Kimmo Porttila, Kalle Lassila and Laura Arffman the hottest topics of the skiing season in Urheilu’s podcast, which also explains what the dream skier of the 2024 model is like.
The past winter sports weekend included, in particular, the Levi World Cup competitions in alpine skiing and the Olos Cannonball Championships in cross-country skiing. The continuation of the sports studio reveals the most interesting events and topics of conversation.
You can find everything about the past Sports Studio weekend in our follow-up article.
What are we talking about?
After the sports studio weekend, two somewhat similar winners will speak: Iivo Niskanen and Petra Vlhova.
Niskanen started his season in a wild way on Saturday, when he overwhelmingly won the traditional skiing 10 km race. The Norwegians were shocked. Niskanen himself uploaded really confident comments about his condition. Niskanen was immediately greeted with success two weeks later at the World Cup in Ruka.
Even withdrawing from Sunday’s freestyle competition did not diminish the incense. Finland’s head coach Teemu Pasanen too praised Niskas very much.
Urheilu’s skiing expert Aino-Kaisa Saarinen as well I remembered Niskanen’s show from the weekend.
– Iivo is in good condition. He can head towards Ruka’s competitions with confidence, says Saarinen.
Like Niskanen, Petra Vlhova was shockingly superior in Levi’s alpine skiing world cup slalom on Saturday and won the race with a difference of 1.41 seconds.
On Sunday, Vlhova had an overwhelming lead, but fell out in the second round. The American took the win Mikaela Shiffrin gave credit to Vlhova and considered the Slovakian’s fate to be bad luck.
– Vlhova was in a completely different class than anyone else. Shiffrink seemed sorry. However, this tells you what kind of sport slalom is. All in all, Vlhova aroused the most wonder here in Levi. How exactly was he so superior in his three and a half counts? Urheilu’s alpine skiing expert Kalle Palander snorted.
Who surprised?
He answered the biggest surprise of the weekend Riitta-Liisa Roponen. The 45-year-old Roponen was the best Finn after the international tops in the 10-kilometer freestyle skiing competition at the Olos Artillery Games. Roponen was sixth and left behind the national team skiers – even the brightest stars, such as Krista Pärmäkoski and Kerttu Niskanen.
Roponen said that these days he only enjoys skiing. Coach man, though Toni Roposen according to the training hours per year are about 800 hours. “Ritu” ended his professional career a year and a half ago. He only decided to compete in Olos at the beginning of the race week.
This autumn, Roponen has also appeared on the television program Selviytyjät Suomi. The program was filmed last spring in Malaysia.
– It was fun to watch Ritu skiing. However, he has been on TV programs all over the world in the meantime, and he skis fantastically, then free again, Saarinen described.
According to Saarinen, the background of Roposen’s top performance is a great basic condition. With it, you can ski hard even in a single competition, even if you are, as Saarinen says, in a “horse’s jeera” for a long time.
– Of course, this was worrying in the way that Finland’s top women couldn’t beat her, Saarinen says.
Who flopped?
The flop of the weekend, on the other hand, can be found on the alpine skiing side. The Finnish women’s team as a whole was a disappointment. Five Finns participated in Saturday’s World Cup slalom. Only one made it to the finish line.
Only three Finns went to Sunday’s race. Even then, only one made it to the finish line. On Saturday Charlotte Henriksson was the 60th, on Sunday Riia Pallari 61st, and both times the difference between the Finn to the top was more than five seconds.
– I would have hoped that the Finns would have been able to stretch and show speed at least in some of the intervals. But there was nothing, Palander regretted.
On Sunday, we also saw a confusing situation when Finland’s top name Rosa Pohjolainen withdrew from the competition.
Finland’s head coach Mikael Kurki said that Pohjolainen is currently not ready to start in the World Cup. Palander had seen Pohjolainen while watching the track. Already on Urheilustudio’s TV broadcast, Palander was spinning his head and wondering about Pohjolainen’s decision.
– I was surprised, what the hell. Nobody in the union understood what was really going on, Palander revealed after the TV broadcast.
What the hell?
Over the weekend, we were surprised by the recent ban on fluoride cream in both cross-country skiing and alpine skiing. At the opening of the Alpine Skiing World Cup in Sölden, the skis were still tested for fluoride, but Levi was not brought a scanner that measures the concentrations.
In the Olos Artillery Games Krista Pärmäkoski pointed out that the big differences in the top were partly due to fluoride creams. Pärmäkoski believed that not everyone was using fluoride-free skis on Sunday.
Head coach of the national team Teemu Pasanen according to Olos, fluoride creams were prohibited because the competitions were FIS competitions. However, fluoride was not tested at Olos. Some of the skiers also used fluoride openly.
The situation is special because the skiers’ results are not completely comparable. Saarinen reminds that Sunday’s competition in Olos was also a display competition for the Ruka World Cup.
– We don’t know what is on the bottom of anyone’s ski. But if there was a national-level athlete aiming for the World Cup in Ruka, then it would be worthwhile for him to use fluoride cream in such a situation, says Saarinen.
What next?
In cross-country skiing, the caravan moves to Ruka. First, we compete in Ruka in the Finnish Cup and the next weekend in the World Cup.
Aino-Kaisa Saarinen is especially waiting to see where Kerttu Niskanen and Krista Pärmäkoski will turn. Saarinen expected more from both of them in the first races of the season.
According to Saarinen, the duo must think very carefully about their training in the next two weeks before the World Cup in Ruka.
– Of course, Kerttu had a similar situation last year. It was sticky at Ruka, but the rest of the season went well. However, he won the distance cup in the end, Saarinen reflected.
In alpine skiing, Finnish eyes turn after the women’s home competition Elian Lehto. The Finnish promise was supposed to compete this week in Zermatt-Cervinia in the World Cup downhill competition, but both races of the weekend were canceled due to bad weather.
However, Lehto had time to shine in the official training and was sixth.
– I expect Elian Lehto to be in the top 20 in the World Cups. It was a real shame that the weekend’s races were cancelled. Training went so well. Elian would have had a good start to the season, says Palander.
Next weekend, 18.–19.11. we will compete in Ruka in the Finnish cross-country skiing cup. shows the competitions on its channels and follows the events on its website.