39. That was the number of skiers who took part in today’s Davos World Cup women’s sprint. The number is alarmingly small, as last year 84 skiers participated in the same race.
The number of participants in Davos shows the direction of this season, as since the beginning of the season there have been significantly fewer participants, especially in the women’s games, than in the past. For example, there were 59 women in the Ruka sprint that opened the World Cup season, 61 in the 10 km race and 49 in the 20 km race.
In previous years, the Ruka weekend has seen significantly more participants, and statistics from eight years ago show that at that time, over 100 female skiers participated in the three competitions.
Finland’s head coach Teemu Pasanen in my opinion, the reason for the low number of participants is that there are too many competitions. It has been seen in skiers getting sick and in the selection of competitions.
– No one can ski all competitions. Some leave some in between and focus on training. This number of competitions and traveling also makes the whole rollercoaster expensive, so some countries skip weekends because of it, Pasanen said.
Pasanen hopes that the wake-up call of the International Ski Federation (FIS) will ring loudly now, because he thinks that something must be done about it.
– This has already been discussed many times at FIS meetings and others. Maybe this is now a wake-up call, Pasanen said.
The FIS change does not seem to have been successful
FIS changed the World Cup points calculation for this season so that instead of the best 30, points are distributed to the best 50. At the same time, the difference in points between the winner and the runner-up decreased from 20 points to 5 points.
In addition to this, FIS changed the competition distances for this season to be the same for both women and men, and the season started with three weekends of three races.
Finland’s top skiers especially criticized FIS’ point changes even before the start of the season. They believed that the competitors selected the games more carefully, so absences during the season were to be expected.
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Watching the Davos race from the sofa at home Jasmi Joensuu reminded in the story section of his Instagram account that with the current point system, the last person in the qualification (39th in Davos) gets 12 World Cup points by skiing to the finish line. Last year, to get these 12 points, you had to finish 19th.
– FIS’s goal was to get a wider group of participants to the Games. Well, everyone can decide for themselves whether this has been successful, Joensuu wrote.
The Finnish skiers who skied in Davos were also sorry about the situation. In their opinion, this should not be the case.
“The direction is by no means right”
Started his own World Cup career already in 2007 Anne Kyllönen is currently the most experienced skier touring the World Cup in terms of number of competitions. He doesn’t remember an equally small participation in the Cup race, if the Tour de Ski races are left out of the bills.
– The direction is by no means the right one. Yes, there should be at least 50–60 participants per race here, Kyllönen said.
The Finnish name of the day also agreed Krista Pärmäkoski. He reminded that athletes just have to train at some point and conserve energy. Even in Sunday’s 20 km race, there are no real winning candidates.
– Frida (Karlsson) is gone and apparently also Heidi Weng is gone. Yes, it just shows that those hard decisions have to be made. Of course, I will be skiing tomorrow, but my own solution is that I will stay here for Christmas and avoid that travel. From here I will then go directly to the Tour, Pärmäkoski said.
Pärmäkoski was very successful in the Davos sprint, as he took the fourth final place of his career in the freestyle sprint. He was fifth in the final results, even though the day was quite long for him.
– After the semi-final, I think I let out a few curse words that I still have to continue. It felt so bad, Pärmäkoski laughed.
Pärmäkoski made it to the final based on his time, but because he skied in the latter semi-final, the recovery time was short.
– It was visible today. (Winner Nadine) Fähndrich was the only one who could fight those acids from there. We were (sixth placed Indulgence) Stenseth’s with quite a few visitors, Pärmäkoski admitted.
– Still, I’m very satisfied. The semi-final was the minimum goal, but it’s always nice to ski in the final.