Nordic Skiing/Biathlon Thread

[Libertine Seguros]

I dont follow biathlon that close, but after the Norwegian opening on Sjusjøen there was a lot of talk in the media how the Norwegians had so much better skis than the germans and Vittozi. Apparently it was clear to see in the masstart race, and some of the experts were talking about how the Norwegians were miles ahead of Germany/Italy in this new Fluor free world of waxing.
But then it seems like the Norwegian men are not as impressive in the skiing times as previous seasons, so it’s probably hard to argue that the Norwegian biathletes have superior skis.

Realistically, more likely they did have better skis on the day, but it was probably more the regular kind of ski superiority that comes from knowing the conditions at that venue or just judging it better; the remainder of the superiority came from the fact the Norwegians had pretty open competition for places on their international lineups and a glut of talent competing for World Cup and IBU Cup spots whereas the Germans and Italians brought people who were already guaranteed international slots and building their form ready for the World/IBU Cup seasons, and it was just internal competition to see who got allocated to which competition.

Of course, the Norwegian media will have seized the opportunity to wax (no pun intended) lyrical about their superiority because it could also imply that those dastardly other teams had abused the fluor regulations to compete with Norwegian excellence and had had to be stopped. Despite last season being an almost unprecedented level of dominance by one nation in the sport.

 

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it's also cold and dry in Oestersund, so not typical conditions were fluor comes with an advantage. The effect of the ban could still be larger on other venues.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Freaking Lolberg...

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

22 distance races in a row with Norwegian victory on the mens side. In these skating races with individual start they are completely dominating, but good go see Musgrave, Vermeulen and Novak close to the podium. Moch will come closer later, hes been sick lately.

 

[KZD]

Golberg has become surprisingly strong in these 10k skating individual races since last year. Hope that he can give Klæbo a proper fight until the end of the season.

Despite not liking her, I have to admit that Diggins was super strong in the women's race.

 

[BullsFan22]

The hilarious thing is, there’s another 10km individual start skate race next weekend.

Anyway, without the Russians, there’s no real competition to the Norwegian dominance, certainly not consistently. Maybe a couple races here and there you’ll see individuals like Niskanen in classic races, a couple Frenchmen and Pellegrino in the sprints (mostly skate), Novak only got his first World Cup podium last week and he’s 27. I don’t know what Calle will be like, but he’s in his mid 30’s now and Poromaa has been sick the last week. The course doesn’t have any significant hills, neither in length nor in steepness, it’s mostly transition hills coming on from downhills/corners. The snow was still quick, despite the cold weather, as evidenced by the times. All of this made for close times.

 

[Bavarianrider]

Norwegian domination, but Vermeulen and Novak are basically on their level. That is really impressive. Skiing Times are as fast as they have always been. There most certainly is no noticeable speed drop due to the ban.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Norwegian domination, but Vermeulen and Novak are basically on their level. That is really impressive. Skiing Times are as fast as they have always been. There most certainly is no noticeable speed drop due to the ban.

Tbf, so far we haven't had fluor conditions.

 

[BigCoward]

Did samuelsson take a short cut, that's insane. Jtb missing twice already, maybe season won't be a write off.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

This is where the Swedes' ski pace has been. This is the kind of outlier I'm used to in Östersund, usually it's Elvira as the outlier with Hanna being as quick as the people who'll usually outpace her the rest of the season though. Samuelsson somehow gained 20+ seconds on the first lap alone, although I think the snow is getting quicker as decent skiers in the early going are being made to look ordinary. People like Florent Claude and Maksim Makarov are setting good times out of prone from later start numbers.

Commentary is blowing a gasket about how phenomenal Christiansen's last lap must have been to be leading after his super slow standing shoot, forgetting that he had a humongous advantage over everybody else before that shoot, so almost all his time loss is because of that shoot.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

That's some turnaround here with Nawrath now looking like the winner.

 

[Bavarianrider]

Ok, Nawrath cooking Boe. Very impressive.

 

[Mayomaniac]

That's some turnaround here with Nawrath now looking like the winner.

The Germs are flying on the skis this season.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

The Germs are flying on the skis this season.

And on the shooting range as well. It could possibly have been quite close if Samuelsson had only missed once. However I doubt Nawrath will be abe to hold on in the pursuit tomorrow, but time will tell.

Sørum is having a pretty good day, too.

 

[KZD]

Ok, Nawrath cooking Boe. Very impressive.

To be honest, it was the slowest Bø, still impressive nonetheless. Samuelsson looking crazy fast once again.

Very entertaining race to follow, Christiansen taking 1:06 minutes on shooting 2 was comical and Lægreid is looking so slow that I wouldn't take him to Hochfilzen especially with Sørum and Strømsheim in this shape.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Start number race I think. Germans are flying relative to usual but the best skiers starting early have been disadvantaged. Tarjei is still 4th on ski time at time of writing, ahead of Christiansen, Johannes, Fillon Maillet, Jacquelin, Ponsiluoma...

The Germans have been underperforming on the skis for a while. Somebody like Nawrath always had a race like this in him because he's had some very good ski days in the past, but his shooting under pressure tended to be a complete lottery - but I always thought he'd get one of these races in the same way as, say, Fanny Welle-Strand Horn or Katharina Innerhofer are World Cup race winners, or a bit like Kühn's win last year or Lars Berger's final sprint win at Hochfilzen, very much an outlier. Speaking of Kühn, although historically seeing Johannes Kühn in the top 10 skiers would be nothing special, he's always been a very good skier and one of the top 5 in the World Cup season-long a few years ago, at this point in his career it does feel like the startlist sweet spot played in to things, he's always kind of been Benedikt Doll-lite.

I've kind of always seen Nawrath as like a poor man's Rastorgujevs, he's gutsy and potentially very quick but also erratic and not liable to perform well under pressure, showing glimpses of greatness followed by weeks of mediocrity. I'd be surprised if he doesn't wilt tomorrow in the pursuit, if he doesn't and he backs this up, we can talk of an Andreas Birnbacher renaissance where he always had the ability, but never managed to put both parts of the game together until suddenly it clicked late on in his career and he became a big player, briefly.

 

[dobrien]

A whopping 52 women on the start list for tomorrow’s 10km skate in Gällivare!

And now on to the relay, where there are FIVE (5) countries fielding relatively serious teams plus one from Kazakhstan and one FIS team. No France, No Italy, No Switzerland, no Poland, no Canada, no Czechia, not even Estonia. Finland looking very weak so really only 4 teams with any chance.

Men's side has a few more teams but not one with even a remote chance of beating Norway. This is bordering on not even being sport at this point.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

And now on to the relay, where there are FIVE (5) countries fielding relatively serious teams plus one from Kazakhstan and one FIS team. No France, No Italy, No Switzerland, no Poland, no Canada, no Czechia, not even Estonia. Finland looking very weak so really only 4 teams with any chance.

Men's side has a few more teams but not one with even a remote chance of beating Norway. This is bordering on not even being sport at this point.

For the TV entertainment it probably doesn’t make a big difference. The tv production is always pretty bad and you basically only see the first 3-5 teams anyway…

 

[dobrien]

For the TV entertainment it probably doesn’t make a big difference. The tv production is always pretty bad and you basically only see the first 3-5 teams anyway…

With half of Sweden out the battle for the win might be enjoyable; I'll certainly watch. My larger point stands though; this sport is on life support at the WC level, at least IMHO.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

this sport is on life support at the WC level, at least IMHO.

i think they need to work over the World Cup schedule. Less races, a couple more weekends without races. 2-3 races every week only benefit Norway as they can put in two-three fresh athletes every weekend.

 

[BullsFan22]

With half of Sweden out the battle for the win might be enjoyable; I'll certainly watch. My larger point stands though; this sport is on life support at the WC level, at least IMHO.

Well, one issue is that they cut off their largest (by far) tv audience.

Also, it’s not shown in North America either.

And as Bavarian mentioned during the Ruka races last weekend, ARD, who alongside ZDF show xc skiing, didn’t show all the men’s races. One is scheduling conflict, they often have xc at the sam time as other, more popular sports. Two, the German men haven’t had any success in years, apart from Moch getting on the Alpe Cermis podium 2 years ago and the men getting on the podium in the 4x10 in Planica last season. You have to go back to Janosch Brugger posting the fastest pursuit time in Lillehammer in December 2018. And that was during a major snowfall that handicapped the leaders. Before that, I think January 2015 with Tim Tscharnke, so you see where some of problems lie. Germany provides some of the biggest sponsors to both xc and biathlon, and it also provides a decent audience, but if the Germans don’t perform, there is a lack of interest, logically.

FIS XC has a lot of problems to fix if they want to be competitive with other FIS sports, never mind mainstream sports.

 

[dobrien]

Despite not liking her, I have to admit that Diggins was super strong in the women's race.

I have never seen her look this good in the early season before; with no Oly or Worlds, and Holmenkollen being classic this year, the Tour de Ski is obviously her priority this season and she's come in fit. Speaking of classic, she looked much better last week in Ruka than in past seasons; hips high and forward, skiing with some snap. She'll never be Hennig or Niskanen but I saw definite improvement. If the Swedes can get back to full strength TdS should be a decent battle.

Well, one issue is that they cut off their largest (by far) tv audience.

Also, it’s not shown in North America either.

And as Bavarian mentioned during the Ruka races last weekend, ARD, who alongside ZDF show xc skiing, didn’t show all the men’s races. One is scheduling conflict, they often have xc at the sam time as other, more popular sports. Two, the German men haven’t had any success in years, apart from Moch getting on the Alpe Cermis podium 2 years ago and the men getting on the podium in the 4x10 in Planica last season. You have to go back to Janosch Brugger posting the fastest pursuit time in Lillehammer in December 2018. And that was during a major snowfall that handicapped the leaders. Before that, I think January 2015 with Tim Tscharnke, so you see where some of problems lie. Germany provides some of the biggest sponsors to both xc and biathlon, and it also provides a decent audience, but if the Germans don’t perform, there is a lack of interest, logically.

FIS XC has a lot of problems to fix if they want to be competitive with other FIS sports, never mind mainstream sports.

I can watch it in North America on skiandsnowboard.live, pretty good coverage actually if you don't mind Kikkan Randall and Chad Salmela. Obviously somewhat US focused but given their backgrounds super knowledgeable and also supportive of skiers from other countries.

As to your last, I don't really have a clue how you'd realistically 'fix' XC or if it's even a saleable product in the modern world. There are only a tiny number of countries which care about it in the first place, and as you said losing their largest audience after Norway is a killer. I'm 64 so definitely miss the old school; I'm one of those people who consider a 50k individual start the truest test and fascinating to watch...and I am surely in the minority in 2023. As LS has pointed out in previous posts, all FIS is achieving now is neutering the sport for those who really love it, and no one new is being drawn in. Biathlon has shooting, alpine has speed and danger, XC has... pain and suffering? We love it but it's not selling very well to the rest of the world.

If I was a billionaire in need of a new toy I'd really shake it up; 30k pursuits through the woods, get off the pristine homologated crap (extremely snow dependent, of course...). Fly a drone with each racer; blasphemy to purists but it's the new wave. More Alpe Cermis style climbs, really mix it up, open the racing to more types of skiers. And for the love of all that is good and holy, get rid of the giant waxing trucks so smaller countries aren't faced with competing against a country spending half your GDP on something as silly as ski wax. (Don't press me for details on how I'd implement that, it's just a dream..).

Edit: laughing at myself as I'm basically describing the Ski Classics here...

 

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There's another interview with Vermeulen in Austrian press today, according to which he lost 7 kg this summer (73 to 66). Today he could have competed in the relay together with the Brits, but decided against it to not get too tired before the Tour de Ski, where he aims for a Top 10 overall. The year after, he wants to become World Champion.

 

[Mayomaniac]

There's another interview with Vermeulen in Austrian press today, according to which he lost 7 kg this summer (73 to 66). Today he could have competed in the relay together with the Brits, but decided against it to not get too tired before the Tour de Ski, where he aims for a Top 10 overall. The year after, he wants to become World Champion.

So we're gonna see the 2nd coming of Joe Dürr on the Alpe Cermis?

He also had some problems during the Summer prep when he got a wisdom tooth removed.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Italy using Graz, potentially their best Skater, in the opening leg of the relay...