2024-01-05 18:50:43
The status multi-day race is losing the respect of both fans and skiers.
The main ski competition of the year has not yet ended, and the degree of dissatisfaction with the actions of the tournament organizers and the behavior of the athletes is off the charts.
First, the multi-day race lost the stars of world skiing, then it allowed itself a number of erroneous refereeing decisions that led to scandals, and now the leaders have disgraced themselves in front of the athletes by not fulfilling their promises.
Tour de Ski is the main failure of the ski season!
We saved ourselves as best we might
When a few days before the start of the first race of the tour in Toblach, Italy, it became clear that the fans would not see Ivo Niskanen, Simeon Kruger and Johannes Klebo himself, the main problem of this season became obvious. Without the stars, there will be far fewer spectators watching the races.
The intrigue seemed to appear by itself: foreign skiers gave a serious battle to the Norwegians in Italy. The men’s sprint was especially bright, where there was no place for the “Vikings” on the podium, and the Frenchman Shanava won an unconditional victory.
True, the next day in the “classic” time trial, Luke performed very poorly and did not meet the limit set by the organizers. According to the rules, the sprinter had to be no more than 15% behind the winner of the gold medalist’s time.
Luka Shanova / Photo: © Federico Modica/NordicFocus / Contributor / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru
Finn Hyvarinen won a sensational victory on December 31 with a result of 23 minutes 08 seconds. Luke should have arrived with a lag of no more than 3.45 – 3.50 minutes. However, the Frenchman lost more than four minutes. For this he should have been removed from the Tour de Ski, but the judges turned a blind eye so as not to lose the bright sprinter.
As we know, in Davos three days later Shanava took another gold, and the Italian Pellegrino and his coach Markus Kramer were rightly indignant at the arbitrariness of the judges.
Daring Skistad and snowy Davos
The story of the French sprinter is not the only one. The experts and coaching staff felt much more emotional regarding the enormous indulgence for the Norwegian Skistad in the sprint semi-finals in Davos.
Instead of disqualification for hitting Ribom with a ski – silver in the final. The organizers simply might not deprive themselves of the intrigue of the Swedish-Norwegian confrontation, so they did not follow the rules. Taking full advantage of the judges’ favor and taking everything from two sprints, Christine finished her performance at the equator of the stage race.
The adventures in Davos did not end there. In the pursuit race on January 4, the women found themselves at the mercy of the snowy elements. All the preparation of the skis went down the drain, as the track was simply not ready. Heavy snowfall turned the ski track cut up for the classics into mush.
Tour de Ski / Photo: © Mathias Bergeld / Keystone Press Agency / Global Look Press
The legend of the plotters and the impudent Swede
Trying to cope with the bad weather, the stadium management promised the athletes to release trackers – specially trained people who were supposed to “break” the ski track in front of a group of athletes.
The result of their work was not noticeable on the television picture, and following the race another scandal broke out:
– This is not a World Cup race. The organizers promised to prepare the route, they promised to make a ski track and let in the builders. None of this happened in the end. It was impossible to fight the climb through the snowdrifts, complains Swede Svan, who finished 20th.
A number of athletes and experts spoke on this topic. Moreover, the German coach even tried to “save” his players during the race. Peter Schlickenrieder put a ski on the track so that the Germans might drive along it and clear off the accumulated snow. This led to a fine and disqualification of the specialist for the rest of the stage race, but the athletes from Germany did not derive any advantage from Peter’s actions.
The current Tour de Ski is more like a battle with windmills: having dealt with one ailment, a new one appears in the next race. Against the background of obvious problems in his sport, the Swedish skier Poromaa for some reason decided to attack the biathletes, calling them “failed skiers”, and provoked another scandal.
William Poromaa / Photo: © Federico Modica/NordicFocus / Contributor / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru
23-year-old William also emphasized that he was annoyed by the popularity of shooting skiers, for which he received a slap in the face from Johannes Boe. The great biathlete said that he had nothing to learn from people like Poromaa.
In general, a whole tangle of gossip, shortcomings and criticism, which all at once fell upon the once high-status multi-day event. It is quite possible that this year will finally put an end to the attitude of athletes towards the Tour de Ski
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