Middle Final

Friday was the middle Final and the map was called “San Martino – Centro.” The starts of the races were in the same place but went in an opposite direction to the Qualification races.

The B and C Finals headed off first, followed by the A final. Competitors were numbered according to their places, so the fastest qualifier started last. This made for interesting racing.

All the finals had similar courses, but the A finals had a spectator pivot control, which made it more spectator friendly. Today’s map was much more technical that yesterday, with a lot of rock and contour detail towards the end.

In the girls A final, Tove Alexandersson from Sweden took out first place and the three Kiwi girls were all about 10minutes behind her. All agreed that there was room for improvement. In the B final Nicola had a good race, and Rachel and Greta had early mistakes, meaning that they were a bit off the pace.

In the boys, Tom had a fairly clean race with only a few small errors and all the other boys were about midfield.

Watching the A final, especially the last few runners was definitely a highlight. It was amazing to see the speed that some of them travel through the forest at. The boys had great fun cheering on the runners, in all kinds of languages as we were socializing with other teams.

Overall it was a fairly good day and most people were pleased with the end results.

Now there is just the relay to go.

The relay teams are;

Boys A;

Tom

Scott

Simon

Boys B;

Jourdan

Toby

Andrew

Girls A;

Kate

Georgia

Angela

Girls B;

Nicola

Rachel

Greta

Ciao Kate and Rachel