Nine representatives of one country in the top 10 of the World Cup is now the norm.
The international season in cross-country skiing takes place without Russia. The International Ski Federation (FIS) is conducting a kind of experiment, trying to test what a popular sport will turn into without an impressive group of the strongest athletes of our time. So far, the results are depressing – at the next stage of the World Cup, nine Norwegians got into the top 10, and the tenth was a British resident of this northern country.
But they try not to notice the absence of Russia.
Dominance of one country
The second stage of the World Cup in cross-country skiing started in Lillehammer, Norway, with a men’s 10 km race. No special intrigue was expected here – the absence of Russians among the rivals turns any starts of the current season into a kind of Norwegian open championship. And there is no better demonstration of this than the first race in Lillehammer.
Iver Andersen from Norway took first place in the 10 km freestyle race. The second line went to his compatriot Didrik Tönset. Also, another representative of the Scandinavian country, Hans-Christer Holund, climbed onto the podium. And in general, the top 10 included nine athletes defending the colors of the Norwegian flag. Only Briton Andrew Musgrave is in fourth position. Curiously, he lives and trains not in his native country, but in Norwegian Trondheim.
Norway is a recognized leader in cross-country skiing, and at home, athletes usually try to perform as best as possible. You can remember how a year ago, when the Russians were present on the ski slopes, the first three places for 15 km in Lillehammer were still taken by the hosts, and our Alexey Chervotkin was only the fourth. So has anything fundamentally changed in the skiing world in the absence of the Russians?
“You are missed in Lillehammer”
After two incomplete stages, it is premature to draw any serious conclusions. But you can see that this season in the Finnish Ruka, in two cases out of three, the podium was completely Norwegian. Only in the 20 km race did the Italian Federico Pellegrino manage to catch the last step of the podium. But a year earlier, Russians shone in Finland. We won two races out of three and took six places on the podium out of nine possible.
In addition, in the main starts of the season, which took place in Beijing, our skiers proved that they are in no way inferior to competitors from Norway, and, judging by the number of medals and victory in the relay race, on the contrary, they are superior to their opponent. So to pretend that nothing fundamentally changed without the Russians is somewhat strange. Perhaps in Lillehammer and with our athletes in the top 10 there would be a lot of Norwegians, but definitely not nine.
Photo: Russian skiers at the World Cup (last season)
In the women’s competitions, there is a little more intrigue – there the Norwegians have serious competitors in the face of the Swedes, as well as some American and German women. But even here the absence of Russia is noticeable. Beijing Olympic champion Veronika Stepanova spoke on social networks about the flow of messages from fans who wanted to see the athlete at the World Cup.
– If I got a dollar for every message I received with the text: “This year you are missing in Lillehammer,” I would have enough money to fly there. Of course, business class! Stepanova wrote.
Whether messages of a similar nature are sent to Alexander Bolshunov and his colleagues is unknown. However, adequate ski fans, for whom their favorite sport is dead without intrigue, should dream of the return of Russian skiers to the World Cups. Norway is rapidly destroying cross-country skiing as a sport. So it’s not far from being excluded from the Olympic Games.
However, it should not be ruled out that the current state of affairs suits many. The Norwegian sports press pretends that nothing out of the ordinary happened and focuses on the unexpected victory of their young athlete. But the Norwegian skiers themselves do not hide the fact that it is easier to win without Russia. However, they are embarrassed to pronounce the name of our country aloud. They are afraid of the very word “Russia”.
“It doesn’t look good with so many Norwegians upstairs. But I must say that there is a strong skiing nation that does not participate in competitions, and today it is not here. So in a normal season, we probably wouldn’t have nine people in the top ten,” NRK quoted Holund as saying.
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