arianna Follis in between. Petra's gonna be great in the classical pursuit tomorrow. In the men's race, Northug confirmed his form with a narrow 0.8s victory over Marcus Hellner, 2.0s up on Teichmann. Italian Loris Frasnelli - my choice for best-named non-Estonian racer on the Tour - slipped into sixth, just behind Cologna, who's obviously in good shape, and Shiraev, who has temporarily replaced Legkov as the bEst-PerfOrming Russian.

Recapping my picks and the actual finishers:

men's 3.7km freestyle prologue
1. Northug - Northug
2. Legkov (actual: 9) - Hellner
3. Teichmann - Teichmann

women's 2.8km freestyle prologue
1. Nystad (12) - Majdic
2. Kowalczyk (3) - Korosteleva
3. Follis (4) - Kowalczyk

Tomorrow's classic-technique pursuit races - 10k for women, 15k for men - will be run over the same course as today's races and seeded according to the finishes in the prologue. Northug will have a six-second head start on Hellner, +12s on Tiechmann, +17s on Cologna. Only a great classic skier will be able to catch him (Teichmann, Cologna, maybe even Bauer at +22s or Legkov at +25s), but no one will be able to make it stick. Petter should lead the TdS from wire to wire. In the women's race, Majdic has +7s on Korosteleva, +16s on Kowalczyk. The Russian will drop back, not preferring classical races, but I expect the Pole to come up at challenge Majdic for the win. Picks:

men's 15m classic pursuit (handicap start)
1. Northug
2. Cologna
3. Teichmann

women's 10m classic pursuit (handicap start)
1. Kowalczyk
2. Majdic
3. Saarinen (coming up from 6th, +30s)

Tour de Ski Prologue Picks

Others have already weighed in with picks for tomorrow's mostly-flat Tour de Ski prologue (course profile available here), but by god I have to offer my one-fiftieth of a dollar, too.

men's 3.7km freestyle prologue

1. Northug

2. Legkov

3. Teichmann

women's 2.8km freestyle prologue

1. Nystad

2. Kowalczyk

3. Follis

And while I'm at it, picks for the overall TdS podiums:

men

1. Northug

2. Legkov

3. Cologna

women

1. Kowalczyk

2. Follis

3. Steira

Hoffmann: Busted (?)

From that well-known ski-news site, the Malaysian Mirror:

Austria's 2002 Olympic 30 kilometres cross country skiing champion Christian Hoffmann was suspended with immediate effect on Thursday by the Austrian Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) over suspicions he is involved in a blood-doping ring.

Let the record show that we were on this story a long time ago.

Original Plans for the Tour de Ski

A couple days ago, I dug up an old video of the men's relay at the 2005 Oberstdorf World Championships, which is a great race* but which also included a little preview by Jürg Capol (then and now the race director for FIS cross-country skiing events) of what was still being described as a ski version of the Tour de France. Said Capol:

I guess today it's a little bit difficult to find out who is the best - really the best - cross-country skiers. Is it the one who goes fast in the sprint, or is it the 50k man, or whoever it is? And as we can see in cycling, they have this Tour de France which extends over all the rest of the season as the biggest highlight. And there you can see all the big names, if it's Mr. Zabel [who] takes part or Mr. Armstrong… [The ski tour] will mostly be some several stages... Now the plans [are] that we would have a prologue, a kind of a prologue in Munich with a a 3 to 5 kilometer prologue. And we would have a team event in Reit im Winkl. We would have a kind of pursuit here, in Oberstdorf. We would go to Zurich for a skate sprint. We would have a king-of-the-mountain in Davos, that means an Alpe d'Huez… where the finish is higher up than the start line. We would go to Italy and have some mass starts and another sprint. And then we end up on the last stage as we can start in all pursuits [sic] with the first coming to the finish, he will win the overall tour.

Capol added that the FIS planned to award the top 30 finishers of each stage the same number of points as a regular World Cup race, and that he expected women to race a total of about 4.5 hours over the entire tour, men about 5.5 hours.

The former prediction sorta came to pass. In the first year of the TdS (2006-2007), racers only received WC points at the end of the Tour, based on the final overall standings (at a rate of four times the usual points, so that first place yielded 400 points, 2 yielded 320, etc.). In subsequent years - including this one - finishers have received half the usual WC points for each individual event and then more points at the end of the Tour based on overall ranking.

Capol's latter prediction sure didn't come to pass. The three Tours de Ski so far have all put the athletes through far fewer hours of racing than Capol's original expectation:

2006-2007 - six stages

Angerer: 3:29:49.7 (last finisher: 3:51)

Kuitunen: 2:20:15.3 (last finisher: 2:44)

2007-2008 - eight stages

Bauer: 3:38:07.4 (last finisher: 4:11)

Kalla: 2:43:01.0 (last finisher: 3:11)

2008-2009 - seven stages

Cologna: 2:56:05.4 (last finisher: 3:24)

Kuitunen: 2:06:41.4 (red lantern: 2:19)

*The 2005 Oberstdorf men's relay was very entertaining. A sizable pack held together for about half of the first leg, at which point Hjelmeset made the race's big selection by trimming the lead group down to just four: himself, Filbrich, Pankratov, and Di Centa. Early in the second leg, Estil and Rotchev cut the group in half, establishing a 1-minute lead over four chasers. On the third leg, Berger and Dementiev stayed out front until late, when Berger accelerated to open a narrow 2.7s gap for Hofstad (remember him?) over Russia's Bolchakov. Hofstad methodically and easily extended the lead to take the win by 17.7s.

The real race happened behind Hofstad. Teichmann started his anchor leg 95s down to Berger, 93s down to Bolchakov in second, and 39s down to Zorzi in third. But Teichmann pushed and pushed, and on the last lap around the 3.3km track, he caught Zorzi on the biggest climb, and then closed on Bolchakov as they entered the stadium. There, in front of thousands of cheering German fans, Teichmann outsprinted the Russian to take the silver - Germany's first medal at the home-snow Worlds. So overcome with emotion was Axel that he subtly pumped his fist as he crossed the line. (The next day Teichmann paired with Angerer for silver in the team sprint.)