Quick summary of the long qualification / prologe race.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Today has been a long day – the
qualification races in the morning, bike part shopping, opening parade and
performances and bike phaffing in the evening.
So todays blog is short and bland summary of the races, without the spice of the opening ceremony. However, before I dive into that, I´d like to
say thanks to all those who have written in our guest book, it is much
appreciated (particularly the words of wisdom from great-grandpa Darvo).
In the mens 3 heats were riden for the 95
riders, and the top 60 (well... 62, see below) will be riding the final
tomorrow. Alex rode comfortably into the
final, placing 10th in his heat in a time of 93:01. His heat was won by Erik Skovgaard Knudsen of
Denmark (81:05). Unfortunately, Steve
had mechanical problems and was not able to finish the qualifying race. He is of course disappointed not to be in the
final, however not too disappointed about missing what is likely to be a
super-long, hilly, hot long distance.
Reigning long distance champion, Anton Foliforov, also sustained
mechanical problems and will not be riding tomorrow.
Given there is only 56 women competing
this year, the «qualification race» simply determines our start positions, and
with the long final tomorrow there were lot of us who were taking it fairly
easy. I had a clean ride appart from one
small error that high-lighted a rather major mapping/organisation error – I had
missed a junction from a large track to a small track and when I realised my
mistake it was more efficient to take the sealed road around, or at least that
was how it was mapped. Along with 3
other male riders, I shortly found myself on the wrong side of a very large,
very solid gate with the owner of the unmapped house (and gate) shaking his
head at us from the right side of the gate.
We all then retraced our steps and found that small track junction and
subsequently the control.
This error has lead to 2 appeals from
riders who missed out on spots in the mens final becuase this discrepency.
Therefore, there will be 62 starters in the A-final of the mens race.
In the junior classes today´s race was a
«prologue» rather than a «qualification» and, like the womens race, it
determines their start order. Chris and
Marc had strong, mostly clean rides and placed 5th and 12th
respectively. All of the junior boys
have improved immensely in the past year and we are looking forward to see how
they go in the finals. Oscar
accidentally rode from controll 9 to 11 (controls 9, 10 and 11 were more or
less in a straight line) and has therefore miss-punched, however control 10 was
only minimally out of his way and he would have come with quite competitive
time. Tom also rode strongly, but had a mistake early on and again later in the
course which has cost him time.
1. Rasmus Sørgaard (DEN) 56:42
2. Alexey Terekhov (RUS) 59:42
3. Andreas Bergmann (DEN) 61:39
5. Chris Firman (AUS) 63:13
12. Marc Gluskie (AUS) 67:44
45. Tom Goddard (AUS) 80:30
Racing starts again at 09:30 local time
tomorrow (which is still 17:30 EST). The
courses are roughly 50% longer in both distance and climb for each of the
classes. Predictions are that the
winning times will be longer than expected, potentionally substatially
longer. Starting times for the Aussie
team are below:
Oscar Phillips – 09:43
Tom Goddard – 10:19
Melanie Simpson – 10:36
Alex Randall – 11:18
Marc Gluskie – 11:55
Chris Firman – 12:19
Finally, the dreamteam competition is on again this year: www.michigigon.at/dreamteam. Entries due before 10am Italian time tomorrow, in case anyone familiar with the process (or curious enough to try) wants to participate.
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