FRIDAY: Double gold in Sapporo

Kuitunen and Roponen win women's team sprint gold medal; Hannu Manninen ends long drought with Nordic Combined gold

print this

Finland enjoyed a double gold medal day at the FIS Nordic Skiing World Championships in Sapporo on Friday, with two wins inside an hour.
      The pairing of Virpi Kuitunen and Riitta-Liisa Roponen brought home Finland's first gold medal at the 2007 FIS Nordic Skiing World Championships, by winning the women's team sprint event over six laps of a 1.2 kilometre circuit.
      Shortly afterwards, Hannu Manninen  skied his way from 9th place after the jumping component to win his first World Championship individual medal.
      Considering that Manninen has dominated the sport for the past three years, it has been something of a mystery that he has not previously figured among the individual medallists at either Olympic or World Championship level. Now all this was washed away amid emotional scenes.
     
The Finnish women led for most of the freestyle race and Kuitunen had enough left in the tank over the final straight to beat off the German anchor to win by 0.7 seconds. The German team was Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle and Claudia Künzel.
     
The German, Finnish, and Norwegian skiers dropped the rest of the field on the penultimate lap, and at the final changeover Roponen was lying third, 1.8 seconds off the pace.
      However, Kuitunen forced her way past the Norwegian and German competitors on the final lap to take victory. The Norwegian pairing of Astrid Jacobsen, the winner of Thursday's individual sprint gold, and Marit Björgen finished 3.1 seconds behind the Finns in third.
     
The gold medal is Kuitunen's second medal of the games from her two starts so far, as she took a bronze in the individual event, despite complaining of the same back problems that have occasionally hampered her otherwise dominant progress in the FIS World Cup events this year.
      The Finnish men Ville Nousiainen and Sami Jauhojärvi failed to make it into the final, which was won by the Italian duo of Renato Pasini and Christian Zorzi.
     
More medals already looked to be in prospect, as Anssi Koivuranta and Hannu Manninen were both well-placed after the ski-jumping component of the Nordic Combined sprint event. Koivuranta was second and Manninen, one of the fastest skiers on the circuit, was in ninth place.
      However, there was always a doubt over whether Manninen would be able to break the apparent jinx that has prevented him from taking an individual medal at the highest level, despite the general acknowledgement that he is the finest exponent of this sport in the world.
      On this occasion, however, Manninen was determined not to let anything go wrong, and on the track he overhauled the race leader Björn Kirchheisen (Germany) with around 2 kilometres of the 7.5km circuit to go. He then held off a spirited challenge from Norway's Magnus Moan to win by 0.3 seconds. Kirchheisen hung on to take the bronze, half a minute behind Manninen, and Anssi Koivuranta was a very creditable 4th.
      The Finns have made a bright start to the World Championships, with three medals from the first four events.


Links:
  FIS Nordic Skiing World Championships, Sapporo, Japan

Helsingin Sanomat