Blowing & Drifting

Forecast: Significant blowing and drifting, with the possibility of heavy accumulation in rural areas.

Midway through the Tour de Ski

Yesterday's classic-style races in Oberstdorf confirmed that Marit Bjorgen is probably out of the running for the women's overall and that Tobias Angerer is perfectly positioned to win the men's.

The women's 10km race was won in dominating fashion by Slovene Petra Majdic, who thereby moved up into second in the general classification, twenty seconds down to Kristin Stormer Steira, second in the race. Virpi Kuitunen, my pick to win the 10km, wound up third, and is now in fourth in the GC, 26 seconds back of Steira and 3 seconds back of another Finn, Aino Kaisa Saarinen. The top nine in the GC are all within a minute of Steira.

The men's 15km went to upstart Franz Göring of Germany, who not only soundly thumped the rest of the field, but remarkably used waxless skis to defeat the bad Alpine weather. Göring's German teammates Rene Sommerfeldt and Tobias Angerer - both former World Cup winners - finished second and third, respectively. (Their compatriot Axel Teichmann had to withdraw from the tour.) With the podium spot, Angerer displaced Simen Östensen at the top of the general classification, seventeen seconds up on the Norwegian and thirty on the surprising Göring. The men's GC is slightly less compact than the women's, with the tenth-placed athlete (Finnnish hope Sami Jauhojärvi) just over a minute behind Angerer - not far, with three races and more than 45 kilometers still to race.

The difficulty of the concluding stages - mass-start distance races on Saturday, ferocious hillclimb races run from "handicap" starts based on the GC on Sunday - mean that the racers tried hard to use the rest day today, and that Friday's sprints in Asiago will be the last chance for athletes to get back into contention, thanks to the time bonuses offered for podium spots in the sprints. Any bonuses could well be offset by further bonuses and the possibility of huge time gaps in the last two stages on Saturday and Sunday. My picks for the sprints:

Women: 1. Majdic; 2. Bjørgen; 3. Arianna Follis (Italy)

Men: 1. Tor Arne Hetland (Norway); 2. Petter Northug (Norway); 3. Cristian Zorzi (Italy)