Gällivare 4x10km: A Weekend for Hellner

Coming into the race, the Olympic champions were the favourites to bring home a win on home snow and they did as expected, but it was not as easy as in Vancouver. A sprint between Hellner and Legkov in the final stretch settled iw while Norway I and Switzerland had a battle for the bronze, but a fall by Curdin Perl while coming into the stadium resulted in Norway reaching the podium.

THE RACE

The shape of the race today had a whole new look to it. Without Northug on the anchor, there was not as much emphasis of teams trying to get away from Norway I. Early on, it was Mats Larsson and Evgeniy Belov led the way for most of the first 5km loop. It was bad news for Canada early on as the pack came through the first lap, the majority of the teams were still together, but disappointingly, Canada’s runner George Grey was losing contact with the lead pack.

With two kilometers left, Rønning deemed it necessary to open up the field and turned the crew, but he was joined with sprint-star Jönsson, Jauhojaervi and Kazakhstan’s Poltarinen. Together, the foursome opened up a 10 second gap on the next group of skiers.

Johhnsrud Sudby continued the good work that Rønning started and only Finland’s Lehtonen was able to stay with him early on. Sweden I’s Olsson was working hard to pull back time and after 4km in the second leg, the Swede was joined by Vylegzhanin and together they were able to join the front two at the 34 minute mark. After Sundby and Lehtonen were caught, Sundby completely let off the gas and the pace momentarily became pedestrian and gave a chance for more chasers to catch up. At one point the lead pack had ballooned to eight athletes but then thinned out to four teams; Russia I, Sweden I, Norway I, Kazakhstan,USA and Switzerland thanks to Cologna’s extremely fast second leg.

Vylegzhanin put in a sprint coming into the exchange to give Sedov a lead, but the advantage dissolved when Sedov realized it wouldn’t be smart to try to expand it with a group ready to hunt him down only seconds behind. Cologna also had a fantastic second leg for Switzerland and erased the 20+ second deficit he was left by Livers. Freeman also had another strong outing and had a great 10km which meant that when he handed off Hoffman, he was with the top six teams.

The third leg had a solid group of six consisting of Sweden I, Russia I, Kazakhstan, USA, Norway I and Switzerland, but the first to falter was the least experienced skier in the group. Noah Hoffman began to feel the hardships at about 4km and at the end of the first lap was nine seconds off the pace. Behind the young American was Sweden II skier Jorgen Brink who was in no-mans-land but could not real in the American.

Shortly after the start of the second lap, Kazakh Nikolay Chebotko was the next to find the pace being set by Rickardsson too much. But it was Sedov who was tactically superior on the leg. With a couple hundred meters before the 7.2km mark, Sedov pulled out and put in a burst of speed going up and over the timecheck which broke Jespersen and Rischer from the lead. Rickardsson appeared to be caught, but was able to recovery on the downhill and latch on for the ride into the exchange.

The final exchange had Sweden I and Russia I with no difference while Norway I and Switzerland were 16 seconds behind and in a fight for the final medal. At the exchange, Hellner was tagged first, but made sure Legkov led the way out. About 4km in, Legkov had enough and insisted on Hellner going some of the grunt work, but coming into the stadium, Legkov retook the lead.

A little further back, the battle for third between Sjur Røthe and Curdin Perl continued with Røthe leading the way for the majority of the first lap. On the second lap, Perl overtook the Norwegian but no attack was mounted.

Coming into the stadium, Hellner made his move and took over Legkov going into last left-hander. Credit to Legkov who didn’t make life easy for the Swede and going around the final right-handed into the straight stretch, Legkov tried to go wide and almost got tangled with Hellner, but Hellner did well and put in a burst to hold off Legkov for the win.

The race for third ended prematurely as Perl fell in the soft snow going around the left-hander which made life easy for Røthe as he was able to ski the last couple hundred meters easily to collect the bronze medal.

Results
1. Sweden I
2. Russia I
3. Norway I

REFLECTION

A very exciting race, especially if you are a casual American fan tuning in late on Eurosport, you would have been filled with false hope as Goldstrom and Dixon mistook Curdin Perl for Chris Cook for the entire final lap when in fact Cook was dropping places rapidly as the race progressed.

Regardless of the commentators’ blunder, what a great first three legs performance by the American men. A lot of attention was put on Freeman’s great performance, but had Newell not posted the 10th fastest time of the opening leg, the gap would have been too large for Freeman to close and would not have regained contact with the lead group. Hoffman tried valiently to stick with the leaders in the third leg, but was simply outclassed by the likes of Rickardsson and Sedov who shed anyone who tried to stick with them. Cook was the week link on the US team and lost 11 spot for the States in the final leg and were almost beaten by their friendly neighbours from the north..

As for Canada, well their Twitter account say it all. It was simply a week to forget and hopefully they can regroup and have a better outing in Kuusamo in four days time.

For Hellner, it was a great weekend double on home snow and thus far, it appears like he’s hit the ground running. With Northug being tested for potential mono, Hellner could make the most of the opportunity with Northug out even though the Swede has already said that he wants to win against the best, and that includes his Norwegian rival.

I’m unsure what happened to the French but Vittoz dropped out of the second leg with DNF’d the team for the day.

Some interesting performances included Bjørndalen who posted the fastest third leg, but no plaudits for his performance since Norway II was already out of contention by that point. Great race from Finland’s Juha Lallukka who posted the third best anchor leg and pulled Finland from 14th to 11th. Overall, a sub-par performance from the nation who is missing Heikinnen after his horrendous 82nd from yesterday. Hopefully he’ll find the form he had last year at this time sooner than later.

Jönsson impressed me with his opening leg today, he was able to stick with the leader group for the 10km. Last year he showed in the Tour de Ski that he does have the ability on a good day to mix it up in the distances.

Once again Jan has his split analysis and you can check it out here for the men’s relay.

Til Next Time.