Good points, fluke is not the right word. And his technique innovations accrue to his credit, I don’t think they should be taken to cheapen his achievements.
In any case, we can all agree that Diggins is a beast! Perhaps we can rename youth skiing to the Koch Diggins league!
No, a 30k won't take them anywhere close to 3 hours. But it was intended to be an 50k. The Olympic Committee changed the 50k to a 30k last minute because of cold weather. Many of these athletes are doing 50k races throughout the race season, not just the Olympics. Changing snow conditions, topography and speed of the course could easily make a 50k race take 3 hours.
I don't know why everyone is nitpicking why a 1k race is or isn't considered a sprint.
A couple of clarifications here. Women’a championship races top out at 30K (Olympics and World Championships). It was the men’s race that was shortened, not the women’s. 3 hours for 50K is fairly slow at a competitive level, roughly like a 3 hour marathon but yes as snow conditions, temp, and terrain make a big difference. And classic technique is a good 10 or 15 percent slower than skating. Finally the Olympic sprint was ~1.5 km. Not 1K.
These are really the first individual XC skiing medals by an American athlete competing on a level playing field. Bill Koch won a silver but that was mostly a fluke since he essentially invented skating technique while everyone else was skiing the slower “classical.” After that race, the sport had to divide the sport into freestyle and classical. Bill Koch wouldn’t have medaled if he was playing the same game as everyone else.
Koch was certainly a transitional figure as the sport continued adapting to fiberglass skis, and yes he was an innovator on technique. But in addition to his medal, recall that he won the 1981-82 X-C World Cup and placed third in 82-83. I would have loved to have seen what Koch could have done in sustaining his career if he had access to 2022-level orthopedics for those knees. I take your point, but I think he was more than a fluke.
More clarification before this becomes a disinformation thread. Koch won his silver medal in 1976 when he was 19, and this was well before skating. Skating took off in 1984 and 1985. Koch won the World Cup in 1982 and a bronze in the World Championships. They were still doing classic but somewould skate parts of the course. But in 1976 it was purely classic skiing.
U.S. women were incredible: Diggins 2nd (passed out at finish), Brennan 6th (5sec out of 3rd), Laukli 15th, McCabe 18th (only age 20, her mom was 2x Olympian). The best U.S. team finish in a mass start in history!
UPDATE: I'm pretty sure that if you score all four, USA DEFEATS Norway for the team title 41-48!!! That is like the U.S. defeating Kenya in World Cross!!
"controlled interval session with long rest and the final interval as fast possible"
Again ... ok everyone, you can get this ... "interval" means the REST INTERVAL between bouts of work.
It doesn't make sense to refer to "work intervals" between bouts of ... what, rest?
Interval means between. You could use it either way if you cleary want to get picky. But it is understood by 99% of people that an "interval session" is a type of work out physiologically. Not a point of wordsmithing
The sprint consists of several races on the same day. First prologue, then quarter final, semi final and the final. This makes it an endurance event, I guess
Kipchoge's WR marathon split for 30k was 1:26:45. Berlin was not set for a qualifying 30k WR split. The "official" 1:26:47.4 by Moses Mosop (per Track and Field News).
The women's 30k XC ski winner, Therese Johaug, was faster than both with a 1:24:54.0.
The woman's 30k 2nd placer, Jessie Diggins, was faster than both with a 1:26:37.3, was also faster than the above men.
Yea if XC sprinting is easy then Johaug would have won that too. Seems XC sprint is a thing to an extent. Very weird that with so much on the line, there is no specialization as with other sports. My theory is you can only move your legs so fast on skis? So that's why you dont have true sprint specialists? Even Sundling faired well across specialties? Same exact team-1500m to 30000M- weird. JD is the overall winner of the olympics to me.
Amazing race for Diggins. Conditions were brutal with temps in single digits (Farenheit) and howling winds which must have made for below zero wind chill. Diggins finished with frozen snot and slobber all over her face. She collapsed at the finish line and required assistance from race officials to get to the recovery rooms. Truly epic! Congrats also have to go to Norwegian Therese Johaug who dominated with almost a two minute victory over Diggins and three minutes over the rest of the field. Note that Johaug is a 15 min 5K/ 32 min 10K runner.
Johaug missed the Olympic 10k qualifying time by 8 seconds. She was second in the Norway national champs.
Therese Johaug NEW 10.000 meters PB (31:33) Tokyo 2021 qualification attempt - Oslo 2021Please subscribe for more cross country skiing related content!
Good showing by Diggins. Nice run by Rosie O’Donnell too.
the race commentating sucked. The woman with the Aussie accent would go on and on about pain caves, and fittest of the fit and strongest of the strong and the race goes on to the finish and the most inane word salads, totally ignoring the race unfolding. There was high drama in the race for silver and bronze, with the Swede Anderson ultimately being caught by the Finn. The skier in Bib 12 made an early breakaway bid, faltered and was caught by the chase, but made another bid for glory at the end only to fall short. Pretty gutsy performance m
I think a lot of people are forgetting almost all distance races are mass start now. Usually the place is pretty pedastrian, unless johaug or some brave soul tries to pull away. This kind of racing favors sprinters, relatively. It feels like There was more specialization about 10 years ago. You’d never see an Ola Vigen Hattestad skiing a 50km.
Good showing by Diggins. Nice run by Rosie O’Donnell too.
the race commentating sucked. The woman with the Aussie accent would go on and on about pain caves, and fittest of the fit and strongest of the strong and the race goes on to the finish and the most inane word salads, totally ignoring the race unfolding. There was high drama in the race for silver and bronze, with the Swede Anderson ultimately being caught by the Finn. The skier in Bib 12 made an early breakaway bid, faltered and was caught by the chase, but made another bid for glory at the end only to fall short. Pretty gutsy performance m
My congrats to Ms. O’Donnell too. I only had access to the Brit announcers and found them to be quite non-sensical, always focusing on some weird, unimportant detail. Ebba got critisized by a lot of Sweden for her poor tactics, but there wasn’t another way she could have skied into a bronze medal. Sure she could have got behind Brennan and taken 6th or something but that’s besides the point. With that weather and relatively poor skis, Rosie really had an impossible position.
Good showing by Diggins. Nice run by Rosie O’Donnell too.
the race commentating sucked. The woman with the Aussie accent would go on and on about pain caves, and fittest of the fit and strongest of the strong and the race goes on to the finish and the most inane word salads, totally ignoring the race unfolding. There was high drama in the race for silver and bronze, with the Swede Anderson ultimately being caught by the Finn. The skier in Bib 12 made an early breakaway bid, faltered and was caught by the chase, but made another bid for glory at the end only to fall short. Pretty gutsy performance m
My congrats to Ms. O’Donnell too. I only had access to the Brit announcers and found them to be quite non-sensical, always focusing on some weird, unimportant detail. Ebba got critisized by a lot of Sweden for her poor tactics, but there wasn’t another way she could have skied into a bronze medal. Sure she could have got behind Brennan and taken 6th or something but that’s besides the point. With that weather and relatively poor skis, Rosie really had an impossible position.
Yea what the eff happened to sclanger, Kikkan and Chad whats-his-name on color? Why didnt we get them on the 30K? They are awesome.
My congrats to Ms. O’Donnell too. I only had access to the Brit announcers and found them to be quite non-sensical, always focusing on some weird, unimportant detail. Ebba got critisized by a lot of Sweden for her poor tactics, but there wasn’t another way she could have skied into a bronze medal. Sure she could have got behind Brennan and taken 6th or something but that’s besides the point. With that weather and relatively poor skis, Rosie really had an impossible position.
Yea what the eff happened to sclanger, Kikkan and Chad whats-his-name on color? Why didnt we get them on the 30K? They are awesome.
Lol yeah, Chad Salmela. Who were they commenting for?
Stillwater Area High School. Someone on here must have gone to high school with her. About 1/3 of MN high schools have Nordic skiing as a competitive sport.
Ben Blankenship was a few year older at the same high school.
Luke Watson too. He did some XC skiing as a youth.
No, a 30k won't take them anywhere close to 3 hours. But it was intended to be an 50k. The Olympic Committee changed the 50k to a 30k last minute because of cold weather. Many of these athletes are doing 50k races throughout the race season, not just the Olympics. Changing snow conditions, topography and speed of the course could easily make a 50k race take 3 hours.
I don't know why everyone is nitpicking why a 1k race is or isn't considered a sprint.
They very rarely race 50k in "traditional" XC skiing. Generally the race the national champs, the international champs and Holmenkollen.
Perhaps you´re thinking of Ski Classics. That´s a differen discipline, where they doible pole in races up to 90k on comparatively flat courses and represent commercial teams, not countries.
Kipchoge's WR marathon split for 30k was 1:26:45. Berlin was not set for a qualifying 30k WR split. The "official" 1:26:47.4 by Moses Mosop (per Track and Field News).
The women's 30k XC ski winner, Therese Johaug, was faster than both with a 1:24:54.0.
The woman's 30k 2nd placer, Jessie Diggins, was faster than both with a 1:26:37.3, was also faster than the above men.
Yea if XC sprinting is easy then Johaug would have won that too. Seems XC sprint is a thing to an extent. Very weird that with so much on the line, there is no specialization as with other sports. My theory is you can only move your legs so fast on skis? So that's why you dont have true sprint specialists? Even Sundling faired well across specialties? Same exact team-1500m to 30000M- weird. JD is the overall winner of the olympics to me.
Also the technique is fairly similar across the distances. Compare that with track runner. A 100m runner has a completely different running form than a 10k runner.