Tanja Poutiainen on the podium in Levi, but Finnish men eclipsed on the slopes

Third place in slalom keeps Poutiainen in World Cup overall lead

Andreas Romar

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It was very much a mixed bag for Finnish skiers when the FIS World Cup came to call at Levi in Lapland over the weekend.
      On Saturday, Tanja Poutiainen was overjoyed by her third place in the Women’s World Cup slalom event.
      When the 29-year-old native of Rovaniemi crossed the finish line - with only the first run’s two fastest skiers still to come down the slope behind her - and saw that she was currently in the lead, she fell on the snow, waved her arms and legs madly, and screamed in delight.
     
”I still feel like a winner”, Poutiainen said at the post-race press conference, after eventually finishing third. “It was an incredible feeling to stand on the Levi podium for a second time”, said the giant slalom specialist, who won the inaugural Levi World Cup slalom event in 2004.
      This time around the winner was Germany’s Maria Riesch, the reigning Slalom World Champion, followed by last year’s Levi winner Lindsey Vonn of the U.S.
      Vonn, who is a double World Cup overall winner, lost to Riesch by 0.08 seconds. Poutiainen came in a respectful 1.16 seconds behind the winner.
      The Riesch family success was completed by the winner’s younger sister Susanne Riesch, who finished fourth, 0.17 seconds behind Poutiainen.
     
Third place was enough to keep Tanja Poutiainen out in front in the overall World Cup rankings, following her giant slalom win in Sölden in October.
      She will next be racing in Aspen at the end of this month.
     
If Saturday had been a source of good vibes for the Finnish contingent on the Levi Black slope, then Sunday was just, well, "pitch black" for the Finnish men.
      With the team already suffering considerable attrition in the shape of long-term injuries to Kalle Palander, Marcus Sandell, and most recently Jukka Leino, hopes were not particularly high in any case, but it was still a disappointment that the men’s World Cup slalom was merely at the halfway stage when the competition was done and dusted for the Finns.
     
For the duration of the break between the first and  second descent the spectators had vacated the slope sides for the local bars and the athletes and the coaches had vacated the finish area - apart from the Finns, that is.
      Five Finnish skiers stood there leaning on their equipment taking turns chatting disconsolately with the media.
      Slightly to the side, General Director Janne Leskinen of Ski Sport Finland kept shaking his head.
      “Three of our top skiers end up in the sick bay in the space of a couple of months! Even many other bigger countries could not handle something like this. We definitely can't”, Leskinen sighed.
     
Leino damaged the medial collateral ligament of his knee in the last run of Saturday’s training session.
      With Leino being injured, in addition to Palander's shin fracture and the convalesence of Marcus Sandell after a horrific fall in training that caused him to lose a kidney,  the Finns’ World Cup programme now needs to be re-thought.
      “It may be that we won’t send anyone to the States, and so on”, reckoned Leskinen.
     
Head coach Christian Leitner appeared desperate.
      In Leitner’s view it was possible that the next Finnish man to be seen in a FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup event will be Sandell in Alta Badia, just before Christmas.
      “We have to plan this carefully. We must not rush it. We have to make sure that the man is physically ready. Health comes first.”
     
In the Levi event, the best Finn was 20-year-old Andreas Romar. In his seventh World Cup appearance, Romar finished 51st, around three seconds behind the winner, Reinfried Herbst of Austria.
      This was not enough to earn him a second run or any World Cup points.
      Four other young Finns took part in their first-ever World Cup competition.
      In an almost identical fashion Juho-Pekka Penttinen, Roope Leskinen, Joonas Räsänen and Victor Malmström all tried too hard, and ended up crashing out of the competition already in the steep first part of the run.
     
With a showing like this, the Finnish men's team might have been forgiven for having wished, quite heretically, that Levi had not been excluded after all from the weekend strike by slope workers that closed down most of Finland's other ski resorts from Friday until Monday morning.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Poutiainen gets dream start to FIS World Cup season and Olympic year (26.10.2009)
  Tanja Poutiainen wins a third crystal globe (16.3.2009)

See also:
  Strike to begin at all Finnish ski resorts today (13.11.2009)
  Alpine skier Kalle Palander faces his toughest ordeal yet (5.11.2009)

Links:
  Tanja Poutiainen website
  FIS pages

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