zarnack said:
Good race for second place. Karlsson has surprised me yet again. It's scary to think, how good she might be in the future though if she is that good already as a teenager. Clearly the hopes of someone truly taking on Johaug in the next few years rest on her.
About dominance the only thing I would say that it is not good for the sport in general. Plenty of countries like Germany, Italy, Czechia have thrown in the towel already. Nobody cares any more.
So far in the championships only 2 countries have won XC golds - Norway 9, Sweden 2. It's fewer countries than what has been in the past. Russia has been second in every men discipline. The competition keeps shrinking. I assume even Norwegians are getting bored of repetition.
But weirdly, I think the Norwegian domination hasn't been as ridiculous as a few years ago. They have won more golds than ever before, sure, but season-long the competition has been less one-sided than ever, and even at these championships, take Klæbo and Johaug out of it, and the Norwegian team really isn't as dominant as it was a few years back. In the 30k at Lahti they took 1-2-3-4, and 1-3-4-8 in the 10k (1-5-10-19 this year). In Falun they did a 1-2 in both the skiathlon and the 30k, with all four in the top 10, and it was only because of unusual changing conditions in the 10k and some start number gambles by others that they failed so badly there. They also won both women's relay and team sprint in Falun and Lahti. In Val di Fiemme the women won every gold bar the Team Sprint, and did a 1-2-3-4 in the skiathlon and 1-3-4 in the 30k as well as a 1-2 in the 10k. They won every gold bar the Team Sprint in Holmenkollen too, and there's also the 1-2-3 in the 30k and the 1-3-4 in the skiathlon at the Sochi Olympics to count.
Overall, across these Championships, the women's XC has, largely thanks to the Swedes, seemed much less of a parade of one nation than for much of the last decade - it's just that Johaug is still an outlier and if you take her out of the results sheet, it's a much more competitive field; Østberg is proven class, but she doesn't just run away from the whole field like Therese does, and the battle between her and Karlsson after Frida dropped, and Ingvild caught and dropped, Diggins made for an interesting medal fight; Weng has been far from her best this season, as has Haga; Jacobsen has never been especially consistent but hasn't hit her best form at these championships, Falla has decided to stop racing the longer disciplines as she isn't going to adapt to them at this stage in her career the way Østberg has, and Bjørgen has retired. The Slinds, the Udnes Wengs and the new young Norwegians have yet to really hit the ground running in the same way that Andersson, Karlsson and even, preceding them, Nilsson have done (though Skistad may, given time, as the sprints are more of a lottery as a small mistake like that can cost you so much), and while they're not going to be winning races with strong fields anytime soon, the championships only allowing four starters per nation is a positive thing for athletes like von Siebenthal and Stadlober who are distance specialists, and Victoria Carl was really good today and is only 23 too. The danger is that she has made noises about biathlon in the past, and obviously hæmorrhaging talent to biathlon has been a long-standing problem for the Germans. The Russians can be competitive, at least in the sprints and the 10k, with Nepryaeva and Belorukova who are both young. Look at the Norwegians leading the charge in the World Cup: Jacobsen is 32. Johaug is 30. Eide is 29. Østberg, Haga and Falla are 28. Weng is 27. Most of them still have years in them, sure. But even when they were obliterating the calendar with veterans like Steira and Skofterud backing up Bjørgen and Johaug, they were giving young athletes more opportunities - and those young athletes, who grew up to become the Østbergs, Fallas and Wengs - were doing more with their opportunities than we're seeing from the young Norwegians now. Is the ease of winning distance with Johaug masking - as Tora Berger's success did in the biathlon - that there is actually less strength in depth than they might think?