Nordic Skiing/Biathlon Thread

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Aug 31, 2019
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historic stuff at the World Juniors today with Gina Del Rio from ANDORRA winning the sprint in the women’s class. She also won the Quali, the quarter final and the semi final on the way to gold. She looks to be technically very solid and it will be interesting to see how she can step up in the elite class next year.
She’s also a decent distance skier, so I’m not ruling out the possibility to win more medals. The 20 km masstart is also skating I think, that should be a good possibility.

Among the men Lars Heggen won ahead of two Swedes.
 
Jul 10, 2009
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historic stuff at the World Juniors today with Gina Del Rio from ANDORRA winning the sprint in the women’s class. She also won the Quali, the quarter final and the semi final on the way to gold. She looks to be technically very solid and it will be interesting to see how she can step up in the elite class next year.
She’s also a decent distance skier, so I’m not ruling out the possibility to win more medals. The 20 km masstart is also skating I think, that should be a good possibility.
Samantha Smith did her best to make it a race but Del Rio was a cut above the field; she sure does look like the real thing. Powerful and technically very smooth and balanced, agree she'll be very interesting to follow. Good for Andorra!

Link to full replay here.
 
Apr 10, 2019
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historic stuff at the World Juniors today with Gina Del Rio from ANDORRA winning the sprint in the women’s class. She also won the Quali, the quarter final and the semi final on the way to gold. She looks to be technically very solid and it will be interesting to see how she can step up in the elite class next year.
She’s also a decent distance skier, so I’m not ruling out the possibility to win more medals. The 20 km masstart is also skating I think, that should be a good possibility.

Among the men Lars Heggen won ahead of two Swedes.
De Martin Pinter (pretty much a local) probably lost a medal because of that crash in the final.

The Italian girls have been going toe to toe with the in the former Opa cup and Gismondi has beaten her in skating distance races.
Gismondi (who has already won senior rollerski world cup uphill races) and de Martin-Pinter are some of the biggest talents that Italy has produced on the women's side in a long time.
 
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Aug 31, 2019
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Sensational gold for Canadian Sonjaa Schmidt in the U23 sprint today, with the favorite Melling only getting the bronze. Among the men gold and silver for Norway and bronze for Hagenbuch.
 
Jun 22, 2010
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Sensational gold for Canadian Sonjaa Schmidt in the U23 sprint today, with the favorite Melling only getting the bronze. Among the men gold and silver for Norway and bronze for Hagenbuch.

Schmidt getting gold after barely getting into the heats is crazy, especially as she was the least known of the Canadians. This more of a shock than Crawford winning gold in Torino.
 
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Jul 10, 2009
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Sensational gold for Canadian Sonjaa Schmidt in the U23 sprint today, with the favorite Melling only getting the bronze. Among the men gold and silver for Norway and bronze for Hagenbuch.
Oh Canada indeed!! That was really awesome to watch. :hearteyes:
Schmidt getting gold after barely getting into the heats is crazy, especially as she was the least known of the Canadians. This more of a shock than Crawford winning gold in Torino.
That was crazy! She barely makes it in then proceeds to win the quarter, semi, and final. You won't see that very often; great win for her and for Canada.
 
Apr 10, 2019
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And of course Chiochetti crashed in the quarterfinal after having the 2nd best qualifier.
Yeah, he's often better in qualifiers than in finals, but he did beat Mocellini in a Skating sprint last month.
 
Aug 31, 2019
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Schmidt getting gold after barely getting into the heats is crazy, especially as she was the least known of the Canadians.
Her qualifyer was weak, but the heats extremely solid. Maybe she's just one of those who struggles in qualifyers? If so that would be a big issue for the World Cups, where it's often pretty hard to qualify.
And of course Chiochetti crashed in the quarterfinal after having the 2nd best qualifier.
Yeah, he's often better in qualifiers than in finals, but he did beat Mocellini in a Skating sprint last month.
Chiochetti couldve been a challenger for the bronze perhaps, the two Norwegians should be at a higher level (even if Holmboe is unproven at World Cup level he's been impressive in Norwegian races which we know have a very high level). Also not sure how much it's worth to beat Mocellini, if i recall correctly he's only ever qualified a few times in skating in the World Cup and never reached the semi finals.
 
Apr 10, 2019
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Her qualifyer was weak, but the heats extremely solid. Maybe she's just one of those who struggles in qualifyers? If so that would be a big issue for the World Cups, where it's often pretty hard to qualify.

Chiochetti couldve been a challenger for the bronze perhaps, the two Norwegians should be at a higher level (even if Holmboe is unproven at World Cup level he's been impressive in Norwegian races which we know have a very high level). Also not sure how much it's worth to beat Mocellini, if i recall correctly he's only ever qualified a few times in skating in the World Cup and never reached the semi finals.
Yeah, 3rd place would have been the best result that Chiochetti could aim for. I do rate him higher as a classic skier. About the Mocellini thing, because of his injury he couldn't train a lot of highspeed double poling during the last few months, so his at that time he was probably actually better at skating. But overall you're right about him being clearly better in classic sprints.
 
Jun 22, 2010
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Her qualifyer was weak, but the heats extremely solid. Maybe she's just one of those who struggles in qualifyers? If so that would be a big issue for the World Cups, where it's often pretty hard to qualify.

Chiochetti couldve been a challenger for the bronze perhaps, the two Norwegians should be at a higher level (even if Holmboe is unproven at World Cup level he's been impressive in Norwegian races which we know have a very high level). Also not sure how much it's worth to beat Mocellini, if i recall correctly he's only ever qualified a few times in skating in the World Cup and never reached the semi finals.

She was 43rd out of 51, 16+ seconds out in Goms and 48th out of 53, 19+ second out in Oberhof. That may not seem too impressive, but those are her first World Cup starts. I am curious if she’ll stay to do the distance races in Planica or head to Canada right away to race the Canmore world cups which start on Friday. Not a lot of time to acclimatize if she does go home.
 
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Sep 26, 2020
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Jun 30, 2022
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I only thought Kuzmina would be doing the EC on home turf.

I didn't expect too much from her there, after I had seen she'd been well behind in a 10 km skating race the week before. She did decently in the pursuit and mixed relay, all things considered.
Kuzmina had an interview on the IBU home page recently, where she said she‘d do relays, so young Slovakian athletes wouldn‘t be thrown out onto the World Cup stage and that she would do some sprints as well.
 
Aug 29, 2009
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With strong winds, high temperatures, rain and wet & dirty snow forecast in Nove Mesto, I guess the exact lineups may not be as important as usual anyway ;)
 
Aug 31, 2019
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1 lap (3,3 km) to go for the women. Only 3 skiers left in the front group after Gismondi hammered it and only Del Rio and Sand managed to keep up (Del Rio struggling).

The big favorite Milla Andreassen completely cracked.
 
Apr 10, 2019
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Gismondi completely outclassing the others here. She's got a great V2 technique.
See, I told people around here that she was a huge talent.
Last winter she got mono before tge WC, but during the summer she has won uphill roller ski mass start races on big climbs (Alpe Cermis in classic in the world cup and the Italian croce d'aune skating race, where she put 52sec into Francesca Franchi).

She makes sprint finals on a regular basis and this season she has beaten de Martin-Pinter and Del Rio once in a sprint final. Those 3 competing against eachother in the Fesa Cup and even in Italian Fis races has helped all of them in their development, the level in those races is pretty high.

She's from near Rome, but is now living in the Trentino region.
 
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KZD

Feb 21, 2019
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teams have just been announced:


no Doll is a bit of a surprise maybe. And Kuzmina is back for Slovakia.

France, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Italy all have a realistical chance of winning but I will go with Norway.

For the rest of the Championships, I expect Simon to be the strongest in the women's side and in the men's while I expect Norway will dominate, I don't think Johannes Bø will win 5 gold medals like last year because Christiansen and Dale are looking really strong and might get individual golds too.