Trondheim trio on top as Klaebo claims back-to-back wins and Musgrave makes history
Dec 16, 2023·Cross-Country
On Friday, Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo won the men's sprint at the Coop FIS Cross-Country World Cup in his hometown Trondheim, Norway.
In the men's 20km skiathlon classic/free on Saturday, the cross-country superstar claimed his first distance win of the season with a strong finish, showing that he is back in the shape that has made him the overall World Cup champion four times.
Great Britain's Andrew Musgrave grabbed a career-best second-place as Didrik Toenseth finished third.
"That was amazing. I had really good skis today and she shape is just getting better and better. It was amazing to race here today," Klaebo said.
The win on home snow gives an extra boost of confidence for the 27-year-old, whose family moved from Oslo to Trondheim when he was five. The Granaasen skiing centre is where he is hoping for a medal haul at next season's FIS Nordic World Ski Championships.
"Skiathlon is always tough and especially today. I feel like Granaasen has some really tough courses," Klaebo said.
"Before the race, everyone was a little bit afraid that it wasn't going to be hard enough. I think everyone now is pretty tired."
Klaebo was part of a group of five skiers who broke away to fight for the podium positions with 4km left of the race. He did not make a move to take the lead until the last kilometre. Coming into the home straight the Norwegian made a push and quickly got a gap of several metres back to his competitors, allowing himself to raise an arm to celebrate his second win this weekend before cruising across the finish line.
It was the first time since 2017 that Klaebo won a World Cup skiathlon race and he was relieved that despite mild conditions in Trondheim, the rain many had feared before the race never came.
"I think we have been really lucky. No rain, really good conditions and now the spectators will head home and they avoided the rain," Klaebo said.
Remarkably, all three podium finishers live and train in Trondheim, including Musgrave, who equalled Great Britain's best cross-country result in a spectacular way.
The Brit led the race after eight kilometres but made a mistake in the switch between classic and freestyle skis at the 10km mark and was more than ten seconds behind, in 12th place, as he started the second half of the race.
"I tried to go fast on the classic, but it ended up being a fairly big group into the ski exchange anyway," Musgrave said.
"Then I managed to lose my ski coming out from the ski exchange, so then I had to use the first lap to catch up and chill out a bit."
Back with in the front of the race a couple of kilometres later, Musgrave wanted to increase the pace to have fewer good sprinters left to fight with in the end, and got good help from Toenseth and Simen Hegstad Krueger in doing so as they, Klaebo and Sweden's Calle Halfvarsson set off in the last four kilometres.
"Before the race we were a little bit worried that maybe the skate part of the track was going to be too easy, that there was going to be a big bunch in (the last stretch)," Musgrave said.
"So we decided to try to make it a hard race and it worked pretty well because most of the fast sprinters weren't there.
"There was a few of us that wanted to make it a bit hard in the end, so me, Simen and Didrik took turns to go a bit fast. Then we managed to get rid of most people, apart from Johannes, unfortunately."
Musgrave crossed the finish line 0.7 seconds behind Klaebo after the winner had slowed down in the last metres of the race, beating Toenseth to the second place by a tenth of a second.
"In the end, when Johannes is in the group, he is always going to be the favourite so I feel like coming second is as good as it could be for me, so I'm pretty happy," Musgrave said.
The 33-year-old had finished third twice in his career, the last time in the 10km classic one year ago in Beitostolen, Norway. Before him, only one Brit had finished second in the cross-country World Cup before – Andrew Young in the sprint in Dresden, Germany, in 2020.
Now Musgrave will look to repeat the feat at the world championships in his Norwegian hometown in February and March 2025.
"I've got some good self-confidence now, I know that on this track I can do well and it seemed like today home track was a bit of an advantage because all three of us at the podium live here," Musgrave said.
"It was nice to be on the podium on the home track."
Distance expert Krueger stayed in the front for much of the race but could not match the top-trio in the last push, having to settle for the fourth place half a second behind Toenseth.
Halfvarsson fell behind in the last kilometre of the race and crossed the finish line in fifth place, 17.6 seconds after the winner.
The rest of the top-ten was all Norway and Sweden as the host nation's Harald Oestberg Amundsen, Jan Thomas Jenssen and Paal Golberg finished sixth, seventh and ninth respectively, Sweden's Jens Burman claiming the eighth place and William Poromaa finishing tenth.
In the third and final day of World Cup action in Trondheim, Klaebo will hope to make it three wins in three races in Sunday's 10km classic.
Click here for full results from the men's 20km skiathlon classic/free.
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