FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2007 - Highlights

Highlights

• The most successful competitor was Finland's Virpi Kuitunen who won three golds (Team sprint, 30 km, and 4 x 5 km) and one bronze (Individual sprint).
• 20-year old Astrid Jacobsen from Norway won three medals in women's cross country with a gold in the individual sprint and bronzes in the team sprint and 4 x 5 km.
• Lars Berger of Norway became the first person to win medals at both the biathlon and nordic skiing world championships in the same year with Nordic skiing golds in the 15 km and 4 x 10 km events and a silver in the 4 x 7.5 km biathlon relay in Rasen-Antholz, Italy in February.
• Indoor skiing was held for the first time at the Sapporo Dome with the cross country sprint and the Nordic combined sprint events.
• Germany's Ronny Ackermann became the first person to win the Nordic combined 15 km Individual Gundersen event in three straight championships.
• Hannu and Pirjo Manninen of Finland became the first brother and sister combination to win gold medals at the same championships with Hannu's wins in the Nordic combined 7.5 km sprint and 4 x 5 km team events and Pirjo's win in the women's 4 x 5 km cross country relay.
• Belarus earned their first championship medal with Leanid Karneyenka's surprise silver in the 15 km event.
• Petra Majdič of Slovenia earned her first championship medal and the first for the nation both for women and in cross country skiing.
• Switzerland's Simon Ammann won medals in both individual hill competitions (Silver: normal, gold: large) and had the longest jumps in the team large hill events.
• Adam Małysz of Poland won his fourth world championship gold medal with the largest victory in the history of the individual normal hill event, his third win in event of the last four championships.
• Despite being well run and well-organized, the championships attendance was only 90,000, mostly at the Sapporo Dome and the ski jumping hills of Miyanomori and Okurayama. This amount was only a third of what was there at the previous games at Oberstdorf.
• A record 697 doping tests were administered for the event, one of the largest in any international major sports outside of the Winter Olympics, including urine, EPO urine, blood, blood transfusion, and human growth hormone testing. One positive EPO urine control was found on Sergey Shiryayev, whose case resulted in a two-year suspension at the FIS Council meeting in Portorož, Slovenia in May 2007 (Two other coaches received sanctions from the Russian ski federation), and nine start prohibitions were issued following pre-competition blood control. The cost for all FIS controls (827 total) was over CHF 1 million for the 2006-07 season at all skiing disciplines for all championships.