By Adele Haeg
In cross-country skiing, conditions, wax, and courses are variable. Over the past seven days on the Tour de Ski, the athletes who started today have raced five times, in classic and skate, both sprint and distance. One hundred athletes competed in the first race of the Tour; 61 started today. The only name in this Tour that has been in the top five overall and by stage since that first sprint is Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who won Saturday’s 20-kilometer skiathlon in a speedy 49:29.
Klæbo said to reporters on-site that he was happy to be first in a distance race again. He’s won four stages out of six so far on the Tour, two sprint and two distance. He skated (or glided, floated, or flew) away from the field at the end of the final skate lap for the win, accelerating up the final hill like it was nothing.
Klæbo commented on his tactics after the race, “I tried to be in front of the pack and kind of be in control and in the last uphill I just pushed really hard.” He was in control, no doubt about it.
Amundsen is out. Northug is out. Schumacher is out. Nyenget is out. Competitors and teammates of Klæbo’s are dropping left and right.
Klæbo is not immune to sickness. No skier is, but when it strikes, that’s it. If you feel a tickle in your throat or sneeze on the Tour de Ski, you might as well book your flight home there and then.
We are hardly halfway through a World Championships season; even more than consistency in results, what athletes at this level pray for is health. Healthy, an athlete can compete, even if they’re not in the top 20 or 30 or haven’t been seeing results. But sickness is ubiquitous at the World Cup, and everyone is susceptible to it, so more so than in other sports, it’s a factor. It might be one cold that’s getting passed around, but it’s not like there’s a plague taking everyone down; it’s just a cold.
Jessie Diggins does not get sick often. You don’t reach fourth place on the all-time individual World Cup starts leaderboard if you’re often sick. She’s got her other afflictions, especially of the feet.
But this is my question, to which I don’t have an answer: Is it luck that Klæbo and Diggins haven’t gotten sick (yet)? For Klæbo, does it have to do with his sprint heat selection habits, as Norwegian news outlet NRK might have us think? Or to be the best skier in the world and to win prizes at the sport’s pinnacle or at the proverbial peak of Alpe Cermis, can (or must) you control every other variable of the travel and racing for sickness? Are the skills and resources athletes need to do so as valuable as those they need to train and race?
After today’s 20km skiathlon, the top ten of the Tour de Ski looks nothing like it did after the last 20km race of the Tour, the skate individual start on December 31. It feels like that was a year ago (it kind of was). On December 31st, Harald Østberg Amundsen was second overall, Ben Ogden third. But they’re not there anymore. In today’s skiathlon, second to Klæbo were Italy’s Federico Pellegrino (+2.4) and Norway’s Jan Thomas Jenssen (+3.9).
Pellegrino, who has long been known for his sprinting but is following a Randall–Bjørgen late-career arc into distance skiing prowess as well, is now sixth in the overall Tour standings after his performance in the skiathlon. On the third day of the Tour, he was 23rd overall. He finished 51st in that 20km.
Pellegrino was fourth in yesterday’s sprint; his sprinting prowess was on display as he jump-skated after Klæbo up the final hill of the skiathlon course, even if it was not enough for Pellegrino to catch him. Jenssen, who has one World Cup victory to his name, in the 20km skate in Ruka 2023, is now seventh in the overall. His best result on the Tour so far was a sixth-place finish in the Toblach 20km.
Jenssen reported after the race that he was thrilled with his result: “When we changed skis it was a very hard pace in the beginning, in the two uphills, and I felt a bit tired in my feet. Then the speed was going down a bit and I managed to recover on my feet and to stay high in the field, ready to sprint the finish. So I’m very happy today.”
For everything about the Tour that could be improved, it is interesting to follow because once athletes withdraw from it, they are out, so that sprinters race distance and vice versa. Especially for the women’s field, spots in the top ten during the later stages of the Tour are much more attainable than at earlier stages, or during other World Cup weekends. Heck, Julia Kern had a career-best distance result today. Marcus Grate of Sweden took the first individual podium of his World Cup career in yesterday’s sprint (which Sweden must be celebrating extra because their star Edvin Anger did not perform well in today’s skiathlon, Expressen reports).
Klæbo and all his antics aside, skiers who don’t often see the podium are seeing success during the Tour partially because of how it is formatted and regulated. Though there are critics out there who think the Tour’s organizers were too easy on athletes this year, it is entertaining to see the Pellegrinos and the Jenssens on the circuit succeed; Norway–Italy–Norway is more interesting than Norway–Norway–Norway. The Tour provides athletes like Pellegrino and Kern their own stage, as it were. Klæbo is well on his way to a fourth Tour trophy. But second and third are anyone’s.
As for Team USA, Zanden McMullen finished 17th, only 22.9 seconds back from Klæbo. Ben Ogden finished 21st, just over a minute back, and Jack Young finished in 52nd. Solid.
Here’s McMullen on today’s race, via USSS:
“It was really hard overall. The first three laps and classic leg, I felt really relaxed. You know, good energy, staying with the front pack quite easily. And then after the transition, the first skate lap was really hard and I was really struggling to stay with the front pack. But the pace kind of slowed a little bit. I was kind of able to gather myself with the whole skate leg. I was, you know, being thrown off the back, on and off. But yeah, I was happy. I was able to stay with them till the end and made up a few spots in the finish there, because people were falling.”
Ogden also struggled with the transition from classic to skate in today’s skiathlon. Here’s Ogden, also via USSS:
“I mean I think we had really good classic skis, so the classic 10km was really good. And then I personally had a bit of a shaky transition and a bad first 2km skate skiing. I lost a lot of time but then somehow I came back to life a bit. I was able to check off some more people so I only finished a minute back which at this stage of the game is good for me.”
Both McMullen and Ogden might be looking to check off some competitors tomorrow in the 10-kilometer skate mass start up Alpe Cermis, or at least, maintain their standing in the overall (Ogden is in 13th and McMullen 32nd).
Erik Valnes is currently in second in the overall standings (+2:18) and Håvard Moseby third (+2:29) — and, yes, that’s Norway–Norway–Norway, with Klæbo in first. Well, it’s Norway. And at the beginning of the Tour, no one would have guessed those two Norwegians would have been the ones now tasked with chasing Klæbo down, or up Alpe Cermis, I suppose. C’est la Tour.
Now, or tomorrow morning for me in Minnesota, it’s the grand finale: Alpe Cermis. Oh boy.
William Poromaa, who is 14th in the overall, told Swedish news outlet Expressen, in comments auto-translated: “It will be brutal. As usual. It’s just home and recharge the batteries. I’ll see if Northug has any tips. But it’s probably just to survive.” Ben Ogden is more optimistic or perhaps a little gutsier than Poromaa, referring to Alpe Cermis as the hill: “The hill scares me, but you know like today I had like 10x the energy I was expecting to after I’ve not been sleeping and stuff. So I’m hopeful, you know we’ll see where the overall looks and we’ll just do our best tomorrow I guess.”
Ogden, McMullen, and Young will represent the stars and the stripes up the monstrous climb tomorrow. If Klæbo’s still shrugging his shoulders across the finish line at the top of Alpe Cermis tomorrow, I’ll be flabbergasted. If that were to happen FIS might have to find a steeper hill, if that is even possible. Tune in, 8:15 a.m. Eastern, 4:15 a.m. Alaska.
Results: skiathlon | Tour de Ski overall
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