World Cup leaders Manninen and Kuitunen enjoy winning weekend

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Finland's Hannu Manninen was in an excellent form over weekend in Zakopane, Poland. The native of Rovaniemi won the postponed Nordic Combined 10-kilometre mass start race and came home second in the 7.5-kilometre sprint. In the 10-kilometre mass start race, which had to be held over two days because of bad weather, Manninen (28:00.5) won comfortably, ahead of his teammate Jaakko Tallus (29:39.7).
      Manninen's near-perfect weekend was spoiled only by Germany's Björn Kircheisen, who capped the sprint event raced on Sunday. In the end, Kircheisen beat Manninen, who took to the track a minute behind the German, by a 15-second margin.
      To mark his success over the weekend, Manninen, who has won the Nordic Combined World Cup three times in a row, put on the World Cup leader's yellow jersey. After 15 of the season's 19 World Cup events, Manninen leads the table once again with 685 points, ahead of Magnus Moan (598) of Norway and Christoph Bieler (557) of Germany.
     
Meanwhile in Davos, Switzerland, another Finn Virpi Kuitunen improved her lead in the women's cross-country skiing World Cup by taking only her second-ever freestyle cross-country skiing World Cup event win on Saturday.
      In the end Kuitunen beat the runner-up, Olga Savialova of Russia, by 11.9 seconds. Marit Björgen of Norway came in third.
      Kuitunen now leads the World Cup standings by a very healthy 441-point margin ahead of Björgen. This was Kuitunen's sixth World Cup event victory of the season.
     
Finland's remaining female skiers did not quite make it to the top of the podium in the World Cup relay, also raced on the Davos course. The Finnish quartet of Pirjo Manninen, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen, Kati Venäläinen, and Riitta-Liisa Roponen came in third, 28.6 seconds behind the Swedish winners.
      The silver medals in this event went to Norway, after the Swedish anchor Britta Norgren managed to squeeze through the finishing line one second ahead of her Norwegian counterpart Marit Björgen.
      Finland's current ace Virpi Kuitunen skipped the relay in anticipation of coming down with a cold. Kuitunen is an obvious medal prospect at the upcoming World Championships in Sapporo, and the team did not want to take any risks.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Winter Sports: Virpi Kuitunen wins Tour de Ski in fine style (8.1.2007)

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