Middle Distance WRE
Friday, 20 July 2007
The middle distance WRE event today bought hot weather again, but with more
tree cover and winning times of about 60 minutes it was much more pleasant.
That is unless you were riding crosscountry (as is allowed here) down a big
slope and hit a hidden stump and do a somersault with pike, also breaking
one's mapboard. Besides this factor I'm still suffering jetlag and making
many mistakes, so can empathise with our trio who are still finding it hard
to adapt to the varied track mapping and density of tracks.
Maxim Zhurkin (Russian) won the men's in 57, while Alex was our best at 10th
(70 mins) and David S was further back. Paul Darvo missed a control today,
so will pay by shouting us dinner when we next visit town. Andy Conn (GB)
broke his seat today, but still finished 9th out of 38. Michaela Gigon won
the women's course again (has been dominating) but only by a 1 minute margin
from a junior Russian girl, Anna Us... The Estonians have gone home to race
in their national selection trials this weekend. The competition has
certainly got stronger over the last 2 years and the depth of talent in the
guys is very impressive. There are many juniors involved in MTBO over here
too, which is great for the future.
It is a lot of fun riding in these European forests though - something all
Aussie mtbo'ers should do at least once in a lifetime. The soft terrain
makes the landings a mite easier too!
We are living in a hotel in a holiday camp with numerous bungalows
surrounding it, with literally hundreds of Polish kids on summer camp.
These kids are so active it makes us feel lazy They run and do aerobics
before breakfast and a military type program of activities keep them busy
all day long. We had pasta with blueberries as a treat for tea tonight -
normally its just bread and cheese! We have a half hour time slot for meals
and have an allocated table and any fraternisation with other tables is
frowned upon, as it upsets their organisation.
Long distance event tomorrow with courses of about 20 and 30 km for the elites.
Kay Haarsma
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Archives
From here you can access the stories and some information about the teams that competed at previous MTB WOCs:
2011 - Italy
2010 - Portugal
2008 - Poland
2007 - Czech Republic
2006 - Finland