Young Korostelev and Pekletsova crushed Bolshunov and Stepanova: everyone was covered

The final mini-tour included a personal freestyle sprint, a 10 km speed skate pursuit, a 10 km classic time trial and a 10 km uphill mass start. And the mass start hung over all the races, excuse me, like a mountain. The questions piled up. Who can do it and who can’t? Who is a “miner” and who is just for standard racing? And how will it all be there: this is the first ascent, which, my dear, was invented for our skiers by Alexander Bolshunov. What will he show?

“When you go up such a climb constantly with a high heart rate, it either gets easier for you, then it becomes difficult again. It’s hard to say that it was hard at any particular moment, it was hard from beginning to end.” Everyone could say this after the mountain. And before the race, these topics could be discussed a lot and deliciously. Bolshunov, for example, said: the last few kilometers will be the most difficult, there will be a showdown there, because at the very beginning to run away – “this is so-so, there the mountain will put you in your place right away anyway.”

“Something with something”

By the mass start up the mountain, it was Bolshunov who was the leader of the mini-tour, although he did not reach the sprint final. But then he won two races, and his advantage over Savely Korostelev (who generally failed miserably in the sprint) was 36.9 seconds. (Aleksey Chervotkin was in third place – 57.8).

Savely clearly didn’t like his lag before the last distance of the mini-tour, but he looked at life realistically. He said that the mountain, of course, is a well-known place where “you get stuck.” But to play such seconds against Bolshunov means “you need to do something with something,” even if Bolshunov is performing after an illness. He also joked: “let Bolshunov pretend that he is sick, I will pretend that I am healthy.”

Korostelev was so determined that he undertook to lead the process in the mass start. The start was given at the ski stadium in Kirovsk, the athletes walked 8 km in the city, park and surrounding area, the final 2 km was the ascent itself. And already at the beginning of the climb, Savely simply rushed up the mountain; only Bolshunov and Evgeniy Semyashkin, who suddenly joined them and was ahead of Chervotkin, could withstand his pace. Moreover, Semyashkin jumped out so cheerfully that it seemed that a surprise was coming, for which ski distances are so rich. True, the mountain brought down the “upstart” quite quickly: at some point he simply stood up in the literal sense of the word.

And Korostelev continued to increase his pace and at the finish line – at the Plateau restaurant at an altitude of 850 m above sea level – he left no doubt about his opponent. Who is the king here? Bolshunov literally ran out of energy tens of meters before the end of the race. But unexpectedly they were left for Chervotkin’s breakthrough, who lost to Korostelev by 9 seconds, but was 5.8 seconds ahead of Alexander. True, Bolshunov retained first place in the overall final standings.

And Korostelev, after lying down for a while, ran live to sprinkle the victory champagne. He said he prepared it in advance. Having splashed, he admitted: it was an unrealistically difficult race. “When they shout at you, “Work for five minutes,” and your muscles no longer work, the big questions are whether you will finish or not.” And he said: at some moments there was a desire to just stop.

Alexey Chervotkin, who finished the climb with jumps, supported his colleague: “My muscles were cramping. In the middle of the climb, three of us drove away from me, I was like: oh well, there won’t be a fight.” But these skiers, as it turned out during the season, are still dreamers. So these words of Chervotkin are about nothing at all. Because when “the guys got tired, it became somehow psychologically easier, which means I wasn’t doing too badly.” And when Semashkin stood still, again opening the way to third place, Chervotkin, as he admitted, “simply rebooted the last 500 meters.”

In general, these stories, after watching the ascent (and it evoked some kind of wild mixture of horror and admiration for the inhuman strength of the athletes), sound like stories from “our town.” Here, for example, is the finish through the eyes and words of Chervotkin on Match TV: “I’m flying around the corner, and here Sanya is literally standing in front of me. I understand that you just need to jump and try.”

For Alexander Bolshunov, the inventor of the last start of the season, the mountain in Kirovsk reminded him of the first time he climbed the Alpe Cermis mountain in the Tour de Ski. True, there is a nuance: our mountain, says Sasha, “is perhaps more difficult than Alpe Cermis.” And it was especially “unrealistically inserted” at the end, Bolshunov was only thinking about the fact that he still had to get to the finish line and lie quietly after the finish line.

Extravaganza Pekletsova

And the women were the first to go up the mountain. And Alina Pekletsova won, Veronika Stepanova finished the climb in second place, and Anastasia Kuleshova finished in third place, who will say that “everyone breathed, endured, it was a difficult climb.”

She won and… didn’t understand anything, as young Alina herself admitted after the finish. Because the first half of the mountain began to work, and the second – to endure. Moreover, without knowing where the finish line is. “Everyone is shouting at you: be patient. And then another rise, then another rise. It’s generally simple…” And then the young athlete will honestly say: she had no tactics. I drove and thought: “if I can endure it, then I will endure it, and if not, then what can I do.” She endured and received her first gold medal at the Russian Cup.

Veronika Stepanova admitted: she had never had such a long-awaited finish. And it seems that there was not a single skier or skier that day who disagreed with this statement. Veronica called the climb “a real challenge.” She had just the right tactic: to get involved from the very start. And here’s another thing – there are many narrow sections in the park before the ascent of the distance, I wanted to go through them first, so that “there would be no unnecessary blockages or broken poles.”

And in some places the track was very steep, Stepanova said that she wanted to go to the “herringbone”, almost to the “ladder”. And it was necessary to follow the main rule, which everyone who gave advice in front of the mountain paid attention to: do not look up. “I watched it once and regretted it.”

Anastasia Kuleshova was asked: did you go and remember the Tour de Ski? Nastya answered succinctly: “I was driving and thinking: “When will this end?” And then she expressed the hope that time would pass and all participants would remember the mountain “with pleasant notes, for some it was the first time, for others they went back a little to the past – to the Tour de Ski.”

In the meantime, we remember once again: the skiers climbed Mount Aykuayvenchorr with a total climb of 580 m, the climb on the slope was 460 m (the total climb at the final stage of the Tour de Ski on Mount Alpe de Cermis was two meters more – 582 m , but on the slope it is less – 420 m.). Well, at stake in all this fantastic, shocking and wonderfully exciting was the Russian Cup and victory in the mini-tour.

Ski race. Russian Cup final – 2023/2024, Kirovsk.

Overall standings of the mini-tour. Final position

Women:

1. Veronika Stepanova – 1:27.23.0

2. Anastasia Kuleshova – lag 44.9 seconds

3. Alina Pekletsova +1.30.6

4. Tatyana Sorina +2.16.4

5. Lidiya Gorbunova +2.19.4

6. Ekaterina Smirnova +2.27.2

7. Elizaveta Pantrina +2.49.6

8. Daria Nepryaeva +3.51.8

9. Anna Surkova +4.08.0

10. Arina Kalicheva +4.54.2

11. Evgenia Krupitskaya +4.59.3

12. Elizaveta Maslakova +5.01.0

Men:

1. Alexander Bolshunov – 1:41.29.6

2. Saveliy Korostelev – gap 22.1 seconds

3. Alexey Chervotkin +52.2

4. Ilya Semikov +1.44.0

5. Ivan Gorbunov +1.55.1

6. Sergey Ardashev +2.24.1

7. Ilya Poroshkin +3.22.3

8. Artem Maltsev +3.54.1

9. Sergey Volkov +3.54.6

10. Egor Mitroshin +3.58.7