Oslo, Finally

With or without Andrus Veerpalu, the Oslo World Ski Championships are underway. A New Zealander and a Dane won today's qualifying races, but I think the freestyle sprint podiums will include the usual suspects:


I can't wait...

North American Skiing's Best-Ever Day

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.)

Drammen Sprints

The freestyle sprints at Konnerud are already under way, but I'll post the predictions I made yesterday anyhow. With the best Russian men missing, we're not getting a true picture of that field, but the women's field is as full of fast racers as it will be next Thursday, when the freestyle sprints will happen at Holmenkollen.

Drammatic

The Oslo Worlds are less than a week away, just the other side of the last tune-up races at Drammen, Norway. Not the familiar (and, frankly, awesome) city-center sprints of the last few years, this year's events are being held at the Konnerud winter-sports park just outside Drammen.

The stakes are high, of course. The Czech head coach Miroslav Petrasek - who has some decent skiers on his squad - said, "You don’t have to win but if you are not in top ten, you can forget a medal from the Worlds. Top shape won’t come in a week." On the other hand, a commentator for Norwegian TV finds that doing too well just before Worlds means you probably won't be in the right form to win there:

In front of the last eight championships (Olympics and World Championships) has the winner of the general test of distance has never been an individual gold medalist. The last one was able feat in the men's side was Mika Myllylä. He won both the final race before the World Championships in Ramsau in 1999, and became king of the tournament with three gold and a silver individually.

So let me curse some skiers with my predictions over at XC Predictions for the Drammen distance events - 10/15km interval-start classic races:

In addition to these ten racers, I'd add the following athletes to the pool of skiers whom Petrasek would see as possible distance-event winners in Oslo:

men

Petter Northug

Devon Kershaw

Alexander Legkov

Maxim Vylegzhanin

Tobias Angerer

women

Arianna Follis

Marianna Longa

Charlotte Kalla

Krista Lahteenmaki

Astrid U. Jacobsen

It'll be interesting to see if Petrasek and/or the NRK blogger is right - that the top 10 at Drammen will supply the medalists at Oslo, but the the Drammen winners won't be on the podiums at Oslo.

Holmen Cow!

The Oslo Worlds organizers just put up a fascinating page about the 30 and 50km tracks at Holmenkolllen - "the world's hardest ski course." The women's course - can we call it Marit's Regret?- is actually 31.6km in length and includes 1,193 of climbing - 61m more than the previous record, at Torino. (The Vancouver 30 included a mere 1,056 meters of climbing.)

Even more impressively, the "50km" race is actually 2,860 meters (five percent!) longer than that, and contains more climbing than any other racecourse in the world - 1,998 meters worth. The course profile is almost as awesome as the races - freestyle mass starts (Saturday, March 5 for the women, Sunday, March 6 for the men) - should be.

Man. vs. Machine

Forget racing the 50km, Marit: how about racing a Pisten Bully?

Otepääst Script: Bibs, Boards, and Bandanas

The racing in Otepää was pretty damn good, as usual. No Estonians reached the podium, so they'd better start tweaking their "training." Worlds is just a few weeks away!

The bibs were matter of fact. The female sprinters and male distance racers wore the logo of Swedbank, which is, unsurprisingly, a Swedish bank - "the leading bank in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania." If the bibs inspired any Americans, you could go open an account at Swedbank New York.

snores

Judging by her demeanor on the start line, Marit really liked the bib's fit and finish. Alas, she couldn't quite dominate the sprint the way she had pwned the distance race, which she won by a lot.

On the other hand, Kowalczyk either didn't like the flat, easy sprint course or didn't like the bib - she does shill for Polbank, a (you guessed it) Polish bank, so maybe it's a sponsor thing. Regardless, you could kinda see from her demeanor that she wasn't gunning for the win, and wound up finishing fourth - six spots ahead of Grinnin' Marit.

The male sprinters and female distance racers wore bibs adorned with the most philosophical logo of the World Cup, that of Ergo, the "the leading company in the area of private health and legal costs insurance in Europe." If I'd known that before the races, I'd have klistered my eyeballs. As it is, my ignorance was only exceeded by the hilarity of seeing Russian journeyman sprinter Michail Devjatiarov do this on the start line.

Dude, sit down. Sure, you won a race once, almost four years ago now, but since then you've only made one final. Worry less about your bandanas and more about your double poling.