Jasmin Kähärä stretched out in the cross-country skiing – a teammate cursed wildly

Val di Fiemme

Skin Tour there were no two words about the Finnish surprise of the sprint day: Jasmin Kähärä finished fourth in the race.

Kähärä was in third at the end of the straight, but Norway’s champion Heidi Weng landed with a spinning effect past the Finn at the very end.

The climax was watched next to the journalists Johanna Matintalo there was no exciting solution to endure: he swayed, shouted and cursed like a sailor. There was quite a cavalcade of curse words when Kähärä lost his third place.

After the race, Kähärä was almost as confused as Matintalo was a moment before.

On Friday, Kähärä even made it to the semifinals of the World Cup’s traditional sprint for the first time. A place in the finals had not previously been secured in either type of skiing.

“This went a little better than I thought… he sighed and started laughing in disbelief.”

24-year-old Kähärä said that the final skiing felt surprisingly fresh. However, the podium place could be due to a tactical blunder: he did not choose the same track for the last descent as those who skied ahead Nadine Fähndrich and Linn Svahnbut took his own path and therefore did not get the maximum peesi benefit.

“You can’t be disappointed with this in any way. I went to get the semi-final. I was already really happy about it and everything after that was a plus. I’m happy that I was able to improve on the last climb after qualifying. We got a really good grip and it even slipped. It was nice to ski.”

The Olympic sprint will be skied in Val di Fiemme next year.

“Yes, I learned a lot from this, especially from the final.”

On a roll the traditional sprint was the first of the World Cup season. Val di Fiemme’s bet was to some extent expected, as he finished seventh in the Lillehammer free sprint in December.

“There have been good competitions like Lillehammer. Ruka was very upset when I got sick before the traditional sprint. Then it felt like the mood was always getting better. Now it was finally the next butt sprint. This couldn’t have gone any better!”

Sanoma wrote from the beginning of the week about the selection scandal bubbling behind the scenes of the Finnish women’s national team. In Finland, there are many rock-hard alternatives to the pair sprint that can be skied at the traditional WC Trondheim. It was mentioned in the story Jasmi Joensuu, Johanna Matintalo, Kerttu Niskanen and Krista Pärmäkoski.

Now Kähärä also signed up for the race.

“The freestyle sprint is my main trip in Trondheim, but of course I’m ready to ski if I’m invited to another trip,” he said and teased behind.