Nordic Skiing/Biathlon Thread

[Bavarianrider]

I do not get it. Why Die Bolshunov not even try on Burgstall. 1.hour 52 minutes. Longest relay in Mannheim decades.

 

[roundabout]

a bit anticlimactic, but an interesting race overall

 

[Mayomaniac]

I do not get it. Why Die Bolshunov not even try on Burgstall. 1.hour 52 minutes. Longest relay in Mannheim decades.

Yeah, he pretty much had to try to grind Klaebo down on the Burgstall.
Great result for France, a strong race by Sweden and Switzerland also pretty good. Holund won the race for Norway, MVP of the team.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Bolshunov is tactically very naïve a lot of the time, Klæbo just outsmarted him at the end there, took the lead where he needed to to force the Russian to come around him on the last climb, and then made the push for it. France deserve the bronze for Lapierre having the guts to try something.

 

[Bubba]

Yeah, he pretty much had to try to grind Klaebo down on the Burgstall.
Great result for France, a strong race by Sweden and Switzerland also pretty good. Holund won the race for Norway, MVP of the team.

Honorable mention to Iversen.

Crazy relay, most definately entertaining.

 

[Silhouette]

Honorable mentions to Golberg also who made the best out of terrible skis. The usual mistake in that position is to race according to the plan and not the skis, if he had spent more time in front when Russia got a gap then I think the. gap would have been closer to 2 minutes after the first leg.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Overall a really interesting relay, clearly the best race of the WC so far.
Will be interesting who Norway will pick for the 50km race, I'd go Holund, Roethe, Krüger, Iversen and Golberg, but it wouldn't surprise me if they picked Klaebo.
Russia will probably go Bolshunov, Belov, Chervorkin and Yakimushkin (who else is healthy and good enough to race this one?)

 

[BullsFan22]

Yeah, he pretty much had to try to grind Klaebo down on the Burgstall.
Great result for France, a strong race by Sweden and Switzerland also pretty good. Holund won the race for Norway, MVP of the team.

I think Yakimushkin won the race for Norway, to be honest, and likely the Russian coaches. Needed likely to have Bolshunov during the second leg, and Yakimushkin and Maltsev in the skate legs. Yakimushkin had 56 second advantage over Iversen at the start. He had a 20 second deficit at the end of it. Maltsev did the right thing, he skied well but controlled to catch France, Sweden and Switzerland, then he rested a bit and went on the attack, but it’s difficult to get away in these sort of conditions and he paid the price.

I also blame Bolshunov for not trying something at least on the last lap, but even earlier. He needed to use the entire Burgstall climb to grind Klæbo down. Once Klæbo was latched on at the top of that climb, that was it. The last chance then for Bolshunov was to be ahead of Klæbo before the final spike just before the final downhill into the finish. Klæbo knew that and he was in an advantage. Bolshunov, kept so close behind the Norwegian I don’t understand. It’s like he didn’t want to win, as if just catching Klæbo was his biggest goal. I don’t understand that tactic.

People just keep handing wins to Klæbo on a platter. I really don’t get it.

Terrible classic performances, again, for the Germans. If there’s anyone who shouldn’t have too many problems here in terms of waxing, it’s the Germans, cause they spent so much time over the past couple seasons preparing.

The French doing French things, snatching 3rd with a clever little dig by Lapierre. After a rather disappointing championship for them they redeemed themselves.

I think the first leg being so close together helped everyone, yes, even Yakimushkin, because without that gap he could have lose more time, and maybe been a minute behind. So Chervotkin won that medal for the Russians. Disappointing showing from Bolshunov, even if he did ski away from the chasing pack. The only positive is that he didn’t really exhaust himself today so he should be ok for the 50km.

 

[kingjr]

I'm thinking Laegreid may have solved the shooting part of biathlon.

 

[BullsFan22]

Overall a really interesting relay, clearly the best race of the WC so far.
Will be interesting who Norway will pick for the 50km race, I'd go Holund, Roethe, Krüger, Iversen and Golberg, but it wouldn't surprise me if they picked Klaebo.
Russia will probably go Bolshunov, Belov, Chervorkin and Yakimushkin (who else is healthy and good enough to race this one?)

Semikov. He was in the team specifically for that race. I can’t see Yakimushkin doing the 50km, with or without today’s performance.

 

[Silhouette]

Will be interesting who Norway will pick for the 50km race, I'd go Holund, Roethe, Krüger, Iversen and Golberg, but it wouldn't surprise me if they picked Klaebo.

As far as I know Røthe aleady left. He wasn't feeling great and wanted to go back home to his very pregnant girlfriend.

 

[kingjr]

Giacomel is getting good...

 

[BullsFan22]

So it was the terrible skis for Yakimushkin that torpedoed his leg, not the body. He said he tried and tried but the skis just didn’t go anywhere and when he heard they were quickly closing in despite his efforts he was very disappointed. Understandable.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Solid work from the Germans. Jacquelin can't get anything right.

 

[Mr. Brooks]

Bolshunov, kept so close behind the Norwegian I don’t understand. It’s like he didn’t want to win, as if just catching Klæbo was his biggest goal. I don’t understand that tactic.

The Swedish commentators offered an explanation. 'Bolshunov was playing dirty trying to break Klæbo's poles!' Personally I don't think so, but if you do, his tactics may make more sense to you?

 

[Max Rockatansky]

Solid work from the Germans. Jacquelin can't get anything right.

Should be Germany's best relay since the WC in Kontiolahti 2015. Huge gaps also. Wow...

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Should be Germany's best relay since the WC in Kontiolahti 2015. Huge gaps also. Wow...

Yeah, normally at least one of them would've made a big mistake. They were obviously helped by the misfortunes of France and Norway, but they did a pretty great job.

 

[BullsFan22]

The Swedish commentators offered an explanation. 'Bolshunov was playing dirty trying to break Klæbo's poles!' Personally I don't think so, but if you do, his tactics may make more sense to you?

LOL. Yeah he ‘was trying to break Klæbo’s skis...’. So he would get him and his team DQ’d? That’s Klæbo’s tactic, to surprise his opponents, ski slow and then attack. Bolshunov was behind him, if he was keeping the same rhythm his poles would have been touched, but I guess Bolshunov is guilty for everything that goes on during a ski race. Would the SVT guys suggest the same thing if it was the other way around?

 

[Bubba]

Honorable mentions to Golberg also who made the best out of terrible skis. The usual mistake in that position is to race according to the plan and not the skis, if he had spent more time in front when Russia got a gap then I think the. gap would have been closer to 2 minutes after the first leg.

Don't know if honorable mentions are required for someone being stupid.

In his own words:
– Jeg hadde alle muligheter å velge det samme som alle andre. Vi sa i går at vi skulle velge det sikre. I dag gjorde jeg vel ikke det, sier Golberg.
(I had every opportunity to choose the same as everyone else. We said yesterday we would go for the safe option. Today I didn't I guess, says Golberg)

Sure, he fought bravely I suppose, but he dug his own grave.

 

[BullsFan22]

Don't know if honorable mentions are required for someone being stupid.

In his own words:
– Jeg hadde alle muligheter å velge det samme som alle andre. Vi sa i går at vi skulle velge det sikre. I dag gjorde jeg vel ikke det, sier Golberg.
(I had every opportunity to choose the same as everyone else. We said yesterday we would go for the safe option. Today I didn't I guess, says Golberg)

Sure, he fought bravely I suppose, but he dug his own grave.

He was very fortunate that nobody really wanted to work in the big group. He lost 10 seconds on the big hill alone, when they turned up the pace. If they went earlier he would have lost more.

 

[zarnack]

What a strange relay in snowfall. Usually it's very hard to lead out front, so how come Chervotkin so easily pulled away and nobody could or bothered to go with him. And then in the second leg things turned around, the chasers were lively. Well, Golberg losing more than a minute would lose the relay in normal circumstances, but not in these extreme conditions as Iversen could easily move up behind others. Feel sorry for Chervotkin though. He did all that work, to see it totally disappear on leg 2.

Holund beat everyone else in skating, as expected, and Kläbo just waited for Bolshunov to then beat him in the end.

Despite all the crazyness the result was ordinary: 1. Norway, 2. Russia, 3. France. The same order as in previous two championships, already kind of de facto result of men relays. First two a whole minute away from the rest, as well, to confirm the class difference. And in results no major shock this time like we had Sweden in women's relay, despite weather being challenging for waxing.

---

Meanwhile in biathlon the difference between men's and yesterday's women's relay couldn't be starker. Yesterday massively close competition, today big differences and smaller nations couldn't compete with the top at all. Norway could take 3 penalty loops to still end up 3rd, and France 4 to still end up 5th.

For Germany this is a major achievement though, with their aging team and not good future prospects. I don't know, what went wrong yesterday, but today they were really fast on skis, even faster than Norway. And with good job in the range they were peerless. It kind of reminded some old-school relay some 20 years ago. Big gaps and top 3 being traditional Germany, Russia, Norway.

 

[titan31]

Odd races today.

I thought Russia had it sorted after the leg 1 disaster by Norway but then Iversen skiied superbly and Yakimushkin less so. I reckon if Russia had Bolshunov on leg 2, they'd have won. Klaebo was just able to do his own thing on leg 4 and skiied slow to save himself for the sprint. His kick on that last climb was fantastic though.

In biathlon, I've no idea where that German performance came from. Even with the Norwegian meltdown in shooting, Lesser, Doll and Pfeiffer were outskiing Laegreid, Dale and Tarjei which is odd that all 3 of them do that in one race. Norway had a meltdown, as did Jacquelin again, so the race wasn't that close unfortunately. Thought it wasn't a good idea for Norway to change the WC team and order after it worked so well.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I just thought that Norway got their form sorted for the World Championships and are probably coming over the hump now, and for the crystal globe for the relay they only really needed to be ahead of Sweden and not too far behind France. Sweden were a long way down because Peppe Femling got sick and Gabriel Stegmayr had to come in on leg 1 on short notice. Johannes Dale shooting a penalty loop isn't that surprising, he's done it a couple of times and he still is young, but the other factor was that Germany really had something to prove after a disastrous World Championships relay. Lesser especially was highly motivated after his Pokljuka catastrophe, while an on-form Benedikt Doll has been a top 5 skier at the World Cup for several years and Arnd Peiffer is just a safe pair of hands. Plus they got fortunate with the wind picking up after they (and France) had left the range a couple of times. The other thing is that the German relay order has been very settled for a long time, the issue has been finding a replacement for Schempp anchoring (they've experimented with moving Doll off his preferred leg 2 and with Philipp Horn who had a couple of disasters) - and by the time they handed over to Nawrath he was already in a place where even a couple of penalty loops would probably put him back to 2nd, but after Émilien Jacquelin imploded spectacularly in prone, Nawrath could shoot very calmly, because he had the freedom to recover from a couple of mistakes.

 

[zarnack]

For tomorrow's 30 km there is no Diggins, Brennan, Stupak nor Nepryaeva on the start list... Not sure, what is happening.

 

[DenisMenchov]

For tomorrow's 30 km there is no Diggins, Brennan, Stupak nor Nepryaeva on the start list... Not sure, what is happening.

Americans are just horrible in classics, no way they could medal. Nepryaeva is sick, and I think Stupak is having a rest, she too is not on great form, and could never medal tomorrow. Zhambalova gets her well deserved start instead though.