This report comes to you from Cogne in Italy. The first World Cup event of the season for the Australian Cross Country Ski Team is tomorrow and for the moment the news is mixed. We are lucky to be having the races here at all, as the track is 100% artificial snow with bare ground all around. Surprisingly the snow is quite clean, and it is hard and fast and very abrasive. There was a classic World Cup race today, but this was not on our schedule. The times were very fast, just over 23 minutes for 10km for the men.

The race tomorrow is a freestyle sprint, which Paul Murray has been concentrating on over the last six months. Ben Derrick was to do the sprint as well, even though his focus is on longer skating races and specifically the 30km in Ramsau in two weeks time. Paul had a promising warm-up sprint race last weekend in Switzerland just after getting off the plane from Australia - promising in that he was up in contention for the finals before falling on a technical downhill. Training in the last few days on the race course here in Cogne has been very good. Paul is feeling great and is ready to give it his best, and on a fast course like this anything can happen.

Unfortunately the night before yesterday Ben suddenly came down sick. Of all things, he has been diagnosed with Chicken Pox. He has spent most of the last 48 hours in bed, apart from 2-3 hours hanging around the hospital in Aosta. The sprint for tomorrow is out of course, and also the 15km freestyle World Cup next Wednesday. Obviously this is a major setback for Ben, who was in possibly the best shape of his life. Needless to say he is not a very happy but very itchy camper. All we can hope for now is a swift recovery so that he may have some chance for Ramsau.

Article courtesy of the www.hoppet.com.au