Nordic Skiing/Biathlon Thread

[Libertine Seguros]

Put all your money on the Bills winning the Superbowl. On Raymond Poulidor winning the Tour de France. On Marie-Josée Ta Lou-Smith winning an Olympic gold. On the Netherlands winning the FIFA World Cup - in a penalty shoot out.

All that you thought was true is a lie. All that we understood of life is fractured and broken. The impossible is possible tonight, tonight. The indescribable moments of your life, tonight.

Franziska Preuß has clutched it out.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Diggins skips a relay for the fouth consecutive time. Weird that FIS decided to remove the points for relays with the introduction of the new pointsystem.

This is absolutely fair and reasonable for her to do, though, especially now that the relays don't matter so much for points. A lot of her World Cup overall rivals will either skip some distance races or skip some sprints (or DNQ them) whereas Diggins tends to do the full calendar start to finish, and also will tend to get further in sprints than many of her distance rivals, as well as have to go all out in many distance races than most of those who can outscore her in sprints. Assuming equal form, she's going to be the US' best chance of victory in pretty much every single race on the calendar bar one (the Alpe Cermis stage of the Tour de Ski), so she has to have somewhere that she can take a break, even though she seems to have very strong recovery enabling her to hold good form for longer than most.

Another factor is that unlike the skiathlon, where it seems by and large the Classic is a matter of attrition before the race is broken up in skate, in the relay the Classic legs tend to be more decisive in breaking the field up, which has often been to the US' detriment since pretty much every skier they have is stronger in skate. This has meant often Diggins is handed over to with a deficit already established, and has to go hard every relay leg to try to pull the team back into contention, to varying levels of success, whereas, say, Finland, where their best technique is Classic, get to hang near the front at the halfway stage and their skate skiers can hitch a ride on others to survive rather than having to do the whole leg alone as Diggins has all too frequently been doing in recent years. Her improved Classic in the last season or two has led to her being deployed on those legs, but with her being the team's main ace, using her weaker technique just to keep them in contact has not been any more successful in the long run because then they don't have their main trump card to play on the skate leg.

 

[BigCoward]

Uldal must have been rapid, conveyor belt shows no signs of slowing down.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Preuß Preuß Baby!

JTB one step closer to overtaking Bjørndalen.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Wang is back in Europe and raced the team sprint qualifier as a training, Wang gang!

 

[KZD]

Norwegian men and Swedish women dominating the team sprint races in Davos, podiums on both races for the home nation is a great result.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

A nearly perfect race by Jeanmonnot (she could have shot a little faster, but she didn't have to). Also a great result for Voigt. Öberg did alright considering her poor performance yesterday, but her prone shooting let her down a bit and gave her a lot more traffic to get through in the first laps.

 

[BigCoward]

Joahhmes still doesn't look like he is skiing at his absolute best (obviously a very high bar).

 

[BigCoward]

3 within 2 seconds off the last shoot. Exciting. The Norwegians need to drop EJ before a sprint.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Well that was anticlimactic

 

[KZD]

Joahhmes still doesn't look like he is skiing at his absolute best (obviously a very high bar).

He isn't given that Jacquelin was a tiny bit faster than him yesterday on the tracks and Sørum and Uldal were almost as fast. These two should keep their places in the Norwegian team for the next round.

I am convinced Jacquelin would have beaten Bø today in a sprint but avoiding these mistakes is part of the game.

Jeanmonot did a perfect race in the women's side and now leads the overall, it won't be easy to take the yellow bib away from her.

 

[QueenStagiaire]

He isn't given that Jacquelin was a tiny bit faster than him yesterday on the tracks and Sørum and Uldal were almost as fast. These two should keep their places in the Norwegian team for the next round.

I am convinced Jacquelin would have beaten Bø today in a sprint but avoiding these mistakes is part of the game.

Jeanmonot did a perfect race in the women's side and now leads the overall, it won't be easy to take the yellow bib away from her.

Jeanmonnot does not lead in the overall actually, she‘s 29 points behind.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Jeanmonnot does not lead in the overall actually, she‘s 29 points behind.

But does anyone really have faith in Preuß being able to defend the lead until the end?
I'd love to see it happen though.

 

[QueenStagiaire]

But does anyone really have faith in Preuß being able to defend the lead until the end?
I'd love to see it happen though.

No, I don‘t have that either, but I‘m not going to write her off prematurely. Jeanmonnot is looking good, it‘s quite weird that for me Braisaz-Bouchet and Simon come to mind when I think of French biathletes while Jeanmonnot was 2nd in the World Cup Overall last Season.

 

[OJRvE]

Leonora Ishøi Rønhede from Denmark won in Swedish junior cup in Biathlon today ahead of super talent Elsa Tänglander so maybe we will see a dane fight for World Cup victories in a few years.

It actually looks like she is born and raised in Denmark and just moved to Sweden for training.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Leonora Ishøi Rønhede from Denmark won in Swedish junior cup in Biathlon today ahead of super talent Elsa Tänglander so maybe we will see a dane fight for World Cup victories in a few years.

It actually looks like she is born and raised in Denmark and just moved to Sweden for training.

The problem is always going to be when she hits seniors, though, whether the Danish budget can allow her to reach those goals. After all, Chardine Sloof and Ukaleq Astri Slettemark were both World Champions at the youth or junior level, but never managed to achieve close to that when turning senior, Sloof even switching to represent Sweden later on, but only after a few 'lost years' where the homegrown athletes got ahead of her in the queue.

The best case scenario would be for her to get trailed around as an additional athlete for the Swedish junior squad, similar to how Laure Soulié was for Andorra (travelling and lodging with the French team and to all intents and purposes being one of them). Theoretically she could also go the same way as Jakov Fak or Campbell Wright, compete in that same manner but then transfer to compete for the nation that has essentially adopted them (I think this is essentially what Sloof eventually did), but they were more successful with their original nationality to the point where they almost had to be brought on by the 'parent' team as they were outperforming all of that team's own performers, which I don't think would be the case for Rønhede unless the Swedes go through a similar down-period to that which they experienced after Ekholm and Olofsson-Zidek retired.

 

[OJRvE]

The problem is always going to be when she hits seniors, though, whether the Danish budget can allow her to reach those goals. After all, Chardine Sloof and Ukaleq Astri Slettemark were both World Champions at the youth or junior level, but never managed to achieve close to that when turning senior, Sloof even switching to represent Sweden later on, but only after a few 'lost years' where the homegrown athletes got ahead of her in the queue.

The best case scenario would be for her to get trailed around as an additional athlete for the Swedish junior squad, similar to how Laure Soulié was for Andorra (travelling and lodging with the French team and to all intents and purposes being one of them). Theoretically she could also go the same way as Jakov Fak or Campbell Wright, compete in that same manner but then transfer to compete for the nation that has essentially adopted them (I think this is essentially what Sloof eventually did), but they were more successful with their original nationality to the point where they almost had to be brought on by the 'parent' team as they were outperforming all of that team's own performers, which I don't think would be the case for Rønhede unless the Swedes go through a similar down-period to that which they experienced after Ekholm and Olofsson-Zidek retired.

I am hoping for a similar situation as with Kristian Ilves in the Nordic combined who I think is essentially a part of the Norwegian team and get all support but are competing for Estonia. I am not sure who pay for it but it’s maybe the Estonian federation or his personal sponsors chipped in. Sweden has a similar partnership with Norway on women’s Ski Jumping where the national federation pay Norway so Frida Westman can be with the team but compete for Sweden. She is still injured though it seems.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I am hoping for a similar situation as with Kristian Ilves in the Nordic combined who I think is essentially a part of the Norwegian team and get all support but are competing for Estonia. I am not sure who pay for it but it’s maybe the Estonian federation or his personal sponsors chipped in. Sweden has a similar partnership with Norway on women’s Ski Jumping where the national federation pay Norway so Frida Westman can be with the team but compete for Sweden. She is still injured though it seems.

That is similar to what happened with Soulié - and was happening with Eiduka in the cross-country with the Polish team before she joined the Åkerdæhlie group.

The issue with Fak and Wright was that they were both outperforming the team that they were paired up with, so the team pushed them to transfer as a result. Slovenia and the US, as mid-field teams at best in biathlon at the times that they made those transfers (Wright might still be racing for New Zealand if Lowell Bailey and Tim Burke were still around and they were getting good results from other sources, but for the moment they need him for the Nations Cup), benefit from the transfers, whereas the Norwegian ski jump and NoCo teams don't really have any need to transfer those athletes in and they can continue to compete for their home nations and help diversify the World Cup.

 

[BullsFan22]

That is similar to what happened with Soulié - and was happening with Eiduka in the cross-country with the Polish team before she joined the Åkerdæhlie group.

The issue with Fak and Wright was that they were both outperforming the team that they were paired up with, so the team pushed them to transfer as a result. Slovenia and the US, as mid-field teams at best in biathlon at the times that they made those transfers (Wright might still be racing for New Zealand if Lowell Bailey and Tim Burke were still around and they were getting good results from other sources, but for the moment they need him for the Nations Cup), benefit from the transfers, whereas the Norwegian ski jump and NoCo teams don't really have any need to transfer those athletes in and they can continue to compete for their home nations and help diversify the World Cup.

Fak had a disagreement with the federation and he was offered decent money by the Slovenians.

I don’t follow biathlon much these days, so I don’t know the details on Wright’s move. Without him US biathlon is essentially nothing these days. That federation has a whole host of problems right now, and some of them are very serious.

 

[BigCoward]

Norway having Soerum on last leg is a surprise. Still think they should be allowed a b tram in world cup relays.
Lawgried has been shooting the lights out this year, wonder if he goes back to his normal relay form.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Fak had a disagreement with the federation and he was offered decent money by the Slovenians.

I don’t follow biathlon much these days, so I don’t know the details on Wright’s move. Without him US biathlon is essentially nothing these days. That federation has a whole host of problems right now, and some of them are very serious.

The New Zealand authority have some previous when it comes to a lack of investment. Sarah Murphy qualified them a spot at the Sochi Olympics but they turned it down without asking her because they didn't want to spend the money on sending her if she wasn't going to challenge for medals. A similar thing happened around Wright at Beijing, they placed demands on his performance to justify sending him, but he then achieved them with a great result in an Individual at Antholz in the last event before the Olympics, when lots of big names were taking time out to prep for Beijing. He was working with the US coaches at the time, and used defecting to compete for the US as a threat to negotiate that arrangement around the Olympics. I can only imagine that either the NZ authority reneged on a promise, or another ultimatum was given which led to him carrying out the threat; or there was an incentive from the American team that the New Zealanders simply couldn't match or were unwilling to match meaning it was more advantageous for him to make the switch.

Also US biathlon could do with some good news, obviously Dunklee, Egan, Bailey and Burke are all things of the past, and they appear to have some kind of historical SA scandal going on in the organisation as well that a few of the women have become embroiled in.

 

[DenisMenchov]

I'm loving this Davos loop.

 

[Mayomaniac]

I'm loving this Davos loop.

It's hard, proper distance racing.
Alev is doing surprisingly well.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Nyenget has really good technique in both styles, smooth classic stride and absurdly strong in both double poling and V2.
Hard climbs, but Lapalus being so good on a course with so much double poling is surprising.

 

[Bavarianrider]

So a individual start race that almost lasted an hour. We should celebrate this day. We most likely will never see anything longer. I think Niskaanen would have won over 10,15km.
Great race, decent gaps. For the Women this will be a real test with substantial gaps.