VIESSMANN FIS Cross-Country World Cup in Gaellivare (SWE), Relay, 19th of November 2006
, while Katerina Neumannova with her Czech team took the fourth place. </p>
<p>The North American team, consisting of Canadians Dasha Gaiazova and Chandra Crawford on the classic legs and Americans Sarah Konrad and Kikkan Randall on the skate legs, finished 19th out of 24 teams. This finish was unofficial, since the athletes were from two different nations.</p>
<p>A strong Norwegian squad led for the first half of the race – skied in classic style before reverting to freestyle – with Vibeke Skofterud and Hilde Pedersen. But a stunning third-leg charge from Finland's Riitta Liisa Roponen and Germany's Evi Sachenbacher reeled in the Norwegians, as the three nations went into the final changeover covered by less than a second. But on the last lap, Marit Bjoergen, the overall World Cup winner of the last season, was too strong for the other athletes and clearly took the lead.</p>
<p>The decision about places two and three was influenced by a fall of Aino Kaisa Saarinen from Finland. Claudia Kuenzel use this chance and finished less than second 9.3 seconds behind the Norwegian team while Aino Kaisa Saarinen and her team took the third place 26.8 seconds behind the winner.</p>
<p>Germany displayed their formidable strength in depth to take a resounding victory in the men's 4x10km relay in Gaellivare. Jens Filbrich, Franz Goehring, Tobias Angerer and Axel Teichmann were today the strongest team and finished 24.6 seconds clear of the Russians with Nikolaei Pankratov, Vassili Rotchev, Alexander Legkov and Evgenji Dementiev and the Czech Republic (Martin Koukal, Lukas Bauer, Jiri Magal and Milan Sperl) which were 37.3 seconds behind the winner. Norway with the winner of the yesterday's race, Ole Einar Bjoerndalen took a disappointing fourth place. Four Germans finished in the top ten of the individual 15km freestyle on Saturday, and that quartet showed their class over the relay course. </p>
<p>The US mens team finished 18th out of 25 teams competing, and 22 official teams. Kris Freeman skied the scramble leg and tagged off in 13th position to Andy Newell. Newell skied about the same time that Freeman did, but the team dropped to 17th. Andrew Johnson and Dave Chamberlain skied the skate legs.</p>
<p>Chris Cook and Torin Koos skied the classic legs for a US/China team that finished 24th out of 25 teams.</p>
<p>In the Nations Cup ranking Norway is still clearly in the lead with 1542. In second place is Germany with 916 points and the Swedes are in the third place (564 points).</p>
<p>Spectators: 5.000</p>
<p>Weather: fog, – 1 °C </p>
<p>Snow Conditions: packed powder </p>
<p>Pictures:<br />
Please note that high quality action and podium pictures from today’s races are available for purchase through the Internet portal offered by FIS Partner Nordic Focus at <a href=http://www.menzipics.ch/info/indexfisevents.html)
www.menzipics.ch/info/indexfisevents.html
Quotes:
Marit Bjoergen (NOR): “ I felt good today, better than yesterday and the skies were amazing. Before that race our team was the favourite and I'm happy now that we could realize it. For us, one of the important person in the race was Hilde. We are happy that she is back.”
Claudia Kuenzel (GER): ” My race was quite better than yesterday. I need every year some races to get into the rhythm. The Norwegians were today again a own class. I skied together with Aino Kaisa Saarinen but she felt down and so it was easy for me to finish second. Today we had a quite new starting order in our team and also for the first time Kathrin Zeller started in the first team. But I think personally this experiment was successful”.
Aino Kaisa Saarinen (FIN): ” It was a pity for us that I felt down. Otherwise our team had a chance to fight for the second place. But beside this the whole team is happy to reach a podium place.”
Franz Goehring (GER): ” It was a perfect race for me today. My skies were wonderful and I felt very good during the whole race. Our team result shows that we are all in good shape and we hope we will be that the whole season.”
Tobias Angerer (GER): “Yesterday I crashed and had not so much luck. Today everything was good and my shape is great in the moment. I'm happy that we all had a good race especially our youngster Franz Goehring.”
Vassili Rotchev (RUS): ” We had all a good race. First we had a little bit problems with the wax but we are such strong guys that we had manage also this problem. With Legkov we had also a new athlete in our team and we are satisfied about his power in the today's race. For him it was the first podium place.”
Milan Sp erl (CZE): “It's the first podium place for our Czech team in my career. We all are very satisfied. This evening we will celebrate it also a little bit. Now we are looking forward to the Tour de Ski and the World Championships in Sapporo. The Tour de Ski is in my opinion a very good kind of race.
Results are available on: http://www.fis-ski.com/uk/604/1228.html?cal_suchsector=CC&event_id=21674
