Imagine you are in the best shape of your life, skiing in a World Cup and finding yourself able to hang with the World's best kilometer after kilometer, hill after hill. Then you somehow find the strength and the will to kick it up a notch and start passing Olympic medalists, World Champions, and overall World Cup winners including the guy that won this exact race by a landslide 3 years ago. The overall World Cup leader is barely staying ahead of you. You put on a massive sprint at the end and finish an incredibly close 3.7 seconds behind the winner, good enough for…16th place.
Such was the case for Canadian Devon Kershaw in this morning's 10km+10km pursuit in Falun, Sweden, possibly the most closely-contested World Cup cross country race in history. While massive 10-, 20-, or even 30-skier sprint finishes are becoming more and more common on the World Cup, today's 20km race had the most ridiculously tight finish in recent memory.
You can also view split times at the following link until the sprints begin early Thursday morning: http://www.sportresult.com/sports/htm/cc/cc.htm