Nopesport

As expected all the GB Women qualified from the PWT heats in the mountain village of Sant'Agata di Puglia. Times were well spread and the heat winners all won with a minute to spare.

Clare Ward took second place in Heat 1, 2 minutes behind last years Bronze medalist from the sprint at the World Championships, Jenny Johanssen, winning with a time of 14:53. Jo Stevenson grabbed the last qualification place from this heat with 8th place.

In Heat 2 World Sprint Champion Simone Niggli-Luder took top spot in a time of 16:33 with Helen Bridle & Jenny Whitehead qualifying in 3rd and 5th places respectivly.

In the 3rd Heat Britains sprint Champion Sarah Rollins took 2nd place behind Gunilla Svärd of Sweden. The final qualifier in this heat, Lorena Kleinmann of Argentina, took a time of 34:02 - more than twice that of Svärd!!!

In the mens heats things were much closer with little over a minute separating the qualifiers in each heat. Heat 1 saw 19 year old czech Jan Prochazka take 1st place with 14:26 for the 1.4km course, 10 seconds ahead of JWOC bronze medalist Daniel Hubmann of Switzerland. Britains Nick Barrable took the final qualification spot with 8th place in a time of 15:46. Biggest shock of the day was 2002 PWT Champ Yuri Omeltchenko missing out on qualifying with a time of 16:13.

Heat 2 was the fastest and closest of them all with Frenchman Damien Renard winning by a second from Switzerlands Lukas Ebneter. BUSA Individual Champion Matt Crane showed little ill effects from the hectic past few days, qualifying in 8th place, just over a minute behind with a time of 14:16. 2 places back was Dan Marston who took a time of 15:30.

Heat 3 saw Britains Ewan McCarthy & Oli Johnson both miss out as Frenchman Nicolas Grisch won by 15 seconds with a time of 13:49. In arguably the toughest heat other qualifiers were 2003 Nordic Sprint Champ Emil Wingstedt, Halden team mate Mats Haldin and Aussie Troy De Haas.

GB Qualifiers:

Women:
Claire Ward
Joanne Stevenson
Helen Bridle
Jenny Whitehead
Sarah Rollins

Men:
Matt Crane
Nick Barrable

Congratulations to these athletes, who will compete in the PWT race 1 in Ginosa (11/3/04) and race 2 (13/3/04) in Lecce.

A map sample is shown below

Source and photos (and full results): Park World Tour