There was some improvement from the Australian team at the World Cup in Ruka in Finland today, however it was not enough to keep the chances of qualifying for Torino in a classic event alive. Clare-Louise Brumley had the best result, finishing 61st out of 70 starters in the 10km Classic. KT Calder was 69th in the same event, still well away from good form. Ben Sim skied a lot better than last weekend, finishing 80th out of 86 starters in the 15k Freestyle.

Waxing conditions were again a little tricky, with wet dirty snow and rain the day before dropping 3-4 degrees and accumulating 2-3 cm of new snow overnight. But this time the waxing crew were better up to the task, with Clare-Louise and Ben having good skis and only KT a little light on for grip. Clare-Louise was in the hunt for the top 80% of field Olympic qualifying result, but ended up 20 seconds short of the 56th place she needed to achieve. Both Clare-Louise and Ben scored their best FIS points in a World Cup or World Championship event, 96.2 for Clare-Louise and 74.6 for Ben. To give an example of the depth of the men's field, for Ben to make it under the top 80% of the field he would have needed to score 51 points. The winner of the women's race was Marit Bjorgen (again) from Norway, and Tobias Angerer from Germany won the men's event.

Tomorrow only Ben will race in the Freestyle World Cup events - Clare-Louise has difficulty backing up two days in a row with her asthma, and KT is really not quite in the right shape to be skiing World Cup. Other Australian team members are also racing around the world this weekend - Ben Derrick and Esther Bottomley in Sovereign Lake in Canada, and Paul Murray in Gallivare in Sweden.


Courtesy XC Files