February 09, 2014 (Krasnaya Polyana, Russia) – Canadian star Alex Harvey was stymied in his bid for an Olympic podium, and deliver Canada’s first-ever men’s Olympic medal, despite coming off some great World Cup races and feeling in the “best shape of his life”. Slow skis during the Classic leg of the men’s 30km Skiathlon, resulting from the choice of cold wax selection that proved to be the wrong decision as things warmed up earlier than expected, put Harvey in 26th at the exchange and he missed the all-important 17-skier break that contained the final podium. Sportcom caught up with him and his coach post race for their comments…original article in French here.

(Sportcom) – Canada’s Alex Harvey had some bad luck placing 18th in the 15kmCL+15kmFR Skiathlon today at the Sochi 2014 Olympics crossing the finish line 1 minute and 44.8 seconds behind the 17-strong lead group that formed shortly after the half way point of the race.

Harvey tries to make up ground during the skate leg © Nordic Focus

Harvey was among the leaders at the beginning of the classic leg but slowly fell back and lost contact with the front group near the 10km mark and was 47.6 seconds behind at the halfway exchange.

He quickly realized that it would be difficult to be in the game because of his skis. “It was game over after the second lap. I had no grip at all and I was not fast either. I lost 45 seconds in the classic section and was pushing 100% , while the guys in front were only pushing 75 or 80% of capacity,” explained the St. Ferreol-les-Neiges skier. “In skiing it happens often. We always hope that it will not happen to us, but today it happened.”

According to his coach Louis Bouchard, “The waxers chose a harder wax. In the first lap, everything was under control. Then we felt the heat coming and saw the snow change. We could see he was pushing harder with his body.”

Harvey tried to make up lost ground in the skate portion moving up from 26th to 20th reducing the gap to 32.1 seconds. Bouchard noted that it was a good sign gaining 15 seconds and better placement.

“I wanted to see how I felt in skating with better skis that were equal with the others. It was really good and I dropped the group I was skiing with and caught up with the next group ahead of me.”

But the gap was still too much and Harvey eased up in the last kilometers to conserve his energy for the freestyle sprint on Tuesday. “On the last lap, there was no one in front so it made no sense to push it and I eased up to conserve strength,” he concluded. Ivan Babikov finished 25th and Graeme Killick was 45th in today’s Skiathlon.

Harvey will race the Freestyle Sprint taking place on Feb. 11 and will be joined by teammates Devon Kershaw, Lenny Valjas and Jess Cockney. Kershaw preferred not to race today’s Skiathlon preferring to focus on the upcoming sprint. The Ontarian Devon Kershaw for his part, is silent on the race, preferring to focus on the sprint , to be played freestyle .

Dario Cologna (SUI) won the gold over Marcus Hellner (SWE) in second with Norwegian Martin Johnsrud Sundby in third. Crowd favourite, Russian Alexander Legkov had bad luck on the final climb breaking a pole and finished 11th at 27.7 seconds behind Cologna.

Full results here.