MEDAL THAT GOT AWAY IT WON’T be lost on Team GB that France could toast a gold medal from Maidstone, Kent today in the form of Ben Cavet. He moved to the French mountain resort of Avoriaz aged 10. Now, 14 years on, Cavet is among the favourites for the sk
Musgrave gutted at skiathlon 7th
AFTER 28 of the 30 kilometres, Andrew Musgrave thought he had given the norwegians one hell of a beating. A moment later he was ‘gutted’ that his only prize for a quite staggering performance was a piece of British history.
That he finished seventh in the cross- country skiathlon is no small thing, particularly in light of other British performances in these Games, but the 27-yearold did not see it the same way.
He was disappointed and when he was done with disappointment he moved on to anger and a little dejection. An improvement of 22 spaces on Britain’s best result in an olympics crosscountry event is not what drives him to train 1,000 hours a year, he said. not why he moved to norway to front up to the best, he added.
It was quite the display of selfflagellation and also rather surprising considering the assumption was that he would place well out of the running in what is supposedly his weaker event. Indeed, Team GB have him pegged as a fringe contender for a medal in Friday’s 15km freestyle, but this one? nothing quite so lofty.
Yet there he was, second with 2km to go, trailing norway’s Simen Hegstad Kruger but leading the rest. Dario Cologna, the three-time olympic champion from Switzerland, was behind him. So too Martin Johnsrud Sundby, the norwegian holder of two world titles and medals from the past two olympics.
At that point, Musgrave set off to catch Kruger, got no help from the rest of the pack, and sapped from working alone in the wind fell back to seventh on the second to last hill. norway turned in a 1- 2- 3; Musgrave turned in a fine performance in any estimation bar his own.
‘It’s a little bit like a medal that got away,’ he said. ‘I felt awesome with about a lap-and-a-half to go and I felt that I would be in the fight for the victory. It’s a decent result but I’m not at the olympics to come seventh.
‘I’m here to fight for a win. That’s why I do this.
‘I think all the guys at the top, if you don’t believe you can win, then you’re not going to spend the thousand hours a year that you do out training, suffering every week through interval sessions and pushing our pain limits every session. You don’t do that if you don’t believe you can win.
‘If you told me 10 years ago I would be seventh in the olympics, I wouldn’t have thought I would be disappointed with it. But that is what makes an athlete — you want more. You want to push harder, you want World Cup points and when you get that you want the podium, and when you have that you want to win, and then you want to win more.’
An impressive speech, and an attitude that compensates for some of Britain’s natural disadvantages in snow sports, but it is also necessary to understand the disparity between the nordic nations and British operations when assessing the merits of finishing seventh.
As Musgrave put it: ‘It’s just a completely different world for the norwegians. It’s their national sport and you just can’t compare what we’ve got with what they’ve got.
‘They have this massive support team. Today our coaches were out doing all the wax testing. We’ve got one guy waxing all the skis and the norwegians have got so many (around 25). It’s just completely different.’
His next outing is Friday in the shorter distance of 15km, in which he will have freedom of style unlike the skiathlon (15km classic and 15km freestyle), and is convinced he can win a medal.
He said: ‘It does give me a bit of confidence today. The 15km should be my best event. I was in the fight for the medals here until the last couple of kilometres.
‘So when this isn’t my best, come Friday I should be in the fight for the victory. See you on the podium.’