After second place in last year’s Tiomila, Norwegian club Halden is back in the winners’ circle. This year Mats Haldin’s impressive sprint finish after a dramatic battle on the last leg was enough to give the Norwegian club its seventh win in nine years.

Going into the last leg Halden had a lead of one minute over a pack of three Swedish clubs: Sodertalje, IFK Goteborg and Leksand. The chasing group quickly caught Halden but Niclas Jonasson, Leksand’s anchorman, disappeared after a bad route choice. This left three runners to fight it out, Mats Haldin, Vesa Taanila for IFK Goteborg and last year’s winner Petr Losman, Sodertalje. In the last section of the course Taanila managed to get a gap of nearly thirty seconds on the other two runners but then Mats Haldin began to close in with Losman struggling to keep up. Towards the last control Haldin caught and passed Taanila and made one last, decisive surge.

A notable absentee from Halden’s winning team was former Australian David Brickhill-Jones who recently sustained an ankle injury. Impressive Australian performances came from Rob Walter who ran first leg for Malungs OK, coming in just one minute from the lead and Troy De Haas who had the eleventh fastest time on the seventh leg competing for Finnish club Rasti Kurikka.

In the women’s relay on Saturday, it was another Norwegian club that triumphed after Marianne Andersen for Nydalen managed to hold off the fast finishing Simone Niggli-Luder for Swedish club Ulricehamn. Andersen was sent out on the last leg with a three minute lead after a fantastic fourth leg by teammate Elisabeth Ingvaldsen. ‘I just tried to get into a good rhythm, but then I got tired, I looked over my shoulder a few times, but I never saw Simone’, said Andersen to Orientering.se, ‘It was a fantastic feeling to run down the finishing straight, I was so relieved that the course was over and I didn’t have any controls left’ she added. Allison Jones (pictured with her team) ran a solid first leg for her Swedish club OK Linne which eventually finished in an excellent sixth place.

Clubs now have six weeks to regroup and prepare for their assault on the next big relay of the year, Jukola, in Finland.