WUOC Middle Distance

Today was a long day and a pretty challenging day for the Aussies. What stated with a bus trip that was longer than indicated, on some narrow and windy roads and then continued with a map that had a lot of green and some fairly vague features, sometimes in the green, ended with some disappointments, some could have been better and some not to bad runs from the team.

After the domination yesterday by Great Britain, the Swedes dominated today winning both the men and women’s events by small margins- O Sjoberg in the men and L Forsgren in the women. Michele Dawson was the best placed Aussie in 40^th place 31.9% behind the winner. Michele had a good start being in 17^th place at control 6 however, she lost over 3 mins at controls 9 and 10. She then had some running mates and finished well. Belinda Lawford after a very slow start and after 5 red controls in a row (66^th at control 9) speeded up significantly from control 10 to control 15, to finish in 46^th, 38% behind. Heather Muir was an early starter and tired towards the end of the course to finish in 65^th place 64% behind. Nicola Blatchford who was in 70^th place at control 8  mispunched at control 9.

Andrew Barnett who had a very consistent run was the best of the Aussie men to be in 64^th place, 31.5% behind. Matt Doyle was running faster than Andrew but a small mistake at control 21 caused him to lose over 1 minute. He finished in 66^th place, 32% behind. Henry McNulty had a pretty inconsistent run today with control 12, 14,15 and 21 costing him time and his running speed slowed towards the end. He finished in 71^st place, 38% down. Brodie Nankervis who started well and was in 31st place at control 10, then had some problems and he mispunched control 19 (he was in 57^th and control 18).

Tomorrow is the relay with all the Aussie team running.

Men: Henry McNulty, Brodie Nankervis, Matt Doyle: Lachlan Dow, Ian Lawford, Andrew Barnett.

Women: Krystal Neumann, Belinda Lawford, Michele Dawson: Nicola Blatchford and Heather Muir will run in a mixed team with a French women.

Ciao

Nick Dent