Norway, Finland take team sprints; both U.S. teams make finals
KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia – The women’s sprint went to Norway and the men’s to Finland in a day at the Laura Cross-Country Ski and Biathlon Center that featured lots hard skiing, and a bit of controversy.
The gold medal Norwegian women’s team of Ingvild Oestberg and Marit Bjoergen finished a comfortable 9.09 seconds ahead of Finland (Aino-Kaisa Saarinen and Kerttu Niskanen) in the women’s final, with Sweden (Ida Ingemarsdotter and Stina Nilsson) taking the bronze medal, another 10 seconds back.
The gold was the first-ever medal in the team sprint event at the Olympics for Norway, giving them a medal in every cross-country event. And there are only two events in which the Norwegians have not taken a gold: women’s 30km, and the men’s skiathlon.
Finland’s Iivo Niskanen and Sami Jauhojaervi grabbed the gold in the men’s race by outsprinting Russia (Maxim Vylegzhanin and Nikita Kriukov, silver) and Sweden (Teodor Peterson and Emil Joensson, bronze) to the finish – and thanks to an untimely tangle as the teams entered the stadium for the final time. Finland’s anchor skier, Jauhojaervi, was skipping over to another set of tracks, and cut off Germany’s Tim Tscharnke. The Finn was unaffected by the contact, but Tscharnke went down hard. By the time he’d recovered, Germany had dropped from third place to seventh.
The German team protested to the race jury, but the protest was disallowed by the FIS, which said the contact was considered a “race incident,” and no skier would be penalized. Whether the Germans would push the protest to the next level was not immediately clear.
On the last race of the Olympics for the U.S. sprint racers, with the already-beautiful Laura Center looking even more picturesque in a coat of new snow, Kikkan Randall teamed with Sophie Caldwell to power the U.S. into the finals, but they were not able to hang with the pace set by the Norwegians and others in the final round. They wound up eighth in the 10-team race.
While some in the media referred to the U.S. as among the favorites in this event, because of last year’s team sprint world championship, those predictions crucially failed to mention that all of the U.S. sprint podiums have come in the freestyle discipline. The U.S. has never reached a podium in a team sprint in the classic technique.
For the U.S. men, Simeon “Simi” Hamilton closed out his Olympics with a strong performance, teaming up with Erik Bjornsen to make the finals, where they went on to finish sixth. Bjornsen, used to longer races than the 1.8km sprint course, was pinch-hitting for Andy Newell, who was knocked out by illness.
Sophie Caldwell arguably had the strongest performances for the U.S. cross-country team in Sochi. Coming into the team sprint, she said she had just one firm goal. “It’s a strong field and it’s definitely not a given that you’re going to make it through the semis,” she said, “so that was one goal, to make it into the finals, and we were psyched to be there. But I hadn’t really made any concrete place goals, as far as the finals.”
She said her Olympics had “been a lot more than I could have imagined. I had a really strong free sprint (she finished sixth in the sprint final, the best-ever for an American skier), probably the best of my life, and after that I was just happy to get any start I was offered. It was really a dream to get to do the team sprint today.”
For Kikkan Randall, it was another day that didn’t quite live up to her or other’s expectations. “I felt pretty good in the semis,” she said, “but, man, it was hard right from the get-go in the finals. I know that no one out there felt great. Team sprints are challenging in that you never really feel good. You just have to convince yourself to push through. The teams that have shown they’re in great shape here were definitely strong today, and it was cool to see them really race it all-out from the gun, and just lay it out there, not be too strategic. You could see by all the bodies in the finish that everybody pushed it pretty hard.”
Randall was matter-of-fact about her disappointment here at the Sochi Games. “It’s certainly not the Olympics I was hoping for. The Olympics is a funny thing, you know, it’s two weeks out of four years. You hope to find the best shape you’ve ever had and unfortunately for me I kind of missed the mark somehow. I’m still not sure quite why, but every race I came into I was hoping to turn it around. But I just haven’t had the feelings I’ve had in my best races in the past. So it’s not the way I wanted it to go, but I came in wanting to give it everything I had, and I know I’ve done that. We’ll have another chance in four years, and I know these girls can do it.”
The U.S. men were generally pleased with their sixth place finish, after a long day, with six times around on a very tough course.
“It’s longer than like a normal 10K,” Hamilton said, “so for sure it’s a lot of skiing throughout the day, hammer down the whole time. It’s a hard course, but at the same time it’s a super exciting course. It stays fun, there’s a lot going on all the time, so you’ve got to be focusing for four minutes straight per leg.”
He said he and Bjornsen “were psyched to get to ski with each other, though we were both bummed that Andy’s not feeling well. But this distance specialist (Bjornsen) really stepped up, and he skied awesome. It was super fun. Speaking for both of us here, but I think we both felt really good in our semifinal. And you know the final was hard, to put it simply. It was kind of hammer-down from the start. So we just tried to hang in there, and had fun with it, and I think we’re both encouraged for the future, and for training hard so we can be top-three in that event some day in the Olympics.”
MEN’S TEAM RESULTS
WOMEN’S TEAM RESULTS