Blowing & Drifting

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

Davos Day

The day's two hilly distance races in Davos turned out quite differently. After starting slowly, Virpi Kuitunen (Finland) accelerated over the last three kilometers of the women's 10km to win by nearly 12 seconds over Olga Savialova (Russia), who had the best time at every split except the finish. In a duel for third, Marit Bjørgen (Norway) edged Katerina Neumannova (Czech Republic) by 0.6 seconds. The win pushes Kuitunen closer to clinching the World Cup overall title, as she is now more than 400 points clear of her nearest rival in the World Cup overall with eight races remaining.  And though Savialova, Bjørgen, and especially Neumannova are clearly in good form for the World Championships, the races there are Kuitunen's to lose. She could (and perhaps should) medal in every event, and anything short of three golds would be a disappointment.

The men's 15km race had an unprecedented result: a tie for first between Vincen Vittoz (France) and unknown Toni Livers (Switzerland), racing on home snow. Tight finishes are increasingly common in the mass-start events, but the "contre le montre" format of the individual-start events, in which racers leave at 30-second intervals and race more against the clock than each other, don't often lead to such tight finishes. But as Livers said, today he had "the perfect day" in his "home race." Skating specialist Christian Hoffman (Austria) finished third, indicating as usual good form just before Olympic and World Championship events. Vittoz's shared win put him in first place in teh WC distance rankings, ahead of Tobias Angerer (who did not race today) and Alexander Legkov (who had a horrifically bad race). American Kris Freeman finished fifteenth on the day, his best result in two seasons and a suggestion that he, too, is ready for the Worlds.