Canada’s young women’s team at the cross-country skiing world championships continues to impress.

Yukoners Dahria Beatty, 22, Emily Nishikawa, 27, and Quebec’s Cendrine Browne, 23, and Katherine Stewart-Jones, 21, skied to a top-10 finish in the women’s 4x 5-kilometre relay Thursday in Lahti, Finland.

“We’ve been looking forward to this as a group. This is the first time we’ve fielded a world championship relay team in a long time, so it is super motivating and we are going to move forward from here,” said Nishikawa, who is the only Olympian on the team. “I really think this is the beginning of something pretty special for our program.”

Stewart-Jones skied the opening leg of the relay, handing off to Nishikawa in eighth. She dropped one place, handing off to Browne in ninth. Browne also dropped one spot, handing off to Beatty for the anchor leg in 10th.

Beatty held the 10th spot to the finish.

“It was an awesome day,” she said. “Our plan was to be in contention the whole race with the other teams and we did that. It was fun to be in the mix and ski strong as a group.”

This was only the fourth time in 10 years that Canada fielded a women’s relay team at the world championships.

The best finish for a Canadian women’s relay team came at the 2001 worlds, when they were sixth. They also cracked the top 10 in 1989 when they were eighth.

The men’s relay team, featuring Yukoner Knute Johnsgaard, captured a historic world cup bronze medal last month and finished a disappointing 12th today.

Racing continues Saturday with the women’s 30K skate mass start.