December 23, 2009 (Rogla, Switzerland) – If you are a male xc skier on the World Cup today you have got to be asking yourself “How can I beat Petter Northug (Nor) in a mass start finish?” Twice this weekend he proved again that he is almost unbeatable in a final sprint. On Saturday in the 4-minute+ sprint final he came from behind to beat Germany’s Tobias Angerer (welcome back Tobi). On Sunday, after the two Russian skiers, Vylezhganin and Legov attacked he was able to bridge to them and beat them in the sprint.

We have seen him do this time and time again since 2006 at the Norwegian Championships when he was still a junior. About the only time that he has not been successful was in Sapporo at the Nordic World Championships in 2007 when he fell twice in the sprint to the finish.

Last year at the Nordic Worlds, Axel Teichmann (Ger) complained that it wasn’t fair that Northug would never lead and then at the finish he would come around to win. Pettr’s reply was to say that he didn’t see anything in the rules that said that you cannot race this way and that Teichmann should learn to sprint better.

More and more these mass start races for men are looking like cycling road races. Big packs skiing together until the finish with a few attacks thrown in, a sprint “prime” to keep it interesting and a pack sprint to the finish. And like Mark Cavendish at the Tour de France, Northug wins most of these sprints. Don’t be surprised if you begin to see blocking and team tactics even more. This has already happened twice that I know of – once at the Olympics in Turin where the Norwegian team sent two racers to the front to slow down the pace in the 30km pursuit after Frode Estil had broken a ski at the start.

The other time was at Callaghan Valley last year in the 30km pursuit where three Italians slowed down the pace of the lead group right at the same time as Pietro Piller-Cottrer made a breakaway. Piller thanked his teammates later for their help even though it was illegal.

On the women’s side I’ve always had a hard time accepting that FIS, WADA etc. allow athletes to compete with what’s called a Theraputic Use Exemption (TUE). In this case Norway’s Marit Bjoergen, who’s been diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma, is allowed to use an anti-asthma drug that’s on the banned list. Not to take anything away from Bjoergen who’s had a stellar career and is now back on her game. I know TUEs have been around for some time and there’s medical approval and rigorous testing involved, but even if tightly regulated the concept has never sat well with me.

The Norwegian coach Egil Kristiansen has been quoted as saying that because she has exercise-induced asthma she’s racing with a handicap – he used the metaphor of riding your bike with the brake on. He said that using this drug just brings her up to “normal” and that it’s not the reason why she is racing so fast this year. He feels that she’s racing fast because of a change in her training regimen and improved technique.

Meanwhile Hans Petter Stokke, the doctor with the Norwegian team, has stated in the press, that the drug is definitely helping her to perform better and is a big reason why she is so much faster this year. Bjoergen was first and second this weekend at Rogla and is leading the World Cup. Non-asthmatics apparently don’t benefit from the drug which leads me to wonder why it’s on the banned list at all.

In mountain biking one of Canada’s top riders, Marie-Helene Premont, was diagnosed earlier this year with exercise-induced asthma following several attacks at big races and is also is back in the game with a TUE. I can see this argument from both sides, but it seems to me that we all have to accept our limitations in sport, and the playing field would be better served if athletes were limited to non-banned drugs to address their respective circumstances.

What do you think? Should athletes with TUEs be able to race using a banned substance or only drugs that are not banned? Is it fair for the other athletes? Food for thought over the holiday break.

For more on this story in Skierpost click here and here.
SportsVerden by VG Sports here.
UCI Theraputic Use Exemption info here.
CCES TUE info here.