Two Andrews Enjoy a Successful weekend at Beitostolen
British Cross Country Ski Team members Andrew Musgrave and Andrew Young were both in action on the weekend of 3rd/4th December in Norway.
This year's snow drought in Norway forced the relocation of the annual "BUL Sprint", normally held at Gaalaa, to Beitostolen. Traditionally the weekend consists of sprint races on the Saturday and a mass start on Sunday but this year an extra 15km freestyle time trial was held on Friday (for seniors only) to compensate for the lack of Norwegian ranking races at the start of this season. Britain's Andrew Musgrave produced an impressive performance in the time trial to finish fourth, missing out on third place by 1 second and scoring his second best ever FIS points for a distance event. The race was won by Norwegian national team member, Martin Johnsrud Sundby. Evidently pleased with his performance but acknowledging there is room for improvement Andrew said after the race, "Friday's 15km skate was a good race for me. I opened with a fairly even pace and managed to increase my speed throughout the race. After 10km I was leading but I pushed a bit too hard after that and faded a little in the last few kilometers."
Saturday saw Huntly's Andrew Young come to the fore. Young, competing in the Junior Men's category of the freestyle sprint prologue, qualified in 4th place for his heats. While Andrew Musgrave was knocked out in the quarter-finals of the senior event, Andrew Young seemed to spark into life in the quarters, qualifying for the semi-final as the fastest loser, took second place in the semis and then 3rd place in the final. In that final he dropped back from 1st to 4th place before fighting back to his podium position. After the race he said "This was my first race of the season so the prologue had a sort of 'dusting off the cobwebs' feeling. I didn't feel great in the quarter-final either and went through as a 'lucky-loser'. The semi-final was my best race of the day. I felt a lot better, had great skis and skied a good race tactically. It was fun to go in the final, my first one for 2 seasons. I skied pretty well and felt good. I had a bad position on the final climb so had to work really hard into the stadium to take 3rd. Overall I'm happy but there is stuff to work on and I look forward to the next sprint race."
The Junior Men's 15km classic was the last race of the day and Andrew Young went out hoping to follow up on his success in the sprints on Saturday. Finishing in 5th place (out of 65 starters) seemed pretty good to most people but obviously he had expected more, commenting afterwards "It was an ok race. It was quite hard - the first lap went well then I had a big section in the middle where I wasn't so great before a good final few kilometres. Fifth was ok and I got some good training from racing this weekend and I'm in a good position for this time of the season".
Speaking after the weekends racing Per Nymoen, head of the Nordic section of Norway's Ski Association, commented, "Britain is going to have the world's best relay team in a couple of years" after he watched the two Andrews' sprint performances - perhaps with his tongue just a little in his cheek!
British Ski and Snowboard would like to congratulate the two Andrew's and wish them all the best for the season ahead.
