The long short quali

So the long quali is finished and we have one person in the final - well done Felix - an excellent run and an easy qualification. The day dawned substantially cooler than it has been in the last three days, absolutely perfect weather for a long event - what a shame this wasn't the final. The athletes left the hotel early (as did the rest of the nations) as they had to be in the start area by 9:15, even if they were starting some 90 minutes later. At least the transport more or less worked today.

Pierre was our first runner to head out into the forest today, and he did so in style, catching and quickly overtaking the athlete that started before him, and was even leading the standings for a while at the first radio control. However, at this stage we were worried about the slow times, but through the course of the event it became clear that this time was going to be beaten. Added to this was the fact that Pierre made his two biggest mistakes to control 1 and 2 and so he was playing catch up the rest of the way. He finished in 21st position in a time of 75:59 minutes, about 21 minutes behind the Swiss Matthias Merz and about 13 minutes behind the qualification place.




Markus was our next runner out on the course, and it was apparent that he meant business right from the start. His split time was good and gave us hope and I was waiting eagerly for him to reach the finish straight. The finish straight was incidentally almost 500m long with a heavy climb up from the last control. He finished into 7th place with a time of 68:14, but we knew the place wouldn't hold. The question was, just how close would it get. And as the last runner crossed the line I thought he had really made it as Markus was (according to my list and the results board) in 15th place. However, due to an organisational mistake, one of the Norwegian runners had taken the wrong start number and so I had missed him and the organisers sorted that out fairly quick and so Markus was demoted to 16th place, 11 minutes behind the winner Marc Lauenstein (57:40) and just 2 seconds behind the qualifying place. I even thought about a protest, but it would not have helped. Better luck next year Markus.




Felix on the other hand was quiet throughout the event - that is to say - I didn't hear any radio control splits for him so I wasn't sure how he was doing during the race. After about 60 minutes I started looking desperately towards the start of the finish straight, and I was rewarded almost immediately as he appeared barrelling up the hill. He had a great run in, but the hard work had been done in the forest. An excellent 10th place overall in heat 3, won by Philippe Adamski in 57:28, Felix was just 5 minutes down and well qualified. He is recovering well, and this can only help his bid to make it 2 out of 2 tomorrow in the middle.

All our guys did their best today in a very demanding terrain, with some quite nasty technical areas. All in All I think it was a good result.

Greetings from Kiev,
Richard.

P.S: There was one team today, who showed the rest how it was done. The Swiss were excellent, winning 4 out of 6 heats and getting all 7 athletes qualified. The Russians were however, not far behind. It's going to be an interesting final.