The Face-off: Best Cross-Country Skiers 2019/20

The race for the best male Ski Jumper of the season 2019/20 was clear but the Best Skier Trophy was much fought over and only decided at the very end of the last winter.

The fight was on between Italy’s Alessandro Pittin, whose reputation as one of the fastest Nordic Combined skiers of the last years precedes him and Finland’s Ilkka Herola who slowly but surely developed into a real threat on the cross-country course.

In the end, the scales tipped into Herola’s favour: the Finn had the fastest race time three times in the season and was two times the second-fastest and three times third fastest. Pittin in turn set the fastest time once and claimed four second-fastest and two third-fastest times.

However, with a total of 1017 points, the medal went to the Finn, who beat Pittin by 78 points and also German legend Eric Frenzel was in the mix of the fastest skiers with 925 points. In total, the density of fast skiers in the field is higher than the one of excellent jumpers. Herola, Pittin, Frenzel, Graabak, Geiger, Rydzek and Hirvonen all set the fastest time of the race at least once.

For 25-year-old Herola, the season did not only bring the win in the Best Skier Trophy but he also stood on the podium two times, confirming an upward trajectory that put him into the extended circle of podium hopefuls for the last two seasons.

30-year-old Pittin can look back on a distinguished career with three World Cup victories, an Olympic Games bronze and World Championship silver medal but has also struggled with multiple injuries and big difficulties on the jumping hill. His last podium result came 2017 in Ramsau am Dachstein and in recent years, it was harder for Pittin to put his excellent cross-country skiing to good use to go for the best results.

If any prognosis can be given for the future, it will be the fast skier who manages to get his ski jumping to the highest possible level who will be successful. With athletes like Riiber and Oftebro who excel on the hill but can also hold their own on the cross-country track, competition has become very hard for the fast skiers. But still, nothing exceeds the pleasure of a fast skier tearing through the field to give the good jumpers ahead of him a run for their money. We do hope we will see more of that in the winter to come and will have our eyes firmly trained on Herola, Pittin, Frenzel & co.