On Sunday, the Tour de Ski culminated in fine style, with that literally staggering climb - 4000m long, with an elevation change of 400m - up the Alpe Cermis, southwest of Lago di Tesero, Italy. The front-runners turned out to be the winners. Starting first, Virpi Kuitunen (Finland) skied alone but in complete control, maintaining nearly all of her 100-second gap back to Aino-Kaisa Saarinen (the second starter) and winning by 1:17. For the men, on the other hand, Tobias Angerer (Germany) let second-placed starter Simen Østensen (Norway) close their 15-second gap, skied with Norwegian to the base of the climb, and then pulled away to win by 0:46.
The real drama occurred behind the leaders. As she followed Kuitunen, Saarinen slowly lost ground to Marit Bjørgen (Norway) and, surprisingly, Valentina Shevchenko (Ukraine), the third- and seventh-place starters. Shevchenko had started 3:27 behind Kuitunen, but between the 7.5km and 8.6km time checks, she passed everyone except the two Finns and thereby jumped provisionally onto the podium. As the climb topped out inside the last kilometer, Shevchenko went past Saarinen into second - but then was passed by Bjørgen, who surged to the line to claim second for herself and relegate the Ukrainian to third. Bjørgen, Shevchenko, and Saarinen finished within five seconds of each other, and the Czech skate specialist Katerina Neumannova posted the fastest time of the day to finish just two seconds behind Saarinen - four seconds off the podium third. As Angerer climbed away from Østensen, the field behind them was compressed by the onrush of Russians Alexander Legkov and Evgeny Dementiev, who had started in tenth and eleventh positions, about 2:15 behind Angerer, then moved up through the field. In the last kilometer, Legkov accelerated past both Petter Northug (Norway), who had maintained his third-place starting slot until then, and Østensen to take the silver-medal spot. Østensen finished third. (Though fast, Legkov wasn't the fastest man on the track: his teammate Sergej Shiraev went even faster in moving up from 19th place to 12th.)
All in all, the Tour de Ski was a success. The tour was designed to find the best all-around skiers, and to some extent it did so. Clearly, Kuitunen was the best female, placing in the top ten in all but one race and winning both the Asiago sprint and the next day's 15km mass-start race. Valentina Shevchenko, too, had excellent results across the board, including two race podiums and her overall third. Among the men, Østensen was probably the most consistent racer, with high sprint and distance finishes (but no podium spots except his overall third place). Had his teammates Petter Northug or Tor Arne Hetland had better skis in the Oberstdorf pursuit, either or both of them might have made it to the final podium on the strength of their good sprint and distance racing. Angerer took the overall title without winning a single stage (though he did appear on two podiums); he outdid his competition by racing well in both classical style and freestyle races and by winning some precious bonus seconds with a good result in the Asiago sprint. In fact, for the men, stage wins endangered overall standings: while just two men who finished in the top 10 also won an individual stage, four in the top 10 didn't even make an individual stage podium. (Conversely, the top seven women all had at least one podium finish.)
Beyond the impact of bonus time and flexible racing acumen, the Tour de Ski clearly revealed which national teams had the most "all-rounders." On the women's side, Norway had three women in the overall top ten (six in the point-earning top 30), Finland and Germany two each (four in the top 30). Germany, Russia, and Norway each contributed a trio of men to the top ten; only Sami Jauhojärvi (Finland) broke in. (Germany placed five in the top 30, Norway 6, and Russia a whopping 7 - almost two full relay teams!) The Italian and Swedish teams had notably weak performances, perhaps because they are are training to peak at the World Championships in late February. The best-placed Italian racer was Marianna Longa (15th in the overall); Giorgio di Centa had the third-fastest men's time in the last stage but placed only 20th in the general classification. For the Swedes, their distance ironmen Mathias Fredriksson and Anders Södergren raced poorly and respectively finished 14th and 16th in the GC; the best woman wound up just 26th in the GC.
At next year's Tour de Ski - already on the books to run from December 28, 2007, to January 6, 2008, at the same venues as this year - national teams will probably pay even more attention to managing the stage-race format. Keeping whole teams healthy and fast will further the team-racing tactics that helped some of the best racers - Kuitunen, Østensen, and Northug among them - win valuable bonus seconds at the sprint "preems." Bonus seconds from the preems and from high finishes in individual races were critical: Kuitunen garnered 130 seconds of bonus time - 42.5 seconds more than her total time over Marit Bjørgen. Third-placed man Simen Østensen won 59 bonus seconds; without that time he would have finished outside the top 10.
It will be interesting to see how the officials of the International Ski Federation (FIS) tinker with the format for the 2008 Tour. According to Ella Gjømle, a Norwegian skier too sick to race this time, the tour "will be even more important for every skier" next season, as 2007-08 won't have a world championships or Olympics. "It’s good to have an extra goal to shoot for when you are training toward a new season." Like many racers, she advocates dropping or shortening the final uphill stage: "The last climb didn’t look like ski racing." Both Virpi Kuitunen and Marit Bjørgen said as much, too. On the other hand, Jürg Capol, the director of cross country for the FIS, and Vegard Ulvang, chairman of the FIS cross-country committee, both seem to think the climb functioned well to bring the competition to a close. Capol said at the post-race press conference, "I do not think we should change too much as the basic concept seems to work. Our rules the way we set seem to be fine. All venues surely have some improvements to make and we can always work on the details." Perhaps the tour could feature a race-within-a-race for climbing seconds, similar to this year's sprint points competition or, better, the competition for the polka-dot climbers' jersey in the Tour de France. Both Val di Fiemme and Oberstdorf have the terrain needed for lengthy and hilly, but not solely uphill, stages.
All those matters will be taken up after the World Cup ends. The next regular races will be held in Rybinsk, Russia, on January 20 and 21.