Wednesday, June 10, 2009

WC Sprint Qualification

Today the competitions concluded with everyone taking part in the World Cup sprint qualifications in the town of Salo. There were 3 heats with the top 11 in each to qualify for the final later today.

The men set off first (again) leaving the women alone to entertain themselves in quarantine (again). The men had about a 3.2 km course with a rough winning time of under 14 min.

Dave had the fastest Irish time with 16.37min. Ruairi was in the same heat with a time of 18.14min. Dave said he was "shaky on making optimum route choices, but safisfied with an ok performance". Ruairi felt his race went fairly ok with no mistakes. Colm had a fast run, slowed by quite a large mistake to #2 (again...he mutters). Otherwise he pushed hard and ran well with a time of 16.44min. Neil was least happy with his performance. It took a push to get a comment from him, including descriptive words that I will not pass onto the blog. In general he felt slow, with a few 10s mistakes. His finishing time was 16.58min.




Later in the day the women took on the speedy courses. Simone Niggli destroyed the field with a winning time of 13.05min. Can she perform as well in the final later today? Niamh had a time of 16.23min. She had no mistakes but felt too slow for the course. She's looking forward to watching the final but wishes she was competing!



I (Rosalind) also felt slow. It tough to push the legs so fast after such a tough weekend. I, along with most Irish teammembers (except smug Colm), feel that we took the poor routechoice up and over the forested hill rather than around the road. I believe most time loss was here for a few of us.
Anyhoo, none of us managed to qualify for the final. Boo.

Check out a full set of results here: http://www.noc2009.fi/ar/sprinttikars.html


We're all off to watch the finalists in action....

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