Iivo Niskanen is not fighting for the overall win of the World Cup this season.
Three-time Olympic champion Iivo Niskanen will not be there when the athletes of the Finnish cross-country skiing team will compete for World Cup points in Goms, Switzerland next weekend.
– Iivo decided that he will skip the competitions and concentrate fully on his main competitions, the Lahti traditional competition and the Holmenkollen 50 km competition, which will also be really important for Iivo, the head coach of the national team Teemu Pasanen told STT on Tuesday by phone.
Niskanen’s World Cup season started promisingly with second place in the traditional ten-kilometer race in Ruka, but since then illnesses have ruined the season.
Niskanen is only 24th in the World Cup and 16th in the Cup of normal distances, so it is not worth accumulating World Cup points and risks of getting sick again.
– The fact that there is no fight in the overall situation of the World Cup is certainly a lot behind the decision. He wants to focus on individual competitions, Pasanen said.
Illness reduced the calendar
Niskanen skipped the Tour de Ski at the turn of the year and returned to the race track in Germany’s Oberhof last weekend after a break of more than a month. He shone in the fifth-placed Finnish men’s relay team. In individual competitions, he was 25th in the sprint and 11th in the 20 kilometer combined race.
Instead of Goms, Niskanen headed to train in his mind for the end-of-season competitions mentioned by Pasanen, for which Niskanen tries to schedule peak condition.
In the Salpausselä Games, which will be held in Lahti at the beginning of March, the traditional 20-kilometer intermediate start race will be skied. A week later, Holmenkollen’s legendary fifty will be postponed as a traditional joint start.
Illness already watered down participation in the Tour de Skill at the turn of the year. Even Niskanen made his most recent move with health in mind.
– Iivo doesn’t risk anything. When it has been a broken season, he is not in the places in the overall cup that he needs to fight, Pasanen opened the solution of his number one star.
In Goms, the program includes a mixed relay, a freestyle sprint and a 20-kilometer joint start with freestyle skiing.