The event was held as part of a Brazil’s Para Nordic skiing development programme, with events held for sitting and standing categories.

Fernando Aranha was crowned the winner of the sitting event after completing a four kilometres course in a time of 11min 53.3sec.

Aranha, who competed for Brazil at the 2014 Paralympic Games in Sochi, finished nearly two minutes ahead of the runner-up Cristian Ribera.

Everaldo Arando and Altair Marangne finished third and fourth in times of 18:13.8 and 23:53.3.

The standing competition was won by Thomaz De Moraes in 11:51.6, with Gustavo Silva coming across the line second in 13:23.1.

Leandro Ribela, who coordinates Brazil’s Olympic and Paralympic cross-country skiing programmes, expressed his hope that the country can qualify three athletes for the 2018 Winter Paralympics in Pyeongchang. 

"We want to train more coaches to work with Paralympic winter sports in Brazil," he said.

"We have very good coaches for the summer sports, so I believe we can use their expertise to train Para Nordic skiing coaches.

"In the short term, we seek to have three athletes qualified for PyeongChang 2018.

"For those Paralympic Winter Games, our main goal is to improve the results from Sochi in terms of performance and number of athletes."

Brazil made their Winter Paralympics debut at Sochi 2014, with Aranha and snowboarder Andre Cintra being their only two athletes.

Ribela claimed the country are targeting having an athlete win a medal or finish in the top 10 of an event at either Beijing 2022 or the 2026 Winter Paralympic Games.