Sapporo: Manninen, Finns win team gold

Hannu Manninen won his second gold medal of the nordic World Championships, anchoring Finland to the nordic combined team 4×5-kilometer title.
SAPPORO, Japan — Hannu Manninen won his second gold medal of the nordic World Championships, anchoring Finland to the nordic combined team 4×5-kilometer title.
    Manninen, who won his first individual gold medal on Friday in the 7.5-kilometer sprint, surged ahead of Germany's Bjorn Kircheisen on the final leg of the cross-country race to ensure another win for Finland.
    Finland finished with a time of 49 minutes, 14.9 seconds, while Germany was 28.4 seconds behind. Norway took the bronze a further 1:12.0 back.
    Germany's No. 3 skier Tino Edelmann gave his team a brief lead heading into the final leg, but Manninen was too strong for Kirscheisen, who finished third in the sprint event.
    Finland started the cross-country race with a 0.39-second lead after Manninen and his teammates combined to lead the ski-jumping portion.
    After failing to win a single individual gold medal at the Torino Winter Olympics or World Championships, Manninen, who has dominated the World Cup over the past three years, is making an impressive showing in the 2007 meet.
    The U.S. — Bryan Fletcher, Johnny Spillane, Eric Camerota and Bill Demong — was eighth after jumping and dropped back one spot during the race in which each skier went 5 kilometers, finishing two seconds behind Japan.
    "It was a decent day on the jumping hill even though conditions were tough. Sapporo's always windy for jumping — and it was for our second round, so the comp just took a long time," U.S. head coach Lasse Ottesen said.
    "We had expectations, thought we had a chance to be in the top six, which would be an excellent result for these guys, considering that except for Johnny and Bill it's a young team. Bryan's 20 and has never been at this level, Eric just turned 22 … and these are his first worlds. And we just didn't get it done in the race."
    But, Ottesen said, there are things to be gained from the team event. "I'm a glass-half-full guy, and I'm taking away positives out of this. We didn't expect to be challenging for a medal in the team event, but we had hoped to be fighting for top six. So, we'll build on this and keep looking forward."

Savialova wins women's pursuit; Randall 41st
    In the women's 15-kilometer cross-country pursuit, Russia's Olga Savialova won the won the gold. Savialova crossed the finish line with a time of 41 minutes, 27.5 seconds to capture Russia's first gold medal of the meet.
    Katerina Neumannova, who won the silver medal at Torino, was 0.5 seconds back while Norway's Kristin Stormer Steira was third for the bronze.
    Savialova was fourth after the 7.5-kilometer classical portion of the event but surged into the lead in the freestyle segment.
    Norway's Marit Bjorgen finished 12th, 46.2 seconds off the pace.
    American Kikkan Randall was 41st and Lindsey Weier 52nd. U.S. head coach Pete Vordenberg was pleased with Randall's effort, noting sometimes it's not about the result but the experience gained for a young skier. In the 24-year-old Randall's case, she's looking to grow beyond her traditional strength in sprinting and her performance in the pursuit was one more step in that growth.
    "This is someone who's been on the podium [third in a World Cup sprint in Russia last month] and to improve she needs to improve at [racing] distance and she's working on that. People who win these things with consistency, or are consistently on the podium, are in good control through the early rounds [of sprint heats] and don't have to stretch themselves. That means they're fit enough to ski through those," Vordenberg explained.
    "Yeah, the sprint is a sprint because you have to go fast, but it's also a long day of racing and you need that distance experience, too."
    The mass start race for 59 skiers, with 7.5 kilometers of classic technique skiing and then a 7.5 km race in freestyle, was the first pursuit for Randall since she finished 54th in the 2003 World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy, when it was a 10 km (5+5) format.
    "First lap today I wasn't too concerned about being conservative. I just wanted to get in there and ski with people," she said. I had myself well into the top 30 and that was fun. From there, I just tried to experience the rest …
    "I went into today not with any big goals. I just wanted to experience the race, and I certainly did. I had a great time in first lap just making moves on people. I passed 15 girls on that hairy downhill just because they were snowplowing. I took a smooth outside line and started whizzing past …
    "I wanted to ski in the top 50," Randall said. "This is a big improvement on my 54th [from 2003].
    "There was not a goal of being on the podium in this race. That's a totally unrealistic thing to achieve, but we're looking at 2010 — at the sprint, and this is good, in general. When she says she's having fun, that's not the same as going to the amusement park," Vordenberg said.
    "Maybe only a cross-country racer can understand, but it's some pain and definitely battling it out with other people … not a bowl of popcorn with friends or going to the movies. It's competing against someone else."
    Weier, he noted, is still a student at Northern Michigan University "and she's still young. She has steps to take if she's going to contend, and she's starting to take them now."
    The next women's cross-country race is Tuesday, the 10 km freestyle technique.

Sapporo World Championships results

Nordic combined
Team 4x5k
1. Finland, 49 minutes, 14.9 seconds.
2. Germany, 28.4 seconds back.
3. Norway, 1:12.0.
4. Austria, 1:12.4.
5. Switzerland, 3:41.8.
6. France, 4:09.8.
7. Czech Republic, 4:55.4.
8. Japan, 5:17.7.
9. United States, 5:19.7.
10. Kazakhstan, 12:50.1.

Click here for complete results.

Women
Cross-country
15 km pursuit
1. Olga Savialova, Russia, 41:27.5.
2. Katerina Nuemannova, Czech Republic, 41:28.0.
3. Kristin Stormer Steira, Norway, 41:29.6.
4. Evi Stehle Sachenbacher, Germany, 41:32.1.
5. Liisa Riitta Roponen, Finland, 41:51.5.
6. Kaisa Aino Saarinen, Finland, 41:52.4.
7. Charlotte Kalla, Sweden, 41:52.6.
8. Marianna Longa, Italy, 41:53.2.
9. Justyna Kowalczyk, Poland, 41:59.5.
10. Kristina Smigun, Estonia, 42:07.0

Click here for complete results.