Bolshunov’s return turned out to be a drama. Victory has slipped from our hands

Alexander Bolshunov’s return to the Russian Cup took place in a race that turned out to be dramatic for many participants. It’s good that this time the titled skier was not involved in this.

But it’s also time for him to complain about failure after a missed victory.

First start after disqualification

Bolshunov missed the first two races of the second stage of the PhosAgro Russian Cup in Tyumen. The scandalous incident in Kirovsk is to blame, where the three-time Olympic champion attacked his sprint rival Alexander Bakurov in the back.

Bolshunov was punished with disqualification for his unworthy behavior. The Russian Ski Racing Federation (FLGR) decided to suspend Alexander until the injured Bakurov returned to duty.

For the 20 km classic mass start, both athletes appeared on the start list.

Alexander Bolshunov and Alexander Bakurov / Photo: © Denis Bushkovsky / Match TV

Drama at the finish line

In mass starts, something interesting rarely happens already in the first kilometers of the distance, but the track in Tyumen posed an impossible task for some athletes. On the first lap, a whole group of skiers failed to cope with the turn. Among the losers were Nikita Rodionov and Evgeny Semyashkin.

At the 4 km mark, Bolshunov took the lead, apparently missing his performances at the Russian Cup, but there were another dozen and a half competitors two seconds behind. But Bakurov completed the top 40, 8.3 seconds behind the leader.

The second and third rounds were routine, no one tried to escape. The slowness of the leaders led to the fact that at the 12 km mark there were 34 athletes in seven seconds. The drama unfolded in the fourth round with Ilya Poroshkin. On one of the climbs, he broke his pole, being in the depths of the leading group. Because of this, they could not give him the entire inventory for a long time.

The first attempt to break away occurred only at the 18th kilometer. Alexey Chervotkin tried to escape before the descent, but the Tyumen athlete’s skis worked worse than those of many of his competitors, so the escape was not successful.

The final showdown turned into a real drama for Ivan Gorbunov. The athlete, who had recovered from a spinal fracture, could have competed for medals, but fell on one of the last turns. At that moment, only Korostelev and Bolshunov were ahead of him.

The fall led to the fact that all pursuers fell behind the two leaders. But the three-time Olympic champion was unable to take advantage of the gift of fate, losing a quarter of a boot to Korostelev in the finishing line. The top three were closed by the leader of the overall standings, Sergei Ardashev.

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— Today was a pretty tough race. I relied on flat areas, expecting that it would be a bit difficult on the climbs. When we crossed the finish line, I was confident of victory. I saw these couple of centimeters. The only thing is, I thought that they could give two first places, but definitely not first for Sasha,” Korostelev said after the finish.

Cross-country skiing competitions are shown live on TV channels of the Match family, as well as on the websites matchtv.ru and sportbox.ru.