The final sprint of the 2011 Tour de Ski took place today. Lot's of excitement, good and bad. Devon Kershaw put on a show and won his first ever World Cup, making him the 3rd Canadian male to ever win a World Cup. Ivan Babikov did it a couple of years ago on the final stage of the Tour de Ski, and Pierre Harvey back in the 80's.
Kikkan skied strong all day, and in the end was too strong as she skied into a Swede that wasn't moving fast enough up the big climb and they both went down. She still end up in 5th....not bad for her worst World Cup skate spring result of the year. Callum skied strong in his qualifier, but didn't advance to the rounds.
Tomorrow is the 36 km point to point race for the men from Cortina to Toblach. It should be really exciting leap frogging our way down the road in the same valley as the race course, going from check point to check point. The women will just ski 3 x 5km laps at the Toblach stadium, and then we will pack everything up again and head a couple of hours over to Val Di Fiemme for the final two races.
I might be getting ahead of myself but I think this area in Europe is the most beautiful of all the places I have been. I could live here.....but I would get fat because the food and wine is too good!
Kikkan skied strong all day, and in the end was too strong as she skied into a Swede that wasn't moving fast enough up the big climb and they both went down. She still end up in 5th....not bad for her worst World Cup skate spring result of the year. Callum skied strong in his qualifier, but didn't advance to the rounds.
Tomorrow is the 36 km point to point race for the men from Cortina to Toblach. It should be really exciting leap frogging our way down the road in the same valley as the race course, going from check point to check point. The women will just ski 3 x 5km laps at the Toblach stadium, and then we will pack everything up again and head a couple of hours over to Val Di Fiemme for the final two races.
I might be getting ahead of myself but I think this area in Europe is the most beautiful of all the places I have been. I could live here.....but I would get fat because the food and wine is too good!
Post race interview by Wally the Wombat with Callum.
Callum charging up the first climb, heading back to the glorious sunshine and out of the -11c temps in the shade.
Callum powering around the first corner out of the stadium.
Hot air balloon taking flight about 100m from the race track. The view to the north. The large building to the right just blocks seeing our accommodations.
The ski stadium. The building with the flags arced over the top actually had the race go up and over it. That is the climb where Kikkan went down. Heading south from there you can see the beginning of the narrow river valley that the race will come through for tomorrow's 36km point-to-point.
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