Iivo Niskanen’s speed was enough for a stage win at the Vuokatti Aateli Race (Finland) when he took the win in the prologue. Lauri Lepistö lost 4.4 seconds to Niskanen, Remi Lindholm was third, 8.7 seconds behind the winner.

Others were not a match to Niskanen’s pace, but the winner himself did not glorify his performance in the prologue even though he stated it was “okay”:

”It felt like I skied a harder pre-race preparation with Perttu (Hyvärinen) than this race. It was a little bit tricky here, I guess the best juices were left there”, Niskanen said with a laugh.

Niskanen’s training season started a bit later than usual.

”You can see it in the performance. I’m not quite in the shape I should be, but luckily it was enough today.”

He took advantage of the good snow conditions in Finnish Lapland to ski well into the spring, as he skied until the end of April. After that, he spent a couple of weeks on a harness racing course (form of horse racing), after which he started his training season.

”It was the first time in a long time that I got a bit of a break. It has been a tough two years, so it was good,” said Niskanen, who hopes for a progressive training season.

He has some puzzling thoughts about running (the next stage of the Aateli Race), as a minor calf pain has kept him from running for a while.

”I might not be at my best, but we will see what happens. There are a lot of Chinese there, who I hear has been working on a marathon project all spring. Maybe there are some good runners to push our national team guys.”

Lauri Lepistö thought he did “just fine”, but he was feeling nervous before the prologue:

”I have done all the intensity trainings alone, so there was no basis for comparison in that sense. Last year I was doing well and had zero intensity training on rollerskis, now at least I had a couple of intensity sessions on rollerskis. I was hoping for a bit better. Pretty much the same time as last year, and now the conditions were slower. So that is positive”, Lepistö said and considered his running shape “a total mystery.”

Remi Lindholm described his prologue as “pretty tough.”

”I started at a kind of brisk pace and tried to keep it up. Maybe a little bit difficult end. Third place, when I had previously been ninth at my best. I have been training well, my goal is 1100 hours this season.”

Lindholm, who improved his level a lot last winter, is now enjoying the training with the national team:

”I want to be at Iivo’s heels. I’m trying to hang in there as much as possible.”

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