Should Kerttu Niskanen consider withdrawing from the Tour de Ski? Aino‑Kaisa Saarinen says Monday will be decisive

The Tour de Ski start brought little relief to Finland’s difficult opening to the cross‑country season.

In Sunday’s sprint events in Toblach, Finland’s brightest result came from Jasmi Joensuu, who won her quarterfinal but finished last in her semifinal and did not advance to the final. Among the men, Joni Mäki and Niilo Moilanen were eliminated in the heats.

Other Finnish sprinters also fell short: Jasmin Kähärä missed the semifinals by one hundredth of a second on time, and Lauri Vuorinen was the last man cut in qualifying.

At the top, Norway’s sprint stars prevailed: Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won the men’s race and Kristine Stavås Skistad the women’s. The women’s final also featured a dramatic crash in which Mathilde Myhrvold badly injured her shoulder and had to abandon the Tour.

Given a problematic first couple of months, expectations were modest for the Finns. Yle’s cross‑country expert Aino‑Kaisa Saarinen noted that the national team arrived at the Tour in unusually weak form, with no podiums, poor results, and bouts of illness. She still expected more from Joensuu, Vuorinen, and Mäki than what was seen.

Iivo and Kerttu Niskanen, for whom sprinting is not a specialty, provided different clues about their condition. For Iivo Niskanen, Toblach was his first hard race effort since the World Cup in Trondheim three weeks earlier. He finished only 91st in qualifying and admitted the intensity was brutal, but Saarinen took encouragement from how deeply he pushed himself, calling it a good sign ahead of Monday’s 10 km classic, where she believes he can contend near the front.

Kerttu Niskanen finished 40th in qualifying and missed the heats. She has recently hinted at health concerns—without detailing them—and struggled already in Davos (22nd in the 10 km free, over a minute behind). In Davos she said that if skiing keeps trending worse, she would need to ‘blow the whistle’ and stop. Despite that, she started the Tour.

Saarinen says the general rule is not to start the Tour if you’re not healthy, so she assumes Niskanen has medical clearance. Still, given the earlier difficulties and recent illnesses, the situation is concerning. With the Olympics drawing near, Saarinen believes Monday’s 10 km classic will be decisive for whether Kerttu continues the Tour: if the result is catastrophic, she expects the team to pull the plug. The support team and athlete will be monitoring her condition very closely, because if results don’t begin to turn, time is running out before the Games.