Nordic Skiing/Biathlon Thread

Page 498 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
That's not the right comparison you make.
Top 10 in the mass start were separated by 1 minute. Top 10 in the sprint by less than 30 seconds.

Also, how would you change to bonus system in sprints?
You can't give time bonuses only for the first 3 as you punish the others making them do an extra effort for nothing. And you should somehow reward everyone who passed the qualification as they still do an extra effort

Also, you're other comparison is way out of line. None of the 3 you mentioned is even top 50 on the hard mountain stages. In comparison to the likes Diggins and Klaebo, they are comfortably top 10 and actual favourites for some distance races.
Valverde, if you ask me, is decent comparison to both and he podiumed all the GTs and won one.


If we compare distance races to hard GC stages and sprints to TTs, in cycling you don't see the likes of Mas or Cancellara dominate GC's, you're looking for all-rounders (or rarely extremely gifted climbers) the same goes to TdS. You don't get the likes of Pellegrino or Holund dominate, you get all-rounders (Diggins, Klaebo, Boergen, Bolshunov, Cologna...) and rarely extremely gifted distance skiers (like Bauer and Johaug) win.
I mean, all the bad things aside, Peter Northug was really all-around skier and he won only one TdS.


When I think about it, the biggest problem aren't the big sprint bonuses, but the presence of 2 mass starts and one pursuit instead of one more 15-20 km individual race.
The 20km Individual is the longest distance they cover on the World Cup outside of the one or two 50ks a year that we get as an anomaly.

Imagine giving out the same time bonus for sprint wins that you give for the spread of the top 10 in a 50km ITT.

Yes, Valverde is a good comparison for somebody like Diggins, I'd agree. But how many Grand Tour bunch sprints has he won? Like, actual sprints. The kind of sprints Valverde wins are comparable to the 15k mass start that Diggins won on stage 2, and got... no bonus seconds for.

And how would I delegate it? 5 seconds bonus for heats, 10 seconds bonus for semi-final, 30-25-20-16-14-12 for finalists. Definitely nothing more. Make it so that if you get through to the sprint you have to decide whether or not it's worth pushing it, at the moment some of the GC skiers who know they aren't getting anywhere in a sprint are happy just to take the bird in the hand by getting the free time gifted to them for being there. Just reaching the semi-final of a sprint is not enough to merit the same value as coming top 5 in a 20k individual start, especially when sometimes it's just a matter of not falling over in some of the demolition derby sprints. And look at the women's Tour today - there's what, 42 remaining athletes? So being in the top 30 is hardly some kind of achievement worthy of a whole swathe of bonus time.

I mean, even then I think I'm being pretty generous. After all, Klæbo won today's sprint with a time of 2'35 after a qualification of 2'34. He will have had to do the course four times for a total of ~10'30 time spent racing. In the 20k Individual Amundsen won with a time of 44'05 - more than four times as long. Klæbo gained 52" over Amundsen in the freestyle sprint in Toblach, despite that Amundsen actually set a faster time to be eliminated from QF 2 than Klæbo set to win QF 1. Amundsen has come 3" behind Klæbo over 15k, beaten him by 46 seconds in a 20k, beaten him by 5 seconds in a 15k (although that counted as losing 40 seconds or so because of the pursuit)... and was a minute and a half behind him on the GC after four stages despite actually skiing faster than Klæbo in the stage he lost almost all of that time.

So Amundsen lost 3" in sprint quali on day 1, 3" on day 2, gained 46 seconds on day 3 and lost 41 of those back on day 4. Totalling a difference of 1 second's actual skiing difference between the two. The rest of that minute and a half gap before today was time bonuses given to Klæbo for sprints and intermediates. That's just absurdly disproportionate to my mind.
 
The 20km Individual is the longest distance they cover on the World Cup outside of the one or two 50ks a year that we get as an anomaly.

Imagine giving out the same time bonus for sprint wins that you give for the spread of the top 10 in a 50km ITT.

Yes, Valverde is a good comparison for somebody like Diggins, I'd agree. But how many Grand Tour bunch sprints has he won? Like, actual sprints. The kind of sprints Valverde wins are comparable to the 15k mass start that Diggins won on stage 2, and got... no bonus seconds for.

And how would I delegate it? 5 seconds bonus for heats, 10 seconds bonus for semi-final, 30-25-20-16-14-12 for finalists. Definitely nothing more. Make it so that if you get through to the sprint you have to decide whether or not it's worth pushing it, at the moment some of the GC skiers who know they aren't getting anywhere in a sprint are happy just to take the bird in the hand by getting the free time gifted to them for being there. Just reaching the semi-final of a sprint is not enough to merit the same value as coming top 5 in a 20k individual start, especially when sometimes it's just a matter of not falling over in some of the demolition derby sprints. And look at the women's Tour today - there's what, 42 remaining athletes? So being in the top 30 is hardly some kind of achievement worthy of a whole swathe of bonus time.

I mean, even then I think I'm being pretty generous. After all, Klæbo won today's sprint with a time of 2'35 after a qualification of 2'34. He will have had to do the course four times for a total of ~10'30 time spent racing. In the 20k Individual Amundsen won with a time of 44'05 - more than four times as long. Klæbo gained 52" over Amundsen in the freestyle sprint in Toblach, despite that Amundsen actually set a faster time to be eliminated from QF 2 than Klæbo set to win QF 1. Amundsen has come 3" behind Klæbo over 15k, beaten him by 46 seconds in a 20k, beaten him by 5 seconds in a 15k (although that counted as losing 40 seconds or so because of the pursuit)... and was a minute and a half behind him on the GC after four stages despite actually skiing faster than Klæbo in the stage he lost almost all of that time.

So Amundsen lost 3" in sprint quali on day 1, 3" on day 2, gained 46 seconds on day 3 and lost 41 of those back on day 4. Totalling a difference of 1 second's actual skiing difference between the two. The rest of that minute and a half gap before today was time bonuses given to Klæbo for sprints and intermediates. That's just absurdly disproportionate to my mind.

As you're giving example with Amundsen, it's down to him underperforming in the first sprint.
He was top 10 in the sprint races so far and if he did this, he would be ~30 seconds behind Klaebo, despite dropping 41 seconds in one of the distance races (ans I didn't think Klaebo was massively benefited by group ride as he skied most of the time by himself).
And if you add 30 more seconds from the second sprint, you end up with one minute in total. If you can't gain 1 minute over Alpe Cernis, 20 km individual, 2 pursuits (okay, I didn't like the pursuit format but yeah), bonus seconds are not the biggest problem, you're opponent is just better overall skier.

And you're wrong when you compare sprints in TdS to the sprints in cycling. I'd go as far as saying both things have nothing in common.
How often do you see the likes of Philipsen, Milan and Greipel Cavendish before that mixing up in a mountain stages? Hell, even extremely unique and durable cyclist as Van Aert has no business in the pointy end of most of the GC stages (even not really hard). Whereas in CX skiing you get a lot of skiers being able to do top 5 or even win both.
As I said above sprints to me TTs are much more accurate comparison. The likes of Dumoulin were able to put minutes on Quintana in just (say) 40 kilometres of racing while putting 2 minutes over 200 km mountain stage is extremely hard. If we follow your logic we may reduce TTs even more as it's not okay to be able to win minutes over such a short distance when you can't really make that time back over the mountains?

I do agree that your idea of bonuses is good. But as I said, those bonuses aren't the main problem. If you had two 20 km individual races your gap to 10th should be bigger than the bmgap between 1st and the 35th in a sprint. Adding 10-6-2 as bonuses for the first 3 in any distance race works as well as a way to give the distance skiers extra seconds. And if Klaebo or Diggings are able to limit their time loss to 30-40 seconds or even win (as they did on Sunday) and ultimately win the whole thing, they're just better overall skiers.
 
Its a shame Weng wasnt a bit closer. She might compete for the stage, but not droping her for the overall.
Considering the start of the season I had expected more of Weng in this tour. But maybe she peaked early, hopefully she be able to peak again for the worlds

Great performance in the last downhill today though, Weng has previously been afraid of high speed but today she had the most aero position of all the women and it paid off
 
As you're giving example with Amundsen, it's down to him underperforming in the first sprint.
He was top 10 in the sprint races so far and if he did this, he would be ~30 seconds behind Klaebo, despite dropping 41 seconds in one of the distance races (ans I didn't think Klaebo was massively benefited by group ride as he skied most of the time by himself).
And if you add 30 more seconds from the second sprint, you end up with one minute in total. If you can't gain 1 minute over Alpe Cernis, 20 km individual, 2 pursuits (okay, I didn't like the pursuit format but yeah), bonus seconds are not the biggest problem, you're opponent is just better overall skier.

And you're wrong when you compare sprints in TdS to the sprints in cycling. I'd go as far as saying both things have nothing in common.
How often do you see the likes of Philipsen, Milan and Greipel Cavendish before that mixing up in a mountain stages? Hell, even extremely unique and durable cyclist as Van Aert has no business in the pointy end of most of the GC stages (even not really hard). Whereas in CX skiing you get a lot of skiers being able to do top 5 or even win both.
As I said above sprints to me TTs are much more accurate comparison. The likes of Dumoulin were able to put minutes on Quintana in just (say) 40 kilometres of racing while putting 2 minutes over 200 km mountain stage is extremely hard. If we follow your logic we may reduce TTs even more as it's not okay to be able to win minutes over such a short distance when you can't really make that time back over the mountains?

I do agree that your idea of bonuses is good. But as I said, those bonuses aren't the main problem. If you had two 20 km individual races your gap to 10th should be bigger than the bmgap between 1st and the 35th in a sprint. Adding 10-6-2 as bonuses for the first 3 in any distance race works as well as a way to give the distance skiers extra seconds. And if Klaebo or Diggings are able to limit their time loss to 30-40 seconds or even win (as they did on Sunday) and ultimately win the whole thing, they're just better overall skiers.
My use of Amundsen was more because his 'real time' skiing more or less totally matched Klæbo's to show the distortion of the GC by the sprint bonuses, rather than any comment on his level of performance relative to expected. I agree that on form Amundsen should not have had such a level of deficit from the sprint, but it doesn't change that he did.

I feel that if you want to disregard the sprints-to-sprints comparison then a better comparison for the XC sprint would be a puncheur finish, a 1-2km uphill finish where the time taken is similar to that of the XC sprint, something like the Cauberg or Mur de Huy. There, your Valverde comparison comes back into it (although we are effectively giving him the equivalent of 3 minutes per uphill finish using the TT to individual start comparison, which is still extremely excessive by my reckoning) - we shouldn't be eliminating the possibilities for a guy like Valverde to win, but we shouldn't be making it so that a guy like Gilbert can. A guy like Alaphilippe should be borderline. He's balanced but more puncheur than climber.

I agree that distance race time bonuses would be a way to balance that. It's not that the skiers who win are Klæbo and Diggins, even though I dislike both. Klæbo of course is similar to how Northug used to be, but without the annual collapse on the Alpe, and would be one of the main competitors to win on any course that takes in multiple styles of race. Diggins is the type of skier, at least in terms of her engine power (so taking technique and team strategy out of it), who should be favoured by the course as she is competitive over all distances and has great recovery, so she would be at least in the mix in any balanced course too; it's just the way the organisers are engineering an artificial competition to create their intended outcomes and/or a final day shootout that I object to here. Just like in cycling, sprinters are not GC men. Even if we compare the sprinters to puncheurs instead, it should be noted that true pure puncheurs are not GC men either - but some GC men are competitive or even good puncheurs.
 
@Libertine Seguros But it's not like we get sprinters to compete for the win. Tha actual sprinters (I'm going for the men's side as women seem to be a bit more durable) like Chanavat or Even Northug are not a GC contenders. Even more durable, but still predominantly sprinters, I'm like Pelegrino or Valnes aren't really in the mix for the win. And those 2 are capable of actually putting random very good performances in some distance races. Besides, in a TdS format, a lot of "gc men" have an actual chance, especially in the second sprint, to qualify even for the 1/2 finals thus limiting the time loss to mere 30 seconds.

If we compare distance strictly distance skiers (like Nyenget or even Johaug) to the pure climbers in cycling you'll see that just like in cycling in order to win they have to be extremely good or have some luck with the field.
And, just like in cycling, pure sprinters are nowhere to be seen while the winners are usually great distance skiers who can sprint on a decent-to-great level (I mean IIRC Cologna actually won sprints, the same goes to Kowalczyk)
Klaebo is a slight exception, being mostly a sprinter but he's still damn good distance skier.
Care to remind me how often do we see a sprinter in top 10 in the final standings?
 
@Libertine Seguros But it's not like we get sprinters to compete for the win. Tha actual sprinters (I'm going for the men's side as women seem to be a bit more durable) like Chanavat or Even Northug are not a GC contenders. Even more durable, but still predominantly sprinters, I'm like Pelegrino or Valnes aren't really in the mix for the win. And those 2 are capable of actually putting random very good performances in some distance races. Besides, in a TdS format, a lot of "gc men" have an actual chance, especially in the second sprint, to qualify even for the 1/2 finals thus limiting the time loss to mere 30 seconds.

If we compare distance strictly distance skiers (like Nyenget or even Johaug) to the pure climbers in cycling you'll see that just like in cycling in order to win they have to be extremely good or have some luck with the field.
And, just like in cycling, pure sprinters are nowhere to be seen while the winners are usually great distance skiers who can sprint on a decent-to-great level (I mean IIRC Cologna actually won sprints, the same goes to Kowalczyk)
Klaebo is a slight exception, being mostly a sprinter but he's still damn good distance skier.
Care to remind me how often do we see a sprinter in top 10 in the final standings?
Yea, a lot of the pure sprinters don't tend to finish the Tour, though they are often well-placed on GC when they drop out. Obviously Chanavat surviving the Alpe last year to win the points bib was a bit of a story, but ordinarily with a Klæbo around who can win that bib while competing for the GC, any of those types just quit on the race before the final weekend.

The women's side is a much bigger offender on this front, largely because of a lot of terrible 10-15km mass start and pursuit races, not just here but proliferating through the World Cup, on infuriatingly flat courses that just end up with sprints at the end, exacerbated by some pretty anæmic startlists that mean that there's still World Cup points available for most people that just finish the race. Look at last year's race - Diggins, Weng and Niskanen at the top makes total sense, but then you have Sundling and Svahn ahead of any of the pure distance types, Sundling was 2nd all the way until the final day. Hell, Tiril Udnes Weng won the overall World Cup and finished 3rd in 2022-23 without really deviating much from that template. Stupak was 2nd in 2021, Nilsson was 3rd in 2016-17 too. It's becoming more frequent that those types compete up at or near the front in the GC, as the other stages become more formulaic and ineffective in dividing up the field, and the time gaps generated in the sprint and in mid-race bonuses that add zero to the action become more and more decisive as a proportion of the GC action.

The equivalent men to that kind of formula, other than obvious outlier all-rounders like Northug and Klæbo, would likely be somebody like Finn Hågen Krogh (2nd in 2016) or Emil Iversen (10th in 2016), but I think the problem is spreading into the men's races since the Russians were barred as they would frequently make up a large part of the upper GC; we are seeing the likes of Valnes (8th in 2021-22 and 6th last year), Pellegrino (who you say is not really in the mix but was an anomalous 4th on GC in 2022-23) and even to some extend Amundsen himself who match up with that same kind of "can win a sprint at the end of conservatively-raced or unselective middle distance format" formula of a Svahn or formerly a Nilsson.

Probably the move to reduce the number of different race formats, the lack of experimentation with things like prologues, short distance, the loss of the Toblach-Cortina distance race and the packaging of everything up into a small number of uniform disciplines is as much a factor as any, but I have perceived a move toward the sprint bonus seconds becoming far more important, proportionate to other stages, in the GC mix in the last few years and I think the race is favouring athletes in that durable sprinter niche an ever-increasing amount.
 
Yea, a lot of the pure sprinters don't tend to finish the Tour, though they are often well-placed on GC when they drop out. Obviously Chanavat surviving the Alpe last year to win the points bib was a bit of a story, but ordinarily with a Klæbo around who can win that bib while competing for the GC, any of those types just quit on the race before the final weekend.

The women's side is a much bigger offender on this front, largely because of a lot of terrible 10-15km mass start and pursuit races, not just here but proliferating through the World Cup, on infuriatingly flat courses that just end up with sprints at the end, exacerbated by some pretty anæmic startlists that mean that there's still World Cup points available for most people that just finish the race. Look at last year's race - Diggins, Weng and Niskanen at the top makes total sense, but then you have Sundling and Svahn ahead of any of the pure distance types, Sundling was 2nd all the way until the final day. Hell, Tiril Udnes Weng won the overall World Cup and finished 3rd in 2022-23 without really deviating much from that template. Stupak was 2nd in 2021, Nilsson was 3rd in 2016-17 too. It's becoming more frequent that those types compete up at or near the front in the GC, as the other stages become more formulaic and ineffective in dividing up the field, and the time gaps generated in the sprint and in mid-race bonuses that add zero to the action become more and more decisive as a proportion of the GC action.

The equivalent men to that kind of formula, other than obvious outlier all-rounders like Northug and Klæbo, would likely be somebody like Finn Hågen Krogh (2nd in 2016) or Emil Iversen (10th in 2016), but I think the problem is spreading into the men's races since the Russians were barred as they would frequently make up a large part of the upper GC; we are seeing the likes of Valnes (8th in 2021-22 and 6th last year), Pellegrino (who you say is not really in the mix but was an anomalous 4th on GC in 2022-23) and even to some extend Amundsen himself who match up with that same kind of "can win a sprint at the end of conservatively-raced or unselective middle distance format" formula of a Svahn or formerly a Nilsson.

Probably the move to reduce the number of different race formats, the lack of experimentation with things like prologues, short distance, the loss of the Toblach-Cortina distance race and the packaging of everything up into a small number of uniform disciplines is as much a factor as any, but I have perceived a move toward the sprint bonus seconds becoming far more important, proportionate to other stages, in the GC mix in the last few years and I think the race is favouring athletes in that durable sprinter niche an ever-increasing amount.

Stupak finishing on the podium in a TDS is/was not a surprise.
 
Look at last year's race - Diggins, Weng and Niskanen at the top makes total sense, but then you have Sundling and Svahn ahead of any of the pure distance types, Sundling was 2nd all the way until the final day.
Sundling, the girl who was 4th in the maybe hardest Championship 30k of all time in the brutal conditions in Beijing, been 3rd in the 30k at Holmenkollen, 2nd in a 20 km interval start in Lahti, won a 10 km individual start last year and is reigning Swedish champion in both 10 km and 20 km (both Ebba and Frida took part in both those races). Sundling can be a very competent distance skier, also in the hardest courses.

If Sundling being 4th in the Tour doesn’t make sense to you I think the problem is you, not the Tour or FIS.
 
I read that the Skiathlon-track today is the one they are gonna use in the freestyle part in the Olympics. Apparently the farmer wouldnt let them use the classic part today
 
Sundling, the girl who was 4th in the maybe hardest Championship 30k of all time in the brutal conditions in Beijing, been 3rd in the 30k at Holmenkollen, 2nd in a 20 km interval start in Lahti, won a 10 km individual start last year and is reigning Swedish champion in both 10 km and 20 km (both Ebba and Frida took part in both those races). Sundling can be a very competent distance skier, also in the hardest courses.

If Sundling being 4th in the Tour doesn’t make sense to you I think the problem is you, not the Tour or FIS.
I take it you don't disagree with any of the others or the general point of athletes of the durable sprinter skillset being increasingly favoured then?

Sundling is better at distance than many in that kind of style, certainly in the last couple of years, but she's still very much somebody who converted across from being a sprinter. I suppose you could argue based on your favourable assessment of her all-round skills that if I count her I should also count Ingvild Flugstad Østberg, but while at some point she became a pure all-rounder, certainly at first she was appearing in the GCs with a position artificially inflated by the sprint bonuses, it's just that in Østberg's day the gaps were bigger and the amount of time gained in bonuses relative to the time gained on the snow wasn't so egregious, with bunch finish mass start races and pursuits that encourage the bunching together of the athletes again favouring that skillset hugely by making it ever harder for distance specialists to recoup that time back, so the impact that the sprint time bonuses had wasn't so painfully obvious in those days. As I say, over four days, Amundsen and Klæbo were virtually tied for time in real terms, but Klæbo was over a minute and a half ahead on time bonuses, much of which accrued in a sprint where he was actually slower in his quarter final than Amundsen was.

Stina Nilsson won a 30k medal at the Olympics in 2018 too, I wouldn't call her a first and foremost distance skier either.
 
Vermeulen leading, but not going all in. The bad middle ground. Meanwhile Klaebo tries to surpass him on every downhill to moveblock him at the start of every climb.
The Italians are getting better and Cramer said a big peak for Trondheim is the plan.
Someone please check Klaebo's skis after the race.
 
As exhibit A toward my point of how the race is now built around time bonuses and being able to sprint at the end of a mass start race, I'd like to call to the stand this race right here. Yavor said that the likes of Valnes and Pellegrino aren't really GC-relevant, but Valnes is likely to be on the virtual podium with a day to go, and Pellegrino is going to be well inside the top 10 with a day to go without having even podiumed a sprint.

This is two years in a row that the penultimate day distance race in Val di Fiemme has been a bunch gallop. Last year they got bad fortune with the weather ruining any possibilities for the race, but this year there's no such excuse.
 
I take it you don't disagree with any of the others or the general point of athletes of the durable sprinter skillset being increasingly favoured then?
I disagree with some of them, like Stupak that BullsFan mentioned and Nilsson which also had a lot of good results from distance races.

I think neither Valnes or Pellegrino will end up in the top 6 and maybe even not top 8 (Klæbo, Vermeulen, Lapalus, Moseby, Fjorden Ree, Jenssen, Moch and Desloges) and that’s with Amundsen getting sick and Krüger crashing out of the GC today.

Both Valnes and Pellegrino are decent enough distance skiers, there isn’t anything wrong in them being in and around the top 10 in the GC, they are not close to win or actually podiuming. Pretending Pellegrino is a pure sprinter is living in the past. Since Cramer came in he’s changed his training and his big goal is a medal at the 50km in the Olympics next year.

The course today was hard. A lot of meters climbing. The climbers (Vermeulen, Ree, Lapalus, Moch etc) failed to make it hard enough, meaning that they are either stupid or not strong enough. Pellegrino being second today is a legit distance result.
 
  • Like
Reactions: search
Looking at the TV-puctures it’s very hard to believe that this course has more climbing than Lillehammer
The difference is that you in Val di Fiemme gets a bit more of the climbing for free when you slide into the hills. If one were to count the meters of climbing from where you have to start working in the uphills it would be a bit below Lillehammer, but still hard compared with the average WC courses.

In courses with a lot of shorter climbs like today there is always bigger groups together because it’s kind of easy to stay in touch, but the last half of the front group are in a state which I will describe as “they are there, but they are not there”, meaning that they are in contact with the group, but they are already cooked and only hanging on for dear life without any chance of actually moving up at the end of the race.
 
The level in this men's Tour de Ski has been absolutely dreadful, the only guy that could give Klaebo a fight in the overall got sick and the one that could give him a fight today crashed out of contention. Pellegrino did great by finishing second but with the Russians around, he wouldn't even have been in the top10.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BullsFan22