Roller Skiing gold for Di Centa

FasterSkierSeptember 12, 2007

The pursuit race at the FIS Roller Skiing World Championships was held in ideal fall conditions in Oroslavje, Croatia. Start order was based on the prologue race, and the competition was held in the free technique over 18km (men) and 14km (ladies) on an uphill course to Sljeme.

Double Olympic champion Giorgio Di Centa (ITA) added yet another gold medal to his collection. Di Centa easily held the advantage he established in the prologue, taking the win well ahead of Alfio Di Gregorio (ITA) and Sergio Bonaldi (ITA). In the ladies event, Tatiana Yambaeva (RUS) was able to extend her lead over Lada Nesterenko (UKR) to three minutes. Natalia Zernova (RUS) moved up to take the final spot on the podium.

In the junior men's race, the gold and silver went to Norway. Thomas Vestboe skied a great race, and beat teammate Markus Moe by a minute and 47 seconds, and Michele Galassi (ITA) by four minutes. In the junior ladies' event, Ileana Casali (ITA) ran away with gold, and Kateryna Tseselska (UKR) captured the silver.

Sunday's relay races concluded the 2007 FIS Roller Skiing World Championships. In the men's race the Championship title went to the Russian team (Anisimov, Fedulov, Glushkov) which edged the Ukrainian squad (Gumenyak, Leybyuk, Martsyv) by a mere six hundreths of a second. Team Italy (Pession, Paredi, Di Gregorio) completed a stellar week, finishing third.

There were only six teams at the start of the ladies race, and so according to FIS rules, no World Champion title could be awarded. Nevertheless, the race was extremely close. Sweden (Seppas, Hansson, Magnusson) finished first, one tenth of a second ahead of Russia (Zernova, Yambayeva, Firsova).

Source: FIS

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