Three Australian women through to the WOC long distance final
English-speaking readers of WOC News number 8 would have been amused by some of the translating, but were probably stumped by the question posed to WOC technical director David Aleš when he was asked if the trial run of systems at the Czech Sprint Championships in June had achieved “metrical prosody”.
In contrast to the translators of the WOC News, the Australian women had no problems translating the demands of the qualification race into starts in the final. All three qualified comfortably, with Jo Allison in particular having an excellent run in the hotly contested heat A, less than three minutes behind Signe Soes (Denmark). Although the spread of qualifying times in heats B and C was greater, both Kathryn Ewels and Vanessa Round had solid runs, with Ewels 7th (+3:24) in heat B, and Round 11th (+7:26) in heat C, where Finland’s 2007 co-world champion Minna Kauppi had the fastest overall time.
In the men’s races, New Zealand’s Ross Morrison has qualified with 15th place in heat A, but Australia’s Kerrin Rattray was 25th in the same heat.
Selected results
Men qualifying race A
1. Mats Troeng (Sweden) 61:46
2. Anders Nordberg (Norway) 62:39
3. Jamie Stevenson (Great Britain) 63:42
15. Ross Morrison (New Zealand) 70:22
25. Kerrin Rattray (Australia) 81:48
Women qualifying race A
1. Signe Soes (Denmark) 48:09
2. Marianne Anderson (Norway) 48:31
3. Dana Brozkova (Czech Republic) 48:48
9. Jo Allison (Australia) 51:03
Women qualifying race B
1. Annika Billstam (Sweden) 49:26
2. Marianne Riddervold (Norway) 50:22
3. Merja Rantanen (Finland) 50:40
7. Kathryn Ewels (Australia) 52:50
Women qualifying race C
1. Minna Kauppi (Finland) 47:14
2. Eva Jurenikova (Czech Republic) 48:00
3. Anne Margrethe Hausken (Norway) 48:27
11. Vanessa Round (Australia) 54:40