Nordic Roundup: The Other Finn jumper; Women jumpers; College skiers

Nordic Roundup: “The Other Finn” jumper; Women jumpers; College skiers{mosimage}Familiarity may breed contempt, as someone once said, but for Finland’s Matti Hautamaeki, familiarity breeds a World Cup victory. Hautamaeki, who won Sunday on Janne Ahonen’s home hill in Lahti to win at the end of the Lahti Ski Games, made it two in a row Wednesday night on his own hill in Kuopio as he led both rounds under the lights and topped Norwegian Roar Ljoekelsoey by more than 11 points. That clinched the World Cup title for a second straight season for Janne Ahonen, who was 12th.

Hautamaeki set the world distance mark a couple of years ago when he jumped 231 meters in Planica, Slovenia. He’s been a top-10 regular, and solid top-five finisher for various stretches, but never a steady winner. He said he hasn’t changed his technique but “I was maybe putting too much pressure on myself before.” In kuopio, Kautamaeki said, “I’m quite familiar with the hill.”

The season rolls into Norway this weekend – a night competition Friday in Lillehammer and then Sunday at Holmenkollen in Oslo – before concluding at Planica’s 215-meter ski-flying hill where the organizers figure it was a bad season if no records are set.

As opposed to regular competitions, in ski-flying, long jumps in training are recognized for records. In 1985, American Mike Holland became the first skier to go over 600 feet when he went 186 meters in Planica. Finn great (on the hill) Matti Nykaenen came down about 15 minutes later and jumped 191 to re-set the record…but Holland was the first over 600 feet.

Women jumpers face final Continental Cup

The last event of the inaugural Continental Cup season for women ski jumpers will be held Sunday at Holmenkollen in Oslo, Norway, part of the annual Holmenkollen Ski Festival. Three U.S. women – Lindsey Van, Jessica Jerome and Alissa Johnson, all out of the National Sports Foundation program before Women’s Ski Jumping USA was established a couple of years ago to help underwrite women jumpers’ training, travel and competition – are in the top 10 jumpers of the world.

Women’s Ski Jumping USA, a nonprofit headquartered in Park City, Utah, has helped turn things around for the women. They’re still not living and traveling like royalty, but, Van told USA Today, “We get to stay in nicer places. We get better food, better accommodations and better organization throughout the whole process of a competition. Three years ago, we stayed a whole week in a barn in Austria.”

Maybe, but the foundation’s website includes not only competition results from overseas, as well as domestic events, but also reports from Coach Casey Colby or some of the athletes. And Colby, in a mid-February report about their stop in Rastbuechl, Germany, indicated they hadn’t totally escaped farm lodgings.

The goal remains inclusion in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Ski jumping and nordic combined remain the lone two sports which don’t have a women’s Olympic equivalent; jumping has the women’s Continental Cup but there’s no nordic combined women’s program anywhere. International Olympic Committee member Anita DeFrantz, who met with WSJUSA officials earlier this month at Utah Olympic Park, said there’s no longer any truth in the ages-old argument that there’s no place for women’s jumping because there aren’t enough jumpers. The other plus, she told USA Today, is facilities. “You don’t have to build anything new. The hills are already there.”

New snow boosts NCAAs at Stowe

A snarling snowstorm spruced up conditions in Stowe, Vermont, this week for the NCAA Ski Championships, which are being hosted by the University of Vermont. Alpine races were set for Wednesday and Friday on Mount Mansfield with cross-country races Thursday and Saturday at Trapp Family Lodge, the first official ski touring center at the start of the Seventies.

In Thursday’s classic technique races, German skiers won both ends of the men’s 10km classic race and the women’s 5km. In the process, the University of Denver, which saw its three-year title run snipped a year ago by New Mexico, saw Rene Reisshauer lead DU men into first, second and fourth in the 10km classic as they overtook first-day leader Vermont. In the women’s 5km, Mandy Kaempf of the University of Alaska Anchorage edge Northern Michigan’s Lindsay Williams by 10 seconds; after winning the U.S. sprint title in January, Williams had been named to the World Championships Team but later declined the nomination to focus on her college racing.

Sickness still plagues Germans

Defending World Cup cross-country champion Rene Sommerfeldt was among those sidelined by sickness at the nordic world championships and now World Cup leader Axel Teichmann is battling some kind of bug, according to a story translation on fasterskier.com. German Coach Jochen Behle said Teichmann will skip this weekend’s 50km classic bruiser at Holmenkollen.

That’s a small roll of the dice since Tor Arne Hetland of Norway, who’s second in the points after winning Wednesday’s classic sprint in Drammen, Norway, doesn’t run many distance races, certainly not a bruiser like the Holmenkollen 50km. Third-ranked Vincent Vittoz of France is primarily a skater, so it’s unlikely he’d finish high at Holmenkollen, either. Heading into the weekend, Teichmann had 548 points to 507 for Hetland with Vittoz lurking at 466. After Norway, the season heads to Sweden for a skating sprint March 16 and concludes March 19-20 with pursuits and relays.