Is there any reason for Norway to mess with their relay line up now that Laegreid is on a bad run. It's difficult to argue the Dale hasn't earmed his spot, but why mess with a dominant formula.
His final lap yesterday was outrageous, he can make up a penalty lap on most of the field (other than his team mates).
What's the best case scenario of other countries winning medals in the men's events?
Even though I hate the formula the most competitive race will probably be the SMR. Germany, Sweden, France, Italy and Switzerland all have a decent shot at taking out the Norwegians.
Most likely would be a start number race where conditions get fast at a certain point in the startlist, somebody strong to hit 20/20 in the Individual, or have the Norwegians mess up the sprint and somebody who is fast enough hit 10 targets, like a Benedikt Doll or Martin Ponsiluoma. I don't see much chance in either of the head to head formats.
Of the races not won by Norwegians this season, four are won by Germans (three sprints (Doll x2, Nawrath) and one individual (Rees)) and one by Swedes (one pursuit (Samuelsson)). That means that apart from Samuelsson's pursuit win all the way back in Östersund, Norwegians have won every single head to head race. Now, most of those races are before Christmas and the second trimester has been a Norwegian festival. This season they've done six sweeps of the podium, with one being a 1-2-3-4 and one being a 1-2-3-4-5. One of the sweeps was a 1-2-3-5-6. But
all of those have been in pursuits and mass starts, curiously. Definitely it helps that those that have broken up their dominance in the time trial formats are people like Johannes Kühn and Benedikt Doll, who are far better shooting when left to their own devices than when they have the race on the line and opposition shooting all around them as you have in a Mass Start, but it's strange that these are the events where the Norwegian ski speed superiority seems to have the most impact. Maybe they're just struggling at skiing with traffic whereas in the head to head races they can just use their surplus speed to get on the front of whatever group they're in and drive the pressure, knowing they will either gain time, or cause opponents to miss targets by going at a pace they're not as comfortable with, but whatever it is, it's a curious stat.
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