February 27, 2009 (Harbin, China) – All the competitions ended today in Yabuli and the delegations are already busy with their departure. This will mark the end of their fantastic “Chinese experience”. All the athletes and organisers felt a bit sad this morning.
But anyway, the show must go on, and we had a fantastic final on the cross country stadium. Indeed, during the mass start 30 km classic men’s event, we could see a big battle between three Russian skiers: Artem Zhmuro, Ilya Mashkov and Egor Sorin, one from the Czech Republic: Petr Novak and Yoshida Keishin from Japan. Artem, Petr and Ilya were fighting till the last meters after 4 laps of 7.5km! Finally, Petr managed to cross the finish line between Artem and Ilya. It’s another double for Russia and a superb result for Petr Novak.

During the women’s 15km classic mass start Russia was, like always, the strongest team. With four skiers at the top, we could say that the Russian team gained the result of a very fruitful preparation for this particular event. All the skiers were very happy with the organization.

Kazuhiro Kokubo reaches the sky
Who else than the Japanese star Kazuhiro Kokubo could win the last snowboard event of the Universiade program, the so called Big Air. We have already said everything about this rider when he won the title two days ago in the half pipe competition. But do not think that Kazuhiro had only to show up to clinch the gold. The battle for the podium has been quite tough between six riders. Under the eyes of his very attentive Team Leader who is also his father; the young Finnish Pekka Ruokanen took the silver in front of the Russian Dmitry Mindrul.

Who else than the Russians?
You can leave the two sprint gold medals, Nadezha Chastina and Artem Gusev out of the very attractive 2×6/2×7,5 relay, you can make 8 shooting mistakes and still leave your closer opponent 2minutes and eleven seconds behind when your team is called Russia. But do not think it was only a health walk for the Russian team. After the two first female relays, Russia (Anna Kunaeva, Irina Maximova) was only second behind the two Polish girls. But the two Russian men (Sergey Balandin, Alexey Trusov) made the difference. It looks also that Mixed relay is a French specialty: one week ago in Korea France was World champion. Here in Maoershan, with their silver medal Anais Bescond, Laure Bosc, Yann Guigonnet and Remy Borgeot have shown than they were nearly as competitive as their country fellow men in Korea. Ukraine with Lyudmyla Zhyber, Valentyna Shestak, Anton Yunak and Oleksandr Kolos have thought until the last relay that the silver medal was dedicated to them. But the disastrous shooting of Kolos left them finally with the bronze.

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