No gifts at the long distance race

Saturday, 15 July 2006

No-one new just what an epic race this was going to turn out.  With the men’s and women’s winning times both more than 20 minutes longer than recommended it turned into a war of attrition for many.  The men’s course, posted as 40.4 km was measured as 50 km by one rider.  And on the women’s course of 29 km, another rider measured nearly 40 km!

Unlike the terrain so far, there were much fewer tracks, but many of the smaller tracks were much rougher than we’d encountered so far.  In many places the short-dash tracks, strewn with rocks and roots, reduced riders to a walk.  Or at best 6 kmh or so.  The large roads were very fast and generally flatter.  Long dash tracks were either forest tracks or ski tracks.  In the case of the latter, these had extremely steep sections which were often difficult to ride down and nearly impossible to ride up.  Combine all that with being allowed to ride through the forest and it all added up to a very tough race!

For Carolyn this was a difficult area to race on.  With her broken ribs still healing, the bumps and precipitous descents would have been daunting.  She was slowed by this, but as usual, rode accurately and finished well in 37^th place.  The women’s podium was made up of Christina Schaffner of Switzerland in 1.51.28.  The Russian, Ksenia Tchernykh was only 4 seconds behind in 2^nd place with Finland’s Ingrid Stengård another 2 minutes behind in 3^rd.

The early pace in the men’s race was set by Remy Jabas of Switzerland.  He posted a time of 2.19 and it was clear from when he picked up the map for the 3^rd loop that the course was very long.  Remy is one of the top Swiss riders and said that he’d faded and made mistakes on the last loop.  Shortly after Jeremie Gillman of France reduced the time to 2.16 and this held for a long while until the first surprise of the day.  The Dane’s, in force at their first MTBO WOC posted a 2.06, 10 minutes in front of the best time in the shape of Lasse Brun Pedersen.

Alex came into the first map change about 9 minutes behind the leaders.  He’d had a disaster at the 2^nd check point and lost most of this time there.  He continued around the course, but ‘soft-pedalled’ to save himself for the relay and finished 35^th in 2.26.

Alex grinds through the soft stuff

Now we were waiting on only the remaining top riders.  There was great excitement in the Aussie camp when AJ came through the first map change in 2^nd place.  He made a few small errors on the 2^nd loop and lost about 2 minutes, dropping to 8^th place at the map change.  He toughed it out and picked up to finish on the podium in a really impressive 6^th place, tantalisingly close to the medals.  It was another awesome ride by AJ, not perfect, but no-one was riding these courses in this terrain without mistakes.  In the end it was the home advantage that saw the Finns and Russia dominate the men’s results, with Margus Hallik of neighbouring Estonia taking 4^th.

One of the most notable changes in MTBO over the last three years has been the dramatic increase in the speed of the riders and depth of the fields.  This year the competition has really come of age, particularly in the men’s field.  There are “no gifts” at WOC.