Jessie Diggins of the United States failed miserably in the opening leg of the Tour de Ski, the freestyle sprint. Diggins’ sky ended already with the qualification.
The Tour de Ski started with a real bang when one of the women’s pre-favourites, the United States Jessie Diggins qualified from the sprint stage. Diggins does dominate the freestyle sprint, as before Christmas he was second in the World Cup sprint in Davos and last year he won the opening sprint of the Tour de Ski in Lenzerheide.
– Right in the moonlight is Jessie Diggins. The attempt was very hard, but it didn’t go anywhere, stated Urheilu’s expert Toni Ropon too in the newsroom.
– Now there have been so-called matte skis.
Roponen referred to his former coach’s 2016 Lenzerheide sprint qualifying, when Matti Heikkinen was only 96th among 100 skiers.
Diggins won the Tour last season and is one of the early favorites on the Tour this winter as well. Disqualification from the heats is a bad setback for the American, as he was now left without bonus seconds and was as much as 11 seconds slower than the top skier. No comments were received from Diggins, who was very disappointed, after the qualification, because according to the Norwegian public radio NRK, he ran through the interview area without stopping.
– The next two days are still really difficult for Diggins. Pertsa’s top ten is difficult for him anyway, and now he’s going to chase after all the pre-favourites, after that there’s still an intermediate time race, Roponen said.
– At the point when we start skiing 20 kilometers free, he is probably far from the positions he thought he was in.
Norway also fell out of the pre-favorites stage Heidi Weng and the German Olympic champion in the Paris Sprint Victoria Carl.
If Diggins was disappointed, there was a big surprise in Sweden’s camp. Only 20 years old Marta Rosenberg rattled in his first World Cup start for the third fastest time. Two years ago, Rosenberg won relay gold at the Junior World Championships in Vuokatti and won World Cup silver in the sprint at last year’s Games.
– This is incomprehensible! Swedish women do do something differently than anywhere else. It can’t be a coincidence that only 17-22-year-old sprinters rise directly to the top of the world, Roponen was amazed.
Switzerland was the fastest in the women’s sprint qualifying Nadine Fähndrich. Five Finnish women made it to the next round, the best of them was Jasmin Kähärä tenth place in qualifying. We will also see each other in the batch phase Jasmi Joensuu, Krista Pärmäkoski, Kerttu Niskanen and Katri Lylynperä.
The final phase of the sprint starts at 2:55 p.m., live broadcast on TV2 and Areena, as well as on ‘s website.