13 février 2006

Canuck sixth after taking gold in 2002
Will try to rebound in three other races

PRAGELATO, Italy—Beckie Scott had just finished putting on a brave front for a round of TV interviews when she turned a corner and saw her husband, Justin Wadsworth.

A former U.S. ski team member, Wadsworth is the one who helped push Scott through the dog days of training, of which there have been plenty, as she toiled to become the favourite entering yesterday's 15-kilometre cross-country pursuit.

"If this doesn't work, I'm going to really be sorry," Scott, a gold medallist in Salt Lake City four years ago, told Wadsworth more than once this past summer.

It didn't work yesterday. When it came to crunch time, when Scott tried to summon the reserves she'd built through her painstaking training, she found she didn't have the legs on the steep uphills in the last half of the race.

She finished sixth in 43 minutes, 20.6 seconds, well off Estonian Kristina Smigun's winning time of 42:48.7, a result that might have pleased her six years ago but not when she was expecting much more.

Katerina Neumannova of the Czech Republic took the silver, 1.9 seconds behind Smigun, followed by Evgenia Medvedeva-Abruzova of Russia.

Sara Renner of Canmore, Alta., placed a disappointing 16th.

Scott's eyes welled up as she looked at Wadsworth, embraced him and sobbed on his left shoulder, burying her face in his orange ski jacket. She wiped away her tears with a ski glove and he pulled her wraparound glasses down on her face to hide her red eyes as she moved on to the next round of interviews.

"I think even if she got second today it would have been hard for both of us because she really worked hard for this," said Wadsworth haltingly as he struggled to regain composure.

"I mean we felt that a medal was almost ... not a guarantee because nothing's guaranteed, so I know she's going to have a hard time with this. But she's strong, she'll bounce back."

This was the event Scott feels is her best. She had won one World Cup pursuit race this season and was second in the other by three-tenths of a second.

"There were points in the race where I thought I had it," said Scott. "But you don't know how other people come into these races and what shape they're in."

Scott held the lead and pushed the pace at various points in the first half of the race, which was skied in the classic style. As the athletes switched skis for the skating portion of the race at the midway point, Scott was feeling strong but later found she couldn't stay with the rest of the pack on the three steep climbs.

"I gave everything of myself out there today and it wasn't enough," said the 31-year-old from Vermilion, Alta.

Scott won the gold medal in the pursuit four years ago, although the format has changed since then. It was the race where she finished third behind two Russian skiers, who each later tested positive and were disqualified. It took 28 months and a tough fight to finally get the gold medal.

Scott, who voiced her suspicions about the Russians right after the race in Salt Lake, was asked if she felt yesterday's race was clean.

"Things are getting better in our sport," she said. "With the way the testing has been this year, especially out-of-competition testing, I think it's scared a lot of people.

"I'm confident that it was a cleaner field today than in Salt Lake City."

Scott still has a shot at the podium in three races, including the team sprint with Renner tomorrow.

"I think today will make us hungry," she said.

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