Seve de Campo completes ultimate World Cup endurance test

Seve de Campo claimed a slice of winter sport history on the weekend, becoming just the third Australian to finish the famed Tour de Ski.

Established less than 20 years ago, the Tour has quickly become the focal point of the FIS Cross Country World Cup season, with the endurance event providing a true test across all parts of the discipline.

Stages are held in both Freestyle and Classic styles and are contested in Sprint, Mass Starts and Interval Starts before the much-hyped final climb up Alp Cermis in Val di Fiemme.

Simply making it to the final stage of the Tour de Ski is a wonderful achievement with fatigue often seeing competitors drop out, while athletes can also be eliminated due to time cut-offs on any individual stage if their margin to the leader is too large.

Having finished the opening stage on 30 December in 93rd position out of 100 starters, de Campo moved up the standings on every stage to eventually finish in 50th place overall.

"The Tour de Ski was my main goal for this season," said de Campo. "I had the goal to firstly complete the entire seven stage event as traditionally it requires consistently strong skiing throughout to make it through cut off points on each stage, and therefore I wanted to ski strong and show my best through the Tour.

"My preparation was almost enough to mean I wouldn't start the Tour at all, after contracting COVID 10 days before it started and only just getting rid of symptoms once the Tour began.

But we said we would have a go and see how I responded. Fortunately I was responding well to the racing and whilst there were certainly tough times racing, it started to just become an absolute blast getting up each day and fighting to do my best and on such iconic picturesque courses through central Europe.

"The stages in Val di Fiemme including the final climb up Alpe Cermis - a 10km skate with the last 4 km climbing up a downhill race course - was a childhood dream, seeing my heroes on TV since I was a kid and then finally getting to race up it myself, I can confirm it was steep!"

A thank you to our support team, coach Alexei Sotskov and wax tech Fabian Mauz who did an amazing job racing against the big wax trucks getting from venue to venue. Thanks to Finn Marsland for backing me in and setting it up for us. I'll see you, Alpe Cermis, again soon."

De Campo's result compares favourably with Callum Watson (36th place, 2011) and Jessica Yeaton (38th, 2020 and 42nd, 2022). (PyeongChang Olympian Barbara Jezeršek finished as high as 29th in 2014, however this was when she was still competing for Slovenia).

Finn Marsland, Snow Australia Cross Country Skiing Program Director, said de Campo’s completion of the seven-day event was an outstanding achievement.

“Making it through the Tour de Ski is a huge challenge for anyone, but this was a particularly impressive effort by Seve,” said Marsland. “Recovering from illness mid-December, at Christmas we weren’t even sure if he would make it to the start line. Each day there was a post-race evaluation, and it wasn’t until after the fifth stage that we really thought Seve could make it to the final climb.”

De Campo was only seconds from the time cut-off on the 10km stage two in Toblach, Italy, and had to fight hard to avoid being lapped on the 20km stage five in Davos, Switzerland.

“I remember when Callum Watson completed the Tour in 2011, he only just avoided being lapped out on about stage three or four,” said Marsland. “Short laps are great for spectators, but a big headache for athletes that drop off the main pack on a long stage.

“Our head coach Alexei and wax tech Fabian were there every step of the way and deserve credit for helping Seve make it all the way to stage seven.”

This weekend Australian athletes will take part in the Scandinavian Cup races in Estonia and the Austrian championship in Saalfelden, before returning to the World Cup circuit in Goms, Switzerland, later in January.