March 18, 2010 (Whistler, BC) – The McKeever brothers did it again claiming their second gold medal, this time classic skiing on a fast, icy 10km course with a time of 26:01:6. Norwegian competitor Heig Flo took home the silver at 1:38:6 minutes behind, while Russian team member Nikolay Polukhin was the bronze medalist at 1:41:7 minutes back. Eastern European athletes once again dominated overall as Belarus skier Vasili Shaptsiaboi placed fourth while the Ukraine’s Oleg Munts was fifth.

Despite his decisive victory McKeever was somewhat critical of his race. “Classic may be my event, but 10km is definitely not. Robin left me behind many times. It was fast conditions today, but we are used to it. We train in Canmore so we like this a lot and we’re comfortable in these conditions. We were listening for split times from the other competitors and trying to react to that. You never feel unbeatable. There’s too many top competitors out here. So if you have an off day, you can get beaten.”

Both McKeevers said not competing in biathlon yesterday definitely worked to their advantage. “We wanted to make sure we focused on our best events. It’s important to get the wins where we can,” said Robin. He added that, “the Paralympics are so different from anything else. It’s bigger and better. If we’d put a perfect race together today we might have been 30 seconds faster, but it wasn’t a perfect race.”

Alexei Novikov, Canada’s other entry was 14th, 9:20:3 minutes behind McKeever. There were no Americans competing.

Full results here.