A tough day at the office for Paul Murray in his first distance World Cup. He ended up 81st out of 83 starters in the Davos 15km Classic, just under 7 minutes (~18%) behind the winner Jens Svartedal of Norway. Paul's first 5km lap was not too bad, but then he really started to work hard on the hills for the next two laps. A small positive was being able to hang onto Mathias Fredriksson from Sweden (who finished 5th) for about 500m on his (Paul's) last lap. But in general it is lucky that Paul isn't racing this event at the Olympics. Another good day for the Canadian women with Sara Renner and Beckie Scott finishing 2nd and 4th.

Konig Ludwig Lauf (Day Two)
KT Calder had another good race today with 2nd place in the Konig Ludwig Lauf 23km Classic. First place went to an as yet unknown girl who sat behind KT for most of the race then sprinted not quite past and tripped KT up with about 400m to go. Thanks unknown girl. Ben Derrick paid good on a 5 year old threat to double pole the 23km Classic (in which Paul Murray was 5th in 2001). His advice to anyone who thinks it might be a good idea: don't do it. He finished 6th, losing time on the hills at the start and never really catching up. But anyway not too bad after the 55km freestyle the day before.

On the Saturday night BD contested the Konig Ludwig Laug night sprints, finishing 4th out of 6 in his heat and missing out on the semis. BD says: "A massive crowd for this event, pity that I'm not really a sprinter. Who won, maybe a Swede or an Italian, I don't know it was dark and I was wearing sunglasses"

So now it is on to Torino, with the first event the Pursuit starting on February 12. We will try to get a Olympic Special page up with various links, but we don't know yet if we be able to get any reports from the team during the games.


Courtesy XC Files