Tour de Ski

Like it or not, Tour de Ski is a high point of the season and it'll be
here soon!
http://www.tour-de-ski.com/

Norway sends out a team of eleven skiers (criteria: good chances of
overall podium finish or stage win)

Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen
Marit Bjørgen
Marte Kristoffersen
Therese Johaug
Kristin Størmer Steira

Martin Johnsrud Sundby
Petter Northug
Tord Asle Gjerdalen
Eldar Rønning
Tor Arne Hetland
John Kristian Dahl


Finland settles for seven skiers (criteria: top twenty overall):

Virpi Kuitunen
Pirjo Muranen
Riitta-Liisa Roponen
Aino-Kaisa Saarinen

Matti Heikkinen
Sami Jauhojärvi
Ville Nousiainen


(Swedish team not announced yet, but Johan Olsson will give TdS a
pass.)


Anders

Thanks Anders,

I want to see Kalla and Steira battle on a big climbing finish.

I'm sure that Tour de Ski will be fantastic, as always I'm sad that
my favourite skier won't start - Odd Bjoern Hjelmeset, but I
understand this decision, probably it will be really hard for him to
be as strong as he was ... but he's already 37 years old.

I can add polish team for Tour de Ski (any surprises, it's the same as
always) like you did with Norway and Finland:

Justyna Kowalczyk
Sylwia Jaskowiec
Kornela Marek
Paulina Maciuszek/Martyna Galewicz
Janusz Krezelok
Maciej Kreczmer
Mariusz Michalek

This list answers part of my question about Marit Bjørgen, tho she said
the World Championships are the high point of this season. I don't
think she's alone in that view.

Gene

Anders wrote:

Like it or not, Tour de Ski is a high point of the season and it'll be
here soon!
http://www.tour-de-ski.com/

Norway sends out a team of eleven skiers (criteria: good chances of
overall podium finish or stage win)

Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen
Marit Bjørgen
Marte Kristoffersen
Therese Johaug
Kristin Størmer Steira

Martin Johnsrud Sundby
Petter Northug
Tord Asle Gjerdalen
Eldar Rønning
Tor Arne Hetland
John Kristian Dahl


Finland settles for seven skiers (criteria: top twenty overall):

Virpi Kuitunen
Pirjo Muranen
Riitta-Liisa Roponen
Aino-Kaisa Saarinen

Matti Heikkinen
Sami Jauhojärvi
Ville Nousiainen


(Swedish team not announced yet, but Johan Olsson will give TdS a
pass.)


Anders

On Dec 17, 9:57*am, wrote:
This list answers part of my question about Marit Bjørgen, tho she said
the World Championships are the high point of this season. *I don't
think she's alone in that view.

Gene



Anders wrote:
Like it or not, Tour de Ski is a high point of the season and it'll be
here soon!
http://www.tour-de-ski.com/

Norway sends out a team of eleven skiers (criteria: good chances of
overall podium finish or stage win)

Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen
Marit Bjørgen
Marte Kristoffersen
Therese Johaug
Kristin Størmer Steira

Martin Johnsrud Sundby
Petter Northug
Tord Asle Gjerdalen
Eldar Rønning
Tor Arne Hetland
John Kristian Dahl

Finland settles for seven skiers (criteria: top twenty overall):

Virpi Kuitunen
Pirjo Muranen
Riitta-Liisa Roponen
Aino-Kaisa Saarinen

Matti Heikkinen
Sami Jauhojärvi
Ville Nousiainen

(Swedish team not announced yet, but Johan Olsson will give TdS a
pass.)

Anders- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Canada's Team:
George Grey
Devon Kershaw
Ivan Babikov
Sara Renner

On Dec 17, 4:21*pm, Daniel wrote:

I'm sad that my favourite skier won't start - Odd Bjoern Hjelmeset, but I
understand this decision, probably it will be really hard for him to
be as strong as he was ... but he's already 37 years old.

It wasn't his age that dropped him off the TdS team so much as his
athma: on the Monday after Davos he underwent a test at the Norwegian
School of Sports Science in Oslo.
- Simply put they measured how much air I can manage to breathe out.
Unfortunately the results were quite bad. Without medication I managed
less than half of what is normal.
- Now I cut off all competition, in any case until the second weekend
of January. And I won't be doing many hard sessions before the end of
the year.
- I am an optimist. 15 km classic on February 20th at the World
Championships is still my goal. But it is obvious that to get there I
will have to be fast in the Norwegian Championships (Jan 15th) and in
the WC race in Otepää (Jan 24th). At the moment I don't qualify for
the team.


Anders

On Dec 17, 6:57*pm, wrote:

This list answers part of my question about Marit Bjørgen, tho she said
the World Championships are the high point of this season. *I don't
think she's alone in that view.

"Two years ago Marit Bjørgen said that the Tour de Ski was like made
for her. She came second. Last year she said the same thing, but
travelled home in tears before completing the tour.
- It is time to deliver. So far it's only been talk from me.

The two Finns, Virpi Kuitunen and Aino-Kaisa Saarinen have appeared to
be unstoppable, but Marit counts herself among the favourites to be
first on top of Alpe Cermis.
- I absolutely believe it is possible to beat them, otherwise I
wouldn't have bothered to be there. But they are obviously really good
skiers. And they will benefit greatly from each other, especially in
the classic mass start stage in Val di Fiemme. They will surely have
the ambition to take all the bonus seconds they can get.

She is more interested in her own condition, though. She has changed
the way she has periodized her training this season with an eye on how
to be at peak form. Basically that has meant more easy quantity
training also after the World Cup season has started, instead of
tapering (? "samle overskudd", "collect a surplus") for every race.

She has nevertheless been on the podium in five of the six individual
WC races she has done.
- I have felt heavy (worn), especially in Davos. But that's according
to the plan. Now I'm awfully keen to see how the rest of the plan will
work, so that I'll be in peak form in Liberec. It sounds simple when
one says it, but it must be put to reality as well.

Even if the TdS is an important goal for this season. it is also a
part of the preparation for the World Championships.
- The plan is that the tour shall act as a period of hard training.
The hope is that my form will improve during the tour.
- It would appear brash to say that I will win. You must be succesful
and have luck at each and every stage. But I will go for the victory.

Bjørgen is pleased that instead of the full quote of 18 skiers there
are only eleven in the Norwegian team.
- I hoped that the team would be as small as possible. The stress on
the wax guys and the whole service team is enormous. Therefore I
believe that it is correct to prioritize those who have a chance to
win. That's how it is."

On Dec 17, 1:46*pm, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

I want to see Kalla and Steira battle on a big climbing finish.

You cannot always get what you want. Or you may see them battle each
other, albeit not for the victory. The odds are that only those who
can keep up with the gruesome Finnish twosome on the classic stages
will be in the position to be the first to reach the top of Alpe
Cermis.

Kalla's win last year can turn out to have been a fluke that wouldn't
happened without a fortuitous snowfall in the C mass start in Val di
Fiemme (and I think Kalla already has Liberec higher in her list of
priorities than many of her competitors in TdS). Steira will, I'm
afraid, still be too much handicapped by her relatively poor classic
skiing.

Follis, Shevchenko and Kowalczyk are all bound to have at least one
bad day, the Russians and the Germans seem to be going nowhere
(Katrin Zeller would be my longshot, though); I'm afraid that only
Marit Bjørgen has the ability to do well (or at least to avoid doing
badly) both in sprint and in distance races and both in freestyle and
in classic.


Anders

Thanks for all the quotes!

Anders wrote:

On Dec 17, 6:57*pm, wrote:

This list answers part of my question about Marit Bjørgen, tho she said
the World Championships are the high point of this season. *I don't
think she's alone in that view.

"Two years ago Marit Bjørgen said that the Tour de Ski was like made
for her. She came second. Last year she said the same thing, but
travelled home in tears before completing the tour.
- It is time to deliver. So far it's only been talk from me.

The two Finns, Virpi Kuitunen and Aino-Kaisa Saarinen have appeared to
be unstoppable, but Marit counts herself among the favourites to be
first on top of Alpe Cermis.
- I absolutely believe it is possible to beat them, otherwise I
wouldn't have bothered to be there. But they are obviously really good
skiers. And they will benefit greatly from each other, especially in
the classic mass start stage in Val di Fiemme. They will surely have
the ambition to take all the bonus seconds they can get.

She is more interested in her own condition, though. She has changed
the way she has periodized her training this season with an eye on how
to be at peak form. Basically that has meant more easy quantity
training also after the World Cup season has started, instead of
tapering (? "samle overskudd", "collect a surplus") for every race.

She has nevertheless been on the podium in five of the six individual
WC races she has done.
- I have felt heavy (worn), especially in Davos. But that's according
to the plan. Now I'm awfully keen to see how the rest of the plan will
work, so that I'll be in peak form in Liberec. It sounds simple when
one says it, but it must be put to reality as well.

Even if the TdS is an important goal for this season. it is also a
part of the preparation for the World Championships.
- The plan is that the tour shall act as a period of hard training.
The hope is that my form will improve during the tour.
- It would appear brash to say that I will win. You must be succesful
and have luck at each and every stage. But I will go for the victory.

Bjørgen is pleased that instead of the full quote of 18 skiers there
are only eleven in the Norwegian team.
- I hoped that the team would be as small as possible. The stress on
the wax guys and the whole service team is enormous. Therefore I
believe that it is correct to prioritize those who have a chance to
win. That's how it is."