Nopesport

MTBO World Champs Long Qualifier Results

It was a more eventful day for the GB Team at the Long qualifier than my initial reports gave credit for! Officially all 3 women qualified with relative ease with 60 out of the 62 through to the final. It was a completely different race however for the men with an acknowledged hard riding but technically easy course suiting the purer bikers. Andy Simpson and Liam Corner put good races together to secure qualification in 18th positions in their respective heats.

X-Rays and a long list of injuries beckoned for Steve Heading as Karen reported after accompanying Steve to hospital “He had a big crash on a hairpin bend descent and was held by marshalls for 5 mins before insisting that he was ok to finish the course. He had made small mistakes prior to then but only just narrowly missed qualification by 5 minutes! He now has 4 or 5 broken teeth, at least 10 stitches in his mouth and 2 on his chin, sprained wrist, thumb and various other cuts, gashes and bruises” It seems unlikely that Steve will be fit to ride the relay on Friday. But we wish him a very easy rest day tomorrow!

It wasn’t a straight forward race either for Helen Winskill as she punctured and had some brake problems that she took 7mins to fix. But still managed to finish well in mid pack in her heat.
Janine commented that she had a steady ride today - “I didn't need to do anything special as all 20 qualified in my heat.  There was a lot of mega fast riding on loose tracks and lots of fast downhill - I lost time, as I was being so careful on these loose bendy downhills - didn't want to come off at this stage when there was no need to worry about qualifying! Really not impressed with the planning today …particularly for the men - they rode the same route 4 times which was a very, very steep loose track.  All the girls were slogging it up this same route, whilst the lads were absolutely beasting it down – really, really dangerous. Really bad that some of the heats were totally different too - Toni and me had a 7 min quicker heat, which of course meant everyone packed in and I was a bit further down than intended.  It was definitely a bikers day really”.
Karen was also happy with her performance “ I started easy but picked it up at the end when I realised how good a race I was probably having. I was lucky enough to pick up a bit of a tow and a big route choice hint from the Slovakian Stanislova. Powered up last hill although you had to really to keep the momentum going”

Janine’s view on the men’s field “It was so tough to qualify in the men’s as there are so many really strong bikers (as opposed to orienteers - you didn't need too much navigation). Andy Conn, after his fantastic medium result, lost a lot of time on 1 control and otherwise would have qualified easily.  Rick (taking the place of Phil who is resting his injured tibia up for the relay) managed to cycle off the map - they do the trick of just ending the map really near a control, so you're snookered if you accidently take the wrong turn.  He was riding really strongly though, so big shame.”
 
But the team are remaining philosophical, and in good spirits and looking forward to tomorrow’s rest day and also reportedly looking forward to enjoying the Slovak beverage on Saturday night!

Maps of the courses and some photos (1 GB) can be found on the web page
http://www.orienteering.sk/mtbo2005/index.php

If you feel like sending the team a good luck message you can email them at gbrmtbo.woc05@ntlworld.com

Results
Women A 21 Riders

1 Aurée Ballot FRA 90.46
8 Karen Heppenstall GBR 93.52
15 Nina Philips IRL 100.47

Women B 21 Riders

1 Ksenia Chernykh RUS 90.32
11 Helen Winskill GBR 106.46

Women C 20 Riders

1 Hana BajtošováSVK 83.04
12 Janine Hensman GBR 90.50
19 Toni OˇDonovan IRL 103.39

Men A 43 Riders

1 Jussi MäläFIN 97.46
18 Andy Simpson GBR 112.38
25 Andy Conn GBR 117.32

Men B 43 riders

1 Martin Ševčí CZE 97.44
18 Liam Corner GBR 106.52
22 Steve Heading GBR 111.59

Men C 42 riders

1 Jaroslav Rygl CZE 94.17
29 Killian Lomas GBR 115.56
32 Rick Featherston GBR 117.58