World record holder prevails

The men s 20k race attracted a strong field of competitors. Just like in the ladies contest, the leading group formed rather quickly and consisted of World record holder (1:17.22) Francisco Fernandez of Spain, Polish great Robert Korzeniowski, local favorite Vladimir Andreev and Marco Giungi of Italy. The group went through the 5k mark in 19.51, then clocked a 39.31 10k. By that point, Andreev and Giungi had lost contact, when all of a sudden Korzeniowski, who was not feeling well, decided to save it up for the World championships and dropped out of the race. Fernandez, finding himself all alone with a comfortable lead, only had to maintain the pace, which he did in winning comfortably in a solid time of 1:19.48. After Giungi was disqualified, Andreev enjoyed his second-place position for quite awhile, before Alessandro Gandellini, another Italian in the race, passed him over the last 2k and claimed the silver by 4 seconds.

Andreev`s bronze was aided by Ilya Markov`s 5th place performance in helping Russia to a second-place finish behind the Spaniards in the team competition.