Ruka World Cup Betting Preview Favor Defending Champions to Win First Race

The 2020-21 Cross Country World Cup will start this weekend in Ruka, Finland. We find the usual names in the top favorites in the Ruka World Cup betting preview. Like Norwegian Johannes Hosflot Klaebo in the sprint or Russian Alexander Bolshunov who are the defending champions. But new talents and local favorites can also take the victory in the first race. 

For several years the new season in cross-country and Nordic combined has been started with the Nordic weekend. The races are held in the far north, close to the north pole. And it will be the same in the 2020-21 season too. When the resort of Ruka will host the opening event at both sports. In cross-country races will be held in classic sprint and classic 15 km along with a 15 km freestyle pursuit.  Last season’s champions, the winner of the overall and distance event, Alexander Bolshunov and the sprint champion Johannes Hosflot Klaebo will compete and start their mission to defend their titles.

Ruka World Cup betting preview for sprint and distance match-ups

Let’s start with the classic sprint race, where Johannes Hosflot Klaebo is favored to win the event by online sportsbooks in Finland. The Norwegian athlete is a sprint specialist. He is the most successful male sprinter in World Cup history with his 37 individual race victories. He also set a new record for the most overall sprint titles with 4 at the age of only 24. Klaebo also won the 2018 Olympics and the 2019 World Championship in the sprint. Which explains his odds of 1.285 to win in Ruka again.

But you can also bet on different pairs and to which one of them can finish ahead. Like in the case of the 2020 overall world cup winner, Alexander Bolshunov, whose odds to finish higher than Emil Iversen is 1.40. Iversen is another Norwegian athlete who finished 6th in the overall standings in 2019. He performed well in last year’s Nordic Opening though after finishing second in overall, but sprint might not be his strongest point. While in the pair of Lucas Chanavat and Richard Jouve we find the same odds, 1.83 in the Ruka World Cup betting preview.

Favorites in the classic race

After the sprint, athletes will compete in the 15 km classic race where local favorite Iivo Niskanen won last year. The Finnish athlete is an Olympic champion in the longer, 50 km  distance and the 2017 world champion in 15 km. He finished 3rd in the distance world cup last season and favored to defeat Bolshunov again in Ruka with the odds of 1.50. Klaebo has the same odds to finish higher than Iversen just like he did last year.

Between the Russian pair of Ilia Semikov and Ilia Poroshkin the former has the better results so far after finishing 4th in another Finnish race at Lahti last season. He has the odds of 1.57 to defeat his countryman on 22Bet. To find all the odds just visit their site after reading our latest review about 22Bet sportsbook.

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