World of O News
Tove Alexandersson (Sweden) and Kasper Fosser (Norway) were yet again in another league than the other runners at the Long distance race of the World Cup final in Cansiglio, Italy today. Both had a winning margin with more than 5:30 down to the second place – and both had Swiss runners closest on the results.
In the men’s class a new generation of long distance runners are on the way up, but still two of the three podium places are occupied by the old generation – with Matthias Kyburz (Switzerland) in second and Daniel Hubmann (also Switzerland) in third. And the rest of the Top-10 also shows that experience is not a drawback in long distance orienteering.
Simona Aebersold (Switzerland) was closest to Alexandersson in the women’s class, with Natalia Gemperle (Russia) some seconds behind. Gemperle was in position for second place at the last controls, but Aebersold had a stronger finish.
The terrain looked tough and challenging, but route-choice wise and with respect to orienteering technical difficulty the courses seemed to be less decisive than one could have expected. Here are a two of the more interesting leg – for Saturday’s middle I would expect terrain more similar to the last leg, i.e. very interesting middle distance terrain:
Race development men’s race
Looking at the race development, one clearly sees how Kasper Fosser dominates the race – with Matthias Kyburz keeping up with the Norwegian the first 5 controls. From control 5 until control 19 Fosser’s speed is out of another world, while Fosser is more on the level with the rest of the field from control 19 to the finish.
Looking at the rest of the field, Matthias Kyburz was in second spot throughout the race, but both Hubmann in third and Audun Heimdal (Norway) in fourth had a stronger finish and nearly caught up on the last controls.
Race development women’s race
In the women’s class Tove Alexandersson is even more dominant than Fosser from the start, never letting any of her competitors get close, and increasing the speed compared to her competitors as the race progresses.
Looking at the rest of the field, one can see how Aebersold and Gemperle have a tight battle for the second place, being within 50 seconds of each other from the start until the finish. Andrine Benjaminsen (Norway) was also in the battle until control 11, but lost too much on the long leg to control 12 and on a mistake on the 22nd control, and had to settle for 4th place.
Maps and GPS-tracking
GPS-tracking from TracTrac is available here – see below for maps with courses for men and women, respectively.
Results
Men
Women
Superman and superwoman exists?
There was some comparisons of how close winners of world-cup or world-championship races were to the sum-of-leg-winners times, these two ought to be rather high on such a list?