The Russian Cross-Country Ski Championships on Friday, March 24, continued with relays. The team of the Tyumen region on the home track of the stadium "Pearl of Siberia" scored a golden double in them.
The first to go to the start, according to tradition, were girls. The star of the first stage was Anastasia Faleeva, who had just recovered from her illness and started the tournament for the first time. The representative of St. Petersburg turned on at full power from the very beginning of the distance and provided her team with a seven-second advantage in the transmission of the relay.
Diana Soboleva, who replaced her, at first tried to keep the lead, but already on the second lap she ran out of steam and completed her stage only seventh with a gap of 55.5 seconds. And after the finish, she needed the help of doctors because of her poor health.
The leaders by the second gear were the teams of Moscow and Tatarstan-1, which at the stage were represented by Anastasia Prokofieva and Lidia Gorbunova, respectively. However, the Muscovites did not last long in the top, and at the third stage a real sensation was made by Maria Istomina from the team of the Volga Federal District. Not only did she regain the 25-second gap, but she also topped the race. Moreover, she beat at the distance no less than Ekaterina Smirnova from Tyumen, who two days earlier in a pair with Elizaveta Pantrina won the team sprint, and before that she was the first in the "cutting".
Maria could have provided her team with a huge gap, but an accident prevented her: on the descent before entering the stadium, the skier suddenly fell and lost precious seconds.
"I was very upset, I didn't expect to fall at the end. I needed to bring more of a breakaway to the girls to make it easier for the team to fight. I don't know how that happened. Just the skis went away and I fell forward. It is very offensive and annoying, - the athlete complained after the performance. When I fell, I thought I would be immediately overtaken. But I had enough time to get up. I understood: I will let the team down again. It's just unthinkable. It's one thing to run for yourself, but here in the team."
As a result, three athletes - Pantrina, Ekaterina Nikitina and Victoria Troshina - left almost simultaneously for the last lap. By that time, the pursuers were more than a minute behind, and no medals were claimed.
For the first half of the distance, the leaders went side by side, but then Pantrina, who had already won four medals at this championship, began to break away from her rivals. No one managed to maintain its pace, and the struggle for silver did not work: 17-year-old Nikitina from the Volga Federal District quickly fell behind Troshina, representing Tatarstan. Pantrina, for the second race in a row, finished at a leisurely pace and in proud solitude.
"I trained all season to show the best result at the main start of the season, and I succeeded. I worked now for all the money, I didn't play cat and mouse. The coach told me: "Start from the very start and do not look at anyone." On the second lap, I was already working at the maximum to make a breakaway," Elizaveta said on Match TV.
The men did not have much intrigue in the race: the top three and future medalists were determined after the first stage. It was won by the representative of the Komi team Yermil Vokuev, who broke away by 15 seconds from the two main pursuers - Andrei Larkov from Tatarstan and Artem Maltsev, representing the Tyumen region. The gap between fourth and fifth place in the relay was 36 seconds, which, taking into account the composition of the teams, actually deprived them of the opportunity to join the fight for awards.
"The track allowed you to go at the same time. I wanted to use my best qualities, make a breakaway, and it worked out, "Vokuev commented on the passage of the track.
However, his teammate Ilya Semikov was not in the best condition and lost the advantage. First, he was bypassed by Sergey Ardashev, and 1.2 km before the pass of the baton, Evgeny Belov tried to make a breakthrough, however, he did not run far. Semikov sat behind his back and eventually passed the baton to second, while Ardashev lost to both of them by just five seconds.
The culmination of the race was the third stage, in which the Olympic champion Denis Spitsov ran for Tyumen. Anton Timashov and Alexey Vitsenko could not compete with him. The first to "fall off" was the representative of Comey, who in the second half of the distance lost 17 seconds in just a kilometer. Soon Timashov could not stand it. Spitsov gave his all and sent Ivan Yakimushkin to the distance with an advantage of 23.4 seconds.
"It's one of the few races where my skis were going better with each lap, and just the last one, when I had to give acceleration, they worked very well. Therefore, it was possible to escape, and I am very satisfied, "said the Tyumen skier.
To keep the first place in such conditions for the vice-champion of Beijing Yakimushkin was a matter of technique. Although, by his own admission, the day before he was not sure that he would be able to go to the start - he felt a pre-painful condition. The athlete thanked Spitsov for a comfortable handicap, which gave him the opportunity to join the race.
"Making a breakaway is harder than holding it. If there is an advantage of 15-20 seconds, you can save it. And Zhenya gave Denis a gap of 5-6 seconds. Such an advantage does not matter, it almost immediately closes. And the big gap is not immediately closed, there is an opportunity to escape, we then did. I ran a comfortable distance and held on to it. If it had been 5-7 seconds, then the tactics would have been different: I would have waited for Vanya (Gorbunov. - RT) and figured out at the finish line or during the distance, depending on the condition and operation of the skis, "the Championship quotes the skier.
The national championship in Tyumen will end at the weekend. On Saturday, there will be a women's mass start at 30 km classics, and on Sunday - a men's "poltinnik".