Iivo Niskanen had a hard time in the Les Rousses World Cup 10 km freestyle race when he fell into a fence.
Anu Karttunen,
Kimmo Porttila
27.1. 17:12•Updated 27.1. 17:36
In the Les Rousses 10 km freestyle race Iivo Niskanen arrived at the finish line last, almost three and a half minutes behind the leader. Result or difference winner Harald Östberg to Amundsen however, it is not worrying, because Niskas was very unlucky during the race.
– I managed to load the second round Jon’s (Hill) followed by (Johannes Hösflot) Kläbo got into it appropriately. I went down the steep slope to his position, but in the U-bend the ski slipped off the ice, went into the net fence and through that hole, Niskanen told Urheilu.
– I was close to losing my leg on it. It took me a long time to get out of there. Fortunately, I was able to ski to the finish line. I’ll probably get by with some kind of stilt.
Joni Mäki saw the event from the fence. Niskanen’s fall messed up Mäki’s own race for a lap.
– He (Iivo) fell straight from the front into the billboards. Yes, I myself went skiing after that while collecting. I wondered how the guy was doing. I turned back a little and saw that the guy was in the same position, so what’s the matter, Mäki stated.
– I wonder if the ski was so stuck that you couldn’t just get up from it.
Perttu Hyvärinen was just going in the other direction when Niskanen fell.
– A terrible clatter was heard from there. I thought that it was probably going to go wrong there. I have no idea what happened there, but Puska must have been scared there, Hyvärinen stated.
The final level of the neck was not seen
Before his fall, Niskanen was about half a minute behind the leader in 25th place. However, Rytäkä took a good couple of minutes and the ranking dropped to the worse side of 60. However, according to Niskanen, the track was safe, only that one corner was frozen.
– Yes, the speed stops quite suddenly. Perhaps a little too greedily, I went to it behind Kläbo and then left from under the cover on mirror ice. There was nothing you could do about it.
Will you still be able to ski?
– I’m not, Niskanen stated.
The head coach Teemu Pasanen had not yet seen Niskas when he came to the interview, but believed that the skier survived the crash mostly with mental injuries.
– Nothing bigger. The equipment was intact, the man was intact and he skied to the finish line, Pasanen said and stated that it was not yet clear about Niskanen’s hitting ability.
– It wasn’t really seen what Iivo’s final level would have been when the race was a bit unfinished.
Update at 17:36: Perttu Hyvärinen’s and Teemu Pasanen’s comments added.