– Think everyone who didn’t do the World Cup last weekend was slacking? After seven races in nine days, the Tour de Skiers had good reason to put their feet up. Even so, several couldn’t sit still. At the Bedřichov V Jizerských Horách ski marathon on Sunday, Lukas Bauer (CZE), Valentina Schevchenko (UKR) and Aino-Kaisa Saarinen (FIN) made the podium in their respective men’s and women’s 50 k classic races in the Czech Republic. After placing 16^th in the Tour, Schevchenko won the women’s race, Bauer was second and Saarinen was third.

– Finland’s Sami Jauhojärvi hasn’t raced since the Kuusamo World Cup Dec. 2, and the Helsingin Sanomat explained why. His father died suddenly the day before Christmas while clearing snow in Ylitornio, Finland. Jauhojärvi, 31, tried to revive him and the ambulance arrived within 10 minutes.

“Unfortunately, nothing could be done,” Jauhojärvi told the Sanomat. “[My] father left us too soon.”

While it was decided that Jauhojärvi would sit out the Tour, Finland’s head coach Magnar Dalen was not sure when he’d return to racing.

“I’m sad for Sam,” Dalen told Iltalehti. “This is all part of life, and I wish him the best.”

– There’s a standoff in Meråker, Norway, and if the herders have their way, there will not be a summer ski race with the likes of Petter Northug – unless they $900,000 kroner (roughly $160,000 dollars) and then some.

According to NRK, the dispute between local race organizers and agriculturalists is nothing new, but this year the farmers are serious. Instead of allowing the annual ski race and mountain run to be held in late June, they’re demanding that it take place after Aug. 1 so as not to interfere with the reindeer industry during calving and marking season.

“They offer us to have a summer ski when [there] is no snow,” said Roar Aspaas, the CEO of Meråker’s activities, according to a translation. “The grazing district knows grazing it is not possible.”

Aspaas had hoped the race would attract Northug and other World Cup cross-country ski racers. The herders are requesting an additional $900,000 kroner in compensation for previous races. According to NRK, both sides were meeting Tuesday morning to discuss the issue.

The guessing game is over. It looks like Finland’s Aino-Kaisa Saarinen will be the guest of honor at the North American women’s camp in Anchorage, Alaska, later this month.

Kikkan Randall made the announcement via Twitter on Tuesday: “Roller ski intervals in the rain with @jessdiggs this am and now picking up Aino-Kaisa Saarinen for a lot of sweet training coming up!”

A recent FasterSkier article about U.S. Ski Team camps referenced the inclusion of  ”an unnamed European guest” at the USST/Canadian national team camp on Eagle Glacier from June 18-July 1.

Saarinen, 33, has won multiple world championships and three bronze medals over two Olympics. Last year, she led Finland’s relay to second and third place on the World Cup.

–Yeah, yeah, we know–Petter Northug (NOR) made his return to competition on Saturday, winning a domestic race in Norway. So did Aino-Kaisa Saarinen (FIN). But the guy you really need to know about is Philip Boit (KEN). (No, really, KEN, for Kenya.) Boit is the former elite runner whose crossover to nordic skiing in the 1990s was funded by Nike. He competed at the 1998 Olympics, where Bjoern Daehlie famously waited at the finish for Boit to cross the line. After racing in the 2002 and 2006 Games, he didn’t qualify for Vancouver, but he’s now training in Norway (with juniors!) in advance of the 2011 World Ski Championships.

–Did you hear about the Rampa con Campioni, the race up the Alpe Cermis, otherwise known as the Tour de Ski’s final climb. Participants, apparently, will include Czech Olympic champion Katerina Neumannova, FIS Cross-Country Race Director Jurg Capol, and living Norwegian legend Vegard Ulvang.

–Ski-Nordique.net (the French version of FasterSkier) has a cool gallery of many of the World Cup biathletes dressed in their street clothes, which is not something you see every day…

–Oddly enough, the best interview we’ve read with Norwegian biathlon star Emil Hegle Svendsen has been conducted by the Russian ski website SkiSport.ru. Read it to find out about how Svendsen will come down from his current peak after Christmas, whereupon which he will give his body “a good spanking.” He also talks about the Russian fans at the 2011 World Championships venue, Khanty-Mansiysk, where apparently they cheer when the foreign athletes miss their targets.

–Norwegian classic specialist Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset hasn’t raced on the World Cup yet this season, but after winning a domestic race in Norway on Sunday (topping, among others, Petter Northug), he’ll get a start in Davos.

–Todd Lodwick won both Continental Cup nordic combined races held in Steamboat Springs, CO, last weekend.

–Lastly, we know most people read FasterSkier for our cross-country coverage, but we have to put in a quick plug: All the biathlon races this weekend were totally kick-ass. The best part–you can watch them all, for free, at any time, on the website of the International Biathlon Union. During your lunch break, study hall, or whatever, make sure you catch the men’s sprint and pursuit races, which featured totally epic battles between Norwegian biathlon god Ole-Einar Bjoerndalen and Emil Hegle Svendsen, the 25-year-old who would usurp that title. Really. It’s worth it.

–The Helsingen Sanomat reports that four officials at the Finnish Ski Association will face charges of fraud and perjury in an investigation stemming from newspaper claims of widespread doping in the 1990s. The charges, the report says, come just a few days after news broke that the Association had “been borrowing money from its athletes’ coaching fund to patch up its finances.”

–The Helsingen Sanomat also has a good profile of Finnish star Aino-Kaisa Saarinen.

–The Northern News service profiles Canadian Olympic biathlete Brendan Green.

–The International Ski Federation has a piece on Kjell-Erik Kristiansen, the announcer and ski personality who travels with the World Cup circuit.

–FIS Cross-Country has a brief interview with Norwegian star Petter Northug, primarily on his training and plans for the summer. There’s also a video interview with Finnish Olympic medalist Aino-Kaisa Saarinen.

–Northug’s home race, the Tour de Trondelag, is supposed to take place this weekend, but is in court due to complaints by local reindeer owners. Seriously.

–Swedish distance specialist Anders Soedergren has expressed his disappointment over the fact that there’s no 50 k in this year’s World Cup calendar. (The only one is during the World Championships in Oslo.)

–The list of finalists for the 2018 Olympics was released Tuesday, with no surprises: Pyeongchang, South Korea; Annecy, France; and Munich. Apparently, Pyeongchang is favored, which, given its reputation for hectic weather, may not please biathletes and cross-country skiers.

–If flipping the calendar from April to May didn’t get you off your laurels from last winter, the 2010-2011 really gets underway today as the U.S. Ski Team begins its first camp of the season in Bend, Oregon. If you’re in the area, you can head to a welcoming barbecue–info here.

–Some Norwegian dude made a pretty solid YouTube video imitating the different techniques of the various Norwegians, like Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset, Petter Northug, and Tora Berger.

–The New England Nordic Ski Association has an interesting two-part interview with longtime Stratton Mountain School coach Sverre Caldwell. Part one. Part two.

–FIS has a post on Finland’s Aino-Kaisa Saarinen, who will be working with a new coach next year after her old one, Jarmo Riski, decided to retire. Saarinen left the 2010 Olympics with two bronze medals, but apparently contracted pneumonia at the end of the season.

–After announcing her new sponsorship by the Norwegian Seafood Export Council, Marit Bjoergen has come under pressure from an environmental group. Torfinn Everson, the CEO of Norwegian Salmon Rivers, said he was disappointed that Bjoergen would advocate for the consumption of farmed salmon, which is notorious for its negative impact on the environment. Bjoergen responded to the charges yesterday, saying that her mission is “to promote people to eat more fish–whether farmed or wild salmon can be up to the individual consumer.”

Lightning. Bears. Concrete walls.

Those are a few things that might be able to stop Norway’s Marit Bjoergen right now. Mere mortals from Italy, Finland, and Germany? Fat chance.

Taking the tag from Kristin Stormer Steira with Italy hot on her heels, Bjoergen laid down a blazingly fast final leg—dropping Sabina Valbusa on the first climb and skiing away, uncontested, to her third gold medal of these Games, and Norway’s first in the women’s relay in 26 years.

The real battle unfolded behind, as the chase pack of Finland, Sweden, and Germany quickly swallowed up Valbusa. Without a single medal for her country from the 2010 Games thus far, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen (FIN) was out for blood, driving the pace hard for her two laps of the 2.5 kilometer course. Only Germany’s Claudia Nystad could hang on, passing the Finn on the final climb to take silver, while Saarinen held on for the bronze.

How it Unfolded

With Bjoergen anchoring, Norway may have been the favorite, but their coaches couldn’t take anything for granted until Vibeke Skofterud made it through the first leg unscathed.

Italy and Germany led things out up the first big climb, with the pack still together. Kikkan Randall sat in the second row, just next to Skofterud.

Skiing aggressively, Randall still sat in the lead group on her second lap, then used a fast pair of skis to gap the rest of the field on the course’s biggest downhill. Anna Olsson (SWE), Skofterud, and Katrin Zeller (GER) made up the ground on the climb before the stadium, but Randall still came into the stadium with the leaders, tagging off to Holly Brooks in fourth place—just ten seconds back.

Brooks didn’t have the legs today, though, and she quickly fell off the back. She said afterwards that she’s worried her health problems from the summer (see may have resurfaced, and she spoke to the team doctor about doing some testing to figure out what’s wrong.

“It was really fun having Kikkan come in in such a strong position,” Brooks said. “There was a little pressure going into that, but I just know that can ski a lot faster than I’m skiing right now, and it’s pretty frustrating.”

At the front, Norway, Italy, and Germany were still together, while Sweden’s Magdalena Pajala was gapped going up the big climb on her first lap.

As the three leaders duked it out up ahead, Poland’s Justyna Kowalczyk was working her way back from the 18-second deficit she’d inherited from her teammate, Kornelia Marek. Echoing yesterday’s spectacular second leg by Lukas Bauer (CZE), Kowalczyk made up all the ground Marek had lost, then just kept on going.

No one could respond when she came by—Marianna Longa (ITA), Therese Johaug (NOR), and Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle (GER) couldn’t hold on, and the lead group shattered. Kowalczyk’s leg ended up being nearly thirty seconds faster than anyone else’s, and she tagged off to Paulina Maciuszek with a ten-second lead.

Which promptly evaporated. Maciuszek was no match for the power of Norway’s Kristin Stormer Steira and Italy’s Silvia Rupil, as that pair caught her and dropped her almost in the same breath.

Meanwhile, after a miserable first leg, Finland’s Riitta-Liisa Roponen had worked her way back to a chase group, which included Sweden, Germany, and France. Led by Charlotte Kalla (SWE)—who turned in the fastest split of the leg—that group stayed within striking distance of Steira and Rupil, coming through the exchange just fifteen seconds behind.

But with Bjoergen anchoring Norway, the most any of those teams could hope for was silver or bronze. While Italy and Norway came into the exchange together, Bjoergen was gone before Valbusa could say “arrivederci.” Bjoergen gapped the Italian going up the first climb out of the stadium, and was off to her third gold of the Games. Despite coming to a full stop before the finish to pick up a Norwegian flag, and skiing the last hundred meters with no poles, she still had the fastest time of her leg.

After being dropped by Bjoergen, Valbusa was fading hard. The chase group behind her was gaining, led by a ferocious Saarinen. As the Finn V2-ed her way up the course’s big climbs, it didn’t seem like there was any way that Germany’s Claudia Nystad or Sweden’s Ida Ingemarsdotter could hold on, and indeed, Ingemarsdotter came off on the last lap—just as the trio caught and passed Valbusa. But Nystad hung tough, and somehow found the energy to go by Saarinen on the final climb and ski in for silver.

Anchored by Caitlin Compton, the U.S. finished 12th on the day. Like Brooks, Compton said that she wasn’t at her best today, and also may have had trouble with her skis, according to Zach Caldwell, one of the members of the U.S. service staff. Canada was 14^th.

Full report to come!