Who the Hell Is Finn Hågen Krogh?

1. A twenty-year-old junior ski racer from Norway.
2. The second-place finisher in the general classification of the 2011 season finale at Falun.(Great Nordic Xplained race recap here.)
3. The guy who, in moving up from eighth to second in the finale GC, posted the fastest time in the 15k skate pursuit, nearly a half-minute up on Maurice Manificat, one of the top few skaters in the world.
4. The skier who closed a 5s gap to Dario Cologna and Giorgio diCenta with about 1000m remaining in that pursuit, then outsprinted Cologna to the line.
5. A skier who has had only six World Cup starts, all in early 2011 - and the best of which, before Sunday, was a 21st in the Lahti 10+10 pursuit the previous weekend.
6. A three-time World Junior medalist: a gold in the relay and a bronze in the 20km pursuit at the 2010 WJC in Hinterzarten plus a bronze in the relay at the 2009 WJC in Praz de Lys Sommand.
7. A racer with five podium finishes in Scandinavian Cup races during the 2010-2011 season - including sprints and distance races and in both techniques (plus two other top-10s).
8. Someone who seems like a good bet for the Norwegian national team in the 2011-2012 season.
9. A racer who could well be the next Therese Johaug - or at least the next Kristin Størmer Steira.
10. Or who could well be the next Ronny Hafsås.

World Champs Hits and Misses

The 2011 World Ski Championships have been over for more than a week now, so I figure I'd better write a leetle recap before the campfires in Holmenkollen are totally cold. (I'm sure you recall our recap of the 2009 Liberec Worlds, right?) I'm too blog-jaded to do a full, formal recap, so I'll just provide a few hits and misses.

HIT

The Kollen-brølet - 'Kollen roar - thanks to the half-million spectators who showed up. That's a lot of herring munchers! (Photo from Oskar Karlin's excellent World Champs photostream.)

MISS

The 'Kollen-tåte - 'Kollen fog. Look! The slightly faster gray blob is passing the slightly slower gray blob!

HIT

Apparently no dopers were caught at Oslo, even though at least one competed. (Two, if you're a Bjørgen-hater.)

MISS
Apparently no dopers were caught at Oslo.

HIT

Bjørgen's dominance of the women's events - four golds and a silver. Not bad, unlike this inexplicable banner along the track. With fans like these, who needs grumpy Polish rivals?

(Also from Oskar's photostream.)

MISS

Alexander Legkov. How do you say "choke" in Russian? I'm no longer thinking of him as the Russian #1: clearly Vylegzhanin is the superior skier, especially in big races. And Chernousov isn't far behind. Though Legkov has finished on a World Cup podium eleven times (including stage races), he hasn't yet won an individual medal at Worlds or the Olympics, while Vylegzhanin has four World Cup medals and three Worlds silvers, and even the relatively unknown Chernousov has three individual World Cup podiums and a Worlds bronze.

HIT

Marcus Hellner winning the hell(ner) out of the freestyle sprint. Amazing.

MISS

No American medals at all. Last year, Newell crashed out of the classic sprint; this year, Kikkan crashed out of the freestyle sprint. It's hard to keep the black side down in the big races. *sighs*

HIT

Yes Canadian gold. Alex Harvey's surge on the home stretch of the men's team sprint to pass Ola Vigen Hattestad and take Canada's first-ever World Championships gold was freaking awesome. Not only was it a superb finish to an excellent race, but it meant that Devon Kershaw - one of the best guys on the World Cup (fast skier, cool dude, and Packer fan!) - finally got to hang a gold medal around his neck. I love his superstitiousness:

Kershaw said he and Harvey also had a morning discussion about the race. “We woke up at 9:45 this morning and Alex said to me ‘So how will it feel to be the world champion tonight?’ I said, ‘don’t, don’t say that. I don’t want to jinx us. I knew we could be world champions, but I didn’t think we were going to be.”

And Harvey's win really made the Norwegians feel real real bad - or was it the shhh?

(Photo from the Star (Toronto).)

MISS

I know that there was some furor about Harvey's "shhh" gesture, but it paled in comparison to the bratty 'Thuggish grandstanding at the end of the relay. I hope I'm not just been North-Americocentric here, but - as I argued on March 4 - there's a huge difference between a few seconds of shhhing after crossing the line and Northug's extended mockery of his competition. Like I said, "Shameful."

HIT

Therese Johaug's amazing win in the 30km mass start. When she first climbed away from Bjørgen and Kowalcyzk, I figured that it wouldn't last, that they'd sweep her up well before the finish line. That didn't happen. The race was probably the best since the Olympic 50 last March. Nice win.

HIT

Last, I am honor bound to report that I won the very satisfying contest among the nordic-skiing bloggers who participated in the wonderful "XC Predictions" game for the Oslo Worlds. Of the 120 participants (of whom 41 made all of the possible predictions, rather than just one or two), I finished fourth, four spots ahead of Nordic Xplained and 55 spots ahead of Statistical Skier. The prediction contest continues through the end of the year!

Go-Haug

Last Saturday, I was amazed by Therese Johaug's breakaway in the 30km at Holmenkollen. I just could not believe that her audacious move would stick, but of course it did, and paid off in her first-ever elite win - a World Championships, to boot.

Yesterday, watching the 5k+5k pursuit at Lahti, I was almost equally amazed to see Johaug pull away from the pack, dragging Justyna Kowalczyk with her. Even with 2k left, the eventual sprint seemed like a foregone conclusion: JK by a ski length. After all, the Pole is the defending sprint World Cup champion, while the Norwegian never even tries the sprints, and the Pole is a full five inches taller than the Norwegian. All that seemed to mean that Kowalczyk would have a decided advantage if the sprint came down to a ski throw at the line (a topic which NCP covered in depth two and a half years ago).

But I forgot about the wild card - the way Kowalczyk has still failed to master relatively elementary techniques like conserving speed through a downhill corner or throwing her ski at the right time. Check this hot mess out: JK started her throw 10 or 15 meters from the line, just far enough away to squander her height advantage:

Here was the result. JK had to actually start to pull her thrown leg back under her to avoid falling before the line, allowing the much shorter Johaug to stick her left foot out and take the win.

Northug: Jævle Barnunge

Or "jävla barnunge" in Swedish - a fucking brat.

I had built up a tiny bit of respect for the guy over the course of the current season, but it was pulverized by his pathetic display of poor sportsmanship and raw arrogance at the end of the men's relay. After lying in wait through most of the last leg, Northug launched a characteristic attack inside the last 500 meters. It was clear to everyone that he'd won, but instead of respecting the race, the venue, and his fellow racers, he then skied slowly down the finishing straight, shushing the crowd, and actually *stopped* before the finish line, taunting Hellner, before finally stepping over the line at the last second to take the win. It was shameful.



I can only hope that Petter has a DeSean Jackson one of these days:

Ski Service

The life of a service(wo)man at a Marathon Cup race - January's Marcialonga in this case, but next week's Vasaloppet just the same:

Men's Relay

Today's women's relay was probably the least interesting race of the World Championships. I didn't even bother to make a prediction, since the result was as much a foregone conclusion as any result could be. So long as Bjørgen raced, Norway would win - and they did. From the results of previous races at Worlds - and, really, from the results of the World Cup races since Christmas - it was obvious that Finland and Sweden were the next strongest teams, with Italy comparable on a good day. Italy didn't figure today, being two fast skiers short of a relay team and leaving the silver and bronze medals to Sweden and Finland.

Friday's men's relay should be much more interesting. Clearly, Norway (Johnsrud Sundby, Roenning, Gjerdalen, Northug) and Sweden (Rickardsson, Olsson, Soedergren, Hellner) will - at least on paper - vie for the win. Russia (Vylegzhanin, Volzhentsev, Legkov, Chernousov), Switzerland (Livers, Cologna, Fischer, and Perl), and possibly Finland (Nousiainen, Jauhojaervi, Lallukka, Heikkinen) might get into the medals fight as well. Just as Germany and Italy have underperformed over the whole season to date, we've seen nothing from either country's racers to suggest that either of those teams will finish anywhere near the medals. The French are having a mediocre Worlds, and the Czechs seem to be off their Tour de Ski peak. Thus, my picks:

1. Norway

2. Sweden

3. Russia

World Champions

HELL YES.

(Photo stolen from Fasterskier.com)