The 2007 Nordic World Ski Championships will be like no other in the 83-year history of the event.
    For starters, it will be the first time the championships, starting Thursday, will be held in Asia, but that won’t be the only unique aspect of the event.
    For the first time, medals will be decided under a roof. Cross-country sprint races will start and finish 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.
    The stadium is equipped with a giant moveable grass field that will be covered with snow and rolled into the building for the sprint races.
    After starting in the stadium, the athletes will exit through a giant door before coming back into the building to cross the finish line.
    The Feb. 22-March 4 championships open with men’s and women’s cross-country sprint races. Long-distance cross-country and nordic combined events will be held in more familiar surroundings at the outdoor Shirahata course on the outskirts of Sapporo.
SAPPORO, Japan — The 2007 Nordic World Ski Championships will be like no other in the 83-year history of the event.
    For starters, it will be the first time the championships, starting Thursday, will be held in Asia, but that won’t be the only unique aspect of the event.
    For the first time, medals will be decided under a roof. Cross-country sprint races will start and finish 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.
    The stadium is equipped with a giant moveable grass field that will be covered with snow and rolled into the building for the sprint races.
    After starting in the stadium, the athletes will exit through a giant door before coming back into the building to cross the finish line.
    The Feb. 22-March 4 championships open with men’s and women’s cross-country sprint races. Long-distance cross-country and nordic combined events will be held in more familiar surroundings at the outdoor Shirahata course on the outskirts of Sapporo.
    “The Nordic World Ski Championships in Sapporo will be a great opportunity to promote nordic skiing throughout Asia,” said Yoshiro Ito, president of the Ski Association of Japan.
    While the venue may be unique, traditional powers such as Norway, Austria, Finland and Germany are expected to dominate.
    Finland’s Hannu Manninen will be bidding for an elusive gold medal in the nordic combined events.
    Manninen, who leads the nordic combined World Cup standings this year and is a three-time World Cup champion, went into the Torino Olympics as the odds-on favorite but had to settle for a lone bronze medal that Finland won in the team event.
    At the last nordic World Championships at Oberstdorf, Germany, in 2005, Manninen also missed out on the podium.
    Also in nordic combined, Austrian veteran Felix Gottwald will be looking for a medal along with Germany’s Ronny Ackermann.
    The United States will have its best hope for a medal in nordic combined with veterans Bill Demong and Johnny Spillane.
    In ski jumping, which will be held at the same venue that hosted the Sapporo Winter Olympics in 1972, Norwegian Anders Jacobsen will be a strong medal contender. Gregor Schlierenzauer of Austria, who is just 16 years old, is second in the standings and will be a medal favorite along with established stars such as double Olympic champion Thomas Morgenstern of Austria and Switzerland’s Simon Ammann.
    Jacobsen has had an impressive season with four World Cup wins to date.
    Norway won only one gold medal in nordic events at Torino with Lars Bystoel winning normal-hill ski jumping, and will be looking to restore some national pride.
    The Norwegians are using all resources and have called upon biathletes Ole Einar Bjoerndalen and Lars Berger to help out in cross-country. Bjoerndalen won a cross-country race earlier this season.
    Elsewhere in cross-country, Marit Bjoergen of Norway and Tobias Angerer of Germany will also be among the favorites.
    Like Manninen, Bjoergen will have something to prove after falling short of her goals at Torino.
    Bjoergen had to settle for a silver in the 10-kilometer race at the Olympics after struggling with a stomach virus during the Games.
    She has a strong World Cup showing this season and is second in the overall standings. Finland’s Virpi Kuitunen is first.
    Angerer, who won a pair of medals in Torino, leads the overall World Cup standings heading into the World Championships, which features 12 cross-country events.
    Japan’s best hope is in ski jumping, but the host nation has struggled of late and failed to win a medal at last year’s Winter Games.

— The Associated Press