Nopesport

Report from Chris Poole

Hi Guys

A quickie report from Poland - as its 2315 & I am on start duty tomorrow!

Team was mostly very happy with todays qualifiers. Its great to have 4 &
4 in the final (the best we think since Czech in 2000).
Terrain was as expected with open fast runnable beech woodland on steep
sided ridges with prominent spurs & reentrants and some small point feature
detail.
The 3 courses for each of mens & womens were planned as almost parallel
courses, so in lots of cases runners ran closely together.

Of those who qualified well - Alison was very happy with a near clean run
clearly in control and making good and safe route choice decisions. GG also
ran cleanly catching Fabian Hertner by number 3 & only two very small misses,
although he did choose some longer route options to save climb.
Lizzie Adams had a very good start leading after the first few controls
and qualifiying safely on her first JWOC. Cerys was clean with one miss
early on but a little disappointed to miss by less than 30 secs and is hoping
her good fitness will pay off over the classic.
Mhairi was clean but finshed with energy left & feeling she could have pushed
harder but still maintaining control.
Scott Fraser by his own admision is a lucky guy & knows that he needs to
have better planning to attack the controls tomorrow. He had a number of
misses where he lost direction descending off the ridges.

So we are in a good position to push for some good performances tomorrow
both individually and in the team competition (3 men & 3 women to score).

Also a big respect & thanks to the Brits who have travelled out to support
for 3 days - Ewan McCarthy & Dids Jenkins.

Its back to the same forest, start area & finish.

With the A finals first we should have results to text back after 1030 UK
time.

Chris Poole

**************************************
Britain scored one of its best days at JWOC for a long time as 8 of the 12 athletes qualified for tomorrows short final.

From three heats of 60 in each class, the top 20 go through to the final. Today Mhairi, Alison, Helen, and Lizzie Adams all qualified in the womens heats and Mark Nixon, Graham, Scott and Dan all qualified in the mens.

Even better though was the news that GG and Alison qualified in the top 5 in their heats, giving both them and the team a great boost for the final, and some advantageous start times. GG was 4th while Alison scored an amazing second place. Similar performances tomorrow and Britain could see its first JWOC podium finishes since the relays in 95!

Keep watching the official JWOC site.

News of tomorrows final is being streamed through www.alternativet.nu in a 'semi-live' fashion.