Cross-country skiing: route extensions hard for women
Sports
The extension of the distances in the cross-country skiing World Cup to those of the men have primarily brought an increase in kilometers and stress for the women this winter. The Salzburg top runner Teresa Stadlober draws a mixed conclusion.
After four World Cup stations and before the Tour de Ski, the Pongau native from Radstadt says she doesn’t think the changes are “that bad at all”. The 20-kilometer run with a running time of one hour will certainly benefit her. However, the woman from Salzburg criticizes the declining number of participants.
“Female athletes are now skipping more races”
“You have to consider that there are a lot of kilometers of racing,” says Stadlober: “You saw in Davos (last World Cup before Christmas, note) that there were relatively few starters. There were 39 in the sprint and 46 in the individual. That is very little and not good advertising for cross-country skiing.”
According to Stadlober, the athletes would rather skip races because of the increasing strain so as not to strain themselves too much.
“For me personally, I think it’s good, longer distances, the 20s is interesting. But for cross-country skiing in general, I don’t know if that’s true,” says the 29-year-old.
Pongauer does without sprints from Livigno
After the Tour de Ski, which will last until the end of next week and will cover seven competitions, she will automatically have a time without competition stress, because Stadlober WILL only have her next World Cup appearance on the last weekend in January in Les Rousses/France. For the sprints before that in Livigno it happened.
Sniffing in Slovenia for the World Cup
In the week after the Tour de Ski, the Olympic bronze medalist in skiathlon will spend four days with the Austrian team in Planica in order to get to know the cross-country ski trails in the Slovenian winter sports resort around a month and a half before the World Championships there.