And the star team of the Tyumen region in the relay disappointed.
Relay competitions at the Russian cross-country skiing championship are perhaps the only kind in which there are no pronounced favorites. In both women and men, several regions claim to win at once.
In addition to the team intrigue, personal confrontations aroused great interest in the men’s race: the battle of the classists Vokueva And Bolshunova and sprint duel Zealous And Terentiev.
The three-time Olympic champion put on an incredible race, but his teammates mightn’t back him up. And Vokuev, finally, became the champion of Russia in Syktyvkar.
Hidden Favorite
Under the first number, the race was taken by the Tyumen region. Of the 21 teams, fans might, if they wanted to, define this region as a shadow favorite, because in their composition all skiers have good achievements in the international arena within the national team: Zealous, Belov, Spitsov and Yakimushkin.
Among other teams, regions with obvious leaders in the composition stood out, which might provide important breaks in their stages, allowing them to fight for the podium. First of all, we are talking regarding the teams of Komi (Semikov, Vokuev, Poroshkin, Vitsenko) and the Arkhangelsk region (Terentyev, Bolshunov, Shemyakin, Goroshnikov)
Hypothetically, the intrigue was formed like this: the strongest classists Bolshunov and Vokuev might make a gap for their teams, which would allow them to keep the lead until the finish line. If this does not happen, then the chances of Tyumen with strong third and fourth stages (Spitsov and Yakimushkin) look better.
Fantastic Bolshunov
During the first stage, a group of leaders was expectedly formed: Semikov, Terentiev and Feller. Ilya, who specializes in distance racing, managed to escape on the penultimate rise to a breakaway, and sprinter Alexander Terentyev might not support him. Experienced Andrey Feller from the Tatarstan team caught on to the leader and passed the baton to the second position with a small margin.
Vokuev left for the next stage with an advantage of 20 seconds over Bolshunov, who occupied an intermediate third place. Our Olympic champion quickly caught up with Andrei Larkov and gradually reduced the gap from Ermil. But it seemed that the marathon runner was not putting all his energy into maintaining the advantage and was preparing to hack Alexander on the second lap.
However, these assumptions were shattered by Bolshunov’s fantastic acceleration following the first lap. Even at the stadium, he raised the pace so much that Larkov and Vokuev immediately fell behind. By the transfer of the stage, Bolshunov created an advantage of 32 seconds over his pursuers. The powerful move of our leader became the decoration of the relay race.
The Tyumen team found itself in an extremely difficult situation. Belov passed the baton to Spitsov with a delay of almost two minutes.
Embarrassing defeat
The third stage of the relay race was marked by the pursuit of Alexei Shemyakin from the team of the Arkhangelsk region. The pursuers in the person of Poroshkin (Komi) and Nikolaev (Tatarstan) reduced Shemyakin’s advantage to 25 seconds by the end of the first round, and by the time the baton was passed, it was completely leveled. Shemyakin might not keep the groundwork created by Bolshunov.
At the final stage, Alexey Vitsenko (Komi) stood out from the top three. His rivals Dmitry Goroshnikov (Arkhangelsk) and Yaroslav Rybochkin (Tatarstan) are less famous, so they might hardly have imposed a serious fight. Moreover, the Tyumen team broke into fourth place, where Spitsov played for half a minute and passed the baton to Yakimushkin with the potential to level the gap from third place.
Unfortunately for Alexander Bolshunov, his heroic stage did not ensure victory for the team. Vitsenko fully realized his potential and brought Komi victory. Goroshnikov did not keep the silver and became the third with the Arkhangelsk team. Rybochkin brought Tatarstan the second place.