Team Ukraine

The FasterSkier countdown continues (and is joined by NordicXplained). Per usual, I like reading about the nations I don’t always follow as closely, like the Ukranians. The distance results for the four skiers mentioned in the FasterSkier article are below:

Roman Leybyuk had a string of strong results between 2002 and 2006, but has been slowly regressing since then. Valentina Shevchenko has been their mainstay for well over a decade, with several WC wins and countless top ten finishes. She too has fallen off slightly the last two seasons, but probably shouldn’t be counted out. Lada Nesterenko I don’t know much about. She’s been very consistently mediocre since 2008. 2007 was an interesting year for her. Her only major international competitions were at World Championships where she racked up a 7th, 17th and 25th in distance events. She did only around 6 other FIS races that year and while she won two of those races, they were Baltic Cups. In the more competitive Scandinavian Cups she was 14th and 25th.