A surprise guest at the Cross-Country Skiing World Cup in Les Rousses (France), Antoine Cyr concluded Saturday’s classic sprint at 22e rank after being eliminated in the quarter-final round. This is his second best result this season in the sprint after his sixth place at the fifth stage of the Tour de Ski, on January 6, in Val di Fiemme.
Frenchman Richard Jouve delighted the crowd as he won the final ahead of Norwegian and yellow jersey holder (World Cup standings leader) Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo by just 9 hundredths of a second. Paal Goldberg (+0.91s), also from Norway, joined them on the podium.
The best Canadian cross-country skiers were not to be present at the World Cups contested before the World Championships, except that when the Les Rousses stage was confirmed on the calendar, Cyr organized himself to be there since he was already in Europe, unlike the majority of his teammates.
“The stage was not supposed to be staged due to the lack of snow, but in the last week they had a snowfall and cold temperatures, so they were able to do a pretty impressive track. Hats off to the whole organization! recognized the only Canadian representative present in the Jura.
The Quebecer was the 21e faster in qualifying where he felt in “super good shape”.
“Qualifying is always a little more complicated for me, so I was happy this morning. […] (In the quarter-finals), I positioned myself really well at the start and I led the wave for a good while. Then, I made a technical error and was overtaken on the descent, because I didn’t have the skis to compete with my rivals (due to a bad choice of skis). »
The 24-year-old athlete will be back on track Sunday in the classic 20 kilometer mass start.
“I have high expectations and we’ll see how it goes. If it goes well, so much the better and I will continue in this momentum and if there are things to correct, I will take out my notepad and make the corrections to the training plan. The course suits me well and I can’t wait to see! »