GBS Results Round-Up: Cross-Country team excel in Lillehammer

Superb skiing in Lillehammer on a weekend of weather impacts in Sweden, and high-octane action in Beijing

Musgrave and Davies to the fore in high-grade Cross-Country showing

The British Cross-Country team, racing as part of Team AkerDaehlie, laid down a marker at the Lillehammer World Cup with a slew of excellent performances across the weekend’s competitions.

The best results of the weekend came on the final day’s racing, where Andrew Musgrave raced to a brilliant sixth place in the 10km/10km Classic/Free Skiathlon, with Joe Davies managing a new career-best finish in 15th spot, and Andrew Young making it three top-30 results with a 30th place finish. Amid a highly-competitive race, Musgrave led with just over 2.5km to go, before being reeled in but securing his first top-10 finish of the World Cup season, hot on the heels of an 11th place finish in the earlier 10km F races.

In the same 10km F race, Davies had matched his previous best World Cup finish with an excellent 16th place, while Young took 43rd and Gabriel Gledhill came in in 51st.

The weekend’s Sprint races saw James Clugnet take 42nd in the Sprint F, with Andrew Young in 46th, and Gledhill in 82nd.

Secret Garden Halfpipe action sees signs for encouragement

Zoe Atkin, Liam Richards, and Siddhartha Ullah all showed encouraging signs at the Secret Garden Halfpipe World Cup, with Atkin’s seventh place the pick of the results.

Qualifying for the Women’s Freeski Finals in 3rd, Atkin pushed outside of her established routine’s comfort zone, and was close to landing a superb run that would’ve challenged the higher medal positions in Finals, but fell marginally short to leave her in a still impressive seventh spot.

In the Men’s Freeski competition, Liam Richards skied brilliantly in only his second World Cup since transferring to the British system over the summer, just missing out on Finals and showing much of the rich promise that has marked him out as one of the sport’s most exciting young athletes to watch.

Meanwhile in the Men’s Freestyle Snowboard competition, Siddhartha Ullah finished in 34th spot in only his seventh World Cup start.

Weather interrupts Moguls programme in Idre Fjall

Having seen relatively few weather disruptions to the early part of the season’s calendar, the Idre Fjall Dual Moguls competition fell victim to heavy fog on the Swedish slopes, leaving the weekend shorn of the latter half of its competition schedule.

In the individual Moguls events, Cali Carr took 26th and Mateo Jeannesson 34th, with the team now entering a period away from competition after the Alpe d’Huez World Cup which had been planned for the coming weekend was called off having failed snow control procedures.