Weekend Sports Round-Up

Antti Autti collects a delicious double of World Championship titles
     
      At the Snowboarding World Championships held at Whistler Mountain, Canada, Antti Autti  won the gold medals in the half-pipe and big air events on successive days over the weekend.
      Friday’s big air competition almost promised to be a Finnish whitewash, as Autti was accompanied by Jukka Erätuli (4th), Risto Mattila (5th), and Jaakko Ruha (7th). Before the decisive third jump, the Finns held a 1-2-3 lead, with Mattila heading Autti and Erätuli.
      Only Autti managed to sustain the momentum in his third jump, and the lesser medals eventually went to Matevz Petek  of Slovenia and Sweden’s Andreas Jacobsson.
     
On Saturday, Autti started less than perfectly, and was placed sixth, with only five going automatically through to the final.
      He eventually did make it to the final group, and his first run down the half-pipe scored him a personal best of 47.7 points, enough to see off Justin Lamoureux of Canada and third-placed Kim Christiansen of Norway.
     
     
Ahonen wins again - and then fails to make podium; Risto Jussilainen takes 3rd place
     
      Janne Ahonen’s remarkable season on the ski-jumping hills continues. Returning after a bout of 'flu and without anything in the way of practice, he won Saturday’s World Cup competition in Titisee-Neustadt with jumps of 142 metres and 138 metres.
      It was his 12th win of the current campaign, setting a new record for the number of victories in a single season. And this season is still only just over half over.
      On Sunday, Ahonen looked almost mortal, however, as he finished only 7th. It was the first time this season he has not been on the podium, with 12 wins and two second-place finishes to his credit from his fourteen starts.
      In a sense, all the furore surrounding Ahonen’s "failure" was somewhat unfair on Risto Jussilainen, who coped admirably with the windy conditions in Titisee-Neustad. The 29-year-old came in 3rd behind Jakub Janda of the Czech Republic and Poland’s Adam Malysz. Jussilainen is clearly in form: he also picked up a 3rd place at the ski-flying event in Kulm a week ago. Ahonen missed that event through illness.
     
Ahonen continues to lead the World Championship standings by an overwhelming margin, and it seems only to be a matter of time before he is unreachable. He has 1396 points from the 17 events so far, with his nearest rival Janda back on 926 points. There are eleven more competitions.
     
     
Manninen dominates in Liberec
     
      Nordic Combined specialist Hannu Manninen  collected another win in the World Cup season when he rose from 6th place after the ski-jumping to take victory in the sprint event in Liberec, in the Czech Republic, on Sunday.
      Manninen came home 14.8 seconds ahead of Kristian Hammer of Norway, with the USA’s Todd Lodwick  a further 6.5 seconds back in third.
      Manninen continues to hold the lead in the overall World Cup standings, and he benefited on Sunday from an unusually poor showing from his lcosest rival Ronny Ackermann of Germany.
      Ackerman could finish only in 11th spot and the gap between the two men expanded to 142 points.
      Manninen has 846 points from the 12 events so far, with a further seven to come before the end of the season.
     
     
Gardemeister opens WRC season with 2nd place in Monte
     
      Tony Gardemeister, driving his first race for Ford, brought his car home in second place behind the overwhelming winner Sebastien Loeb (Citroën) in the Monte Carlo Rally, the first event of the new World Rally Championship season.
      Marcus Grönholm, whose Peugeot was lying in 2nd place after Saturday’s stages, fell back to fifth after a spin caused allegedly by spectators throwing snow onto the road on the Turini special stage.
      The same fate befell Petter Solberg of Norway. Solberg fared even worse: he was forced to retire.
     
While Gardemeister was naturally delighted with his opening performance in a new car, as was third-placed Gilles Panizzi  (Mitsubishi), Grönholm was unsparing in his criticism of the spectators, whom he described as not real rally fans, but just sick people who wanted to see accidents and drama. The practice is a common one on the Monte Carlo Rally.
      Harri Rovanperä picked up two points for finishing in seventh place in his Mitsubishi.


Links:
  FIS results
  World Rally Championship