Was there a sigh of relief among the ski bosses when Therese Johaug arrived at the finish line for the last time?

On November 25, 2018, the period that the ski districts could wait began.

Has been on the sidelines for two years due to doping Therese Johaug returned to the race tracks in the Ruka World Cup and continued where he had left off in the spring of 2016.

Johaug won Ruka’s 10-kilometer break in traditional skiing 22 seconds apart in Sweden Charlotte Kallaan. At the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, achieved three personalized medals Krista Pärmäkoski was the best Finn from Johauga for 55 seconds and was sixth.

From that Saturday, Johaug’s winning machine grinded opponents to pieces until March 5, 2022, when Johaug slammed Holmenkollen into the finish line 19 seconds before Pärmäkoski.

Johaug could afford to take his audience for the last few kilometers. What if the difference to the pursuers was five miles before the goal more than a minute and a half.

One and a half minutes. Kollen has skied the men’s 50 kilometers combined since 2010, with a maximum profit margin of 18 seconds. Johaug also managed to set this record on Saturday, despite skiing the Norwegian flag in both hands on most of the stadium and stopping to bow to the crowd before crossing the finish line.

When one athlete is so overwhelming, the competition forcibly loses interest – and the still life doesn’t show up in a better light at all, when at the same time the men’s races are steady.

However, it is completely pointless to blame Johaug for this.

Let’s go back to the November 2018 Ruka race mentioned at the beginning. At the time, many knew how to expect Johaug to return strong despite a two-year competitive break. The previous stint in the World Cup had been the 2015–2016 season, in which Johaug had competed in 21 normal distance starts and left as a winner 15 times. The profit margin was thus 71.4.

And now it’s time to stop for a moment. If Johaug’s dominance had anesthetized someone in the spring bang of 2016, the Norwegian star took the 32 out of 41 possible races in the World Cup in the World Cup from the time of November 2018 to the sun-drenched Holmenkollen on Saturday. So 78 percent.

In reality, Johaug lost only four pieces of the cross-country skiing between 2018 and 2022, three of which were taken from Sweden. Frida Karlsson and one in the United States Jessica Diggins. All other losses were reversals of mass departures with a trail profile more reminiscent of park skiing than the World Cup.

The World Championships in Seefeld in 2019 and Oberstdorf in 2021, as well as the Beijing Olympics, still had their own chapter: 9 personal competitions, 9 gold medals.

Without taking anything away Kerttu Niskanen, when an athlete presents such superiority from one competition and one season to another, the reversal of the tenth battle of the Beijing Olympic Games to the Norwegian cannot be considered an outrageous injustice. The real level difference between Johaug and Niskanen before and after that race is hardly anyone clear.

Six Olympic medals, four of which are gold. 19 World Championship medals, including 14 world championships. Therese Johaug is one of the skiers of all time, but in the search for absolute superiority, the best measure is personal medals, especially wins.

As for the five-ring race, Johaug will share fifth place with three personal Olympic victories Sixten Jernberg, Marja-Liisa Kirvesniemen, Nikolai Zimyatov and Thomas Alsgaardin with stars like the following only Björn Dählie6 pieces, Marit Björgen5, and four personal gold Ljubov Yegorova and Dario Cologna.

In the personal world championships, however, Johaugin has put Björgen in the top ten gold. And considering that Johaug won the 30-kilometer finish that ended his World Cup before his ban, he ended his career by winning ten consecutive personal prizes. No other skier has been able to do the same.

So what should you think of Johaug’s doping collar, which came from a sample containing an anabolic steroid clostebol in the summer of 2016? In his home country, Johaug is at least as salon-worthy an athlete as, say, the aforementioned Yegorova or Larisa Lazutina in the eastern neighborhood. There is no information about the D-shaped brand.

However, in the fall of 2016, the International Court of Appeal for Sport (CAS) and the International Ski Federation (FIS), which took Johaug’s case to court, made clear what they thought about the liposuction explanation and the athlete’s own degree of guilt, which is primarily considered in doping cases.

What if Johaugia wasn’t?

The question has certainly crept into the minds of many ski lovers as the Norwegian wins the march. After Johaug crossed the finish line for the last time in the World Cup, Sports calculated which competitors would have benefited the most from Johaug’s absence in the periods 2018–2022.

The most significant benefit in calculating profits would have been Norwegian Heidi Weng, which would have been number one seven times without Johaug – all this in one season, 2019-2020. Pärmäkoski was the best behind Johaug in the Ruka World Cup in 2019 and on Saturday at Holmenkollen, Niskanen would have risen from fourth to third both at Kollen and a week ago in Lahti.

Although some of the skiers found in the list above have already finished their careers, it is worth starting to look for the fillers of the power vacuum left by Johaug at the top of the list. As the statistics show, despite the good grips of recent months, in the big picture, Finnish stocks are not on a hard price.

This was also revealed when Sports asked five international skiers who would benefit most from Johaug’s retirement. None named the Finnish skier.

Instead, the western neighbor of the trio Frida Karlsson, Ebba Andersson and Jonna Sundling the name of at least one appeared in the response of each expert. Despite this, the outlook for Finnish women’s skiing for the period 2022–2023, which includes Planica’s World Championships, is anything but weak.

As the value race statistics below show, the Finns hardly resented when Johaug decided to hang his skis on a pound.

As a result of the termination decision, satisfaction could also surface among international ski bosses.

Of the Nordic ski sports, cross-country skiing is three times smaller than men’s ski jumping as a TV sport, and the superiority proposed by Johaug has not made the job of strengthening the sport’s position easier.

And let me repeat: it is useless to blame Johaugia for it.

Story edited 6.3. 2:55 p.m .: Contrary to what the promoter announced, Johaug’s career did not end for Holmenkollen yet. At the post-race press conference, the Norwegian said he was still skiing in the final cup of the World Cup in Falun, the Norwegian Championships and the traditional Birkebeinerrennet race in Norway.