Norway’s Nyenget makes his move with 20km Classic victory in Davos

In cross-country skiing, 20km races are all about pacing. And Martin Loewstroem Nyenget (NOR) paced his race to perfection at the FIS World Cup in Davos, Switzerland on Sunday to win the Interval Start Classic.

The Norwegian conquered altitude, a gruelling 7.2km course with a new uphill section and a stacked field to put his hand up for selection at the home world championships in Trondheim in February and March.

Despite Davos’s challenges, a fresh covering of snow, sub-zero temperatures and increasingly clear and still skies provided near-perfect conditions in the Swiss resort.

And Nyenget made the most of them. Going out 42^nd in a 90-strong field, the 32-year-old claimed just his fourth individual victory in his 11^th season of World Cup racing and his first win over this distance. It was his second victory of the season.

Nyenget and distance classic specialist Iivo Niskanen (FIN) were in a league of their own for most of the race, swapping the lead before Nyenget eventually moved clear.

He led by 1.3 seconds from the Finn after lap one with climbing specialist Hugo Lapalus (FRA) only 7.6 seconds back.

That lead had stretched to 2.8 seconds by the halfway point, but Niskanen clawed time back to hold a 1.2s advantage over Nyenget after lap two as the pair began to pull away from the rest of the field.

It was at this point that Nyenget began to turn the screw. By the next checkpoint (16.5km) his lead was 4.9s. At 18.5km, it was 6.4s. He eventually crossed the line in 55 minutes, 37.8 seconds, 13.1s ahead of Niskanen who blew up on the final climb.

“It was an amazing day,” Nyenget, who now leads the World Cup distance standings, said. “It was a really good race. I tried to focus on what I do in training – a 60-minute session, which is what I do back home. I had a really good day and incredibly good skis.

“The new course was the toughest I have done in Davos, and being 1500 metres above sea level, it’s even harder so it was a fight. But I managed to stay at the same pace throughout the whole race so I’m really happy about the performance.

Lapalus withstood a final-lap surge from Simen Hegstad Krueger (NOR) to take just the second individual podium of the Frenchman’s career, collapsing across the finishing line and remaining on the ground for several minutes.

In only his second distance race of the season, sprint star Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo (NOR) – who blew away the field in a 20km Interval Start Classic in Lahti, Finland last season – finished more than a minute back in fifth. Importantly, though, he was one place ahead of reigning Crystal Globe champion and World Cup leader Harald Oestberg Amundsen (NOR), meaning Klaebo closes the gap at the top of the overall standings to 96 points with Nyenget in third.

The FIS Cross-Country World Cup season returns for the Tour de Ski, which begins in Toblach, Italy on 28 December with the Women’s and Men’s Sprint Freestyle.

To watch all the action, click here

For the full results from Davos, click here