Nordic Skiing/Biathlon Thread

[BullsFan22]

...and he does his thing on the Zorzi climb as ever. I do dislike the way they always lay the course out with that being the last climb here, it's too decisive to be like a Northug step finish (which they've tried to replicate in Antholz with the reprofiling for these games), but it's not long enough to tilt things back towards some of the endurance specialists like Chiesa or Pojer which would introduce tension as to whether or not Klæbo could keep the attack pace up for the whole climb, whereas we know full well he can on Zorzi and nobody can even remotely go with the pace he can generate on that uphill. How Johannes is still so fresh after such a program is just wild.

Oh I think you know how

 

[BigCoward]

Fis has corrected now. No idea what happened there.

 

[BigCoward]

Anyone but a French or Norwegian biathlon athlete please.. Norway's men have won 11 golds just on xc skis.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Anyone but a French or Norwegian biathlon athlete please.. Norway's men have won 11 golds just on xc skis.

It's going to be one of the French, most likely. They've been the strongest team all season long overall, they're the only team that didn't rest up for the last World Cup before Antholz, they're performing at their absolute peak both on the skis and in the range, and while everybody else is looking dead on their feet, the French are still performing as though completely fresh, as we saw from Fillon Maillet yesterday.

 

[YavorD]

I doubt Laegreid would win even 25 of 100 sprints.

That's not I meant though.
I meant the 4 shooting races won by Ponsiluoma and Dale.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Bened sitting out to give Justine Braisaz-Bouchet a chance to repeat her heroics from last time around since she was in the WC top 15 but had no quota as the French already had four in the startlist due to medals. And this was exactly how Dale-Skjevdal got his start yesterday, too.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Patrick now wants them to make the targets bigger so that more targets are hit and we can have more people sprinting for victory, because he's a complete tool and I hate him.

 

[kingjr]

Patrick now wants them to make the targets bigger so that more targets are hit and we can have more people sprinting for victory, because he's a complete tool and I hate him.

F*ck my life. Btw, remind me that I have to go on a rant about Rob Hatch's commentary of the Short Track events yesterday.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Patrick now wants them to make the targets bigger so that more targets are hit and we can have more people sprinting for victory, because he's a complete tool and I hate him.

I'm sure Lampič and Tandrevold supports this message.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

F*ck my life. Btw, remind me that I have to go on a rant about Rob Hatch's commentary of the Short Track events yesterday.

He followed this less than five minutes later by thanking the heavens Sweden and Italy got medals so it wasn't all Norway and France, as though those medals hadn't come because Ponsiluoma and Vittozzi shot better than the Norwegians and French under pressure in those races...

Preuß going out with a whimper rather than a bang. People who had been going well seemingly running out of steam, Vittozzi, Kirkeeide etc.. But Julia Simon and Lou Jeanmonnot are still flying, of course.

 

[BigCoward]

I'm sure Lampič and Tandrevold supports this message.

For lampic they would have to be literally barn doors

 

[Libertine Seguros]

We get a clean sweep in XC from a man with Northug's skillset, and now more biathlon glory for a woman with Northug's legal plot armour.

Edit: ok, so maybe she IS finally tiring, not outpacing her own teammate.

 

[kingjr]

Michelon will take this, right?

 

[Samu Cuenca]

I screamed when Voigt missed the last shot despite knowing she likely wouldn't have gotten a medal anyway.

Now give me that Czech gold.

 

[kingjr]

Or maybe Simon after all

 

[Libertine Seguros]

More French over superiority on the skis. Simon is going to pass Magnusson and medal too. So over this.

 

[kingjr]

More French over superiority on the skis. Simon is going to pass Magnusson and medal too. So over this.

I can see why Siegfried Mazet is returning to France, at any rate. Go where the best athletes are and then take credit for their success.

 

[BigCoward]

I can see why Siegfried Mazet is returning to France, at any rate. Go where the best athletes are and then take credit for their success.

Imagine If we find out he's a fraud and been holding the Norwegians back all these years. And they do a 2024 pog.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

5th place is not a bad farewell for Doro, but a medal would of course have been nice. At the other end of the scale, you wouldn't be surprised if Jeanne Richard had messed with Preuß's riffle instead of Michelon's by mistake.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

5th place is not a bad farewell for Doro, but a medal would of course have been nice. At the other end of the scale, you wouldn't be surprised if Jeanne Richard had messed with Preuß's riffle instead of Michelon's by mistake.

It is funny that the crime of tampering with a rifle gets you demoted to the IBU Cup right before the Games, while several years of stealing and defrauding multiple teammates and a criminal conviction gets you what turns out in the end to amount to a one week suspension. Richard just didn't think big enough.

 

[QueenStagiaire]

It is funny that the crime of tampering with a rifle gets you demoted to the IBU Cup right before the Games, while several years of stealing and defrauding multiple teammates and a criminal conviction gets you what turns out in the end to amount to a one week suspension. Richard just didn't think big enough.

I mean, it‘s all about one being a biathlon racing thing and the other being a crime that doesn‘t say anything about your racing mindset. Punishment for credit Card fraud should be made in fines or prison sentences, not in being banned from your job.

 

[KZD]

France is going to make the women's biathlon races as boring as Norway makes the men's XC skiing races, besides dominating the Olympics and having Jeanmonnot likely winning the World Cup overall, they currently have 6 out the top7 spots in the IBU Cup overall.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I mean, it‘s all about one being a biathlon racing thing and the other being a crime that doesn‘t say anything about your racing mindset. Punishment for credit Card fraud should be made in fines or prison sentences, not in being banned from your job.

It's more about how she was originally given a six month suspension by the biathlon federation.

Then it was changed to one month with five months' suspended.

Then it was changed to a backdated one month so that 3/4 of it was served before the racing started for the season.

That's before you get to at least one of her victims still being on the team, of course. At least the known others aren't on the squad anymore.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

France is going to make the women's biathlon races as boring as Norway makes the men's XC skiing races, besides dominating the Olympics and having Jeanmonnot likely winning the World Cup overall, they currently have 6 out the top7 spots in the IBU Cup overall.

To be fair, being at the top in the IBU Cup in the circumstances is more a product of the World Cup depth, because any athletes who are performing up at the same level as the French IBU Cup squad for other teams are getting promoted. The French have been dominating the level, but it probably isn't 6 out of 7 spots if the likes of Skar, Fichtner, Heijdenberg, Schneider, Skottheim, Carrara and pre-suspension Passler don't split some time at the World Cup.

This was Norway a few years ago, back when Johan-Olav Botn was winning 5 out of 6 IBU Cup races and not being able to get promoted because the only spots available at the World Cup were on rotation, and Tarjei Bø and Vetle Sjåstad Christiansen had perfected the art of pulling out a race win whenever their place in the team started to come under threat. Johannes Dale-Skjevdal has been on at least 3 occasions that I'm aware of relegated to the IBU Cup just because there wasn't room for him at the World Cup. In 2022-23, Norway had 5 of the top 6 on the IBU Cup (the exception being Lucas Fratzscher, a journeyman IBU Cup competitor who the Germans didn't tend to look at all too often for promotion at the time. He's got his Olympic start in the Individual here and is past 30, so I don't suspect we'll see too much more of him after this year) and in 2023-24 they bogarted the top 5. Of those, two are in the Olympic team (Botn in 2nd and Uldal in 4th), one is in the World Cup rotation (Frey in 5th), and two are still stuck at the IBU Cup (Øverby winning overall and Nevland in 3rd). They repeated the feat in 2024-25, with Frey winning overall, Botn in 3rd, and Dale in 5th, plus Bakken in 2nd and Sverre Dahle Aspenes in 4th. Of those, probably only Aspenes is somebody the team will perceive as topping out at this level (and even then, he got a podium albeit in a weakened field when he got rotated in at Nové Město).

Most fascinatingly, though, that domination has evaporated into thin air this season. Of course, the Bø brothers retiring opens up two spots, but they now have Vetle Rype Paulsen in 4th, Kalkenberg in 7th and Nevland down in 10th, while the French - who only had one man in the top 10 last year, Gaëtan Paturel in 8th - suddenly have four of the top 5. Yes, Levet, Lombardot and Paturel are all the correct side of 25, and Antonin Guigonnat is essentially a French equivalent to Roman Rees or Johannes Kühn in the German team. But this season France have just kicked into another gear on both sides of the gender divide - it's just that they were already deep in talent and at the highest level on the women's side. But looking at the women who are part of that domination on the IBU Cup, Gilonne Guigonnat and Sophie Chauveau are both probably permanently stuck as rotational names, Paula Botet may be headed that way. The other ones are juniors or around that age though, and some are probably a bit too raw for the World Cup in a team as strong as the French one at this point in time, if Amandine Mengin's workouts at the start of the season are anything to go by.

 

[nightowl]

The 50km always seems to throw up some random results - I reckon we'll see someone unexpected in the podium.

My main hope is for a few skiers to go hard early and cause chaos, then you never know what might happen

Well that was wishful thinking...

They really need to start introducing stricter wax testing limitations to reduce some of the ski gap. At the moment the Norwegians throw so much money at it that no one else can hope to compete, especially for a long race in these kinds of conditions.

We also really need longer interval starts back, but alas FIS seem dead set on more mass starts and less distance.