Yesterday in Lavarone we had the WOC long distance event. After the urban terrain of the sprints we moved into the bush terrain for the rest of the events. A lot of the athletes were making their first appearance in WOC events after not competing in the sprint events- especially Thierry Gueorgiou and Olav Lundanes in the men who have both won two WOC long distance events.

Australia under the new IOF rules for WOC was only permitted two runners in the women’s and one in the men’s. This system has been introduced as a result of having no qualification events for the middle distance and the long distance. This system also means that our performance in these events- long, middle and relay, will determine the numbers of runners we can have at WOC in 2015 in the long and the middle.

This new system also created an interesting start list for the women’s event today where the top 10 favoured runners started in the middle of the field and some of the least experienced runners started at the end of the field. This apparently was done for TV so the concentration of the television production could be focused on the top runners. This start list created a lot of comment- and hear is mine” what is the IOF thinking in allowing this to happen? If this is what they want they might as well have just the top 10 or 20 runners in the event and not worry about the rest because the commentary and probably the TV was purely focused on the seeded top 10 runners. No recognition was given to any of the women who started after the seeded group. This is a very elite euro centric view and does nothing to help the growth of the sport beyond the big five countries”.

The ironic feature of all this is that the winner of the women’s event did not come from the seeded group of runners and was not considered to be a possible winner until after she actually finished. The was winner Svetlana Mironova (Russia), in a time of 79:44, Tove Alexandersson (Sweden) 2nd and Judith Wyder (Switzerland) 3rd. Mironova was a clear winner and she was the leader at all the radio controls. She is the first Russian woman to win the WOC long distance event.

Hanny Allston had a very strong run to come into 13th place in a quality field. Hanny was pleased with her performance and said she felt good about the race. She was not sure of one longer route choice where she went left and Mironova went right and gained time on all the rest. Vanessa Round who had not been feeling well in the last two days ran a steady race to finish in 43rd place.

In the men’s race it was no real surprise to anyone that Thierry Gueorgiou (France) was a the winner in a time of 94:45 with Daniel Hubmann (Switzerland) 2nd and Olav Lundanes (Norway) 3rd. Gueorgiou becoming the first man to win 3 long distance WOC events. Simon was competing in his first Long Distance event at WOC, he ran a very steady race to finish in 43rd place. Simon commenting that he just didn’t have the strength on the hills that the others had. A very commendable performance in a very challenging race especially physically.

Thursday is a rest day before we move to the complex terrain of Campomulo (NE of Asiago) for the middle distance and the relay on Friday and Saturday.