February 19, 2006 (Pragelato, Italy) – It was a warm and snowy day in Pragelato as Devon Kershaw got Canadian blood pounding as he led the pack through the first leg of today’s 4x10K relay handing off to Sean Crooks from Thunder Bay. In his Olympic debut, Crooks battled hard against a strong field but faded to 14th on the second leg.

A race within a race was taking place as Chris Jeffries took off on the first skating leg about 1:10 back of Kazakhstan, 50 seconds down to the US and 15 seconds back of Ukraine. Jeffries had an excellent leg passing the Ukraine and pulling Canada within 10 seconds of the US and just over 70 seconds back of the Kazaks.

It was George Grey skiing the anchor leg against the USA’s Carl Swenson, and Grey quickly closed the gap before hunting down and catching Kazakhstan for an 11th place finish. The result was an improvement on last years 13th placing.

The home country fans had a lot to cheer about as halfway through the race Pietro Piller-Cottrer put the hammer down on the rest of the teams taking an insurmountable break, handing off to Zorro (sprint specialist Christian Zorzi) who skied for victory with a comfortable margin. The race for silver and bronze was between Tobias and Mathias, with Germany’s Tobias Angerer out sprinting Mathias Fredriksson for 2nd.

Norway struggled, finishing in 5th place. Austria, of recent antidoping notoriety, were lapped and removed from the race, finishing last.

Final results were delayed as there was a protest that at one point Sweden skied the wrong lane in the stadium and didn’t re-enter the course, at the point from which they left. This is a similar situation to the one which resulted in Beckie Scott’s disqualification earlier in the week . The protest had been reportedly launched by the French team that made a similar mistake in the relay but retraced their steps. This development would have moved France to the bronze medal position, after benefitting from an excellent anchor leg by Vincent Vittoz.

With Kershaw’s performance in the relay, he showed that he has regained his form after a roller ski injury derailed his early season training schedule. The signs are promising that Wednesday’s sprints could see some more strong results from both Canada’s men’s and women’s teams.

Results

1 ITA – Italy 1:43:46
VALBUSA Fulvio
di CENTA Giorgio
PILLER COTTRER Pietro
ZORZI Cristian

2 GER – Germany 1:44:01
SCHLUETTER Andreas
FILBRICH Jens
SOMMERFELDT Rene
ANGERER Tobias

3 SWE – Sweden 1:44:02
LARSSON Mats
OLSSON Johan
SOEDERGREN Anders
FREDRIKSSON Mathias

4 FRA – France 1:44:23
PERRILLAT Christophe
ROUSSELET Alexandre
JONNIER Emmanuel
VITTOZ Vincent

5 NOR – Norway 1:44:56
SVARTEDAL Jens Arne
HJELMESET Odd Bjorn
ESTIL Frode
HOFSTAD Tore Ruud

6 RUS – Russian Federation 1:45:10
NOVIKOV Serguei
ROTCHEV Vassili
ALYPOV Ivan
DEMENTIEV Eugeni

7 SUI – Switzerland 1:45:11
BURGERMEISTER Reto
STEBLER Christian
LIVERS Toni
FISCHER Remo

8 EST – Estonia 1:45:24
REHEMAA Aivar
VEERPALU Andrus
MAE Jaak
KOKK Kaspar

9 CZE – Czech Republic 1:46:03
KOUKAL Martin
BAUER Lukas
MAGAL Jiri
KOZISEK Dusan

10 FIN – Finland 1:46:36
JAUHOJARVI Sami
SIMILAE Tero
OHTONEN Olli
KATTILAKOSKI Teemu

11 CAN – Canada 1:48:16
KERSHAW Devon
CROOKS Sean
JEFFRIES Chris
GREY George

12 USA – United States of America 1:48:44
FREEMAN Kris
FLORA Lars
JOHNSON Andrew
SWENSON Carl

13 KAZ – Kazakhstan 1:49:04
GOLOVKO Andrey
EREMENKO Dmitrij
ODNODVORTSEV Maxim
KOSCHEVOY Yevgeniy

14 UKR – Ukraine 1:50:02
LEYBYUK Roman
OLSCHANSKI Vladimir
PUTSKO Olexandr
GUMENYAK Mikhail

15 CHN – People’s Republic of China 1:50:40
XIA Wan
LI Geliang
ZHANG Chengye
ZHANG Qiung

16 AUT – Austria LAP
TAUBER Martin
PINTER Juergen
DIETHART Roland
EDER Johannes