Cross-country skiing: over 13 hours on the boards on New Year’s Eve for Bastien Laurent
For winter sports athletes, the festive season often means training on 24 and 25 December as well as 31 December and 1 January. And on Tuesday, New Year’s Eve, Bastien Laurent was no exception to the rule with his fellow members of Team Asop, a team linked to the Oye-et-Pallet ski club (Doubs).
A team aiming to enable skiers to continue cross-country skiing in competition in popular and departmental races, this contingent of a few people decided to spend the end-of-year festivities on the boards.
Six riders set off from Giron (Ain) on the 189-kilometre Grande Traversée du Jura with the aim of reaching Le Meix-Musy in the Doubs region. And while some of the French squad decided to stop at the 105th kilometre (Jules Bernardet, a French team rider, Lucas Descourvieres, Vincent Prêtre and Siméon Batlogg), two of them continued their adventure all the way to the Doubs village.
Accompanied by Clément Dornier and Jordan Muller, who was assisted by Vincent Prêtre in the car, the member of the Team Nordic Expérience Coste – Fromageries Marcel Petit achieved his feat by completing his epic in 13 hours 43 minutes and 52 seconds. In total, the two men covered 4,198 metres of ascent.
It was a remarkable performance, as Bastien Laurent took the opportunity to become the first athlete to complete this 189-kilometre event solely on a double push: “My aim was to do this Grande Traversée du Jura on a push because I’m racing in the Ski Classics and I wanted to use it as a physical and mental challenge,” he tells Nordic Magazine.
