January 6, 2006 (Val de Fiemme, Italy) – 30km mass start race in classical technique had many leaders throughout the competition but no one could outsprint Eldar Roenning, who moved to 9th place on Overall standings.

Super tracks on the 3,75km course to be skied 8 times and true Italian weather awaited 76 men today with snow temperature -5C and the sun already hiding behind mountains.

Home crowd favorite Pietro Piller Cottrer (ITA) fell right on 1st uphill. Rene Sommerfeldt (GER) and Mathias Fredriksson (SWE) were the first leaders on the opening lap.

On the 2nd lap Swedes Fredriksson and Anders Södergren took the lead positions. They had said earlier that they have nothing else to do than full go today. And that’s what we saw – Fredrisson, Södergren together with Frode Estil (NOR) moved ahead of the group. Germans Jens Filbrich and Sommerfeldt kept their team leader and Tour Overall leader Tobias Angerer in good control right behind Estil. Soon Södergren took the lead and started to pull the lead group apart. The tempo was really hard. Roenning took the lead on last downhill showing how good skis he had.

On 3rd lap Russians Sergei Novikov and Sergei Shiriaev attacked and quickly opened a gap. Novikov was dropped soon and Shiriaev, who was #14 in the Overall ranking before today’s stage, 1.26,8 behind the lead, went solo.

Intermediate sprint points were up to grabs on 4th lap. Shiriaev takes 15, Estil 10 and Roenning 5 bonus seconds. Was that a tactical plan of Russians and Norwegians to take away as many bonus seconds as possible from Angerer? After getting the points, Shiriaev dropped back and Estil went ahead solo. But not very long, he was caught soon by the group.

Alexandre Legkov (RUS) takes the lead on 5th lap in the group and started pushing. Only Angerer could go with him and took the lead. But they could not open any real gap with the chase group and were caught soon. Coming to stadium, the lead group of 10 athletes really eased tempo to take a little breath after so hard start. This helped the Leader of Tour Sprint ranking Tor Arne Hetland (NOR) to catch the group together with teammate Jens Arne Svartedal.

There were soon 14 athletes in the group on 6th lap when Franz Göring (GER) and Ilja Chernousov (RUS) caught the group. Coming to the stadium, Angerer and Sami Jauhojärvi (FIN) changed the tracks at the same time and fell on each other. They were quickly up and caught the group.

The 2nd intermediate sprint was on 7th lap. After Angerer fell, Tour Overall 2nd Simen Oestensen (NOR) sprinted for the sprint seconds. Other Norwegians Estil and Roenning slowed the group down like in cycling and they succeeded. Oestensen takes 15 bonus seconds, Estil 10 and Roenning 5, just ahead of Angerer, who had to make up for the lost position after incident on the stadium. We can say that Norwegian team tactics succeeded here, Oestensen came 15 seconds closer to Angerer in the Overall rankings.

Going to the last lap 12 men were together. 1st uphill was taken under the lead of Angerer, followed by 4 Norwegians. Angerer had only 1 teammate Filbrich to help in the lead group but he was in the back of the group so Angerer had to fight alone against the Norwegian might. Ivan Alypov (RUS) and Jauhojärvi sprinted first on the last downhill followed by Roenning who had shown on previous laps that he has the best skies on downhill. The podium was going for these 3 and Roenning showed his sprint skills and took the 1st place, ahead of Alypov, Jauhojärvi. A surprise for many, Hetland was 4th today ahead of Angerer 5th and Estil 6th.

In the Tour Sprint rankings Tor Arne Hetland was 1st with 73 points, 2nd place went to Tobias Fredriksson with 68 and 3rd place for Oestensen with 59 points,

In the Overall rankings the gaps are really small and nothing is clear about the possible Tour winner. Angerer leads by 15,2 seconds ahead of Oestensen, followed by Peter Northug (NOR), 38,4 seconds behind. Don not rule out the chances of Estil (7th, 1.23 behind) and the Russian trio Legkov, Eugeni Dementiev and Nikolai Pankratov, on the 10th, 11th and 12th place respectively, starting within 5 seconds of each other and 2.13 behind the lead.

The winners of the Veissmann Tour de Ski will be announced tomorrow after brutal Alpe Cermis uphill. The races will start 1415 CET for ladies and 15.15 CET for men.

Results (brief)

1.Eldar Roenning, NOR, 1:21:30.0
2. Ivan Alypov, RUS, 1:21:30.06
3. Sami Jauhojaervi, FIN, 1:21:31.6
4. Tor Arne Hetland, NOR, 1:21:33.8
5. Tobias Angerer, GER, 1:21:34.2

42. George Grey, Rossland, B.C., 1:25:56.5
44. Stefan Kuhn, Canmore, Alta., 1:26:12.9
51. Dan Roycroft, Port Sydney, Ont., 1:27:52.0
54. Sean Crooks, Thunder Bay, Ont., 1:28:25.3

For complete results click here.





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