Nipissing’s Cascagnette earns top North American men’s result
The cross-country races at the World University Games kicked off in Italy with continuous pursuit races, combining classic and skate legs in a mass start format. The men raced 15km and the women 10km over the courses of Val Di Fiemme on artificial, trucked in snow. The conditions were relatively stable through the races, with competitive skis for the Canadian team in both classic and skate legs. The team’s best results on the men’s side came from Nipissing’s Jordan Cascagnette, who put in a solid classic leg to start, and fought to hold his position in the skate, fading toward the finish and losing places to German and Swiss skiers.
"The competition here is definitely a lot stiffer than I expected,” Cascagnette said. “I raced a solid race today so I can't be too hard on myself, especially being my first race of the season. I felt really strong in the classic leg, so that's encouraging looking forward to the sprint and the 30km races.”
The men’s race came down to a sprint finish, with a Russian skier coming out on top of the podium, with the top five filled out by deep contingents from Russia, Kazakhstan and Japan.
With this being his second international race experience after the World Junior Championships, Cascagnette was stoic about the results. “57th may not feel like anything to brag about, but I was still the top North American so I can live with that."
The Canadian men filed in with Harry Seaton (Lakehead University) in 59th after being a bit rattled by a broken pole in the start, Mathias Purdon (Trent) making gains in the skate for 67th, followed closely by Peter Beisel and Lee Hawkings (Carleton University) in 68th and 72nd.
The Canadian women were led by Andrea Lee (University of New Mexico) who squeaked in a top 50 result with a 49th place. After a flagging leg in the classic leg Lee pulled it together for a punchy performance in the skate that moved her up through the pack. She was followed by Kendra Lee (Carleton University) in 52nd who skied with tidy, relaxed classic technique, holding on for the skate, 6.3 seconds ahead of Myriam Paquette (Université Laval) in 53rd, who was 33.4 seconds up on teammate Camille Pepin (Laval) in 56th. The women’s podium went Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Finland, with a strong team put together by the Kazakh program to round out the top five places.
Live TV coverage of the events is available here: http://www.livefisu.tv/schedule