I mean, I know that feeling. Its never nice to get "burned" by investing too much into an athlete just to get disappointed. Just wanted to put another perspective here. Not saying that I know any more than anyone else here though.
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I know that the Norge-armada skipping the Tour de Ski and peaking right for the WC while the Russians all raced the Tour played a big part overall, but can we talk about Klaebo?
The guy pulled an Olsson and trained alone, not with the rest of the team, while staying in his cabine in Skeikampen and is now also a top distance skier.
Here's the source for him training alone in the woods (it's in German): https://www.xc-ski.de/aktuelles/new...-niskanen-klaebo-und-papplikum-in-oberstdorf/
The guy pulled an Olsson and trained alone, not with the rest of the team, while staying in his cabine in Skeikampen and is now also a top distance skier.
Here's the source for him training alone in the woods (it's in German): https://www.xc-ski.de/aktuelles/new...-niskanen-klaebo-und-papplikum-in-oberstdorf/
He certainly looked very good in the 30 km skiathlon and 50km, two distances that you don’t normally associate him with.
Is Nordic skiing getting to be more like speed skating, where a stellar talent (Heiden, Schenck, Koss, etc) can win every championship/Olympic event from 500 meters to the 10,000?
It’s a long time ago since anyone could win all events in ice skating. The demands are so completely different between 500M vs 1000/1500M vs 5000/10.000M. Events in XC skiing are just not comparable.
Showing my age I guess
Eric Heiden in 1980
Maybe someone has done it thereafter but today the skaters are very specialized and as different as a track cyclist, a GC contender and a puncheur. It's quite cool to watch 500 metres, they almost reach 60 km/h in the last curve.
not quite xc, but I think we discussed biathlon here before
www.biathlonworld.com
BIU Provisionally Suspends Andrejs Rastorgujevs - International Biathlon Union - IBU - International Biathlon Union - IBU
The Biathlon Integrity Unit (BIU) can confirm that the Latvian biathlete Andrejs Rastorgujevs has been provisionally suspended from competition due to a potential Anti-Doping Rule Violation (ADRV) in the form of a whereabouts failure according to Article 2.4 IBU ADR The BIU has taken the...
www.biathlonworld.com
A shame, I liked him, he was - and I guess continues therefore to be - like the Alexey Poltoranin of biathlon.
Poltoranin had a much more successful career than Rastorgujevs, doping or no doping. He made World Juniors at only 14 years of age and his Olympic debut at 18, where he skied quite well.
Northug won both sprint and 50 km, even in the same championship (2015). So this is not something completely new.
But it may be the effect of decreasing competition depth, so that a good talent can shine through in a variety of disciplines. For example we don't even have true classic specialists any more, like we used to have (Niskanen is currently the closest to this). Those, who are good, can be competitive in both styles.
Iversen and Bolshunov, who were in the front in 50km, are also both good in sprint. I wouldn't be surprised if, say, also Valnes developed some distance capacity over the years.
Maybe the comparison is more related to that both Kazakhstan and Latvia are fringe nations in these respective sports.
Once Poltoranin was caught, Kazakh XC was pretty much dead. Latvia of course still has Baiba Bendika, but I wonder if this affair could effectively wipe them off from biathlon map for a while as well. (although apart from Rastorgujevs and Bendika they don't really have competitive athletes currently).
https://biatlonmag.cz/dvojnasobny-o...ce=www.seznam.cz&utm_medium=sekce-z-internetu
Former Russian biathlet Dmitrij Vasiljev went out hard on Norway in general but on Lagreid in parituclar a few days ago:
According to Vasiljev, it is very likely that, thanks to therapeutic exceptions, Norwegians use steroids and anabolic drugs.
Sportsdaily.ru asked the two-time Olympic champion about Sturla Holm Lægreid 's performances . "It's hard for me to judge what made him so special that he suddenly could become a star from being mediocre . I have questions that I would like to have answered. The main question is when the rampage with therapeutic exceptions will end. We know that the worst offenders on planet Earth are Norwegian skiers and biathletes.
Norwegian/French trainer Mazet on Twitter:
To accuse Sturla Lægreid or any athletes of doping that I took/take care, it's insulted my work. M. Dmitri Vasiliev, when you are from a country who has the past it has, it s really better to shut up. Next.
Former Russian biathlet Dmitrij Vasiljev went out hard on Norway in general but on Lagreid in parituclar a few days ago:
According to Vasiljev, it is very likely that, thanks to therapeutic exceptions, Norwegians use steroids and anabolic drugs.
Sportsdaily.ru asked the two-time Olympic champion about Sturla Holm Lægreid 's performances . "It's hard for me to judge what made him so special that he suddenly could become a star from being mediocre . I have questions that I would like to have answered. The main question is when the rampage with therapeutic exceptions will end. We know that the worst offenders on planet Earth are Norwegian skiers and biathletes.
Norwegian/French trainer Mazet on Twitter:
To accuse Sturla Lægreid or any athletes of doping that I took/take care, it's insulted my work. M. Dmitri Vasiliev, when you are from a country who has the past it has, it s really better to shut up. Next.
I'm not the one who usually defends Norway in either XC skiing or Biathlon, but most of their newfound dominance in Biathlon came after they poached top level shooting coaches from France and Italy for both the men's and women's team (Siegfried Mazet and Patrick Oberegger).
I think being critical of TUE’s (particularly when it’s already been established that the Norwegian Olympic Committee and the NSF give asthma meds to those who don’t even have asthma) is completely fine. Why would the Norwegians give their athletes those meds if it didn’t help them any? And they absolutely can be used to cover steroid use. Also questioning Hagreid’s meteoric rise is absolutely within the wheelhouse.
Short of a GRU hack, he won't actually know who the worst offenders are as he is merely a mid-level official in the Russian biathlon system slash 'expert' on a public channel (hint-hint) with nothing that I've read suggesting that he has any insight.
And being critical of TUEs is one thing, using them as deflection from issues in Russian biathlon is another.
The issues in the RBU have nothing to do with doping. It’s their set up, lack of communication, no cohesiveness.
This positive was known about in the McLaren docs. This was actually the most egregious and stupid thing about the sanctions and the OAR stuff in Pyeongchang, because athletes like Irina Uslugina who hadn't even been competing internationally at all in 2013-14 and weren't mentioned in the docs at all were barred from the Olympics, along with people like Yurlova and Tsvetkov who had only done one or two races that season, yet Lapshin, who not only appeared in the McLaren docs but had a positive test recorded in them, was allowed to compete because he'd changed nation.
And the likes of Sergey Ustiugov, Gleb Retivykh, Anton Shipulin, Viktor Ahn, and others also not included even though they weren’t on any ‘list.’ Even FIS wrote to Bach and the IOC asking why they weren’t allowed to go, and the IOC never gave them an answer. That’s one of the many reasons I find the McLaren report, the psychopath Rodchenkov, and the IOC a farce. They dished out what they wanted to dish out without anyone fact-checking them (due to politics, of course).
Pity they didn’t have the guts to bust her. Too big to fail.
If Marit Bjørgen is indeed a steroid user and she herself is the only source for the 2017 incident, and her account is false, why in the first place to bring up the fact that she had steroids in her system in 2017?
I recall some people here speculating that Eddy Merckx didn't really refuse the blood transfusion way back in 1972 when he was offered one instead of hypoxic training for his one hour attempt, because transfusion is a better method to increase one's Hct. Again, the only source for the offer was "The Cannibal" himself, so why just not to keep mouth shut if he chose the needle.
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