The cross-country skiing World Cup season continues this weekend in Davos, Switzerland, with individual-start distance races in the freestyle technique on Saturday and relay races on Sunday. Both events are critical in the run-up to the World Championships in Sapporo later this month. The individual events are the last chance for many skiers to qualify for their nations' world-champs teams and to tune up for identical events at Sapporo. The relay races are important for that latter reason - an opportunity to try out likely teams and to see how a team matches up with its competition. All those matters aside, the proximity to Worlds (and Davos' extremely high altitude) means that some athletes won't race in Switzerland. German Tobias Angerer is skipping both events, for instance. On the other hand, some national teams will send more racers to Davos than they usually commit to an event. Three American women skiers are joining Kikkan Randall in Davos, both to test themselves at a World Cup and to fill out a relay team. My picks for the weekend's races:
women's 10km
1) Katerina Neumannova (Czech Republic), 2) Virpi Kuitunen (Finland), 3) Valentina Shevchenko (Ukraine)
men's 15km
1) Vincent Vittoz (France), 2) Christian Hoffman (Austria), 3) Petter Northug (Norway)
women's 4x5km relay (revised, 2/3/07)
1) Finland, 2) Russia, 3) Germany
men's 4x10km relay (revised, 2/3/07)
1) Norway, 2) France, 3) Russia