. world ski news : Majdic and Northug win "Tour de Ski" prologue - 01 January 2010 - 19:45
The favored Petra Majdic (SLO) and Petter Northug (NOR) won the first stage of the 4th Viessmann FIS Tour de Ski performance by Craft Sportswear in 2010.
As last year, the FIS Tour de Ski kicked off in Oberhof with a prologue. On the challenging 2,8 km course for the ladies, last year's Tour de Ski 3rd-ranked Petra Majdic won the race clearly in a time of 6:35.3min. She finished 2,1 seconds ahead of Natalia Korosteleva (RUS). Justyna Kowalczyk from Poland finished third, 6,3 seconds behind the winner.
The race, which took place under slight snowfall, was exciting. Justyna Kowalczyk started quite fast and had the best time after 1,5 km but then lost her lead on the last kilometer.
Including the 15 bonus seconds for the victory, Petra Majdic will start tomorrow seven seconds ahead of Natalia Korosteleva for the 10 km classical race while Justyna Kowalczyk will go into the race 16 seconds behind the leader.
In the men's race, Petter Northug kept increasing his speed from the start to finish, beating the time of Markus Hellner (SWE) who finished second by 0,8 seconds. The third place went to the winner of last year's prologue, Axel Teichmann (GER), 2 seconds behind the winner on his home trails.
Also here we saw a very tight race where all the favorites for the overall Tour de Ski are in front.
In tomorrow's 15 km classical race, Petter Northug will start with an advantage of 6 seconds over Hellner while Axel Teichmann will be starting 12 seconds after Northug on the 5 x 3,3 course.
Weather: snowfall, -6,8° C
Snow Conditions: hard packed
Spectators: 3.000
Enormous interest in Tour de Ski
The first day of the 4th Tour de Ski was marked with enormous interest not only by TV stations, written media and photographers but also by worldwide Internet audience on www.fiscrosscountry.com. Almost 30.000 unique accesses were registered on 1st January 2010.
Worldwide cross-country audience
Fans from 107 countries wanted to see the latest information from the world of cross-country skiing and particularly the FIS Tour de Ski. Norwegian fans were - not surprisingly - most numerous. They were followed by Poland, Germany, Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic.
There were not only fans recruited from traditional countries interested in cross-country skiing. Kenya, United Arab Emirates, Colombia and even Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Handicap race
FIS Tour de Ski continues tomorow with a 10 km C ladies handicap start race at 13.00 and 15 km C men handicap start at 15.00.
FIScrosscountry.com
Friday 1 January 2010