Nordic Skiing/Biathlon Thread

[BigCoward]

Oh dear, another Diggins win incoming? That Is a rapid start.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Karlsson's technique already breaking down early, I fear that she's gonna crack hard later.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Seriously, you shouldn't be allowed to host an individual start distance race if you can't have an actual 5km loop...

 

[Mayomaniac]

Diggins racing like she's possessed by the spirit of Mühlegg.

 

[Mayomaniac]

If Carl started early before the snowfall got stronger and had found someone on the way (like Heidi Weng did with Dolci) she could have been fighting for the win.

Overall it looks like the Swedish service team made some mistakes.

 

[KZD]

I would hate to go into the final shoot knowing I could go to the penalty loop and still win. That is some f'ed up pressure.

They should give Dale the opportunity of doing a relay soon.

Diggins making these 10k skating races as boring as the Norwegian men. Carl and Dolci did some great races too.

 

[dobrien]

Diggins racing like she's possessed by the spirit of Mühlegg.

Take that to the clinic please.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Take that to the clinic please.

Yeah, it's more about the technique combined with the dominance, but I get your point.
Still better technique than Stadlober...

 

[dobrien]

If Carl started early before the snowfall got stronger and had found someone on the way (like Heidi Weng did with Dolci) she could have been fighting for the win.

Overall it looks like the Swedish service team made some mistakes.

I was not able to watch the race live and came back to chaos...either the whole Swedish team came down with COVID or that was an epic waxing disaster. Ouch.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Diggins racing like she's possessed by the spirit of Mühlegg.

Wildly, she's actually more aesthetic to watch in classic nowadays

I took one look at the startlist and the conditions and went out for a bit, saves you all the rant about the commentary.

German team is wildly bare bones in this women's relay. Preuß, Kebinger and now Schneider all Covided out, and I'm not sure what's up with Weidel for her to have raced the sprint and be out, considering she missed Östersund sick in the first place, but they've brought Wiesensarter - who isn't even on the IBU Cup - back to do this relay, largely because she's local and could get there in time. And Hettich looks like she's way below 100% out there too. At least they still have Selina Grotian, who hardcore biathlon fans will already know is the product of a prototype cloning process to create a replica of Laura Dahlmeier.

Norway by contrast can seemingly get World Cup performance out of anybody even on their weaker women's side. Marit Ishol Skogan has reached her mid-20s and barely made an impression at the IBU Cup level for selection, but she did well at Sjusjøen and has picked up three top 20s and now is performing alongside the likes of Vittozzi in the relay.

 

[Mayomaniac]

I was not able to watch the race live and came back to chaos...either the whole Swedish team came down with COVID or that was an epic waxing disaster. Ouch.

Karlsson's technique was already breaking down at the first time check, she clearly isn't back at 100% yet.
Andersson suddenly loosing more and more time after being up there at the start was a bigger surprise. Clearly more snowfall and bad skis didn't help either.

 

[OJRvE]

Karlsson's technique was already breaking down at the first time check, she clearly isn't back at 100% yet.
Andersson suddenly loosing more and more time after being up there at the start was a bigger surprise. Clearly more snowfall and bad skis didn't help either.

I think the skis were ok as long as there was enough skiers around to keep the course ”clean”. Andersson lost most time the last lap.

Typical Karlsson race back from illnes, the Swedes had superior skis yesterday so it looked better than it was. Of ourse she had the same ski issues as Andersson today so with normal skis she might have been around 10 or something.

 

[dobrien]

Yeah, it's more about the technique combined with the dominance, but I get your point.
Still better technique than Stadlober...

Appreciate that, thanks. Yeah, Muehleggs technique would have given any windmill a run for its money but that's not the first thing I think of when I hear that name. The reference just drags up some ugly imagery; he'd have made Bjarne Riis ashamed of his measly 60%!!

Frankly, between the Russians not being here, fluoro ban weirdness, Swedes missing from COVID, Krista out, etc, the competition is for sure super thin, and like most if not everyone here I have no more desire to watch Diggins run away with these than I have to watch a Norwegian men's parade. But she's been one of the best skate racers in the world for years and is clearly in awesome form, and her Salomon's do seem to run really well on this cold snow; it is what it is right now and the Muehlegg reference was unfair to her IMHO. Thanks again for the clarification.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

Yeah, it's more about the technique combined with the dominance, but I get your point.
Still better technique than Stadlober...

Johan Olsson had a good session on Swedish TV about Diggins last weekend, were he talked about how there is a big difference between technique and style.

Diggins have a very messy style, but her tecnique isn't bad at all in skating. If you chopped all the female skiers in half (haha) and only looked at their movement from the waist an down I'd say Diggins is perhaps the best. Her hips are stable and her angles are overall very good, meaning she gets the power down in the right direction. The upper body movement isn't that great, but not that bad either, but her head movememt makes everything look extremely chaotic. But the head movement is perhaps the one movement during a race that have the smallest affect of your performance.

Petter Northug was also a skier where the technique were better than his style in skating, even if he had different issues than Diggins. Both had some kind of strange looking head movement, but where Diggins is executing really good with the legs, Northug was executing really well with the upper body.

I honestly think Diggins technique in skating is a lot better than many of her biggest opponents.

 

[dobrien]

Wildly, she's actually more aesthetic to watch in classic nowadays

It's the end of the world as we know it!!

 

[dobrien]

Johan Olsson had a good session on Swedish TV about Diggins last weekend, were he talked about how there is a big difference between technique and style.

Diggins have a very messy style, but her tecnique isn't bad at all in skating. If you chopped all the female skiers in half (haha) and only looked at their movement from the waist an down I'd say Diggins is perhaps the best. Her hips are stable and her angles are overall very good, meaning she gets the power down in the right direction. The upper body movement isn't that great, but not that bad either, but her head movememt makes everything look extremely chaotic. But the head movement is perhaps the one movement during a race that have the smallest affect of your performance.

Petter Northug was also a skier where the technique were better than his style in skating, even if he had different issues than Diggins. Both had some kind of strange looking head movement, but where Diggins is executing really good with the legs, Northug was executing really well with the upper body.

I honestly think Diggins technique in skating is a lot better than many of her biggest opponents.

This is a really good post; spot on IMHO. The thing that seems to be driving her classic improvement is really increased core stability (and of course helps skating too); watching her going up the hill in the sprint yesterday she was rock solid in the core which allows her to keep those hips high and forward, and from there everything is working, kick, poling, etc. Last year she was constantly sinking into the back seat and everything just stops when that happens (plus it looks horrendous).

 

[Bavarianrider]

Back to total Norwegian domination in the men's 10km race. No one came remotely close this time.
Very impressive performance by Deggendorf in what appeared to be a really tough race for the women.
Crazy gaps in the men's relay if Norwa had not backen off in the end. The Qualität of the men' s fiels seems really deuted.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Johan Olsson had a good session on Swedish TV about Diggins last weekend, were he talked about how there is a big difference between technique and style.

Diggins have a very messy style, but her tecnique isn't bad at all in skating. If you chopped all the female skiers in half (haha) and only looked at their movement from the waist an down I'd say Diggins is perhaps the best. Her hips are stable and her angles are overall very good, meaning she gets the power down in the right direction. The upper body movement isn't that great, but not that bad either, but her head movememt makes everything look extremely chaotic. But the head movement is perhaps the one movement during a race that have the smallest affect of your performance.

Petter Northug was also a skier where the technique were better than his style in skating, even if he had different issues than Diggins. Both had some kind of strange looking head movement, but where Diggins is executing really good with the legs, Northug was executing really well with the upper body.

I honestly think Diggins technique in skating is a lot better than many of her biggest opponents.

Yeah, otherwise her descending and cornering wouldn't be that great, it's more about the extra upper body movement that makes her skiing a lot less economic.
Frankly, as a skating guy with a cycling background and lack of upper body strength I'm not one to talk big. My lower body technique also blows my upper body technique out of the water. That said, my uphill V1 on longer climbs is probably my biggest strength.

 

[dobrien]

If Carl started early before the snowfall got stronger and had found someone on the way (like Heidi Weng did with Dolci) she could have been fighting for the win.

It's these dumb short loops that really erase the benefit of the interval start; it's such a lottery in terms of who you get to ski with around the course. Just like mens race...

Would have been fun to see Carl fighting for the win; I'm a fan. Still, super result for her and huge for Dolci.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Back to total Norwegian domination in the men's 10km race. No one came remotely close this time.
Very impressive performance by Deggendorf in what appeared to be a really tough race for the women.
Crazy gaps in the men's relay if Norwa had not backen off in the end. The Qualität of the men' s fiels seems really deuted.

It's been a "big four" relay teams for years. Used to be Austria 5th with Sumann, Mesotitsch and Landertinger, now it's Sweden 5th with Ponsiluoma and Samuelsson.

Unfortunately one of the "big four" was Russia and they're now absent, meaning there's a clear gap in terms of depth from Norway, France and Germany down to the rest (Sweden's best athletes are better than Germany's best, but they have a significant drop-off below that top pair). It kind of means that those three will usually make up the podium unless they make noteworthy mistakes - all too often one of those big teams has had a disaster early in the race, only to then return to the front because the other teams just don't have athletes as strong on the last couple of legs.

The real problem at the moment is that while Östersund's skiing conditions may have given a false impression, at the moment the Norwegians are hands down better than the French who in turn are clearly better than the Germans, so there's not even that much suspense in the battle between them.

Women's relays are a lot more competitive as you have a number of teams with 2, or 3 world class athletes who can upset the apple cart (Italy with Vittozzi and Wierer, Czech Republic with Jislová and Davidová, Austria heading that way with Hauser and Gandler) plus a lot of those top teams also have athletes who can be highly volatile (Tandrevold has been good this season but had a lot of trouble in final standing shoots last season, for example) or have problems adapting to the psychology of the relay (take Chloé Chevalier or Ida Lien as examples) so there's always the possibility of a meltdown that costs one of them.

 

[dobrien]

Yeah, otherwise her descending and cornering wouldn't be that great, it's more about the extra upper body movement that makes her skiing a lot less economic.
Frankly, as a skating guy with a cycling background and lack of upper body strength I'm not one to talk big. My lower body technique also blows my upper body technique out of the water. That said, my uphill V1 on longer climbs is probably my biggest strength.

Very interesting, I'm also a skater coming from running and cycling background. I had spent a lot of time becoming a strong double poler and was very solid in V2(what we call it in the US) but was having issues with V1 on steep hills. It wasn't until I did a video session with a really good coach that I could see what was going on (hips not high enough, which in turn kills shin/ankle angles), and things changed overnight. Physics combined with physiology can be strange; what works for one might be disastrous for another even though the basics are similar.

 

[KZD]

This Norwegian relay team with Arnekleiv, Skogan, Knotten and Tandrevold is looking really strong, injuries or illnesses aside its likely the Worlds team.

The French messed up by putting Guigonnat in the first leg of the relay, she's too slow.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

This Norwegian relay team with Arnekleiv, Skogan, Knotten and Tandrevold is looking really strong, injuries or illnesses aside its likely the Worlds team.

The French messed up by putting Guigonnat in the first leg of the relay, she's too slow.

It's Jeanmonnot that cost them this race though, she lost 1'10 to Vittozzi. I know they aren't going to - and shouldn't - drop her, and Guigonnat was in in place of Chevalier who is both sick and capitulated in Östersund. The World Cup being down in Austria while the IBU Cup was up in Sweden precluded it, but I'd have been very interested in what Jeanne Richard could have done. She's been great this season, Michelon is a bit more volatile so Richard should be next one up regardless, especially for the relays, and she's four years younger than Guigonnat too.

Bondoux is an exciting prospect. She skis really quick and her and Julia Tannheimer for the Germans are setting the fastest ski times on the IBU Cup despite Bondoux being a year one junior and Tannheimer being a year two youth - however while Bondoux is slightly faster she is also losing a significant amount of time in the range. It does remind me just a bit of what Justine Braisaz was like when she was that age, although at that time she got put through to the World Cup as the team had much less depth then, with the likes of Marine Bolliet, Sophie Boilley and Pauline Bréton who were good shots but couldn't produce competitive ski pace holding down World Cup places at the time, and them being heavily reliant on Marie Dorin-Habert.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

Yeah, otherwise her descending and cornering wouldn't be that great, it's more about the extra upper body movement that makes her skiing a lot less economic.
Frankly, as a skating guy with a cycling background and lack of upper body strength I'm not one to talk big. My lower body technique also blows my upper body technique out of the water. That said, my uphill V1 on longer climbs is probably my biggest strength.

I never made it as a skier to reach any form of high level, but I've done my hours with filming and analysis of technique training on roller skis and ski (both mine and with guys in the same training group - a lot better skiers than me, a couple of guys that won medals in Norwegian Championship at junior level, but they never made it at elite level) and back in our days we used to watch clips of Ole Einar Bjørndalen. He was seen as the perfect skater 15-20 years ago and one thing with his style was the very stable head, a thing you see with some of the most elegant skiers like Kruger and Røthe aswell, and I think that's one of the reason why we easily get fooled by Diggins, because her head goes everywhere.

It would be fun to see a edit where someone clips Bjørndalen or Røthes head on Diggins body with the correct movement for how Bjørndalen/Røthe moves. I think that would put Diggins technique in a whole different light. Her upper body movement isn't that big when looking at whats important (the upper torso until shoulders), but the head movement takes a lot of attention and she's a little sloppy with her arm movement too.

 

[BigCoward]

Tandrevold took a few seconds out of E Oeberg at pretty much every split, Interesting.

Can't beleive this Norway team are proving so dominant in the relays having lost their 2 best athletes (and in Olsbu one of the top 3 relay racers since I've been watching, along with Berger and Dahlmeier. Someone who is both fast and reliable, unlke Eckhoff occasionally).

Makes the mixed relays less interesting than I thought they'd be, now Tandrevold and Knotten have stepped up.