Next to gold: Bolshunov and Nepryaeva became prize-winners of the KM stage in cross-country skiing in Davos

The second stage of the World Cup in cross-country skiing this season has started in Davos, Switzerland.

The first day of the competition brought two medals to Russian athletes.

Alexander Bolshunov became the silver medalist in the individual sprint, and Natalya Nepryaeva won bronze.

The stage in Davos was deprived of the lion's share of world-class skiers.

Due to the epidemiological situation, the Norwegian national team first refused to travel to Switzerland, and then Sweden and Finland followed suit.

Already the day before the starts, it became known about another loss - an outbreak of coronavirus was recorded in the French women's team, and almost all of its athletes had to go into quarantine.

But the absence of a number of contenders for medals did not make the Russian national team an unequivocal favorite of the competition.

The Davos program was formed from the most difficult disciplines for the team.

This was especially true of the skating sprint, which consisted of the Saturday program.

Last season, this type of program did not bring a single medal to men, and Natalia Nepryaeva won one bronze medal among the girls in the Tour de Ski stage.

The French and Italians, the Americans and the Slovenes were much more fortunate, and they were not going to miss the opportunity to compete for awards in Davos.

The qualification showed how serious the opponents were.

In the women's race, none of the Russian women managed to get into the top ten.

Khristina Matsokina finished 11th, two positions lower was Nepryaeva.

At the same time, both of them lost more than six seconds at a distance of 1.5 km to American Rosie Brennan, who had already won bronze in the pursuit race on the mini-tour in Ruk this season.

Tatyana Sorina, Yulia Stupak and Natalya Mekryukova made it to the playoffs, but they were even farther from the leaders.

In the men's selection, two freestyle sprint masters immediately announced themselves - the Frenchman Luca Shanava and the Italian Federico Pellegrino.

They did not let anyone near them and played the first seeding number among themselves.

Among the Russians, Andrey Melnichenko turned out to be the closest to them, having shown the sixth time in the prologue.

Artyom Maltsev, Alexander Bolshunov, Gleb Retivykh and Alexander Terentyev were in the second ten and also continued to fight.

But in the playoffs, the whole fight starts over.

For Russian girls, the quarterfinal races were extremely tense.

Nepryaeva and Sorina finished third in their races, but ran fast enough to become lucky losers.

They had to wait for all the other results, and luck still smiled upon them.

They passed on together with Matsokina and Stupak, whose tickets to the next round were not contested.

Stupak performed especially impressively - at the finish line she easily bypassed all rivals who had the best seeding.

Men started even more confidently in the main stage of the competition.

Quietly, Bolshunov and Retivykh won their races, Terentyev and Maltsev advanced from second place to the semifinals, and the latter had to fight with the local favorite, four-time Olympic champion Dario Cologna.

Qualifying winner Shanava unexpectedly ended the fight after the first race, leaving Pellegrino to face the Russian skiers alone.

At the end of the semifinals, the representation of Russian women decreased by four times.

Sorina had to face real sprinters alone, such as Slovenian Anamaria Lampic, and she did not retain the strength for the final spurt.

In another race, Nepryaeva and Stupak fought to the last on the track, but another Slovenian Eva Urevts was ahead of them, and only Nepryaeva got to the final.

Matsokina finished last.

The semi-final duel between Bolshunov and Pellegrino ended in victory for the Italian, but the Russian significantly saved his strength in the ascent and let his opponent go, without fear of his ticket to the final.

The race with the participation of three other Russians turned out to be more intense, and this time only the Zealous were successful.

Maltsev lost only one hundredth of a second to the host of the competition Valerio Grond in the fight for the final, and Terentyev did not take part in the final showdown.

The women's final was very difficult for Nepryaeva.

Brennan, Lampic and Switzerland's Nadine Fendrich created a gap early, and the Russian woman had to make double efforts in the middle of the distance to catch up with them.

In the next climb, Nepryaeva sat on the tail of her rivals and endured until the finish line, where she was able to win only four hundredths of a second from Fendrich and win bronze, her first medal of the current season.

At the same time, the Russian skier climbed to third place in the World Cup sprint standings.

The awards were distributed among men very early.

Pellegrino did not save his strength for the finish and immediately ran away from Bolshunov, while the Zealous did not have enough energy to keep the Briton Andrew Young.

In this order, they reached the finish line.

Bolshunov became the silver medalist for the second time in a row and intercepted the yellow jersey of the World Cup leader from the Norwegian Johannes Hösflot Klebo.

The Russian will be able to gain a foothold in the first place in the overall standings on Sunday, when the race will take place from a separate start freestyle.