Clear Middle Distance wins for Pesu and Lamov
Posted on | January 24, 2015 | Category: News
Mervi Pesu, Finland and Andrey Lamov, Russia took the Middle distance gold medals today in the European Ski Orienteering Championships in Lenzerheide, Switzerland in a tough race, both physically and technically.
The last part of the race was physically hard because it had a lot of climbing on narrow tracks. Since there was not a lot of snow on the ground it was possible to short-cut a lot. This made the race tricky. “If you did a short-cut, it was not that easy to know where you came out”, said Tove Alexandersson.
Mervi Pesu from Finland won with a lead of almost one minute. “You had to be careful all the time”, she said. “I felt tired during the whole race.” After taking the silver medal in the Sprint, today she was the fastest. Second was defending champion Tove Alexandersson (Sweden), only two weeks after her victories in the foot orienteering World Cup in Australia. Josefine Engström from Sweden was in third place, 1:32 behind the winner. She won her third medal of this week after the victory in Sprint Relay and the third place in Long Distance.
Andrey Lamov from Russia won the men’s race with a lead of 1:10. “This was my best race in this season”, he said at the finish. “I tried to go slower on the narrow tracks and to push to the maximum on the wider tracks.” After two bronze medals in Sprint and Long Distance, this was the first victory at Lenzerheide for the world number one. Second was Andreas Holmberg. The 22-year-old Swede won his first elite medal after he was multiple junior world champion. The bronze medal went to Stanimir Belomazhev, which won his third medal this week. The Bulgarian said he felt tired because it was his fourth race within five days.
The Championships end with the relay race tomorrow.
Text: Annetta Schaad, Photos: Martin Jörg
Leading results, Middle Distance
Women
- Mervi Pesu FIN 39:41
- Tove Alexandersson SWE 40:35
- Josefine Engström SWE 41:13
- Mira Kaskinen FIN 41:28
- Iuliia Tarasenko RUS 41:44
- Tatyana Oborina RUS 41:53
Men
- Andrey Lamov RUS 37:24
- Andreas Holmberg SWE 38:34
- Stanimir Belomazhev BUL 38:38
- Staffan Tunis FIN 38:43
- Øyvind Watterdal NOR 39:09
- Peter Arnesson SWE 39:33
|| Print page ||
Search
IOF Main Sponsor
IOF Sponsors
World Championships
Other Upcoming Events
IOF Partners
RSS