Men's results from the Stage 1 4K prologue. 30 seconds separating the top 36 skiers.

http://www.fis-ski.com/cross-country/events-and-places/event=35089/race=24105/index.html


Women's Stage 1 3K prologue: 30 second separate the top 28, although since the distance is shorter, 23 seconds separate the top 15


http://www.fis-ski.com/cross-country/events-and-places/event=35089/race=24104/index.html




I still kind it weird that women's racing is all shorter distance. All they are doing is favouring the girls with more fast twitch since the ladies can easily cover the full distance the men cover (well, Joan Benoit already shut the door on that silly discussion about women doing shorter distances with her LA olympic win).

I'm with you. I bet that is part of the explanation that Björgen is so extremely dominant on the womens side: the races are simply never (except the 30k, which could totally be 50k like the mens) long enough and are all pretty equal in demands.

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Endurance coach | Physiotherapist (primary care) | Bikefitter | Swede

XC skiing, cycling, speed skating...they all have this patronizing mode where the women race shorter races....it benefits the women with a higher fast twitch composition. In ay case, as you can see from the time deltas, the racing is tight, but the usual names dominate the top, not unlike a Tour de France prologue. The nice thing about the Tour de Ski is that the stages are short enough that even 13 year olds could do the entire thing. Not saying that XC skiing is clean (far from it, and has a long history of doping), but one could make the arguement that you can get through all stages just fine, even at the citizen racer level so need need for "outside assistance" to get through. Whereas, a 3 week cycling grand tour has had doping/medical assistance as part of it since day 1, just to get through the brutality of the course. I like the format of the tour de ski...all the racing is exciting every day and it is not like watching paint dry...I think something like this could be done in triathlon in the vein of the old France Iron tour.

Another good day for Norway.
Both races are available here
http://crosscountryski.us

Thanks for the link! Will check it out. What is your pre race analysis on how this tour shakes out? Or are there too many variables to predict anything?

In cycling, it's not really patronizing. A pro women's field could not finish the TdF as a race. A couple of them could do it, but the field would get decimated by time
cuts and abandons due 7-8 hour stages on a daily basis.

Let's assume that women take 9 hours to do an Ironman and men take 8 hours. If we scale women's bike races accordingly, at most the women's distances would be 10-12 percent shorter to make the duration the same. But this is not what we generally see. In any case realistically what is the excuse in XC skiing and speed skating? The races are all short enough that you can't really use the excuse that the women will be "out there forever". It really seems patronizing. I am actually surprised that many of my women athlete friends don't make a bigger deal about it in those sports and just go with what the men in black suits at FIS and ISU tell them they are capable of.

I xc skied for the first time today. Without lessons. I think the olympic scouts are going to be swarming me soon ;)

Really though it was hella fun

Day 2 in the books at Oberstdorf Germany...


Looks like a tight race in today's 15K classic pursuit with 6 seconds separating the top 10. Good day for Norway (Northug) and Canada had Alex Harvey in 2nd, but our other guys (kershaw 4th in the 50K at Whistler Olympics) and Babikov (often on the podium in the hill climb stage) were 80-90 seconds off the pace.

http://www.fis-ski.com/cross-country/events-and-places/event=35089/race=24107/index.html

For the men's race the Italians must have had really good skis. Impressive skiing by some of the not so famous names.

The men are close. Dario looks strong. Good to see Northug back. Sunday will be strong, so will Jespersen. But Dario is the favorite.

For the women it is Norway all the way.

Northug is a real master of positioning himself and what a finish! Its gonna be tight. Dario looks sharp and so do Sundby but its so close so many of the guys still have a good chance in the mens race

For the women I would say that Björgen looks unbeatable..

Stina Nilsson is only doing the sprint then dropping out in favor of the Nordic Champs which are in Falun, so that she can race on the World Champ track. It's a shame, she raced great today. Wonder if it is a good or bad move by the Norwegian top ladies to race the entire tour.

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Endurance coach | Physiotherapist (primary care) | Bikefitter | Swede

I am sure you mean the world championship in. Falun.
It is more important for Swedes to win in Falun than any Olympic gold. Falun is the greatest place to win if you are Swedish, just like the WC in Holmenkollen 2011 was for the Norwegians.

Athletes react differently to Tour de Ski. And it can be smart to not do all the races if you need more time to train. Also you get send home fast if you get a little sick, just ask Martine Haga and Sjur Rothe.

Today the skiers with weak classic technique suffered, while the all round skiers prevailed. Americans need to work on classic technique, their skating is good but they lose too much in classic.

The scale of the differences is patronizing. It should be much less than is frequent - maybe 10 or 20% shorter in longer events, and perhaps the same in shorter ones.

I'm reminded of one year at the Killington (Vermont) Stage Race, where the first road stage was just over 100 miles for the pro-1-2 field and just over 50 miles for the women - I think the women's race was actually a 1-2-3-4 but it might have been a 1-2-3. The women started a few minutes behind us, had a break right away, and were drilling it, whereas the men's race was just steady. So the women caught and passed us....

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http://www.jt10000.com/

Bjoergen is so dominating at the moment, that the women's race is boring almost from the first day. Whatever the Norwegian girls are doing in their training, is head and shoulders above anyone else out there.

Men's race is a completely different story - although I doubt that Northug would have won yesterday because what essentially happened was that Harvey almost knocked out the Italian guy (Fabiani he was?) on the descent to the finishing straight which allowed Northug to "slip" through a bunch of four skiers in a single second without applying any power to the skis, get a gap of couple of meters, and then it was only whoever had the largest double poling power.

Anyway, waiting for next stages with great excitement .

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Need more W/CdA.

The only two being anywhere close to the norwegians last years are C.Kalla and Justyna Kowalczyk but both have been out of shape this winter.
Im actually a little bit disappointed.it doesnt look good for Kalla and some of the swedish girls and man leading up to Falun..

I think it was Halvarsson that Harvey was about to knock off his feet. Both lost some speed but Northug probably would have won anyhow.

Some of the swedish guys like Hellner tries to compete themselves back in shape and so far it looks better than before the tour.
For a sprint specialist like Stina Nilsson it may be a good idea to skip the hardest part of tour to stay fresh

Great sprint today. Tour de Ski sprint is different, but fun. The next four days will be fun.

Go Norway

Go to 44.30 in this video of the last stage of Tour de Ski for women. This is why 1.2 million Norwegians watched.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJubLH8o89s