Pellegrino wins first ever City Sprint in Dresden

The Italian, overall sprint champion just two years ago, found himself up against Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo and Lucas Chanavat with just 500m to go in the men’s sprint freestyle.

And Pellegrino was able to hold off the charging Klaebo by just 0.18 seconds with France’s Chanavat less than a second behind the Italian, in third.

“When I will have grandchildren, this will be the story I am going to tell them, that I beat Johannes. I always try to do my best, if the best means the victory it’s great,” he said.

“Yesterday I changed the way I was thinking about the race. It was a really good show. I prefer courses with more hills.”

The win gave Pellegrino ten sprint World Cup victories in his career, making him only the fifth athlete in history to achieve that feat.

Defeat was not enough to topple Klaebo atop the sprint World Cup standings, however, with the Norwegian top of the leaderboard on 330 points, with Pellegrino now second on 275, while Martin Johnsrud Sundby still leads the overall World Cup although Klaebo did cut his lead to just 43 points.

Sportsbeat 2018