By Noah Eckstein
Tallinn, Estonia, is not your typical World Cup venue. The Baltic capital — perched on the Gulf of Finland just 80 kilometers south of Helsinki — has hosted a World Cup just once before, in 2023, and has no actual race arena. The sloping amphitheater of the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds (aided by some determined snow moving) is a pretty good approximation, though, and on Wednesday evening hosted a fast and physical city sprint under the lights.
Continuing a frankly unbelievable undefeated streak in sprints stretching back to January of last year, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo of Norway took a narrow win. Just behind him, Frenchman Jules Chappaz and Norwegian Harold Østberg Amundsen managed to lunge across the finish line in such perfect sync that the commissaires were unable to find a difference in the finish photo and declared a tie for second, a deeply rare occurrence in modern mass start racing with precision finish-line imaging.
Ben Ogden, leading the American team, just missed out on the finals to come home seventh.
With no Dresden or Drammen on the calendar this year, Tallinn was the sole standard-bearer of the once-vaunted city sprint event this World Cup season. Lacking the architecturally stunning riverfront of Dresden or the striking central church of Drammen, the Estonian organizers nonetheless did their best to create a spectacle.
Held at night, a row of a dozen flamethrowers, à la Davos, lined the curving descent from the apex of the two-lap course, and lots of string lights draped around trees gave the whole thing an outdoor beer garden vibe. The healthy crowd was vocal if not raucous and the energy was lighthearted.
After the race, Ben Ogden gave the fans high marks. “The vibes on course were really cool,” he wrote to Nordic Insights. “It is fun racing here because the Estonians really cheer for everyone. They were cheering for me by name in the warmup and got loud for the heats. Really fun atmosphere on the whole.”
Klæbo was imperious from the start, dancing through his quarterfinal as he always does. In the second heat, Colby College senior Jack Young battled against sprint-final stalwarts Federico Pellegrino and Amundsen and managed to come across the line fourth, briefly holding a lucky loser spot before being unseated by the following heat. He was 19th overall.
Young raced two weekends ago in Hanover, New Hampshire, at his final NCAA Championships. His sprinting has been the deserved star of the show recently, landing him in five sets of World Cup heats plus the heats at World Championships in Trondheim. But at Oak Hill he proved some distance chops too, coming 13th in the 7.5km classic and 14th in the 20km skate.
Nonetheless, two transatlantic flights in two weeks is quite a bit of load, and Young framed his feelings about his race through this lens.
“I was really happy with today,” he wrote to Nordic Insights. “The conditions ended up setting up as perfect spring skiing. Very fast and only a bit soft on top.”
“The reason I am so happy with this result is precisely because of how much jumping around I’ve done,” he went on. “I’m really happy with how I’ve been handling the travel so far, and I’m happy to have the opportunity to race these last few in Europe…I’m just trying to soak it in, since things have been going really well this year.”
The third quarterfinal saw American Gus Schumacher ski aggressively from the start. Trading spots near the front with hulking Norwegian Erik Valnes, his countryman Matz William Jenssen, and retiring Frenchman Renaud Jay, Schumacher looked assertive and strong. On the second lap, he found himself boxed out on the edge of the very narrow track by Jenssen, though, and was unable to work his way forward in the closing stages. He finished the stage fourth to come home 16th overall.
In comments to Nordic Insights after the race, Schumacher sounded happy with his form and racing but wished he had been able to capitalize better. “Things were OK,” he wrote. “Felt really good, had one of my better qualifiers and had the pace in my heat, just need a bit more go-around speed.”
He also added, pointedly, that he was “not thrilled with Jenssen’s racing style either.”
In quarterfinal four, Ogden looked like a man on a mission after a disappointing week in Trondheim. He skied straight to the front and traded pulls with a bullish Chappaz, eventually gliding across the line in a comfortable second place.
Ski speed, notably, was not an obvious factor today despite the wet, transformed conditions. FIS built upon a similar experiment at the last Tallinn World Cup and instituted a standardized ski preparation regime, in which athletes could submit two pairs of skis for waxing and brushing by a neutral service team.
This doesn’t create a completely level playing field, of course — Klæbo’s fleet of hundreds of the very best Fischers in existence paired with the extensive Norwegian grinding program still gives him a leg up on ski selection and structure, for example. But, unlike in Trondheim, where big differences in ski speed were a noticeable (and, for American fans, unfortunate) theme, on the Tallinn loop everybody looked more or less in the same boat.
Reports on the ground were positive as well. “The standard waxing appeared to be pretty sweet today,” Schumacher reflected. “You saw six different nations in the women’s final, and I didn’t notice any one nation with remarkably bad or good skis today so it seemed like a win!”
The first semifinal, absolutely stacked with talent, saw Klæbo and Italian Federico Pellegrino nab the first two spots. Just behind, poor Lucas Chanavat of France managed to pole between his legs halfway up the finish straight, knocking himself out of contention and opening the door for Valnes and Amundsen to advance as lucky losers.
In the second, Edvin Anger of Sweden raced from the front and coolly led the pack home. Behind him, Ogden came around the final hairpin just ahead and inside of Chappaz. He had a clear opportunity to swing wide on Anger’s tails and force the trailing Frenchman into the barriers. Instead, he pulled what Chad Salmela on the broadcast called a “gentlemanly move” and slid slightly left, allowing Chappaz to fully open up his sprint and then pull ahead for second place and a spot in the finals.
After the race, Ogden acknowledged that this lost finish sprint is part of a larger, frustrating trend. “Yes certainly, the final sprint is going to be a big focus of mine this year,” he wrote. “After the 2022/2023 season I was also feeling the same way and I feel that I made big strides going into last year but then I kinda lost touch with that goal a little last summer and I have had a ton of races this year that have been lost in the final sprint.
“I will probably try and incorporate a lot of sprinting at the end of intervals to work on this,” he continued. “It is important to practice speed like that under load so it simulates a race environment.”
Contrary to what a quick glance at the results might suggest, the finals were actually quite exciting. Klæbo opted to ski a tactical rather than full-gas race, spending most of the first half lurking behind Chappaz and Anger.
Coming down the final arcing descent trailing the Frenchman and facing an extremely short finish straight, Klæbo accelerated hard to the outside of the final hairpin, which the two leaders skied side by side. Chappaz floated wide on the exit, nudging Klæbo within a few inches of the outer barriers, but the Norwegian’s preternatural body control and severe allergy to crashing meant he managed to stay upright and eventually squeeze by to take a close victory.
It was all smiles and fist bumps in the finish pen among the podium as Chappaz and Amundsen waited a good few minutes to see who had taken silver and who bronze. In the end they both seemed happy enough with the tie for second, chumming it up on the same step of the podium and gleefully spraying around some pinkish Estonian bubbly drink.
Klæbo, who had looked genuinely exhausted at Holmenkollen over the weekend, seemed to have regained some of his mojo. “It feels really good,” he said in his post-race FIS interview about racing in the home city of his grandfather and other relatives. “It’s always fun to race here when you have your family cheering for you. It’s a difficult track, but it’s also a lot of fun. We all want to do more of these city sprints, so hopefully in the future we’ll continue to do this.”
After a bit of post-Trondheim wallowing, he’s ready to put on a show in Lahti this coming weekend. “I’m looking forward to the last weekend now,” he said. “I’m more motivated this week than last week, so that’s a good sign.”
Americans JC Schoonmaker and Kevin Bolger also raced, finishing 42nd and 51st, respectively, in qualifying.
Racing continues on Friday in Lahti, Finland, with a skate sprint. Expect similar American names on the start list. For Ogden, at least, and possibly others, the true season-ender is Supertour Finals in Lake Placid, running March 26–30. Nordic Insights will have boots-on-the-ground reporting from Lake Placid for all four days of racing.
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