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