Category: Competitions

As always travelling with a bike brings is challenges. At Gatwick we were marched off to have our bike bags weighed at the oversize luggage check in before we were formally allowed to get our boarding passes. Luckily I thought we had 23kgs so when I found out we had 25 I squirrelled a few of the heavier items out of my hand luggage to take it to 25. This was fortuitous as they then proceeded to weigh our hand luggage, oops, I was way over but a smile and shrug got me through without any payment.

And so to Russia. Our first brush with very slow official formality we were to find time and time again was car hire. It took nearly two hours! After that it was an unscheduled visit to the centre of St Petersburg where we relocated on the Winter Palace before finally getting the right road out towards Vyborg and our accommodation which was a very pleasant surprise. Its a sort of upmarket center parcs without the swimming pool. The food is great and we could not ask for anything, its all provided. The lengthy process’s of form filling and judicious use of huge rubber stamps continued though and our passports whisked away to ???

Daylight saw us to be in a gorgeous sandy forest with huge pine trees stretching straight and true towards the sky. Another pleasant surprise was the SFR punching system which turns out to be much easier to use than EMIT which it is closest competitor. After a leisurely morning we completed the model events before a visit back to the forest for some team building and photo taking before a quick ride round the sprint model area. We even have a bike wash outside our block which I had to use a little earlier than I intended after riding through what we can only assume was Bear poo, it went everywhere and stunk

Tomorrow brings our first race the Sprint in Vyborg.

Some photos here https://picasaweb.google.com/mark.stodgell/EuropeanChamps2011?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Over in Russia we will be using the SFR punching system, not EMIT or Sportident.
Ive always found EMIT hard work on a bike, mainly due to its size, although after a whole week of it in Denmark last year I was starting to get more confident with faster punches.

In Russia we have 2 days to get used to a totally new system for us – SFR.

There are various versions of it, but we seem to be using one which is more like EMIT than SI in that a brick has to be place the correct way round in a shoe and it has a backup paper punch card. There is also a separate pod which goes on the fork of the bike, I assume for rolling finishes. With the Sprint being the first event I think the new system could be interesting, lets hope we get lots of time to practice.

Lots of photos of the IOF advisor trying it here http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/o-sport-ru/album/167417/?

 

Its just 10 days to go now until the European MTBO Championships 2011 near St Petersburg in Russia.
Bulletin 3 is now out with much more information. The racing looks interesting, exciting and varied, the terrain fast and furious.

A small team of 4 is riding for the UK : Mark Stodgell, Iain Stamp, Andew Douglas and Ruth Sheddon, it being a debut appearance for Iain, Andy and Ruth. The Team are travelling out on 17th September and start competitions on Monday 19th September with the Sprint in Vyborg. Hopefully there will be live coverage on the event website at  http://www.o-worldcup.spb.ru/

• 19.09 Mon Opening Ceremony, Sprint Final (EC, WC-Final, EJC, EYC);
• 20.09 Tue Middle Final (EC, WC-Final, EJC, EYC);
• 21.09 Wed Relay- 3 legs (EC, WC-Final, EJC, EYC);
• 22.09 Thu Sprint Mixt Relay-4 legs (1m+1w) (EJC, EYC),
  Model Long: Sprint Mixt Relay-non-official race (EC, WC-Final);
• 23.09 Fri Long Final (EC, WC-Final, EJC, EYC), Closing Ceremony, Banquet;

 

The women’s World MTBO middle distance championships today produced some very close racing. Multiple World Champion Michaela Gigon taking gold just 15 seconds ahead of Poland’s Anna Kaminska and a further 45 seconds back to Rikke Kornvig from Denmark in third.

All the usual suspects were at the top of the table except for poor Emily Benham from the UK who was forced to abandon after a catastrophic mechanical on the second control. Special mention should go to Anna Fuzy in 5th place another fantastic result for the up and coming Hungarian.

Britain’s Helen Clayton was 39th and Lucy Harris 46th after good solid rides.

The Men’s race produced a more emphatic winner with Finland’s Saarela Samuli taking the title ahead of the Russian veteran Ruslan Gristan. A fantastic ride for Austria’s Tobias Breitshadel and a late mistake by Anton Foliforov stopped a Russian whitewash taking Bronze but with three riders in the top 6 the Russians have now to be the favourites for the relay.

A good ride by the UK’s Ifor Powell gave him 56th Place, mid table.

The action continues tomorrow with the Relay competition, promising exciting racing for the Men’s and Women’s top nations. I expect the Men’s race to be very close between the Finn, Swiss, Czech and Russian teams. The normally dominant Danes seem to be struggling at this World Champions but I’m sure will rise to the challenge and add to the mix. The Women’s race will be close too with again the Swiss, Finn and Czech teams very string this year.

 

 

 

 

Another hot day and tough long courses have produced some dramatic results at the World Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships 2011 Long Distance Final.

In the Women’s Race Denmark’s Rikke Kornvig has produced a huge winning margin of  6 min’s over second place Ingrid Stengard and local Italian Laura ‘superlaura’ Scaravonati in 3rd. Other big names are some 15 –  20 mins behind, the heat and steepness of the terrain taking its toll. In fact some riders took close to 3 hours.

The Mens race: all riders took over two hours to complete their courses but Finland’s Samuli Saarela coped best with the heat and the terrain to take Gold ahead of Denmark’s Erik Skovgaard Knudsen by 4 minutes.

In the Junior Men’s competition the Danes are starting to dominate with a win by Andreas Proschowsky but in the Junior Women’s the Russians are still up front with a Gold and Silver, Svetlana Poverina taking the win.

For the Brits unfortunately Chris Brand Barker did not start after a pre-race mechanical in the Junior Mens competition. Lucy and Em came 20th and 35th after long hot races. Ifor rides this afternoon in the Men’s B final.

Live results available at http://www.racecentersuite.com/Races/Specials/Mtbo2011/web/