WOC long quali

Today the Long distance qualification was held to the west of yesterdays middle distance area. The terrain was very similar, on one big hill with big valleys and spurs to make interesting route choices. It demanded a lot of height control and strong legs to power up the hills.

Nick ran in the A heat, the heat of death which was won by Graham Gristwood who was just ahead of the last 3 world champions! Mats Haldin from Finland was the last to qualify just 3 minutes down!

“I started with some small mistakes. But got into it after the 3^rd control. Ran clean enough until the spectator. Was caught by Khramov with 8 min at the 10^th control but was dropped by him on a major uphill to the 18^th.Made a 1min mistake at the second last but didn’t make a huge difference in terms of qualifying. Made about 5min in mistakes so even with a clean run wouldn’t have been near the tough qualifying time. Good experience for future WOCs.

Colm ran in heat B where Baptiste Rollier won. “Started off probably a bit hard and paid for it by missing the first control – one of them 13 contour error types. Apart from the first blip technically i was fine but physically I just wasn’t at the races. I couldn’t get out of first gear at all. After taking the previous week off I’m very disappointed that I wasn’t up to it physically. Looks like its back to the drawing board for 2010!”

Ruairi was in heat C that was won by the Frenchman Thierry Gueorgiou.

“I struggled to cope with the physicality of the terrain, I started feeling tired on some of the big climbs so I was glad of my energy gel at the spectator control!. Technically I had quite a good race, maybe not the best route choice on the long leg to the first and I missed no. 17 by about 25 seconds. I’ve learned a lot about where I am and know now what I need to do to improve in the future”

Rosalind was in heat A, Minna Kauppi won this by over two mins!

“I took it super careful on the long leg to the first control, but took it cleanly, so will be interesting to see what time Minna got at this control... Had one error late on when I veered off to the right and went through quite a tough bit of green to correct. I’m now stinging! Happy with my race though.”

Ciara ran in heat B, won by Simone Luder who looks like she’s in contention to win more medals this year.”I was a bit scrappy with my navigation, not really getting into the map at all which was unusual as ordinarily I quite like the long. I could feel yesterday’s middle in my legs and was tiring towards the end. No result in the end as I stupidly missed out the third last control, so a disappointing day.

Take a look at the men’s map:

http://media.coveritlive.com/media/image/200908/phpeaKtnhmen_s.jpg

and the women’s:

http://cdn.cloudfiles.mosso.com/c71692/media/image/200908/phpd9B47ywomen_s.jpg

Results:

Women 1

1 M Kauppi FIN 45:47

2 S Soes DEN +2:32

3 E Jureníková CZE +2:35

15 I Kazlauskaite LTU +9:29

26 R Hussey IRL +25:47

Women 2

1 S Niggli SUI 47:22

2 A Fincke FIN +0:26

3 A Hausken NOR +1:57

15 O Sluta UKR +9:59

C Largey IRL MP

Men 1

1 G Gristwood GBR 1:00:05

2 M Merz SUI +0:14

3 D Hubmann SUI +0:31

15 M Haldin FIN +3:22

24 N Simonin IRL +12:15

Men 2

1 B Rollier SUI 58:57

2 F Gonon FRA +1:06

3 MJohansson SWE +1:19

15 Z Lenkei HUN +8:54

35 C Hill IRL +38:07

Men 3

1 T Gueorgiou FRA 58:01

2 T Föhr FIN +1:24

3 Á Kovács HUN +2:23

15 D Tsvetkov RUS +6:31

35 R Short IRL +28:29

Special mention goes to Nick Simonin, who wins the ’Fanny pen’ for being the last Irish starter but missing his start time anyway – good job Nick!