Vantaa’s SC track surprised the top skiers – “You don’t find anything like this in the World Cup” | Sport

The sprint track of the SC skis required endurance from the skiers. The recent Finnish champion also hoped that a minute would be taken off the time.

The renovated sprint track of the Vantaa Ski Championships aroused mixed feelings in Hakunila. An additional section of a good couple of hundred meters had been made on the 1.5 kilometer long track, and it was visible during the ski runs.

Number one in women’s qualifying Jasmi Joensuu clocked a time of 3:29.8 and separated from the last runner-up Rebecca Immoseen accumulated 23.5 seconds.

Usually in the World Cup, the final times of the women’s sprint qualifiers are three minutes apart.

In the final, Joensuu clocked almost the same time as he won the championship. After the race, he praised the track, but admitted that he could take a minute off it.

– A nice course in itself, but I would like it to be a little shorter in the Finnish Games. There were quite big differences, Joensuu, representing the Vantaa Ski Club, stated.

Stadium in the wrong place

In the opinion of the Finnish national team coaching, the track is too long in terms of time, even though there were decent fights for the SM medals in the finals.

– The stadium is in the wrong place, because the first hill is too far. If the stadium was closer to the rise, it would be shorter, head coach Teemu Pasanen stated.

– There were good struggles among the men, but among the women you could see that the course is just really long. The level differences are already large, Ville Oksanen your comp.

Sports expert Ville Nousiainen would prefer a sprint track, where the women’s time would be between 2.40 and 3 minutes.

– Then you could hit hard enough, and the sprint wouldn’t become a test of endurance. Now we even have to pass to be able to ski, Nousiainen commented from the commentary booth.

According to the Finnish model

Had a close final battle with Joensuu Jasmin Kähärä and crashed in his own heat Verneri Poikonen stated that the fast weather kept the situation under control. If the weather had been slow, too much time would have passed.

– You don’t really find tracks like this in the World Cup. Speed ​​is my forte, so tracks like Toblach suit me better. A track that is closer to a kilometer than a 1.5 kilometer, Poikonen said and emphasized that the most important thing is to consider the time spent on the track.

– Even if it’s a really long track, if it takes three minutes, it’s the same. In my opinion, the optimum would be a 2.5-minute track, but there are many types of us sprinters and so are tracks. This was a decent track.

In Kähärä’s opinion, the 3.5-minute final was not excessively long. The long downhill part of the course at the end helped and turned the race into sprint skiing.

– That track was suitably challenging. I like that there is a rise and fall, and not just flat. On the other hand, the track was straight, straight ahead, then 180 degrees and straight back. In world cups, the tracks are more winding.

Ranked fifth Tiia Olkkonen too paid attention to the straightness of the track. He would have liked more events on the track.

– Of course there was that U-bend where you had to have your tongue in the middle of your mouth. There have been fast and short courses in the World Cup. Compared to that, more durability was asked here during the day. At the national level, the differences are big, when we still have the world’s top skiers, Olkkonen said.

– On the other hand, it is typical that there are always long sprint tracks in the SC. It is the Finnish model.

The Vantaa Skiing Championship continues on Saturday with the 20 km traditional skiing competition. will follow the events throughout the weekend in this article.