Blowing & Drifting

Well, my predictions were for crap, and today's exciting pursuit races in Oberstdorf yielded several surprises. The biggest shock of the day was a total collapse by Marit Bjørgen, who finished twenty-fifth in the women's event. In her stead, countrywoman Kristin Stormer Steira took the win, surging from fourth place during the change to freestyle technique at five kilometers into the lead by seven kilometers. Steira took first by 13 seconds over Valentina Shevchenko (Ukraine) and 17 over Olga Savialova (Russia). The time bonuses awarded to the top three finishers put Steira into first place in the general classification of the Tour de Ski, six seconds up on Bjørgen, twelve over Aino Kaisa Saarinen (Finland), and sixteen over Katerina Neumannova (Czech Republic). (Interestingly, none of the three racers who won the intermediate time bonuses at 2.9km were highly placed at the race's end.) Of the racers at the top of the GC, Neumannova, who finished fourth in the pursuit, is best poised for the overall win, perhaps as late as the last stage of the tour, a climactic 10km freestyle race that ends with 3000 meters of continuous climbing.

In the men's race, Vincent Vittoz (France) repeated his success in the pursuit at the 2005 World Championships, also in Oberstdorf, surging from behind to catch and pass Russian Alexander Legkov, who had sprinted for the line a bit too early. Behind Legkov, German Tobias Angerer finished third - a strong result that bodes well for his chances at the overall tour win. Thanks to a high finishing position in the Munich sprints and a big intermediate time bonus in the pursuit, Norwegian Simen Oestensen vaulted into the overall tour lead (displacing Christoph Eigenmann, who was disqualified from the tour after being lapped in the pursuit - a dismal fate for the sprinter), 16 seconds up on Vittoz and 20-odd seconds up on Legkov and Angerer. Besides Legkov, three other Russians are in the top 10 of the GC, raising the possibility of effective team tactics in Saturday's mass start classical event and the final-climb race on Sunday. The strong results by Vittoz and Angerer - both excellent skiers in both techniques and both good climbers - make those two the favorites for the overall win.