![Justyna Kowalczyk (Photo: Win Goodbody)](http://images.fasterskier.com/2009/03/kowal.jpg" "Justyna Kowalczyk (Photo: Win Goodbody)")
Kuusamo, Finalnd – Justyna Kowalczyk (POL), the defending World Cup Champion upset Petra Majdic (SLO) in the first World Cup sprint competition of the year.
High humidity and a challenging course made for a tough day. Aino Kaisa Saarinen (FIN) paced the field in the qualification round of the 1.2km classic sprint. Her time of 3:01 was one second faster than runner up Anna Olsson (SWE). Majdic qualified 3rd and Kowalczyk 5th.
Saarinen led the the overall World Cup for the first half of last season, before faltering, in part due to illness. She was overtaken by both Kowalczyk and Majdic. It was the same story today, with Saarinen dropping to 4th in the A-Final.
Alena Prochazkova (SVK) was 3rd, her third career World Cup odium finish.
While Kowalczyk won the overall World Cup title last year, Majdic held the upper hand in sprint competitions. Majdic won 7 of 8 World Cup sprint starts last season. Her lone loss came in Rybinsk, Russia, where she finished 7th. Kowalczyk was 5th that day – the only the second time she has bested Majdic head-to-head in a sprint in the last three seasons.
But today was the Pole’s day, and she showed that she will again be a force to reckon with this season. “I’m a little surprised with myself. Last weekend in Beitostolen was not good for me,” said Kowalczyk. This was her first World Cup sprint victory ever.
Majdic struggled from the start. “I felt strong yesterday but overnight I didn’t feel well and had bad sleep. This morning I was just tired and I was not smiling anymore – which I normally always do. I saw Justyna racing and I was sure she was the strongest today. She knew that physically I could not beat her, but I tried to beat the rest of the field with my tactics and experience.”
Despite qualifying 4 for the heats, host Finland was unable to do better than Saarinen’s 4th. No other Finnish woman made it out of the quarterfinals, including the always-dangerous Virpi Kuitunen. Kuitunen qualified 6th, but ended up 21st.
The US and Canada both struggled, with both nations failing to qualify anyone for the heats.
The US was led by Kikkan Randall in 36th, two seconds out of the top-30. Randall was coming off a career-best distance finish last week in Beitostolen, and has shown significant improvement in her classic sprinting over the last year. But she was unable to crack make the heats and her day ended early.
Liz Stephen and Morgan Arritola also raced for the US, finishing 62nd and 79th respectively. Arritola was the last woman, but both young skiers are stronger in distance, and are still building World Cup experience.
Sara Renner paced the Canadians in 42nd, 4.5 seconds out of the heats. Teammate Chandra Crawford, in her first sprint after missing all of last season due to injury, was 49th, and Perianne Jones was 51st.
Kristina Strandberg (SWE) of XC Oregon and the defending SuperTour Champion, raced for her native Sweden, and finished 50th.
The Norwegian women were unable to match the success of their male counterparts. Maiken Caspersen Falla led the way in 6th place and Celine Brun-Lie was 11th. Norway did have 6 skiers in the heats.
The surprise of the day was 20-year-old Hanna Falk (SWE). In only her second World Cup start, she qualified in 4th and finished 7th on the day.
Topher Sabot
Topher Sabot is the editor of FasterSkier.
3 comments
Cloxxki
November 28, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Someone tell me why the organizers went through all the trouble to design and use a separate, 200m shorter course for the ladies races?
[rant]
Can’t ladies possibly have a sprint race that takes them 10-15% longer to complete? Will audiences walk away in boredom?
I think this is SO sexist, it makes me feel sick. And FYI, I’m a 6’4″ broad shouldered guy. Just, I’m a fan of fast girls.
Just like with ski jumping, are the old men afraid the girls might match up? In speed skating, it would be relatively low effort to make the straightaways shorter for ladies, or use a 3rd inner lane to make the laps shorter that way. But there, they give the ladies the 3,000m in stead of the 10,000, making 5,000 their longer non-marathon distance. Like girl can’t go fast for 14 minutes, let alone 15.
Anyone who’s even been on a skiing, cycling, running, or whatever tour with a fit lady, knows better. Ladies kick butt over the longer haul. They don’t need a shorter course, spectators just get 10% more action for their money.
How hard it is for skiing to NOT make sexist point at every ski race? Let the ladies do the same 15km, rather than a 10km. Even in Northern Finland, there is enough daytime light to accomodate such.
Let them use the same course, with the same “tough” hills. If I treat a girl that way in everyday life, I’m going to get heat from her.
But forbid, the winning girl might take shorter over 15km than the big time sponsored 6 foot chuck of masculin speed holding the red lantern. I KNOW that in biathlon, this is already the case. Backfielder guys lap slower than top level girls. Sometimes organizer can’t get around it, and use the same course for the same distance, and it becomes apparent.
Ski jumping is NOT the last hurdle in female emancipation of winter sports.
[/rant]
Tim Kelley
November 29, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Cloxxki … your rant has merit. But I’ve never heard a women xc skier do this rant. Eliminating “hurdle[s] in female emancipation of or winter sports” needs to start with the female competitors (the jumper girls have shown this). Not the organizers. And not us guys. No noise from the xc girls means that the sexist status quo is acceptable to them.
Lars
December 3, 2009 at 7:24 am
If anything i think the sprints shud be shorter. I mean when a heat takes 4 min its no longer a sprint.
But yeah i see no reason why men and women cant race the same distance.