Australia's Callum Watson has matched his 72nd-place finish from 2013 in the world championship cross-country ski race over 15 kilometres - but the result came six months after he punctured his lung in a nasty fall.
Watson is naturally delighted that he has fought back to ski again but as a true high-performance athlete he is also upset about a stomach bug that slowed him down over the past week.
"The recovery from the accident was really really good ... I managed to get back to some of the best form I have ever had," Watson said.
"To have it literally all go down the toilet is pretty hard to deal with. That's just life I suppose."
Watson, 25, has been on the World Cup for several years and has a big-event best result from 59th place in the 2014 Olympics skiathlon.
His career was thrown into serious doubt when at the Australian championships in August 2014 he fell and the ski of another athlete penetrated between his ribs and punctured his lung.
Watson underwent emergency treatment and surgery, and was back in training again in autumn.
He said he owed a lot to his coach Mattias Nilsson in Falun, where he has been training together with teammate Phillip Bellingham (75th on Wednesday) since last year.
Watson said Nilsson "helped me a lot mentally".
"Initially straight after the accident I thought I was going to have the rest of the year off and not even try because I thought it would just be too much to come back from."
Now Watson is looking ahead to the next big challenges, the 2017 worlds in Lahti, Finland, and the 2018 Olympics in South Korea's Pyeongchang.
"Lahti and Pyeongchang, I am looking forward to that," he said.
"Hopefully the next 12 months is troublefree and I end up getting the results I have been hoping for."
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