World Championship debut last February, World Cup debut in November, Winter Olympic debut next February? Today Clare-Louise Brumley from Templestowe achieved the Australian Team "C" qualifying standard for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. Clare-Louise finished 40th out of 54 skiers in the women's 15km Pursuit in the Sovereign Lake World Cup in Canada, several places under the top 80% of field. As there are only two World Cup Pursuit events in the qualifying period, only one result is needed to meet the C criteria (see October 15 update for a summary of the selection policy). The remaining Pursuit race takes place in Oberstdorf in Germany on January 21.

Clare-Louise was back in about 51st place after the first couple of kilometres, and then started to work her way steadily up through the field. At the changeover she was in 40th place amongst a small group, and early in the freestyle leg she consolidated her placing and moved up to be solo in 39th place. In the closing kilometres C-L was caught by Dussault from the USA and several other North American skiers were close on her tail, but she dug deep to sprint to the line behind Dussault and take 40th place. The result is one of Australia's best female World Cup results - top effort C-L, a great achievement for a lot of hard work put in. The race was won by Bjorgen on Norway ahead of Beckie Scott from Canada.

In the men's 30km Pursuit Ben Derrick and Ben Sim finished 58th and 59th out of 66 starters. Ben Sim was about 30 seconds ahead of Ben Derrick after the 15km classic, but then tired on the freestyle leg. BD struggled a bit on the classic leg but then came home strong in the skating, picking up a few places and sprinting to the line with a couple of Canadians. To reach the C-criteria BD would have had to have finished 53rd - of note, Hofstad from Norway, who won the last World Cup in Kuusamo, was 54th. The race was won by Angerer of Germany - incredibly the top 5 skiers were all German.

Special thanks to Alan Mortimer from Canada who stepped in as wax technician for these Canadian events and did a great job on the skis. Also to all the Australian juniors who helped out giving drinks, holding poles, and cheering like mad!

Tomorrow is the Sprint, where Paul Murray is aiming to score his second top 80% result of the season and Esther Bottomley her first. OK, they are also hoping to qualify for the top 30 and compete in the finals - with fast skis and a good day it is not out of the question. On FIS points Esther is seeded 29th for the event and Paul 39th, Simbo is 46th and BD 52nd.