FIS Cross Country World Cup Men 15km
I've never seen then preparing, setting up their gear for the competition till now. You all know they are tracked with tracking device as in any other sport. Here however they have two, strapped above each ankle by officials.
Skis must be waxed in order to get a better performance and you have to know how much and what type of wax to use, depending on what the actual slope looks like. Today it was snowing heavily, I've never seen snowing so heavily in my hometown. This is a mountain area, the competition being held at Nové Město in Czech Republic.
That fresh snow has made skiers job much more harder, first because the fresh show is not so slippery and secondly because it's difficult to see when your glasses are all wet and you can't even clean them as every second counts. However, cross country skiing is a winter sport and not an indoor sport, they are used to this.
A number of 78 skiers took the start.
source
Alexander Bolshunov, the 23-year-old Russian dominated the race, he was first at almost all the checkpoints, minus one, the 1700m. He has managed to win 14 Tour de Ski competitions so far.
As you can see, the first 11 are pretty much from the same four countries, all from Europe and all with snow, Russia, Finland, Norway, France. Russia took 3 places, Finland 2, Norway 4 and France 2. I would have loved to see exotic countries in this top 11 but as I said before, it's hard to have an athlete from a country that has no conditions for training. It costs a lot and not every country can afford it.
The funny thing is I found a list with the finishers that also has all the penalty details. I've never seen one, so it's interesting.
As you can see there were verbal warnings (a bunch), yellow cards (a bunch) and disqualified skiers, most for not following rules, skiing outside of the marked course. I don't know if these were intentional or mistakes, unfortunately I wasn't able to watch all the event and haven't seen any of these or just were given after they finished the race. I truly hope these were mistakes and not cheating.