European MTBO Championships: favourites Finland win relays
Posted on | June 19, 2013 | Category: News
Jussi Laurila, Finland, finishing. Photo: Ludomir Parfianowicz
The Finnish teams, with both men and women favourites to win their respective classes, held their form in the forests around Zamosc, Poland today and ran out comfortable winners over Russia and the Czech Republic (men) and Russia and Slovakia (women).
The going, away from asphalt roads, has been very heavy after the recent long spells of rain in Poland. Coupled with the hilly terrain and often dense forest with many route choice alternatives, strong focus was needed to overcome the conditions and general tiredness on the third consecutive day of competition. The two Finnish winning teams showed this in abundance.
In the women’s race, Susanna Laurila brought the Finland team home more than 7 minutes in front of Russia. The Slovak team will be delighted to have won the bronze medals ahead of Denmark and Switzerland.
In the men’s, Jussi Laurila had a lead of a little over 3 minutes over the Russian last-leg rider Anton Foliforov when he reached the finish, and again the third-place result was a bit of a surprise – the Czech second team took the bronze medals, finishing nearly 8 minutes ahead of their first team which took fourth place.
Tomorrow is a rest day for the men, but the women have a re-run of the urban sprint, declared void on Monday, on a new course.
Leading results, Relay
Women
- Finland 1 (Ingrid Stengård, Marika Hara, Susanna Laurila) 2:11:02
- Russia 1 (Svetlana Poverina, Olga Vinogradova, Ksenia Chernykh) 2:18:15
- Slovakia (Daniela Trnovcova, Natalia Tyszova, Stanislava Fajtova) 2:27:57
- Denmark 2:28:03
- Switzerland 2:28:44
- Lithuania 2:29:38
Men
- Finland 1 (Pekka Niemi, Samuli Saarela, Jussi Laurila) 2:05:40
- Russia 1 (Valeriy Gluhov, Ruslan Gritsan, Anton Foliforov) 2:08:53
- Czech Republic 2 (Martin Sevcik, Jan Svoboda, Vojtech Stransky) 1:10:25
- Czech Republic 1 1:18:09
- France 1:19:00
- Estonia 1 1:21:06
- Lithuania 1 1:27:33
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