Following the best ever Olympic results for a British Cross Country team at Sochi 2014, the British athletes will hope to make their mark at this year’s World Championships, which includes Andrew Musgrave’s favoured event, the 15km Freestyle. 

 

Joining Andrew Musgrave in the men’s squad will be the in-form Andrew Young and for the women, Posy Musgrave, Fiona Hughes and Sarah Hale will be looking to make an impression. 

 

The World Championships are a huge event on the Nordic calendar, with 150,000 tickets already being sold and a further more 50,000 tickets expected to be sold ahead of the event. The event also includes the disciplines of Ski Jumping and Nordic Combined, as well as a big opening ceremony, concerts and other activities for spectators.  The official website has a comprehensive overview of the events and full programme: www.falun2015.com 

 

The FIS Nordic Junior World Ski Championships is also due to capture the imagination, being hosted for the first time in Almaty, Kazakhstan from 1st to 8th February 2015. Almaty will be testing themselves by holding the event, ahead of them playing host to the Winter Universiade, a big multisport event for students, in 2017. 

 

The Championships will be the last chance for Andrew Young to improve on his best result of 23rd position in the U23 category. He will be Great Britain’s sole U23 representative at the Championships. In the U20 category Great Britain will have five athletes. For Fern Cates, Sam Cairns and Gregor Young, it will be their first ever World Championships, and they will be joined by Sarah Hale and James Clugnet. 

 

This week there has also been confirmation from British Ski and Snowboard’s Nordic Selection Committee of the 2015 squads, which can be seen below. 

 

Elite Team

Andrew Musgrave

Andrew Young

Callum Smith

Rosamund (Posy) Musgrave 

 

Performance Team

Annika Taylor

Fiona Hughes 

 

Senior Team

James Clugnet

Sarah Hale

Duncan Gibb 

 

Junior Team

Gregor Young

Sam Cairns

Beth Maclean

Harry Nicholls

 

Invited to train: Fern Cates 

 

Youth Team

Lynne Gray (FIS) 

 

Not FIS:

Jack Nicholls

Brodie Murray

Oliver Newman

Fergus Newman