Mass start results ROL World Cup Otepää

The second day of FIS Rollerski World Cup in the beautiful town of Otepää in Estonia, a 16km resp. 29km Mass start competition awaited.

The race course was mainly on rolling terrain on a local sport road of Otepää, only the first 3km of the course took the athletes on a special roller-ski road. Juniors and women raced 16km, men 29km

Junior categories

In junior men’s race we had an early break away at around 5km by Malte Jutterdal, the winner for the junior mass start roller-ski World Cup race a year ago in Tartu.
His breakaway was successful, he managed to hold ~20 second lead throughout the race and finished right before the big battle behind him. In the group finish, second place went to Anton Grahn (+3,1s), the winner of yesterday’s junior men sprint race. Third place to Italian Riccardo Munari (+4,6s).

In junior women’s race there was a big group skiing together for the most part of the race and 9 juniors had a group finish together. The fastest sprinter turned out to be Italian Anna Maria Ghiddi, Chinese Gesangquzhen just 1,6 seconds behind. Third place to Kazakhstan athlete Mariya Gerachshenko (+2,0). Ukrainian Anastassia Nikon and Latvian Samanta Krampe just a small margin off from the podium places.

Women's Elite

Women’s Elite race had an early breakaway at 3km by 10 times roller ski World Champion Linn Soemskar and Chinese Olympic team athlete Ma Qinghua. They managed to increase the gap between the rest of the athletes more than minute and a half. In thrilling finish sprint between these two, Soemskar the winner of women’s sprint race yesterday, was faster once again. But Ma Qinghua brought another silver to Chinese team. In a group finish, Zhou Yang was fastest, taking third place to team China! Fourth was Estonian Keidy Kaasiku, fifth Chinese Wen Ying and sixth Ukrainian Viktoriia Olekh.

Men's Elite

For the first 11km the main group consisted of about 25 athletes, but then on one of the bigger uphill we saw Chinese athlete Li Minglin taking the lead and on very top of the hill, Italian Michael Galassi attacked and got a 5-6 second lead. 2km later, Norwegian Patrick Fossum Kristoffersen followed and this tandem managed to increase the gap with the peloton group up to 15-20 seconds quite rapidly. No-one showed initiative to close the gap and therefore it was between these two to decide the top results of the race. Kristoffersen made his move 3km before the finish, on the same uphill where Galassi attacked the lap before. He got 5-6 second lead that he increased even more on the last bigger uphill. Kristoffersen took the first victory to Norway in this weekend, Galassi finishing second (+28,7) and in a fierce battle for third, it was Amund Korsaeth (NOR) who took third place, just about 10cm ahead of the Matteo Tanel, Roller Ski World Champion in 2021 from Italy. Fifth was Riccardo Lorenzo Masiero and sixth Chinese Li Minglin.

Click here for the official result lists.

Source: Suusaliit Estonia