NOC Relay

Today the NOC relay was held, with the same finish arena as the long yesterday. The terrain was similar but with less pronounced features to guide you, it was easier to lose direction and become confused.
Dave ran the first leg in order to gain more experience and allow himself become a top class first leg runner in the future. He had a clean run making only one small mistake and came back in 26th, quite satisfied with his performance, about 10 minutes down on the fastest times.
I (Ruairi) ran the second leg but I wasn't able to have as good a race as I did in the long. I just didn't have as much fun and I lost nearly 5 minutes in total , getting fooled by the terrain, and came back in 27th place leaving Neil 5:30 to catch on the German second team.
Neil ran the last leg and had a solid run. He saw the German team's last leg runner looking lost as he himself was leaving the 9th control and really finished strongly, running fast to bring us home in 26th!
Niamh, Rosalind and Colm all ran the open races in the terrain from the long as there were no places available on relay teams. All ran well, capaitalising on an extra opportunity to get used to the Finnish maps.
As for the medals, it was very exciting with the final sprint deciding medals in three of the relay classes. The two swedish mens junior teams punched the last conrtol together, and raced for gold with the second team taking the victory. In the mens there was a race for silver between Matthias Merz of Switzerland and Tuomas Tervo of Finland, with Merz just managing to stay ahead. In the womens after the Norwegian anchor, Anne Margrethe-Hauksen, had been leading she was pipped by just 10 seconds by Finland who took the Silver, a minute behind Sweden. Also in the female junior relay Denmark took gold with Emma Klingenberg running the first leg, so we'll claim 50% of that gold!
Overall it was a much better performance today and we were happy with this result and plan to keep improving for the World Cup middle distance on Tuesday, after the banquet tonight and rest day tomorrow!

The Irish NOC relay team, David, Neil and Ruairi

full results are available here. Some interesting analysis of our races can be seen here.
And a video (in swedish) showing the arena and the swedes winning!
Ruairi Short!