Otepaa, Estonia – Lukas Bauer (CZE) demonstrated that he is in good form heading to World Championships, wining the men’s 15km classic World Cup race in Estonia. Bauer, last year’s overall World Cup Champion and Tour de Ski winner, edged Swede Johan Olsson by 1.5 seconds. Veteran Vincent Vittoz (FRA) rounded out the podium, +9.3 seconds.
This was Bauer’s first victory of the season, bettering his second place performance in Kuusamo, Finland at the end of November. Bauer was unable to defend his Tour de Ski title, battling illness, and placing 11th. He has told the press on several occasions that his big focus this year is the upcoming World Championships in his home country.
“My main goal for this season is the World Championships in Liberec, and this is much more important than a single World Cup race. It is good to see that a month before the Championships everything looks OK. Before traveling to Otepää I had only four days of training as I was resting after the Tour de Ski.”
Olsson skied to his second podium of the year. He won the last distance World Cup race before Christmas in Davos. He had not raced a World Cup since.
“I’m very satisfied, because this track in Otepää is very hard and I felt a little bit unsure before the race. I have trained in Sweden and had a long Christmas break, so now I had to do a sort of bread and water diet before Otepää. As you see, it went well. No Russian races for me, because we have the Swedish championships race at the next weekend. Then the last World Cup race before the World Championships in Italy and I hope very much to be a medal contender in Liberec as well.”