Roller Skiing Gold for Di Centa

Tue, Sep  4, 2007 - By FIS

The pursuit race at the FIS Roller Skiing World Championships was held in ideal conditions. The starting order was set based on Thursday's prologue race, and the competition was held in the free technique over 18km (men) and 14km (ladies) on an uphill course to Sljeme.

The double Olympic champion Giorgio Di Centa (ITA) added yet another gold medal into his collection, along with the roller skiing world champion title. Di Centa easily held the advantage he established in the prologue, taking the win clearly ahead of Alfio Di Gregorio (ITA) and Sergio Bonaldi (ITA). In the ladies event, Tatiana Yambaeva (RUS) was able to grow her lead over Lada Nesterenko (UKR) to three minutes. Natalia Zernova (RUS) improved to the 3rd place.

In the junior men's race, the gold and silver went to Norway. Thomas Vestboe had a great race, and beat teammate Markus Moe by a minute and 47 seconds, and Michele Galassi (ITA) by four minutes. In the junior ladies' event, Ileana Casali (ITA) was too fast for everybody. Kateryna Tseselska (UKR) captured the silver medal.

Sunday's relay races concluded the 2007 FIS Roller Skiing World Championships. In the men's race the World Championships title went to Russia (Anisimov, Fedulov, Glushkov). Ukraine (Gumenyak, Leybyuk, Martsyv) was only six hundrets of second behind. On third place finished Italy with Pession, Paredi, Di Gregorio). In the ladies category there were only six teams at the start and according the FIS rules no World Champion title could be awarded. But nevertheless the ladies race was very close. Sweden with Seppas, Hansson, Magnusson finished first one tens ahead of Russia (Zernova, Yambayeva, Firsova).