21/12/2022
A much-awaited double appointment, set for the weekend of 21 and 22 January, which will see the best athletes and the best national teams in the World competing in two Sprint races, in a weekend which could also prove important in view of the assignment of the Crystal Spheres. A very snowy Livigno is therefore getting ready to host the strongest interpreters of the speciality, who will start reaching the resort already from 9 January.
Among the most relevant profiles, to be mentioned the sure presence of the Norwegian Johannes Høsflot Klæbo and the Italian Federico Pellegrino, reference points of the world cross-country skiing and protagonists of numerous challenges to the last metre, who from 2016 to 2021 alternated at the top of the speciality World Cup ranking, before the French Richard Jouve, also among the starters in Livigno, broke their hegemony last season. Both for Klæbo, seven times Olympic medallist, and for Pellegrino, two times silver medallist at the Games and winner, in the weekend just ended, of the speciality stage in Davos, it will be a welcome return, as both, over the course of the seasons, have spent long periods of preparation on the snows of Livigno. An advantage that could prove decisive in getting the better of a fierce and numerous competition.
Great balance among the women, also present at the Livigno's stage, with the Norwegian Tiril Udnes Weng, number one of the world ranking and at the top of the World Cup, who will try to defend her supremacy from the assaults of, among the others, the direct pursuers: the American Jessie Diggins, the Swiss Nadine Faehndrich and the Swedish Johanna Hagström, born in 1998, currently second in the speciality standings and surprise of this season's beginning. There is a lot at stake, therefore, for an event that promises to be truly unmissable, both from a technical point of view and in terms of context and scenic beauty.
Under the skilful "direction" of the FISI, the World Cup weekend will open with the individual sprint race in free technique, scheduled for Saturday 21st, followed the next day by the Team Sprint, also in free technique, the main course of an appointment not to be missed, which will therefore fall in one of the most intense and decisive phases of the entire 2022/2023 season. The occasion to admire the best interpreters of a highly spectacular and adrenaline-pumping discipline, which is proposed in a dynamic and highly involving format also for the public.
Public that will be able to access the event for free, to enjoy a unique show and to support the best athletes in the World along the entire track.
