January 23, 2004 – During his first World Cup season, Canada's Jason Myslicki recorded his second-best career finish, at a Gundersen event in Nayoro, Japan.

Myslicki, 26, from Thunder Bay, Ont., had a jump total of 203.0 points from the K90 tower, that put him in 30th spot to start the 15 kilometre cross-country ski event. He ended the day in 36th place, after finishing four laps of the course in just over 43 minutes.

“Although the racing at this level is that much harder, today's cross-country race was an improvement, and both the coaches and myself were excited with how it went,” said Myslicki, who travels with athletes and coaches from the US Ski Team. “I need to fix my timing on the take-off and I believe that will make a big difference and put me in the hunt for a better result in Sapporo.”

Today's Gundersen event had one of the closest finishes of the season. The world's four top-ranked athletes posted dominating results, with just over three seconds separating their times, and over one minute ahead of the fifth-place skier.

Samppa Lajunen, of Finland, was the gold medal winner today, in a time of 39:14.8. He had to fight off Germany's Sebastian Haseney, who crossed the line just one second back to claim the silver medal. Finland's Hannu Manninen posted the fastest cross-country time of the day to clinch third place, only 1.8 seconds off the lead.

Canada's Myslicki will travel to Sapporo, Japan, for the next two World Cup nordic combined events, January 25 and 27, 2004.