Nordic Skiing/Biathlon Thread

[Libertine Seguros]

The Olympia-Norm is kinda funny now though, this is why they usually make Ruhpolding the cutoff. Roman Rees has one flower ceremony and no podiums all season on the IBU Cup, then comes in here with so many top names rested and hits 7th place immediately; Leonhard Pfund is a former Junior World Champion in this discipline admittedly, but he hit 13th on debut here too - he has had more flower ceremonies than Rees on the IBU but he's also had a far worse bottom result, and last week he was 37th and 69th on home snow at that level.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

It didn't look like Braisaz-Bouchet was starting the last lap in attack mode, so I actually thought Jeanmonnot would hold onto the lead, but the final push to the line decided it. JBB was bound to have things go her way at some point. Another bad day at the shooting range for the Italians, and Minkkinen wasn't great either, but Preuß and Magnusson delivered the goods. I was certainly not expecting to see Häcki-Groß, Steiner and Skar finish in the top 10, and especially not all three of them together, but it wouldn't be a proper individual without some surprises (that said it obviously wasn't really a proper individual due to the distance, but that's the world we live in now).

 

[KZD]

Amundsen-Hedegart duo with a dominant win in the team sprint today over Italy's Barp-Pellegrino.

At this point it would be pretty dumb if the Norwegians don't send one of them with Klæbo for the team sprint as Valnes has been garbage in skating races all year and the Italians will be super motivated to get gold at their home Olympics (and what a lovely thing would that be).

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Leonhard Pfund!

 

[Libertine Seguros]

OK so who had Marlene Fichtner and Leonhard Pfund down as the first German winners of the World Cup season? If anybody did, for the love of all that is holy in all religions, including all nine million deities of Shinto, you need a lottery ticket.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

OK so who had Marlene Fichtner and Leonhard Pfund down as the first German winners of the World Cup season? If anybody did, for the love of all that is holy in all religions, including all nine million deities of Shinto, you need a lottery ticket.

But it turns out that sort of person shouldn't buy a lottery ticket because the Germans have now been disqualified due to Fichtner failing to get her rifle strapped onto her back properly after one of the shootings.

 

[kingjr]

Tough luck, they'll not face such lame opposition again very soon.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

At the same time, they themselves were part of said 'lame opposition', as you wouldn't consider either of them to be in Germany's regular rotation for these events. Fichtner is borderline World Cup at this point in time - she was in the teaam in spot #6 at the start of the season, dropped to the IBU Cup but stayed in until New Year on fill-in duty because Grotian and Preuß were both sick. Weidel started the season well so Fichtner would usually be around 7th-9th in the hierarchy, battling with Schneider and Kink (and, once healthy, Puff) over rotation duty, but she's having a better season than most of those. Pfund is on World Cup debut here, he does have the benefit that the men have less by way of top level talent or A-grade prospects than the women in Germany, but he's still only been adapting to the IBU Cup over the last year or so, with two top 6s but no podiums yet, so it's not like he's a guy like Uldal, Frey or Nevland for the Norwegians who's been hammering on the door.

I'm sure, however, that we will see more of him after Antholz, I think this is probably the end of the line for veteran lower-selection and IBU Cup/World Cup borderline guys like Johannes Kühn and Roman Rees. Riethmüller is a stronger guy who was an elite junior whose career is happening 2-3 years later than it was expected with Covid a likely culprit for that, Kaiser is basically the same biathlete as Johannes Kühn but several years younger, but there isn't anybody really exciting in the pipeline for the Germans - just a lot of potential upper midfield runners, which they're already knee deep in.

Edit: Weidel may have started the season well, but now that Grotian has qualified for the Olympics I don't see her getting a start unless illness or injury necessitates it. She's playing herself off the relay team here, and apart from the Individual I don't see where she will add anything, she always seems to get worse as the season goes on and despite qualifying for the World Championships several times she's only got one start across all of them. You'd expect Preuß to start all races, Voigt and Hettich-Walz are likely to also unless the latter really focuses on the Individual, then Tannheimer and Grotian maybe rotate and battle over the fourth spot in the relay. I just don't see where the space for Weidel is going to come.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Only a medium sized Tandreturd this shooting.
Scatheim shooting clean, but bad skiimg performance by her

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Surely Turdrevold or Tandrefailed would fit better?

This race week has been shooting fish in a barrel for the French, as the only major team to have a full strength lineup in situ.

 

[kingjr]

but there isn't anybody really exciting in the pipeline for the Germans - just a lot of potential upper midfield runners, which they're already knee deep in.

I'm keeping my eye on Tannheimer

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I'm keeping my eye on Tannheimer

As in Lukas? Yea, he's got the potential, similar skillset coming through to his big sister (feels strange referring to Julia as that), hopefully he can have the same kind of impact as he goes through the levels, he does need to iron out some flaws but Julia is already doing better than a lot of the German athletes who had similarly biased skillsets coming through; the likes of Hanna-Michelle Hermann never became good enough shooters to make it internationally, while the likes of Sophia Schneider and David Zobel who were super fast but unreliable shots in the school and youth ranks have had to reinvent themselves in the range to make it as senior competitors, but at the expense of much of the ski speed that got them into contention in the first place. Schneider is still capable of strong ski times periodically but Zobel is much more of a shooting-biased competitor than you'd ever have expected of his teenage self.

 

[KZD]

Surprised to see Schumacher getting second in a very good sprint field but he seems to be establishing himself as the best American male skier.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

The lack of a lot of the big name Swedes is creating a very broken up race early on here, it was Slind's desire to try to push the pace uphill vs. Diggins' gliding better and superior downhill for a little while but they've been brought back by a small group. Mackie and Perry having a great day so far but they're starting to be tailed off. Hennig-Dotzler coming into some form just in time, the younger Nepryaeva having her best race on the World Cup so far as well...

Feels like it's going to end with a sprint of six and Diggins winning, although she is seeming to run out of glide on the downhills now, when she had been going best on them in the early race conditions. She's just hands down the strongest sprinter of these six though, and has been doing the classic Northug sit-in-last-position-acting-tired role for most of the last two laps, so unless they can gap her on one of the smaller climbs, having failed to do so on the larger one (and with Simpson-Larsen slipping like nobody's business on it) I can't see any other outcome.

Diggins does seem to have enough glide to get to the front before the last climb though and while Matintalo has enough to get around her, she can't gap them. But she had enough in the finish and sprinted away from Diggins despite the latter's best efforts to make it look like she'd just climbed Alpe Cermis again with the usual Northug sprawl in her stretch to the line despite that she was several metres behind Matintalo and comfortably in front of Slind as well (everybody else grinds to a halt and lays down, Diggins goes full ragdoll stretching at the line which seems unnecessarily risky so close to the Olympics, especially remembering Stina Nilsson injuring herself straining for the line a few years ago)...

 

[Mayomaniac]

Matintalo!

 

[kingjr]

Best skier ever. No question about it.

 

[KZD]

I don't know if Klæbo is the best skier ever but I am glad Hedegart focused on XC skiing this season because he has a good chance of beating Klæbo in the 10k and prevent a clean sweep like last year.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Matintalo!

Best skier ever. No question about it.

Now now, I like Matintalo too, but there's hyperbole and there's hyperbole!

 

[dobrien]

Poor Rosie Brennan; 40th at 4:36 in a less than stellar field. Unless she is purposely sandbagging for some impossible to fathom reason, it surely does not look like any Olympic miracle is going to occur for her. Can't imagine her continuing after this year.

Glad to see Matintalo take that one, I'm a fan. Nice to see Kerttu in the mix, hoping she can pull out a big one in the Olympic 50k, that would be pretty cool.

 

[DonAragona]

Poor Rosie Brennan; 40th at 4:36 in a less than stellar field. Unless she is purposely sandbagging for some impossible to fathom reason, it surely does not look like any Olympic miracle is going to occur for her. Can't imagine her continuing after this year.

Glad to see Matintalo take that one, I'm a fan. Nice to see Kerttu in the mix, hoping she can pull out a big one in the Olympic 50k, that would be pretty cool.

Niskanen looked like a tourist out there today, not relevant in any races in VDF. In fact i'm struggling to last think of an Oympics that had so few medal contenders on the womens side.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Poor Rosie Brennan; 40th at 4:36 in a less than stellar field. Unless she is purposely sandbagging for some impossible to fathom reason, it surely does not look like any Olympic miracle is going to occur for her. Can't imagine her continuing after this year.

Glad to see Matintalo take that one, I'm a fan. Nice to see Kerttu in the mix, hoping she can pull out a big one in the Olympic 50k, that would be pretty cool.

I just think father time has caught up with Rosie. Her best results were already an Indian summer in her 30s, and while she's had injury/illness issues, it just takes longer to recover later on in her career. She's looked laboured all season and while she's still going to be needed for the relay, I can't see her contributing too much else in Val di Fiemme of note here - and if she does it will instantly raise a lot of eyebrows given how bad she's been the rest of the year.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

It's pretty surreal that Giacomel has lost so many points to Perrot in the weakest field we've had this season.

 

[dobrien]

Niskanen looked like a tourist out there today, not relevant in any races in VDF. In fact i'm struggling to last think of an Oympics that had so few medal contenders on the womens side.

? She was 4th in the interval start 10k at Toblach (ahead of Frida), 7th at the end of the 20k pursuit in Toblach (ahead of Ebba and Frida), how is that not relevant? And she didn't race at VDF at all unless I missed her name in the results; not trying to be contentious, just that your post doesn't make a lot of sense considering what the results actually say. As far as today, I haven't seen the race yet (planning on watching the replay) but it seems to me 4th at 7 seconds on a day when the likes of Moa Ilar was 12th at 1:31 seems decidedly un-touristlike to me?

edit: I'm wondering if when you said 'not relevant in any races in VDF' you are meaning "I don't think she will be relevant in any races at the Olympics", whereas I took it to mean "She wasn't relevant in the races at VDF during the Tour de Ski". Sorry for the confusion in that case, that said, I still don't think she looked like a tourist today, and I won't be surprised to see her Top 5 the 50k; podium probably out of reach for her though.

 

[dobrien]

I just think father time has caught up with Rosie. Her best results were already an Indian summer in her 30s, and while she's had injury/illness issues, it just takes longer to recover later on in her career. She's looked laboured all season and while she's still going to be needed for the relay, I can't see her contributing too much else in Val di Fiemme of note here - and if she does it will instantly raise a lot of eyebrows given how bad she's been the rest of the year.

I think it's a combination of that plus it sounds like she has been dealing with an autoimmune condition of some sort; it's plain she almost looks "thick", like she is carrying a lot of inflammation around, and her skiing definitely looks very labored as you say. From what I hear some days she feels normal in workouts and some days she has nothing, even after a greater than usual recovery period than what an older athlete might need, so I think unfortunately it's the perfect storm of age but also else something not working right. If it was only age I could see her finishing say 18th or 20th today, but 40th at 4:36 back over only 20k, that's a disaster.

If I'm the US team coaches I will definitely be thinking hard about including her in the relay; unless she looks really sharp in one of the skiathlon, sprint, or 10k, my relay team would include Diggins, Kern, and a tossup between McCabe, Smith, or Swirbul. Not a great team by any means, but it's what they've got; Swirbul, Smith, and McCabe are all young, fresh, and all on (dramatically) upward form curves. Rosie does bring big race experience but that only gets you so far. Smith is the joker of the last 3; she is killing it in sprints but has put in basically zero senior level volume training so her distance really isn't there at all yet, but over 7.5k, that's a toss up between them imho...

So interesting in how age hits athletes differently; Astrid Slind still looks as strong as a 25 year old to me, like she could keep going for another Olympic cycle if she wanted to. Pretty crazy.

 

[YavorD]

It's pretty surreal that Giacomel has lost so many points to Perrot in the weakest field we've had this season.

Shooting with 4 and 5 misses certainly doesn't help. And though he is fast, he isn't Boe.