The Tour de Ski starts tomorrow. You’ve probably heard the relatively seismic news that Klæbo is out due to illness. If not, let me not bury the lede here:
As per Instagram, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, the two-time defending champion in this event (also: in the World Cup overall), is still not fully recovered from a recent bout with the flu, and will not be racing in the Tour de Ski this year. Klæbo has raced the Tour in four of the last five seasons, with three wins and a third in that time.
“I always try to take every precaution possible and isolate myself this time of year to not get sick,” Klæbo wrote in his caption, “but this season [has] started rough with both covid in october and the flu now.”
And speaking of Covid… the Norwegian megastar is sadly not alone in being sidelined from the marquee event of this season, non–Loppet Cup edition. Here are some other athletes who will not be racing in the Tour de Ski this year due to illness (in some cases Covid, in some cases cold or flu or something else):
- Simen Hegstad Krüger of Norway (source)
- Iivo Niskanen of Finland (source)
- Richard Jouve of France (source)
- Flora Dolci of France (source)
- Moa Lundgren of Sweden (source)
- Oskar Svensson of Sweden (source)
- Anni Alakoski of Finland (source)
For perspective, last year’s overall Tour de Ski podium for the men was Klæbo first, Krüger second, and Hans Christer Holund third. Klæbo and Krüger are both out this week, and Holund has retired. There will necessarily be new names on the men’s podium on January 7.
Some athletes have pointed to one or both of two hotels, the host hotel for the Trondheim World Cup stop and a hotel used by many national teams for a post–Period 1 training camp in Italy, as possible sites for infection.
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There are also several athletes who are yes-but when it comes to their participation in this year’s Tour.
Top Swedish skiers Ebba Andersson and Calle Halfvarsson were reported on Tuesday of this week to have contracted Covid over Christmas or shortly before (source), but by yesterday were cleared to start (source). Andersson now reports that she is happy and healthy. Pål Golberg of Norway had “some kind of flu” and only returned to training on Tuesday of this week (source).
Would-be top contender Michal Novák of the Czech Republic is entered in the Tour and still plans to race, but has written on Instagram that he is only recently returned from bed rest and does not anticipate racing particularly well this week, let alone finishing. He states that he is trying to gain some number of World Cup points to keep from losing too much ground in the overall standings. “Like quite a lot of other competitors, I was caught by health complications during Christmas,” Novák wrote, according to an auto-translation.
Racing starts in Toblach tomorrow. For the time being, all 12 American athletes who expected to race remain on the start list. It was during the Tour de Ski last year that stuff hit the fan for the American team (read more at link above), but so far so good.
— Gavin Kentch
Financial real talk: I worked my butt off for the first year of this website, and took home a net profit of all of $1,500. Inspiring stuff I know. And that was only thanks to the $3,000 that I took in from readers through my GoFundMe. On the one hand, I’m not going very hard on soliciting donations right now, because this is fundraising week for the NNF’s Drive for 25, deservedly so. On the other hand, the money from the GoFundMe is the only reason that I had a profit instead of a loss for the first year of Nordic Insights, and is in turn why there is a second year of Nordic Insights that you are currently reading — I was on board with doing this for very little money out of a love for American nordic skiing, but didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing this.
So. If you would like to support the second year of Nordic Insights, last year’s GoFundMe is still up here. I will update this with a new fundraiser soon/once Drive for 25 ends; for the time being, just mentally substitute in “World Cup” for “Houghton” (basically the same venue tbh). All the money still goes to the same place. Thank you for your support, and thank you, as always, for reading.
