The Australian Team from the China Summer Ski Tour has returned home after mixed results in the second sprint at Changbai Mountain. Esther Bottomley finished her tour with 8th place after the final rounds, while the van der Ploeg brothers unfortunately missed out on the finals. For all three it was a great experience with at least some finals action against some of the world's best sprinters.

Bottomley qualified 9th, and easily made it through the first round of heats. In the next round she was unlucky to be in a slow semi-final that saw only two athletes qualify for the final compared to four from the other semi. In the B-final Bottomley won the start and lead for most of the race before being taken in the final straight by Norwegian Ida G Pedersen (one of the twins) to end up 2nd and 8th overall. The A-final was won by Hilde G Pedersen.
 
"In our semi the lowest ranked skier - a Chinese girl - jumped the gun but no false start was called," said Bottomley. "She took the lead then slowed the pace right down. It took a while to overtake her, and by then it was too late. I was just outlunged for 3rd place, but it didn't matter anyway because we both went into the B-final on times."

After a fine 18th and 23rd place in the first race against a tough men's field Mark and Neil van der Ploeg managed just 35th and 36th in the qualification time trial for the second sprint. Conditions were considerably different for the second event, as new sucky snow had fallen overnight and the track was intially a lot slower. The A-final was won by Anders Hogberg from Sweden ahead of Bjorn Lind.

Results and reports are available on the Nordic Ways website. Other Australian cross country skiing news is available from :
www.hoppet.com.au/xc

Courtesy XC Files