Lundanes: “I didn’t expect the gold”
Posted on | July 12, 2014 | Category: Arena
Olav Lundanes sprinting towards the finish. Photo: newspower.it
Olav Lundanes had hoped to feel better for the Long Distance on Wednesday. He didn’t feel that good on Friday either, but there was a big difference. The Middle Distance race was on higher ground and there were some really steep hills.
“I felt really tired, but I also felt stronger and better than on the Long Distance”, he says. This was his third gold on the Middle distance, this time just in front of Fabian Hertner. “This gold is a surprise for me!” he exclaims.
A year of injuries
He thinks about his form. “I feel that I was at a better level at least at WOC in 2012”, he says. Then he won the Long Distance by a big margin in Switzerland.
The Norwegian has struggled a lot with small injuries this year, like the week after the World Cup victory in Middle Distance in Kongsberg in Norway one month ago. He tweaked his back during the race, got hurt and had to relax. The week after, he trained for only about five hours. It should have been close to twenty. Earlier in the year he again had some injuries.
– But your shape couldn’t be so bad yesterday?
“Yes, it was good”, he smiles.
Dramatic changes
During the race the 26-year-old was at no time the man with the fastest passage times in the forest. First it was Oleksandr Kratov, who finished third and won his first individual World Championships medal, who was the fastest one. Then Thierry Guoergiou took over for the rest of the race. He also increased the gap all the way. At the last control he was 49 seconds faster than Olav Lundanes.
Thierry was announced as winning his 13th gold by the arena commentator, but quickly it became known that his electronic tag was missing the punch from the sixth control.
Read wrong leg
“When I was at the fifth control I started to navigate from the sixth to the seventh control”, Thierry says. Between six and seven there was a track. “Even though the distance before I reached the track seemed a bit longer than it should be, I didn’t think about that. It was not so easy to run in this part of the race”, he says.
When the Frenchman got to the track he thought he was in a different position on it, since he thought he came from the sixth instead of the fifth control, but soon after he got to know where he was.
Three mistakes
Lundanes got bronze on the Middle Distance in 2011, and it has been a goal for him to be better on that distance. He worked a lot with Middle in the winter and spring last year until he took a break. “The work I did last year I have the benefit of now”, he says.
During the race he made three small mistakes. “I lost first 12–15 seconds on the eighth control. At the end of the course I made two more mistakes. Probably mostly because I was so tired”, he says.
The men had a distance of 6.1 kilometres with 18 controls. 310 metres was the estimated climb during the race.
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