Solid performances by both teams in the relay

Saturday, 27 August 2011

Today was another hot day out in the vineyards.  The town of Alonte was set up to provide excellent spectator opportunities with a birds-eye view of the start from a terrace above the street where the riders collected their maps and charged for the bikes, and a spectator loop that came past the finish area, through a covered walk way and then out of town again.   The mens start was, as usual, the most chaotic with riders scrabbling to get their maps on their boards and get away on the bikes:

Chris went out first for the junior boys and, apart from a mistake in the confusion of the vineyards midcourse, he was pleased with his ride.  Tom put in another good performance on the second leg with a very clean ride and sent Marc out in 7th position.  He had a bit of trouble on the first control, but settled into it and was in 6th place at the spectator control with the middle distance champion, Krystof Bogar of the Czech team, hot on his heels.  Through the last loop they were in a head to head race involving elbows and jostling. Bogar managed to sneak ahead by a wheel at the finish line. The Danish junior men won the relay, closely followed by Russia and Finland about 4 minutes down. 

The senior men came 14th overall and were the 11th official team across the line. Steve and Alex both had solid rides with minor mistakes and Oscar stepped up into the senior mens category for the third leg. He rode well, navigated carefully and was pleased with his ride.   

Denmark´s senior mens team (Bjarke Refslund, Lasse Brun Pedersen, Erik Skovgaard Knudsen) transitioned to their second leg rider in 12th place, and impressively worked their way through the field to take the gold medal by a 2 minute margin. It would seem, particularly in the mens relay, there were reasonable differences in the forking. Czech Republic and Finland filled up the medal positions in the mens relay. 

Senior womens relay was won by Switzerland (Maja Rothweiler, Ursina Jäggi, Christina Schaffner) with a thrilled (and a little surprised) Lithuanian team in second and Slovakia in third.  

In the junior women, there was an impressively tight battle the whole race between Russia and Finland. The Russians ended up winning by a 1 second margin!  

Tomorrow is the sprint. Unfortunately, it´ll mean a late night for our keen live results supporters in Aus: first starts at 22:00.  The terrain is described as urban (including town area with narrow street and lanes) and moderately hilly with a network of forest tracks and paths that will demand technical skills.  The expected winning times varies between 18-22 minutes for the junior men to 22-25 minutes for the senior men. With around 20 controls in courses ranging form 7.5km to 9km we are expecting lots of changes of direction and quick decisions.  

Start times: Chris - 14:07, Alex - 14:15, Oscar - 14:23, Tom - 14:33, Marc 15:01, Melanie - 15:10 and Steve 15:11

Marc enjoying the ice-vest and a post-race nunchuck croissant.