Results 10km/15km Mass start
Another day, another race – BLINK Festivalen kept the participants on their race feet. With the mass start competitions, a special format awaited the racers. The town center of Sadnes set the stage with a 1.1km course which made the women take 9 and the men 13 laps.
The women’s 10km start line was ready with international competition. Along with the line up of Scandinavian skiers, Victoria Carl represented Germany and joined the skiers from the Italian delegation that arrived under the lead of expert coach Markus Cramer. Also France had traveled with four female athletes to the event as well as Slovenian’s Sprint expert Eva Urevc, Katerina Janatova from Czechia. Nadine Fähndrich from Switzerland was signed up again as well and with Qinghua Ma, also a Chinese National Team athlete was present.
Despite the format keeping the group together for a long time, it was again Linn Sömskar who put the hammer down and showed the competitor field what excellent Rollerski athlete she is. With Carl and Urevc on her heels, she claims the victory by 0.7 seconds.
The men’s competition held a qualification round and gave out “wildcards” to limit the field to 35 total skiers for the actual mass start race.
With the short loop, the competitor field had to play the cards right to risk breaking away. Therefore, the group remained in position round after round and out of 35 skiers, 27 arrived within 10 seconds off the fastest time. That time was set by Arnaud Chautemps from France, a great surprise of the day, as he had top Sprinters such as Federico Pellegrino (ITA, 2nd), Renaud Jay (FRA, 3rd) and Lucas Chanavat (FRA, 5th) and the local Sprint stars Håvard Solås Taugbøl as well as Sindre Bjørnestad Skar on his heels.
With two fantastic race days ahead, unfortunately Andrew Musgrave got tangled in a fence at the final stretch and was taken out of competition right away.
