Kerttu Niskasen all the keys to a top result – Aino-Kaisa Saarinen aligned the Finns’ settings for the continuation of the Tour | Sport

Tour de Ski continues on Wednesday 3 January. Sprinting in Davos. Above are the TV rights for the remaining Tour de Ski competitions. Urheilu follows the Tour in this article.

The Tour de Ski continues on Wednesday in Davos with the evening sprints of freestyle skiing. This race is very important, as it can swing overall competitions in one direction or another. No less than 60 bonus seconds are offered to the winners, and the 30th-place finisher also gets another four seconds.

Those who fail to qualify in the sprint do not get bonus seconds.

In the Toblach free sprint, only three Finns made it to the qualifying stage, so they should be able to do better in Davos.

Sports expert Aino-Kaisa Saarinen reminds that Kerttu Niskanen and Krista Pärmäkoski must succeed in Wednesday’s race if they want to fight for prize places or good places in the overall competition.

Niskanen is currently in seventh place and Pärmäkoski in tenth place. Niskanen in particular is within striking distance, as he is six seconds from second place, and Pärmäkoskenka’s situation is not bad either. of the United States Jessie Diggins leads the race with an overwhelming feeling, but the next places are still within reach.

– Everything depends on Davos. If Kerttu succeeds there, he can finish in the top three in the overall competition. Krista can also improve her ranking, but now she must not fail in the sprint in the same way as in Toblach, Saarinen reflected.

– It must happen that Jessie is dragged from the throne. Maybe if maintenance happens to have a catastrophic lubrication for the traditional races, in the style of lumps at the bottom, and others succeed, then it would be possible.

The height of Davos is suitable for Niskas

If in Toblach you skied at a so-called intermediate altitude, i.e. neither high nor low, in Davos you are clearly high, at just over 1,500 meters. Some of the Finnish female skiers were excited about it, some were not.

– For some, competing at a high level is more suitable and then we have competitors, such as for example Wind (Busted), who has no experience at a high level, of a women’s coach Ville Maunuksela stated.

Kerttu Niskanen is one of them for whom the high altitude is suitable. In addition, he prepared for the Tour at a high level.

– High doesn’t bother me at all, on the contrary. It only gets better the higher you go!

In Maunuksela’s opinion, the Finnish team underperformed in the Toblach sprint, but the traditional ten was a top day for the team and even in the free 20 kilometer pursuit race most of them were very much in the game.

Vuorinen raises its shares

On the men’s side, Toblach’s pursuit collapsed the Finns’ situation. Remi Lindholm is currently the 26th best (+2.41), Perttu Hyvärinen is 31st (+3.04) and Lauri Vuorinen 32nd (+3.20).

– Situations change every day, and you can’t predict how things will go in the games, head coach Teemu Pasanen said after the chase.

– On Sunday, probably no one guessed that Perttu would win, and today, Monday, hardly anyone could guess that it would go so poorly. Now we’re off to do our best in Davos.

Although Lindholm is the only Finn in the top 30, sprint races are not his forte. Instead, for Vuori, Wednesday’s race is one of the most important in the Tour. In the pursuit race, the steep ascent of the track was poison for Vuorinen, so the break on Tuesday came in handy for him.

– It’s starting to get heavy. However, Toblach’s sprint day was also fairly long and I got a lot out of my body in Sunday’s race. Today it already felt a bit, 32nd-placed Vuorinen admitted after Sunday’s chase.

Aino-Kaisa Saarinen believes that sprint specialist Vuorinen will raise his shares on Wednesday and become the best Finnish man.

– Lauri has continued with positive performances and has not collapsed in normal distance races.

He will pass Remi on Wednesday if he continues with his positive performances, Saarinen said.

– I believe that Lauri has a chance to be in the top 20. But it requires successes all the time, not even one failure must occur, and successes are also required from maintenance.