Sapporo: Newell 5th as Norway takes sprint golds

Astrid Jacobsen overtook Slovenia's Petra Majdic on the home stretch to win the women's cross-country sprint race and give Norway its first of two gold medals Thursday on the opening day of the Nordic World Ski Championships.
    American Andy Newell was fastest in qualifying on the men's side and advanced to the men's A final but missed out on a medal, finishing fifth. Three other U.S. skiers — Torin Koos, Kikkan Randall and Laura Valaas — reached the final heats, but none moved past the quarterfinals.
    In the men's 1.4-kilometer sprint final, Norway took top honors again with Jens Arne Svartedal crossing the finish line in 3:03.8, ahead of Sweden's Mats Larsson. Norway's Eldar Roenning took the bronze medal.

SAPPORO, Japan — Astrid Jacobsen overtook Slovenia's Petra Majdic on the home stretch to win the women's cross-country sprint race and give Norway its first of two gold medals Thursday on the opening day of the Nordic World Ski Championships.
    American Andy Newell was fastest in qualifying on the men's side and advanced to the men's A final but missed out on a medal, finishing fifth in the 1.4-kilometer final.   
    Norway's Jens Arne Svartedal crossed the finish line first to grab the gold in 3 minutes, 3.8 seconds, ahead of Sweden's Mats Larsson. Norway's Eldar Roenning took the bronze medal.
    In the final, Newell couldn't get past a Scandinavian roadblock — two Norwegians and two Swedes — despite jumping lanes several times in search of harder snow conditions as the temperatures moved into the upper 30s. Still, it was the highest U.S. result at Worlds or the Olympics since the sprints were added with the 2001 World Championships in Lahti, Finland.
    Three other U.S. skiers — Torin Koos, Kikkan Randall and Laura Valaas — reached the final heats, but none moved past the quarterfinals.
    ''In the final, I had a difficult time following Petra,'' said Jacobsen. ''But I know I am good in the end in the double poling.''
    ''I'm very surprised,'' added Jacobsen. ''I didn't expect this. My goal was to be in the final and when I got to the final I thought the rest was just a bonus.''

Scandinavian roadblock nothing new for Newell

    "I'm used to getting ganged-up on by the Swedes and Norwegians in the final heat," Newell said, "so that wasn't new … or a big problem, but I wish I could've been there at the [finish] line with them. I was just a few meters out, but … "Part of it was the tracks were getting so skied in on the uphill and I was just trying to find the best track, the one that wasn't as wet as the others…so I was changing tracks a lot. And it was pretty windy, so it helped to tuck in behind someone sometimes," he said.
     Koos, meanwhile, was 13th fastest after two disqualifications. Chris Cook, starting to emerge from sickness, which kept him out of the last World Cup a week ago in China, was 32nd, less than a half-second away from qualifying, while Lars Flora was 49th.
    Majdic led for much of the 1.2-kilometer women's race, but Jacobsen relied on a late burst of speed to win the first medal at the 2007 championships with a time of 2 minutes, 50.9 seconds. World Cup leader Virpi Kuitunen of Finland was third.
    Norway failed to win a gold medal in cross-country skiing at last year's Torino Winter Olympics, but Jacobsen took a big step in restoring national pride with a devastating finish.
    Olympic gold medalist Chandra Crawford of Canada failed to advance past the qualifying round.
    Crawford finished 32nd in qualifying, missing out on the quarterfinals by just two places exactly one year after she won the women's 1.1-kilometer sprint at Torino.
    The sprint races started and finished in Sapporo Dome, a 42,000-seat facility that was built for the 2002 soccer World Cup and is normally used for baseball and soccer.
    In the sprint, the field skis the race loop for a time, and the top 30 finishers move into the quarterfinals, racing in five six-skier heats. The top two automatically advance to the next round and the two fastest times from among the other skiers are used to complete the semifinal field for two more six-skier heats; again, the top two skiers in each heat advance and the two fastest losing times fill the medal round.
    "I was feeling good all day and definitely felt strong in the qualifier, and felt I could ski the hills faster than anybody," Newell said. "My tactics for the day were to hang in on the hills and then have a fast final 200 meters."
    In the quarterfinals, Newell got out of the prepared track with about 250 meters left and finished with a flourish, one-tenth of a second ahead of German Josef Wenzel. In semis, he was third — behind Svartedal and Larsson — but his fast time pushed him into the final round.

Disappointing race for Randall
    On the women's side, Randall and Valaas qualified for finals, but Randall missed a pole plant at the start of her quarterfinal heat and never caught up as she finished 22nd while Valaas lost ground on the final short downhill and came in 24th overall.
    "It was disappointing," Randall said. "I just didn't plant my poles as deeply as I needed to. It was a fast heat and I skied hard to get back up there [with the leaders]. I got close but couldn't catch 'em."
   U.S. head coach Pete Vordenberg praised the effort of his racers.
    "It was a great effort, not just with Andy," Vordenberg said. "Koos was in there and Chris was so close, but he's not 100 percent yet, so that made it even more impressive to get that close … and those were good ladies' results, although we were looking for more."
    Waxing, as it can be in classic races, was not an issue, even with temperatures in the mid to upper 30s outside. "It was humid inside the dome, too, with that crowd, but it wasn't a problem," Vordenberg said. "This is one of the coolest venues, just so creative…
    "I'm stoked with this start. It was awesome — Andy [was] so near a medal, and Laura moving right in there, into the top 30. She wasn't intimidated at all. It's a little strange, having someone fifth and saying 'We could've done better.'
    "The team sprint will be fun to watch," Vordenberg went on, "because all four of 'em are ready to go. The girls left the Dome saying they didn't get to race tonight as much as they wanted [because they were out after the quarters] and Andy and Torin know they can be in there." 
    The competition will continue Friday with the cross-country team sprints and nordic combined sprint event. The team sprint has a tag-team format in freestyle technique. All teams ski a qualifying round, with the 10 fastest teams advancing to the medal round.
  &nbs
p; A total of 18 world titles are up for grabs in cross-country skiiing, nordic combined and ski-jumping, with 480 athletes from 49 countries taking part.
    The 2007 championships mark the first time the meet is being held as an independent event in Asia. In 1972, when the Olympic Winter Games were held in Sapporo, they doubled as the FIS World Ski Championships.
    Earlier Thursday, the International Ski Federation announced that six athletes were given five-day suspensions at the Nordic World Ski Championships due to high hemoglobin levels.
    The high hemoglobin levels were detected in pre-competition blood testing. The six athletes are suspended from competition for the first five days of the event but can compete in the Feb. 22-March 4 meet if they clear a second test, the federation said.
    The six athletes are Russians Voronin Konstantin and Dmitry Matveev and Italian Jochen Strobl in nordic combined, along with cross-country skiers Alen Abramovic of Croatia, Sergei Dolidovich of Belarus and Reto Burgermeister of Switzerland.

Nordic World Championships sprint results

Cross-country
Men
1.4 km sprint
1. Jens Arne Svartedal, Norway, 3 minutes, 03.8 seconds.
2. Mats Larsson, Sweden, 0.2 seconds behind.
3. Eldar Roenning, Norway, 0.8.
4. Bjoern Lind, Sweden, 1.2.
5. Andrew Newell, United States, 5.6.
6. Emil Joensson, Sweden, 43.8.
Other U.S. finishers
22. Torin Koos
32. Chris Cook
49. Lars Flora

Women
1.2 km sprint
1. Astrid Jacobsen, Norway, 2:50.9
2. Petra Majdic, Slovenia, 0.2 seconds behind.
3. Virpi Kuitunen, Finland, 0.3.
4. Anna Dahlberg, Sweden, 2.2.
5. Madoka Natsumi, Japan, 2.3.
6. Lina Andersson, Sweden, 12.3.
U.S. finishers
22. Kikkan Randall
24. Laura Valaas

Click here for complete results.