Tour de Ski
The Tour de Ski is a cross-country skiing event held annually since the 2006–07 season in Central Europe. The Tour de Ski is a Stage World Cup event in the FIS Cross-Country World Cup. Each Tour de Ski has consisted of six to nine stages, held during late December and early January in the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. As of 2023, the prize money for the event is 770,000 Swiss francs, shared out on both men and women. Men's and women's events are held together on the same days, with the only difference being the distance skied.
The stage hosts changes every year, but some of the format stays the same with the diversity of competitions; sprints, mass starts, races with individual starts and pursuits. The Tour de Ski has every year concluded with two or three stages in Val di Fiemme, with the final stage where the skiers race up the alpine skiing course on Alpe Cermis in Cavalese.
There are usually between 20 and 30 nations participating, with the numbers of skiers from each nation based on quotas with a maximum of 10 skiers. All of the stages are timed to the finish; the skiers' times are compounded with their previous stage times. The skier with the lowest cumulative finishing times is the overall leader of the race and wears the yellow leader bib. While the overall standings garners the most attention, there are two other contests held within the Tour: the point standings for the sprinters and the climbing standings for skiers, who are the first on certain hill summits.
History
Origins
Cross-country skiing had been through a period of renewal from the early 1980s, when the free technique was first introduced to the World Championships which led to a rush of new events, including pursuit skiing, sprint skiing and eventually long mass start races, to complement the traditional time trial or individual start style of skiing. The Tour de Ski is another such new event, and the idea has been reported to come from a meeting between former Olympic gold medallist Vegard Ulvang and Jürg Capol, the International Ski Federation's chief executive officer for cross-country competitions, in Ulvang's sauna in Maridalen, Norway. Their idea was to create a stage competition consisting of different events which they expected would lead to several days of continuous excitement before the most complete skiers would become Tour de Ski champions. Ulvang has also brought up the idea of a tour of the Barents Region, Tour de Barents, with stages in Kirkenes and Vadsø in Finnmark and Murmansk in Russia.The first Tour de Ski (2006–07)
stated that FIS originally wished to start the race in the Alps. However, as neither Austria or Switzerland were interested, the opening two stages were to be held in Nové Město na Moravě in the Czech Republic. A week before the Tour was due to start, FIS announced that snow conditions in Nové Město were not good enough, and cancelled the two races there. The first Tour de Ski therefore opened with a sprint race in Munich on 31 December 2006, and was won by Marit Bjørgen and Christoph Eigenmann.Skiers from France, Germany and Norway, among others, said that the Tour de Ski was among their targets for the 2006–07 season, with Norwegian skier Jens Arne Svartedal claiming that the winner would have "extreme respect" for winning such an extreme race. Tobias Angerer and Virpi Kuitunen were the first overall winners of the Tour.
After the first Tour de Ski, reactions among athletes were largely positive. Norwegian athletes said "it was a good concept", German winner Tobias Angerer claimed that the Tour de Ski "has a great future", though many of the athletes expressed concern over the final climb up an alpine skiing hill both before and after the race. The director of FIS' cross-country committee, Vegard Ulvang, said the finish would be in the same place next year, but the way up could be changed. Ulvang also claimed that the Tour had been a success, and a "breakthrough for FIS" Ulvang did, however, admit that there would have to be some changes, as up to a third of participants in the Tour de Ski have struggled with illness or injury after the competition.
Newspaper comments were divided: in Expressen's opinion, the finish was the "most enjoyable competition seen in years," while Roland Wiedemann in Der Spiegel said this "should be the future of cross-country skiing". Critical commentaries appeared in Göteborgs-Posten, criticising the fact that sprinters didn't have a chance in the overall standings, and Wiesbaden Kurier, describing it as a reality show and a skiing circus.
Since 2007
The second Tour de Ski was held between 28 December 2007 and 6 January 2008, in the Czech Republic and Italy. Oberstdorf in Bavaria was originally scheduled to host two stages, but cancelled as the German Ski Association could only arrange a race on 2 January.At a meeting in Venice, Italy, on 7 May 2009, Tour de Ski officials met with officials from the Giro d'Italia road cycle race to learn from the stage race to further improve Tour de Ski competition for the 2009–2010 event.
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the women's Tour was dominated by Justyna Kowalczyk, who won the Tour de Ski four consecutive times and the sprint standings three consecutive times and a record 14 stages. Dario Cologna dominated the same period of time and won three Tours and two sprint competitions in four years from 2008–09 to 2011–12. In 2017–18, the season Cologna won his record fourth overall Tour, Alex Harvey of Canada and Jessie Diggins of USA became the first non-Europeans to achieve podium spot for men and women respectively in the overall standings. In 2021 Diggins became the first non-European to win Tour de Ski.
Race structure
Ranking
The overall results are based on the aggregate time for all events, as well as bonus seconds awarded on sprint and mass start stages.The sprint races carry bonus seconds for the finish, which are subtracted from the overall time. The current bonus format in sprint competitions, as of 2022–23, hands out bonus seconds to the 30 skiers that qualify for the quarter-finals.
In mass start competitions, intermediate points carry bonus seconds; 15 to the winner, 10 to number two, and 5 to number three. The same number of seconds used to be usually awarded at the finish, but not anymore. In the later editions of the Tour, intermediate points has been handed out to the 10 first skiers past the intermediate point.
The final stage of the race includes a steep climb up Alpe Cermis, with a height difference of 425 meters. By the 2018–19 Tour de Ski this last stage was held in a pursuit format, with competitors starting with the gaps they had in the overall classification, so the first skier to reach the top was the overall winner. Since 2019–20 Tour de Ski the Final Climb is held in a mass start format, with stage results added to overall classification.
Bibs
The overall leaders wear the leader bib on the following stage. The leader bib is from the 2019–20 edition colored yellow. From the start in 2006 to 2017–18 the leader bib was red and in the 2018–19 the leader wore a blue bib. Since the edition 2023–24 leaders of the general classification wear a gold bib.The leaders of the points competitions wear the points bib on the following stage. The bib worn by the leader of the points standings is from the 2019–20 edition colored red. In the previous editions of the Tour, the leader of the sprint standings wore a sprint bib; from the start in 2006 to 2017–18 this bib was black and in the 2018–19 the sprint bib was grey. Since the edition 2023–24 leaders of the points classification wear a silver bib.
Since the edition 2024-2025 there is a climbing classification for skiers, who are the first on the top of particular hills. The leaders of the climbing classifications wear the violet bib on the following stage.