Savely Korostelev’s fifth place an hour earlier in the time trial race at the World Cup in Oberhof gave every reason to talk about the seriousness of the Russian’s intentions to fight for medals at the Olympics. Then it was up to another of our skiers, who would go to Italy. Daria Nepryaeva was preparing to run her 10 km classic, and I wanted to believe that she, too, would be able to show a decent result.

An attempt to repeat Korostelev’s success

Nepryaeva looked a little more modest than Korostelev at the last Tour de Ski, although her dash up the final mountain was impressive. If she had started lifting a little earlier, she probably could have reached the medal. One way or another, Daria was clearly improving, so her place in the top 10 in the overall standings of the stage race did not look anything sensational.

Like Korostelev, Nepryaeva missed the sprint race the day before. So the Russian woman had enough strength to pull herself together and produce something interesting in the time trial. Not all the leaders of world skiing made it to Germany a couple of weeks before the start of the Olympics, but in any case, the composition of the participants was very strong. Nepryaeva received the 36th starting number, a minute earlier the Swede Maya Dahlqvist was supposed to start, and two minutes later – the formidable Finnish Krista Parmakoski.

In the 50s, the Austrian Therese Stadlober, as well as the World Cup leader and Tour de Ski winner Jessica Diggins, certainly attracted attention. The American, unlike Johannes Klebo, did not skip the stage in Germany in order to prepare for the Olympics. Apparently, it is important for her to win the overall classification in her last season in her career.

Daria Nepryaeva / Photo: © Grega Valancic/VOIGT / Contributor / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

There was hope, but the ending was blurry

Nepryaeva showed the eighth intermediate time at the moment of passing the first cutoff, losing 6.5 seconds to the leader at that time, the Norwegian Margrethe Bergane. At the following marks, another young representative of Norway, Caroline Grotting, took first place. In general, not all strong and experienced skiers from this country came to Oberhof, but their replacements were very good in the first part of the race. At the 2.6 km cut-off, Nepryaeva improved and made it to intermediate third place, losing only 6 seconds to Grotting.

Nevertheless, it was too early to rejoice, because there were still many strong competitors running behind, including Jessica Diggins. Unfortunately, already at the 4 km mark, Daria rolled back and lost 15 seconds to the same Grotting. At this point I was already worried about the Russian, because such a strong drop in speed could ruin the whole race. Exactly halfway through the race, Nepryaeva began to close the gap again, so there was clearly no need to panic in advance.

Meanwhile, Swedes Ilar and Sundling broke into the intermediate top 3. In general, everything changed instantly and literally every minute, so it was difficult to make even approximate forecasts. At some point, it seemed that Nepryaeva could easily repeat Korostelev’s success and finish in the top 5, but at the 7.6 km cutoff, the Russian woman began to have serious problems. Either fatigue was taking its toll, or the skis weren’t working in the best way, but Daria rolled back to the end of the top ten with a lag of 20 seconds.

The dynamics were negative, so it was naive to expect that the Russian would be able to improve in the end. Unfortunately, Nepryaeva failed to get into the top 10, although she was in the top ten at almost all intermediate cutoffs. Daria ended up finishing 16th with a gap of almost one minute – overall not the most outstanding result, but at the same time not completely disastrous. You just always want more, especially considering how promising the Russian looked in the first part of the race. And the victory was won by the Swede Moa Ilar, who was only 0.7 seconds ahead of the Austrian Teresa Stadlober.