The day after the medium distance took place. Now the conditions were at least the same for everybody with snowstorm from the first start to the last finish. I had a controlled race without any big mistakes but it didn’t felt really good. But that was the recipe to achieve good results that day. I ended on 12th place (same time as Hans Jørgen Kvåle and Even Toomas). This is my best individual result at World Championships ever. Nevertheless I am not totally satisfied. It was just 24 sec up to the 8th place. I lost 24 sec several times that day, but I guess nearly everybody could say that after the race.
on the way to the finish in the snowy medium distance
The third race I a row was the mixed sprint-relay. I skied together with Carmen Strub. I started well and was leading on my forking on the two first controls. Then I had a bad route choice where I lost 20 sec. I can still not understand it, when I watch the map now. After this I had a crash with another skier and got stucked in the river. All this things stressed me that much that I forgot to read the map properly and made a big mistake to the second last control of over 20 sec. After this terrible leg I changed over as number 14 over one minute behind the leader. With a good leg I would have been up there. Carmen skied well on her first leg and changed over as number 6. I had a good second leg with the second best time just beaten by Peter Arnesson by some seconds. At this time we were on 5th place fighting for a diploma with Czech Republic and Kazakhstan. On the last legs these to teams were stronger and we ended on 7th place. A little bit disappointed about the result, but it was big fun to ski this race. And it was nice to have six people helping you (one holding the jacket one the pants, one the drinking belt, one running to the waxing facilities with my skies, one waxing my skies on keeping control). I could get used to that. Thanks to the whole team for the help.
start of the sprint-relay
on my first leg after a lot of mistakes
After two rest days the relay was last competition of the World Championships. I skied the second leg for the Swiss team. I started on 6th position, 1:30 behind 5th place. So I knew that I had to ski my own race and try to take in as much time on Czech Republic as possible. I started well and controlled and after about a third of the distance I could see Jakub Skoda in front of me. Right after the bridge out of the stadium I could pass him and I felt that I was quite much stronger. I skied well until the last four controls in the downhill back to the stadium were I was too careful and lost some time. Thanks to a shorter forking I could change over to Gion with a gap of 1:40 down to Czech Republic. Gion had a good race and we finished on 5th position just 20 seconds ahead of Czech Republic. The top 4 nations were too strong that day.
All in all it was a satisfying week for me, but it could have been even better.
