February 14, 2006 – Beckie Scott gets to stand on the podium with her real Olympic medal today, along with teammate Sara Renner, but it was a day of bad breaks as a busted pole may have robbed the Canadians of gold and the men’s team missed the final despite having a faster qualifying time than the winner of the other semifinal!

Women’s Semifinal
Canada changed their relay strategy today from previous competitions with Renner leading off in the Team Sprint competition and Scott skiing the second leg. Renner got Canada off to a good start in the first semifinal quickly taking the lead and skiing strongly in a lead group with Italy, Finland and Japan. On the second lap the lead group stayed together with Renner and Saarinen from Finland making a break on lap 3. On the 4th and 5th laps Finland and Canada extended their lead and on the last lap both teams cruised to the finish, qualifying comfortably, 16 seconds ahead of Japan and Italy.

In semifinal 2 Norway took the lead on the 4th lap with Russia the only team managing to retain some contact. Sweden and Germany skied together and kept a significant gap over the rest of the field on the final lap, to qualify comfortably.

Men’s Semifinal
Semifinal 1 saw a pack of seven together in the lead for most of the race, with Sweden stretching out a bit of a lead on the last lap to finish first, followed by the Czechs, Slovaks and Finns.

Semifinal 2 had a large pack of 7 fighting it out for most of the race as Devon Kershaw led off with a great start, and George Grey maintaining the pace in a heat that saw more aggresive action than semifinal 1. Canada was in the top group most of the way placing as high as 4th on the final exchange but slipping to 6th and missing the 5th place qualifying position over the final lap.

It was another excellent but very unfortunate result for the young Canadian team who ended up in such a strong heat, as their race time was actually faster than the winning time in the other semifinal!

Sweden, Norway and Russia took the medals in the men’s final sprint.

Womens Final
The Women’s final boiled down to a 4 way race between Canada, Sweden, Finland and Norway. Canada traded the lead for most of the first 3 laps until on the final uphill on the 3rd lap Renner’s pole broke, leaving her without a pole for about 50 metres of the hill. She still managed to ski quite strongly coming into the exchange about 2 seconds back from the top 3 and handing off for Scotts’s second lap. Scott put forth an extraordinary effort to first catch the top group and then at the end take the lead just before the exchange.

Renner looked fully recovered from her mishap on the second leg and skied strongly through the lap and coming into the final exchange tied with Finland for first.

On the final lap it was down to a fight to the finish between Sweden, Canada and Finland, with Sweden entering the stadium just slightly in front of Scott and Finland just behind. In the final sprint Lina Andersson just edged Beckie Scott out over the final sprint, as Scott added a silver to her Olympic medal collection and Finland finished third.

It was a great day for Canada, and a chance for 2 Canadians to share the Olympic spotlight and get their rightful Olympic medals on the day of the race. We will never know what effect the loss of the pole may have had on the final result but nonetheless it was an excellent result and one that bodes well for continuing success at the nordic trails in Pragelato.

Women’s Team Sprint

1 SWE DAHLBERG Anna 16:36.9
ANDERSSON Lina

2 CAN RENNER Sara 16:37.5
SCOTT Beckie

3 FIN SAARINEN Aino Kaisa 16:39.2
KUITUNEN Virpi

4 NOR GJOMLE Ella 16:48.1
BJORGEN Marit

5 GER SACHENBACHER STEHLE Evi 17:03.5
BAUER Viola

6 RUS MOSKALENKO-ROTCHEVA Olga 17:08.5
SIDKO Alena

7 ITA FOLLIS Arianna 17:24.8
PARUZZI Gabriella

8 JPN NATSUMI Madoka 17:27.6
FUKUDA Nobuko

9 KAZ JATSKAJA Oxana 17:42.8
KOLOMINA Elena

10 USA WAGNER Wendy Kay 18:04.9
RANDALL Kikkan


Men’s Team Sprint

1 SWE FREDRIKSSON Thobias 17:02.9
LIND Bjoern

2 NOR SVARTEDAL Jens Arne 17:03.5
HETLAND Tor Arne

3 RUS ALYPOV Ivan 17:05.2
ROTCHEV Vassili

4 GER FILBRICH Jens 17:14.0
SCHLUETTER Andreas

5 FIN KURTTILA Keijo 17:21.5
PYYKONEN Lauri

6 KAZ CHEBOTKO Nikolay 17:25.1
KOSCHEVOY Yevgeniy

7 POL KRECZMER Maciej 17:26.3
KREZELOK Janusz

8 SVK BAJCICAK Martin 17:30.9
BATORY Ivan

9 ITA SCHWIENBACHER Freddy 17:31.3
di CENTA Giorgio

10 CZE KOZISEK Dusan 17:49.6
KOUKAL Martin


Complete Results: www.torino2006.org/ENG/IDF/CC/X05_20060214.html