MTBO WOC relay gold for the swiss women

After a good start of the MTBO WOC Christian was selected in the first team. A strong team, good enough to fight for a medal. Unfortunatley they got a bad start and never really got into the medal fight. Because of hugh forking differences it was an exciting relay, and nothing was clear until the last small loop of the last leg. In the end the Swiss men finished seventh. Denmark won in front Czech Republic and Finland.

The swiss womens team, with Maja Rothweiler, Ursina Jäggi and Christine Schaffner did a great relay, leading from start to finish. Congratulations!

Swiss team, Maja, Ursina and Christine

To day we will end the championship with a sprint in the village Sossano.

New 10th place at MTBO WOC

Another hot day in Italy and another 10th place for us. Today in the womens category. Despite lack of map reading flow, I did a good race and finished 10th. I am happy with the result, but most of all that I was much closer to the podium today. I found it hard to read the map on the small tracks and ofte had to stop to read it. As I also did a few smaller misstakes I did not have a good feeling during the race, and although I could push pretty hard during the race, I was somehow surprised by my good result.
Christian also felt lack of map reading flow to day. He also did a few misstakes during the race, over seeing tracks and doing misstakes in some of the intersections. All in all this costed him to much time and he finished 19th. Hopefully we can both take another step forward on the sprint distance.

Tomorrow relay is on the program. The swiss team selection for the first team will be done this afternoon. Christians results the last days might give him a place in the first team, but he will also be happy to bike in the 2nd team. As only norwegian I will have an extra rest day before the sprint.



Middle distance results will be published here: results
Maps from both races can be found here: maps.

10th place at MTBO WOC

In 36C and baking sunshine Christian finished as number 10 at the long distance at the MTBO world championships in the hills of the Vicenza region. Best ever WOC result for him, a small mistake in the end of the race costed him the 7th place, but after all he is happy with his performance. The competition was steep, hot and long with challenging route choices. Christian biked alone the whole race but feels he could push the whole way and did a good orienteering technical race. Samuli Saarela won (2:00:12) in front of Erik S Knudsen (2:04:47) and Ruslan Gritzan (2:06:27), Beat Okele was the best swiss as number 4.

Christian punching the last control.

I also biked the long distance, but had some more problems than Christian and finished on a 20th place. I lost time on both route choices and unsecure map reading. Hopefully I will be able to improve a lot for the middle and sprint distance. My best Bike-o result is a 9th place at the European championships in Denmark, would be great with another top 10 result. Rikke Kornvig won the long distance in the incredible strong time 1:47:59. (Im am indeed impressed!), Ingrid Stengaard was number 2 (+ 6 min) and Laura Scaravonati was number 3 (+10min).

Results: BIKEO WOC LONG

Today rest day is on the program. We did a short (1 h) easy bike ride, a short sightseeing the the city of Vicenzia and have had some ice cream at a gelateria, sure great in the heat! We will bike middle distance thursday, relay friday and sprint distance saturday. We are both looking forward to the rest of the championships

Short update

Here a short update over the things that happend the last few weeks:

Three weeks ago we finally moved to our new home. Nice to finally have our own place. We are enjoying the trainings in Bymarka, which starts right outside our house. A real trainingsparadise in summer and winter time.

To weeks ago we were in western Norway hiking up to Slogen (1564m) together with my parents and Sigrid (Martes sister). A steep top with a great view over the mountains and fjords in Sunnmøre. To bad I deleted all the pictures from my computer. Maybe we will update with som pictures later.
After 7 hours hiking we stayed at the famous Union Øye hotel. The hotel was built in 1891 and all the rooms are original and unique. We got a really tasteful four-course dinner.

Tomorrow we will travel to Italy for the World Championships in MTB-O, which are held in the region of Vicenza. You can follow us here.