Finnish women take third gold from Liberec

Nordic Combined competitors still without a medal

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Much as expected, the Finnish quartet of Pirjo Muranen, Virpi Kuitunen, Riitta-Liisa Roponen, and anchor Aino-Kaisa Saarinen triumphed in the 4 x 5km relay at the FIS Nordic World Championships in Liberec on Thursday to deliver Finland's seventh medal of the competition so far, and Saarinen's fourth.
      The Finnish anchor has already collected three golds and a bronze medal and come what may in the final women's event on Saturday (the 30km freestyle), she is the queen of these games.
     
Thursday's competition would have been a procession, were it not for a rather sub-par performance from Riitta-Liisa Roponen, which actually injected some excitement into the proceedings.
      Muranen, who already has an individual sprint bronze medal, brought the team to the first changeover in second place, just 4 seconds off the pace set by Poland's Justyna Kowalczyk.
     
Then Kuitunen ripped the field apart and handed over with a lead of more than half a minute. It was turning into a one-horse race, but the unfortunate Roponen - who was in tears after the dust had settled - could not sustain the lead, and was in fact last but one of the fifteen competitors on her individual leg.
      She handed over to Saarinen with the Finns lying second, eight seconds behind the Norwegian team.
     
Saarinen is in such stunning form, however, that this was of no consequence, and she hunted down the Norwegian anchor Marthe Kristofferssen and stormed past, eventually winning by a comfortable margin of 13 seconds.
      Behind her, a real struggle developed for the lesser medals, with Kristofferssen eventually relegated to 4th by the German and Swedish entries. The Germans took silver with 0.4 seconds to spare.
     
For the Finnish women, then, it was business as usual, since the very same quartet were the defending champions from Sapporo two years ago.
      In the Nordic Combined team event, however, things did not go according to plan.
      The Finns, who were again defending a world title, could finish only 8th.
      Matters were not at all helped by the absence of World Cup leader Anssi Kuivuranta, who developed a high temperature on Wednesday and was suffering from 'flu. His involvement in Saturday's HS 134 event is in some doubt.
     
Victory went in the end to Japan, who pipped Germany by the narrowest of margins. In fact the two anchormen recorded the same time and could only be divided by the camera. Norway were 3.6 seconds adrift in 3rd.
      The strong US team failed to show up for the skiing component, after Bill Demong had been disqualified from one of his jumps. Demong had managed to lose his competitor's number. It turned up inside his shoe, but too late.
      Today sees the men's 4 x 10 km relay and the ski-jumpers on the big hill.
      The Finns are rather surprisingly still without a medal in either the Nordic Combined or the ski-jumping, and time is running out.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  One widely-anticipated gold medal - and a surprise bronze (26.2.2009)

Links:
  Liberec 2009

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