New King

Excerpted from Vegard Ulvangs Tour de Ski blog. http://www.tour-de-ski.com/fr/blogs/tour-blog-vegard.html

Excuse me ladies for speaking about the men first today but a new King of Cross-Country has been born! Who can beat Dario Cologna in this year’s Tour de Ski? Good in all disciplines, smooth and elegant technique in the classic style, and faster than most of his competitors combined with a strong endurance capacity. So far this season he has these World Cup results; 14, 23, 13, 2, 8, 4. Many will say I am too early speaking about the winner candidate but let me remind you that he was in the final in the sprint in Davos and today he was knocking out Teichmann himself, former World Champion over this distance, on the last kilometer.

I am simply impressed by this 23-year-old Swiss man.

But ok. I also know that there are 31 men within the first minute and that surprising things will happen when the racers are getting more and more tired later in the week.

Other interesting points on the men’s list:

– Nine different nations among the 10 best

– Strong Swiss team, 1st, 11th and 17th place

– Canada in third, 27th and 34th place

– Estonia in 7th, 12th and 13th place

And in between them we have of course the traditionally strong nations from Scandinavia, Russia, Germany and Italy. This development is very good for interest in Cross-Country Skiing.

Also among the women there are many different nations involved and only ten seconds separating the first five ladies, tighter than ever before. Virpi Kuitunen was strong again but did not manage to make any gap to the others. Tomorrow she must be ready to hand over the yellow bib to a faster skier, maybe Bjørgen, maybe Follis or Majdic.

I hope athletes and coaches had a safe travel to Prague and look forward to an exciting sprint tomorrow.

Source: FIS