TELEMARK. On 16-18th March, the FIS Telemark World Cup finals were held in conjunction with the FIS Telemark Junior World Championships in Espot, Spain. The athletes competed in classic, parallel sprint and sprint, both in the finals and in the junior categories. With two overall World Cup champions and new junior champions to be awarded, it was a memorable weekend in Espot.

Podium men, 16.03.2012, photo © SkiPallars
 
In the ladies fight for the overall World Cup, Switzerland's Amélie Reymond had secured the globe before the finals after another great season with an impressive eight wins, eight second places and only one event with a lower score. She finally won the overall World Cup with a total score of 1460 points. Her biggest contender this season was Sigrid Rykhus of Norway who finished second in the overall World Cup with 1160 points. Due to injuries earlier in the season, Rykhus couldn't participate in the races in the USA and thereby lost her chance for the overall win. Anne Marit Enger, also from Norway, secured third place with 942 points.
 
On the men's side, the overall World Cup winner is Philip Lau of France who won amazing ten World Cup races this season, two of them in Espot, and collected a total of 1426 points. Tobias Müller of Germany came second with 1137 points, closely ahead of Bastien Dayer from Switzerland who came third with 1120 points. In the 18 World Cup races staged this year, the top three overall athletes won all of them except for one!
 
For the Junior events, it was definitely a German season this year. The Allgäuer athletes Johanna Holzmann and Tobias Müller each won three junior titles. And with a total of six gold medals and one silver medal, the Germans dominated the Championships.
 
The last race of the Telemark Junior World Championships was a Telemark sprint classic. In beautiful sunshine, the Norwegian Thea Lunde had the best time in the first run and relegated the double junior champion Johanna Holzmann to the second place. In the second run however, Holzmann went all out and risked everything she had and became the only athlete who managed to set a perfect jump which gave her the best time. With this performance, she became the junior world champion in Telemark sprint and won the overall classification, which consists of three events: classic, Telemark parallel sprint and sprint classic.
 
In the men's competition, Jonas Schmid could not repeat the success of the previous day. The runner-up crashed in the first round and could no longer play a part in the fight for the medals. His team mate Tobias Müller showed that he still had strong nerves and the double junior champion skied into the absolute best time. Just like Holzmann, Müller won the overall standings.
 
Contributed by Sofie Torlei Olsen
FIS news
28/03/2012

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