Despite winning a bronze medal and earning two fourth-place finishes, Canadian national cross-country ski coach Justin Wadsworth said the team wanted more at the Nordic Ski world championships in Val Di Fiemme, Italy.
Illness, slow skis and near misses limited the Canadians to one medal, one shy of their goal.
“It’s nice to be in a place where a third and two fourth-place finishes are considered not good enough, but that’s where we are, and that’s why we came out of these championships a bit disappointed,” Wadsworth said.
The team has had several medal performances this year, but had targeted world championships as one of the premier events, along with the Tour de Ski and World Cup stops in Quebec and Canmore.
“For all that’s happened to us this year, I would say that the world championships were a mild success. For sure, on a normal/healthy year, we’d expect a lot more, but we’ve been thrown a lot of curve balls this year and I think coming out with a third and two fourths isn’t bad. We had set a goal of two medals, but came up about .01 seconds or six inches shy of this.”
The curve balls included an early hand injury to Len Valjas, Devon Kershaw’s early ankle injury and Chandra Crawford’s decision to end her season early in order to focus on the Olympics in 2014. Valjas has bounced back to join the top 10 sprinting ranks, while Kershaw was hit with food poisoning on three separate occasions during his time in Europe.
Defending team sprint champs, the Canadians finished fourth as Kershaw and Harvey were narrowly edged off the podium by a Kazakhstan team. In a photo finish, Harvey fell .03 seconds short of the podium, while Kershaw had to ski a section of the course without a pole.
The team sprint appeared to be Canada’s best chance at a medal as Harvey, Kershaw, Ivan Babikov and Valjas represented the nation’s deepest team ever, however, the team finished a distant 12th.
“Devon continued to struggle with his body, which put us out of contention, but we’re sure as a team we can be in the hunt for medals next year,” Wadsworth said.
The individual sprints produced the only hardware for the team, but the coach was unhappy with the rest of the day.
“Our sprint day was a disaster with the exception of Alex, who barefy qualified but went on to win bronze. That day we had a mix of bad bodies and slowish classic skis, which really put us in a bad spot,” Wadsworth said.
Although he didn’t reach the podium, Babikov’s fourth-place in the 15 km skate was a highlight for the team.
“(It’s) really showed that his commitment and effort in training paid off,” Wadsworth said.
