Vomiting Musgrave battles heat & Norwegians to set new best

Nobody could doubt how hard Andrew Musgrave tried to win his first Winter Olympics medal in his fifth Games. Having to stop mid-interview to vomit was as vivid an illustration of that as anything.

The 35-year-old Scot finished sixth in the 10km interval start freestyle to post Britain’s best finish in a Winter Olympic cross-country skiing event.

Musgrave reckoned he could have finished fourth, but too much heat and too many Norwegians counted against him in Tesero in the north of Italy.

Besides, fourth doesn’t afford you a medal anyway, so sixth means just the same.

“With 2.5km left, I put myself in the fight for a medal but I think I went too fast because the last two hills were so hard. I lost a ridiculous amount of time.

“I was never going to be in the fight for a medal, but I probably should have got that fourth spot. But there isn’t a massive difference to sixth, without a medal.

“It was good, but I was still beaten by too many Norwegians.”

Musgrave, who relocated to Norway 17 years ago, was seventh in the skiathlon in 2018 – until now Team GB’s best result in the sport.

And as well as setting a new mark here, he is now only behind fellow Scot Mike Dixon – who competed in cross-country skiing and biathlon between 1984 and 2002 – when it comes to Games appearances for GB.

“Where I come from, we can do a bit of skiing occasionally,” Musgrave said. “But it’s not the same as being in Scandinavia or the Alps.

“So I don’t think we’re going to be the world’s biggest ski nation. But we’ve definitely put ourselves on the map as a cross-country nation and shown we can compete.”