The final of the Russian Cup in cross-country skiing in Kirovsk continued with races from a time trial start. For the girls, the red group entered the fight, as most often happens, in the second half of the race. Anastasia Faleeva showed good acceleration. At the 2.5 km mark, she was ahead of Alisa Zhambalova by almost 14 seconds, but she was unable to spread her strength over the entire distance. Closer to the finish line, one of the best sprinters in the country began to lose ground and was forced to fight against the time of 21-year-old Daria Kaneva. This task turned out to be beyond her, and as a result, Anastasia lost to the Komi representative by as much as 11.1 seconds.
Daria Nepryaeva and Lidiya Gorbunova rushed to attack Faleeva’s time right from the start, and while the former also didn’t have enough fire for the entire 10 km, then for the latter everything turned out quite successfully. By the middle of the distance, the Tatarstan athlete surpassed Anastasia, and then ahead of Kaneva, finishing with a large margin.
Elizaveta Pantrina, Anastasia Kuleshova and Tatyana Sorina, who followed, were guided by Lydia’s result. The Olympic champion set a high pace from the start, but was unable to keep up with the Nizhny Novgorod athlete. At the 5 km mark, she lost to Anastasia by 6 seconds, and then began to roll back lower and lower. As a result, Sorina finished 2.7 seconds behind Faleeva.
Kuleshova increased her advantage over her rivals with every kilometer. Pantrina was lucky that Anastasia, who started 30 seconds later, caught up with her on the track - Elizaveta was able to work at the leader’s high pace and, thanks to this, snatch a slight advantage over Gorbunova at the finish and a bronze award.
And the fate of the gold medal was decided, as usual, by Veronika Stepanova, who received the final starting number. The Olympic champion started slowly, and seemed to be planning to ramp up towards the middle of the distance. However, after the first lap her gap from Kuleshova was 5 seconds, and after 1.5 km it doubled. Even then it became clear that Veronica would not be able to catch up with Anastasia. At the same time, she had a quite comfortable advantage over Pantrina, which allowed her to take second place.
After the finish, the winner noted the high competition and the struggle that went on from the first to the last kilometer.
“You go to the start and don’t know how the other competitors feel, there is no one hundred percent certainty who will be in the top three. The first lap we went through zeros, on the second we started to have good breaks. I tried to break down the race, listened to the coach, who told me which areas I needed to work on. We discussed this yesterday. I think everything worked out. I love running classic races and I’m glad that in this case I won a landslide victory,” Kuleshova said on Match TV.
Among the men, Andrei Sobakarev showed the best result from the first fifty-fifty athletes, but when the strongest got involved, he was quickly pushed aside. First, Ilya Poroshkin took the lead, then Ivan Gorbunov took the first position, and he, in turn, was displaced by Alexey Chervotkin.
Sergei Ardashev did not put up with this state of affairs, who took it right off the bat and charged the best time right up to the cutoff of 9 km. After this, the winner of the recent sprint race began to lose strength - first he fell behind Chervotkin and Gorbunov, and then lost to Poroshkin and Ilya Semikov.
Savely Korostelev, who started a minute after Ardashev, managed to spread out better over the distance - he took the lead after the 5 km mark and held it until the finish. At the same time, he brought Chervotkin almost 20 seconds.
Meanwhile, Alexander Bolshunov, who closed the competition day, was inferior to the 20-year-old talent in the middle of the distance and aroused some intrigue. However, it did not last long: the three-time Olympic champion added pace and brought the race to victory. However, his advantage over Korostelev turned out to be small - only 6.0 seconds.
“It’s great when young athletes appear, that’s how it should be. If we constantly win all the races, then the federation and all athletes will need to think about why they train. And when there is healthy competition, it spurs you on. It’s great that at this stage we are competing and don’t let each other relax,” the three-time Olympic champion said about the rivalry with Savely.
He admitted that the race was not easy for him, but this is understandable, since fatigue accumulated at the end of the season. This was also noted by the athlete’s coach Yuri Borodavko. According to him, Alexander’s movements lacked ease. However, Bolshunov himself stated that he did not pay attention to the slight lag at the first cutoffs, but worked at his own pace.
“I understood that I needed to run and not spoil anything, and that’s what happened. The ideal condition should be at the World Championships or the Olympic Games, everything is fine,” the skier said.
Sergei Ustyugov, who took second place in the pursuit two days earlier, failed to join the fight for medals. This time the Olympic champion was eighth, losing to Bolshunov by more than a minute and a half.
“I’m weak, that’s all my quirks. There is nothing more to say in my own defense. The loss is very big, and it is very sad. There's a mountain ahead, and I'm already losing a lot. On the mountain, such mistakes are not forgiven,” the Olympic champion shared his impressions of the race in his Telegram channel.
The Russian Cup final will end on Sunday with freestyle uphill racing. Athletes will start in accordance with their positions in the overall standings of the mini-tour, which is formed on the basis of the three previous results of the stage.