Category: XCFeeds

Today is the first to two very deserved rest days for the athletes. With the sprint portion of the Tour done for another year, more and more athletes will be dropping out, particularly sprint specialists. One the men’s side, the most notables to leave the Tour will be leader Emil Jönsson, stage 3 winner Eldar Rønning, the the two top Russians Legkov and Vylegzhanin. For Rønning, he needs to train and focus on the Otepää sprints  as he has yet to punch his ticket to the Olympics with the Norwegian team. Like Rønning, Jönsson dropped out of the Tour with the greater of the Olympics, though it was a difficult decision for him because of the phenomenal racing he had done. He had to follow through with his plan that he set out for beforehand. According to langd.se,  the drop out of the Russian’s is very suspicious as Legkov was sick in Prague already but Vylegzhanin didn’t know anything about his sickness until the morning when he was told so. Langd.se believes it is due to high hematocrit levels, which Vylegzhanin has flirted with already this year in Davos.

On the women’s side it’ll be Evi Sachenbacker-Stehle and Therese Johaug simply because of poor performances. The German will be joined by Herman and Fessel, remember Gössner, Böhler, Nystad and Henkel have already been German’s who have dropped the Tour. The only German female athlete left is Katrin Zeller while the others will most likely have a difficult training camp in preparation of the Olympics. Also, Celine Brun-Lie’s run came to an end after a great result in the Prague sprint and will go home to train for Otepää while Natalia Korosteleva is following her preparations for the Olympics and has headed home to train as well.

Tomorrow sees the start of the second half of the Tour. The women will be doing a 15km point A to point B freestyle race while the men will be doing double that distance. The course profile appears to be the easiest race ever put on the World Cup circuit for the women. According to it, the course elevation drops constantly over the first 12.5km (a total of 200m) with a couple climbs in the last 2.5km. Comparing that to the men’s profile,  it appears that the women get the easy part of the men’s course. The first 16km of the men’s course is almost a consistent climb that gains a total of almost 300m. A good warm-up for the Alpe Cermis I guess. Predictions:

Women
1. Petra Madjic
2. Justyna Kowalczyk
3. Kristin Størmer Steira

Men
1. Dario Cologna
2. Marcus Hellner
3. Matti Heikkinen

Also, today marks the first birthday of Nordic Xplained. I started off this blog last year as a means to put my opinions about races and racers on something physical. After failing to find a forum (in english) where I could discuss topics about the World Cup, I decided that this was the best option. At first, I was only getting a handful of visitors the first couple months, but now it’s gotten much bigger and it’s all because of you, the readers. Personally, I’m actually quite surprised how many people are actually interested in what I have to say. Over the past week, the blog has been getting in between 150-300 readers a day!

I know that there was a huge break from the end of last season to the Rogla races, but I’ve gotten my act together and hope to be more dedicated to the site. If I won’t be blogging, I’ll make someone else will and you’ll see this start when the World Cup comes to Canada and the Olympics begin at the start of February (On that note, if you are interested in writing for this blog, just contact me via e-mail:)). I just want to say thanks for tuning in and hopefully this blog is filling a niche for you readers in this thing we call the internet.

Til Tomorrow.

Today is the first to two very deserved rest days for the athletes. With the sprint portion of the Tour done for another year, more and more athletes will be dropping out, particularly sprint specialists. One the men’s side, the most notables to leave the Tour will be leader Emil Jönsson, stage 3 winner Eldar Rønning, the the two top Russians Legkov and Vylegzhanin. For Rønning, he needs to train and focus on the Otepää sprints  as he has yet to punch his ticket to the Olympics with the Norwegian team. Like Rønning, Jönsson dropped out of the Tour with the greater of the Olympics, though it was a difficult decision for him because of the phenomenal racing he had done. He had to follow through with his plan that he set out for beforehand. According to langd.se,  the drop out of the Russian’s is very suspicious as Legkov was sick in Prague already but Vylegzhanin didn’t know anything about his sickness until the morning when he was told so. Langd.se believes it is due to high hematocrit levels, which Vylegzhanin has flirted with already this year in Davos.

On the women’s side it’ll be Evi Sachenbacker-Stehle and Therese Johaug simply because of poor performances. The German will be joined by Herman and Fessel, remember Gössner, Böhler, Nystad and Henkel have already been German’s who have dropped the Tour. The only German female athlete left is Katrin Zeller while the others will most likely have a difficult training camp in preparation of the Olympics. Also, Celine Brun-Lie’s run came to an end after a great result in the Prague sprint and will go home to train for Otepää while Natalia Korosteleva is following her preparations for the Olympics and has headed home to train as well.

Tomorrow sees the start of the second half of the Tour. The women will be doing a 15km point A to point B freestyle race while the men will be doing double that distance. The course profile appears to be the easiest race ever put on the World Cup circuit for the women. According to it, the course elevation drops constantly over the first 12.5km (a total of 200m) with a couple climbs in the last 2.5km. Comparing that to the men’s profile,  it appears that the women get the easy part of the men’s course. The first 16km of the men’s course is almost a consistent climb that gains a total of almost 300m. A good warm-up for the Alpe Cermis I guess. Predictions:

Women
1. Petra Madjic
2. Justyna Kowalczyk
3. Kristin Størmer Steira

Men
1. Dario Cologna
2. Marcus Hellner
3. Matti Heikkinen

Also, today marks the first birthday of Nordic Xplained. I started off this blog last year as a means to put my opinions about races and racers on something physical. After failing to find a forum (in english) where I could discuss topics about the World Cup, I decided that this was the best option. At first, I was only getting a handful of visitors the first couple months, but now it’s gotten much bigger and it’s all because of you, the readers. Personally, I’m actually quite surprised how many people are actually interested in what I have to say. Over the past week, the blog has been getting in between 150-300 readers a day!

I know that there was a huge break from the end of last season to the Rogla races, but I’ve gotten my act together and hope to be more dedicated to the site. If I won’t be blogging, I’ll make someone else will and you’ll see this start when the World Cup comes to Canada and the Olympics begin at the start of February (On that note, if you are interested in writing for this blog, just contact me via e-mail:)). I just want to say thanks for tuning in and hopefully this blog is filling a niche for you readers in this thing we call the internet.

Til Tomorrow.

Today was final consecutive race day before a day off for the athletes. The Prague city sprints got off to a late start and saw the heats being run under flood lights. The track was tight quarters and who ever was in the lead at the first hair pin after the start would be nearly impossible to pass due to snow conditions and be able determine the pace of the race. We saw this over and over in the quarters and semis. On the back, the athletes actually preferred to double pole the slight down hill instead of skate it.The odds on the leader advancing to the next round was very high as the home stretch was so choppy and loose that it was very difficult to pass anyway.

Women

There were some new names on the podium today in the women’s race. The likes of Kowalczyk and Majdic qualified in 2nd and 4th respectively but failed to make it to the finals. The course conditions didn’t suit Kowalczyk as a big change of pace or turnover that was required to move up placings and she doesn’t possess those type of fast twitch muscles. She failed to make it out of the quarters while Majdic made it to the semis and barely missed out on a lucky loser ticket to the finals.

Even without Majdic and Kowalczyk, the finals was still packed with talent from the likes of Fabjan, Korosteleva, Prochazkova, Saarinen, Follis and Brun-Lie. Korosteleva took the early and held it to the line, winning rather comfortably. In the fight to gain a good position to challenge the Russian to the line, Fabjan stepped on Saarinen’s poles on the final turn before finish line and both went down.

Results
1. Natalia Korosteleva
2. Celine Brun-Lie
3. Alena Prochazkova

Notes: It was also a great race from Norwegian Celine Brun-Lie who grabbed second place, a career best for the 21 year-old. Alena Prochazkova earned the bronze and that result must help ease the pain from yesterday when she fell twice on the same hill, including in the finals to end her medal hopes for the day. Canadian Sara Renner had a rough day at the races and ended up second last in 64th place. There were more casualties to the Tour as Mischol, Traschsel, Slind, Nystad, and Henkel dropped out.

Men

The biggest shock of the day was Northug’s inability to qualify for the heats. This opened the door for those chasing him in the overall classification to capitalize on the bonus seconds and they did just that. After all was said and done, Northug now sits in 5th position 47.3 seconds behind the lead.

After yesterday’s events, Jönsson was out for redemption and he did just that. He took control of every heat and made it look easy and held the lead from gun to wire in every heat. The NRK feed that I was watching cut out and I wasn’t able to watch the final. I can only assume Jönsson took the lead out of the gate, controlled the race until the finish line and put his turbo to the test, like he did in the quarters and semis. It was a great day for Sweden as they had three in the top five with Hellner in 2nd place and the new guy on the scene Theodor Peterson in 5th place. It was also another strong day for Andrew Newell as he racked up some more valuable sprint points as he placed 6th in todays proceedings. The home crowd was also happy as Czech skier Dusan Kozisek just missed the medals and placed 4th.

Results
1. Emil Jönsson
2. Marcus Hellner
2. Simen Østesen

Today’s results are the same as the overall Tour results. Who thought a sprint specialist would be the Tour leader after four stages? Not only that, but two Swede’s ontop of the leader board instead of a pile of Norwegians or Russians.

Notes:  The Canadian men had a decent day as Kershaw qualified 8th but ultimately ended up 21st after a slow quarter-final and Harvey qualified 20th and moved up a place to 19th. Grey and Babikov were 47th and 67th respectively. With the 21st place Kershaw himself in 11th overall only 1:31 off the lead and a very good spot for the start of the distance section of the Tour. Today saw a couple German’s in Katz and Seifert dropped out of the Tour.

Til Tomorrow.