Tartu (Estonia), Aug. 22, LETA. On Saturday, one of Latvia’s leading cross-country skiers, Raimo Vīgants, won a silver medal in the World Cup roller-skating competition in the 27-kilometer freestyle race.
Vīgants was in the leading group during the competition, but the winners of the victory were the Estonian Raido Renkels in the solo finish, who finished the distance after 49 minutes and 3.2 seconds.
Vigants took the second place in the finals, beating the Norwegian Patrick Fossum Christophessen by 0.1 second, and another representative of the skiing power – Ragnar Bragvin Andresen by 0.3 seconds. The Latvian lost 3.0 seconds to the winner, but Renkels reduced his speed before the finish.
Roberts Slotiņš was also in the leading group, who lost 9.8 seconds to the winner and won the eighth place. Edgars Bernāns and Ilvars Bisenieks from Latvia were also in the 14th and 16th positions in the competition of 16 roller skiers.
For women, the bronze medal was won by Kitty Auziņa, who competed in the distance with seven Estonians. She lost 36.7 seconds to winning Johanna Udras, giving her a solid third place.
The top three Latvians for the juniors finished next to the first four. The fifth was Niks Saulītis, who was 1.6 seconds short of the podium, but a little further behind him were Lauris Kaparkalējs and Aleksandrs Artūrs Ļūļe. Silvestrs Švauksts won the ninth place among 14 athletes.
Latvia was not represented in the women’s junior competition.
It has already been reported that on Friday in the classic sprint competition in Otepää, the finals in the junior competition were reached by Kaparkalējs and Samanta Krampe, who took third and fourth place, respectively.
On Sunday, roller skiers will return to Otepää and compete in various distances with an interval start in the classic style.
This weekend, the season of the World Cup in roller skiing starts in Otepää, although in the first days only six representatives from six countries took part in the start – in addition to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Finland and Norway also participate.
The current version of the calendar envisages to continue the World Cup in roller skiing in Latvia on the “Smeceres sila” track in Madona (August 28-30), but in the autumn the cup stage is planned in China (October 23-25). One week ago, the organizers of the Latvian stage informed that participation in the competition has been confirmed by such countries as Germany, Slovakia, Norway, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Estonia, Romania and Lithuania.
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