The absence of skiers has been the talk of the Tour de Ski, even though this season the tour should be the highlight of the season. Italy’s Federico Pellegrino has an improvement proposal for ski decision makers.
The Tour de Ski continues on Wednesday with free sprints, which shows live. The broadcast of the Davos sprint qualifying starts at 15:25 and the sprint finals at 17:58. ‘s live sports broadcasts can be found at this link.
TOBLACH. When skiing in Toblach, or Dobbiaco in Italian, the home crowd seemed to have one big favorite. Federico Pellegrino. He was in pain on Sunday with the help of a storm of screams set up by the announcer in the overall standings of the Tour de Ski.
This year, two of the Tour’s three competition locations are in Italy. From Toblach we go to Davos in Switzerland, but the tour traditionally ends in Val di Fiemme.
The Tour de Ski was supposed to be the highlight of the season this year, since there are no value races on the program.
However, numerous stars have had to miss the race or have had difficulties at the very beginning of the tour due to illnesses.
On the men’s side, last year’s top three are absent due to illness Johannes Hösflot Kläbo and Simen Hegstad Krüger. Also Iivo Niskanen missed the Tour.
In its own way, the lack of men is also underlined by the FIS’s decision to stretch its rules so that 12 men were allowed to continue competing after the second stage, even though they had fallen far from the top according to the rules.
FIS competition manager By Michal Lamplot according to the reason behind the stretching of the rules was precisely the many absences in advance and during the first stages.
At the same time, there has been criticism of the Tour in the Nordic countries. To write for Urheilu Atte Husun in the comment, the ski tour was considered a tourist advertisement, which does more harm than good. It has also been criticized that The Tour has not been reformed much, and the FIS has had no desire to. Even now, when it has been a year without a value competition. Again a bunch of reform proposals have been presented once.
Does skiing pace affect your health?
In Federico Pellegrino’s opinion, the Tour is still the number one event in a season without a prestigious race and it is also in a significant position when competing for the overall cup win.
According to Pellegrino, those who decide on the calendar still have something to think about now. The Italian reminds that those who raced practically the entire autumn are now sick or have just had time to recover for the Tour.
Iivo Niskanen is probably the only exception. Like Pellegrino, he skipped the Tour to train for one race weekend. Pellegrino did it because he wanted to be in shape at the Tour. Still, he also got a cold in mid-December.
– When you compete so many times and for so many weekends in a row, it’s hard to stay healthy, Pellegrino says and also reminds us of the coldness of the early winter games in the Nordic countries.
Before the Tour, the Cross-Country World Cup was contested for four weekends in a row in the so-called first period. Pellegrino has one clear wish for skiing decision-makers.
– The World Cup should only be three weeks in a row. No more, says Pellegrino.
The Norwegian leader of the Tour does not swallow criticism
Harald Östberg Amundsen goes to the competitions in Davos as the top name of the Tour. Amundsen would not change anything from the current Tour. In his opinion, the Tour still has great value.
– It’s still hard to win the Tour de Ski. It is the most difficult thing to achieve. Amundsen described.
– You have to complete seven stages well. Only the toughest men make it to the finish line.
Amundsen rose on Sunday By Erik Valnes over in the overall battle and convincingly cut his lead to 32 seconds, despite feeling that he was tired before the race.
Amundsen said that the night’s sleep had been interrupted because of the New Year’s fireworks.
Last season, Amundsen won the second level, the Scandinavian Cup. Now he has become the winning favorite for the Tour and even the overall World Cup, as Kläbo loses a lot of points opportunities due to his absence from the Tour.
However, Amundsen calms down the talk.
– Johannes takes a lot of points when he returns. Nothing has been decided, just the number one name in Norway at the moment.