The 2009 World Nordic Championships are underway in Liberec, Czech Republic, Australia represented by 11 athletes and seven support staff, the largest team in our cross country world titles’ history.

Qualification events for the women's 10km and men's 15km interval start classic events (contested over 5km and 10km respectively) opened the program, with all skiers with FIS points over 120 for women and 90 for men required to compete, and the best 10 finishers eligible for the next races.

In a good day for the Ski and Snowboard Australia team, Esther Bottomley was up first in the 5km Classic and finished 9th out of the 21 starters, 1:40 behind the winner Morgan Smyth of the USA. Esther was happy with her race, though will not race the 10km as she is concentrating on the Sprint event coming up next Tuesday.

In the men’s event, Andrew Mock finished fourth, Callum Watson fifth, Nick Grimmer 15th, and Chris Darlington 22nd. Mock finished 49 seconds back and Watson another 16 seconds behind, both with pretty good FIS points - 106 and 112.

The following day, Aimee Watson finished 64th out of 72 in the women's 10km Classic, 18.5% behind the winner Saarinen of Finland. It was a solid result for Aimee considering her back injury over the past week. We hope now that she is able to recover well for the pursuit event coming up on Saturday. Aimee came home stronger than she started, negative splitting the second 5km lap with the 58th fastest time over the last kilometre.

The most experienced member of the team is 31 year old Paul Murray, who will be competing in his fifth World Championship. Murray's 31st place in the Classic Sprint in Oberstdorf 2005 is Australia's best ever at the cross country skiing World Championship. Esther Bottomley and Ben Sim have also competed in three World Championships each and have been competing regularly on World Cup since 2004.

Team performance goals for the championship include achieving a top 30 result and several results in the top half of the field. (Thanks to The XC Files)