Canadian cross-country skiers returned to the Tour de Ski for the first time since 2019 and made their presence felt.

Antoine Cyr finished fourth and sixth, his two best World Cup results, and Katherine Stewart-Jones made her first career top 10. The Tour de Ski ended on Sunday after seven stages in Switzerland, Germany and Italy. Nordiq Canada has not sent a team to the Tour de Ski since Alex Harvey retired in 2019. The organization felt that the skiers were not ready for such a challenge. This year’s squad wasn’t big compared to European powerhouses, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Cyr and Stewart-Jones finally got to experience their first Tour de Ski this year and they didn’t pass up their chance.

“We showed them they made a good choice,” Cyr said. We wanted to show them that we are at the level because we want to come back. I am very happy to have had two excellent results in my first experience. »

Last difficult stage

Including a climb of three kilometers out of ten of the race, the last stage, again taking place in Val di Fiemme, like the previous two, was not easy for Cyr, who had warned us on Saturday at the end of his fourth place in the 15 km classic mass start, that it would be more complicated.

The Gatineau cross-country skier finished 36th, 2:30.8 behind Norwegian winner Simen Hegstad Krueger and slipped from eighth to 16th overall. Winner of the first six stages, Norway’s Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo finished sixth on Sunday but clinched the overall title.

With a 40th place on the final stage, Olivier Léveillé finished 32nd overall. In the women’s, Stewart-Jones just missed her goal of finishing the stage race in the top 15 overall. His 18th place on Sunday, 1m51.8s behind France’s Delphine Claudel, who signed her first career win, gave her an identical result in the general classification.

Good words for Léveillé

Pierre-Harvey National Training Center head coach Louis Bouchard praised Cyr’s performance earlier this week, but he also liked what he saw of Léveillé, who was also having his first Tour de Ski and is just 21.

“Olivier didn’t get a big result during the tour, but he showed consistency by always being very close to the top 30,” he said. He’s only 21 years old and making good progress. I know the value of our guys and they can compete with the elite. »