Ben Sim had his best ever World Championship result today, finishing 51st out of 75 starters in the men's 15km classic race (or you could say 130 starters, including the qualification race two days ago).

Callum Watson was 68th and Andrew Mock 70th, on a day when ski selection and grip had a big impact on the result.

Snow fell throughout the day, becoming slowly wetter, and many of the top skiers raced without wax on "hairy" based skis. All the Australians raced with wax, with mixed success.

Simbo had pretty good skis, having to kick off snow at the top of some of the hills and stumbling onto his face twice when his skis grabbed on uphills.

It was a good race for Ben, not sensational, but probably his best classic race this season. Callum had good grip, though spent more time trying to de-ice his skis over the top of the course.

Mocky fared the worst, with restricted glide from balling up skis contributing to a tough day on the track. Percentage-wise Simbo was just under 10%, with Callum 17.3% and Mocky 19.6% behind the winner AndrusVeerpalu of Estonia.

After good skis on the first two competition days today certainly wasn't a great result for the waxing team. We tested hairies about 15 minutes before the start of the race and decided they didn't have enough grip.

Many teams changed from wax to no-wax just before the start, but we weren't the only team to miss the boat. Notably, the Swedish team all went with wax, while half of the Norwegian and German athletes also waxed and regretted it. (Courtesy of The XC Files).