Nopesport

Another day, another set of qualifiers, this time in the long distance event. With a lot of competitors choosing the long discipline over the middle this year due to the timetabling of races it was the first chance to see how some of the big guns will handle the Japanese climate and terrain.

Jamie Stevenson is one of those who chose to skip the middle and he finished 3rd in his heat, looking good to beat his British record performance fron Sweden last year. Jon Duncan and Oli Johnson also finished in the top 10 to qualify comfortably.

The line up for team GBR appears to have altered on the womens side: Helen Winskill who shone at the test race weekend and was the only athlete selected to run the Long-Middle-Relay combination must have decided this was going to be too much and dropped out of the long allowing Helen Bridle to run the long instead of the middle. Whether this was the best plan of action or not is unclear, as Helen failed to qualify by a long way, finishing 22nd in her heat, 20 minutes behind the leaders and 6 minutes away from qualifying.

It wasn't all doom and gloom for the women though, with Heather and Sarah both comfortably through to Thursdays final.

Men-A Results
1 Marc Lauenstein 0:59:32 Switzerland
2 Emil Wingstedt 1:00:25 Sweden
3 Jamie Stevenson 1:00:49 Great Britain

Men-B
1 Andrey Khramov 1:03:21 Russia
2 Marius Mazulis 1:03:27 Lithuania
3 David Schneider 1:05:09 Switzerland

10 Oliver Johnson 1:07:11 Great Britain

Men-C
1 Jani Lakanen 1:02:33 Finland
2 Michele Tavernaro 1:03:10 Italy
3 Francois Gonon 1:03:33 France

7 Jon Duncan 1:07:02 Great Britain

Women-A
1 Marianne Andersen 0:51:24 Norway
2 Yulia Novikova 0:52:27 Russia
3 Eva Jurenikova 0:52:37 Czech Republic

5 Sarah Rollins 0:53:17 Great Britain

Women-B
1 Simone Niggli 0:47:07 Switzerland
2 Paula Haapakoski 0:49:10 Finland
3 Tatiana Ryabkina 0:51:30 Russia

6 Heather Monro 0:53:11 Great Britain

Women-C
1 Vroni Kö Salmi 0:48:23 Switzerland
2 Heli Jukkola 0:49:36 Finland
3 Hanny Allston 0:50:41 Australia

22 Helen Bridle 1:08:19 Great Britain