Proving once again that he is skiing as fast as ever, veteran Italian sprinter Christian Zorzi won a photo finish sprint to the line against Norwegian Eldar Roenning to give Italy the Gold in today's 6×1.2km team sprint in Sapporo, Japan.
Zorzi and teammate Loris Frasnelli managed to hold off not only Norway's team of Roenning and Tor Arne Hetland, but nearly equally-strong efforts by Germany I (with World Cup overall winner Tobias Angerer and Axel Teichman) who finished only 3.4 seconds behind, and Russians Ivan Alypov and Vassili Rotchev who were less than 1 second behind the Germans. Estonian sprint specialists Anti Saarepuu and Priit Narusk were also close at 7.5 seconds behind Italy.
Canadians Devon Kershaw and George Grey skied very strongly to come in 7th, 13 seconds from first and ahead of Norway's second team consisting of John Kristian Dahl and Trond Iverson, both of whom are often A-final contenders in individual sprint World Cup races. The US team of Andrew Newell and Andrew Johnson, both from Vermont, finished 8th in their semifinal for 16th overall.
The last World Cup event of the year happens tomorrow in Sapporo–a 2x15km pursuit for the men and 2×7.5km for women.
Full results: http://www.fis-ski.com/pdf/2006/CC/2519/2006CC2519RL.pdf