Le Revard loooong distance: Gueorgiou 9 minutes ahead

[Updated with results/analysis!] Thierry Gueorgiou crushed the competitors and took a 9(!) minute win in today’s tough long distance race on the Le Revard map – the neighbour map of the World Championships. The start field was very strong – so the French runner really set the standard today.

9 minutes down from Gueorgiou in second spot was Anders Holmberg (Sweden) ; Daniel Hubmann (Switzerland) was 12 minutes behind. In the women’s class Annika Billstam (Sweden) took a 5 minute victory ahead of Helena Jansson (also Sweden).

Vincent Coupat wrote the following about Gueorgiou’s race at Twitter today: – Tough race today. My feet are destroyed : huge blisters. Thierry is impressive! Ran 4 controls with him and was unable to read my map.

Webroute

One of the interesting legs is this leg from number 4 to number 5. I have set up a webroute so you can try to figure out how you would solve the leg. Remember: Runnability is not too good – so compass course along the line would not be your best option. On the other hand, you should not go too far away either.

The article continues below the Webroute.

Without any splits/routes of runners I can’t say what is the best option – but please add a comment if you have any thoughts about it. For now I have just drawn the routes in 3DRerun, and looked at the lengths of three different options (the leftmost option in red – 2258 meter, direct right route in green is 1495 meters and the rightmost option in blue is 1865 meters – the times given are arbitrary!). The challenge for all three options is to find the correct attackpoint for the control – for the red route it should be easier to find an accurate point as you leave the path. For the green route it is most tricky. The green route is tempting, except for the tricky part into the control – and running through the green at the middle part of the leg. I’d probably choose the blue option (rightmost) based on the lengths of the different routes compared to difficulty. You do however take some extra height there.

Map with course

The map is well known for most of the runners – so most competitors probably did not get any big surprises today in that regard. The Le Revard map is one of the most relevant terrains to train in ahead of WOC 2011, and Gueorgiou and many of the other competitors have surely been running a lot of trainings there.

• Map with Men’s course (from Daniel Hubmann’s official Facebook page)
• Women’s course (from Eva Jurenikova)

From the Irish Team Blog: – Toni picked up an injury yesterday so went straight from the start to finish after collecting her map, David made it to 5 before going over on his ankle and at various points throughout the course there was attrition. Other teams faired in a similar way with, for example, the British team having even fewer finishers than the Irish team. A few have been particularly surprised by the rough nature of the terrain with more brashings and felled areas than expected.

Results

Thierry Gueorgiou won with an impressive 9 minutes ahead of Swedens Anders Holmberg. When studying the splits (see graphical illustration below), it seems clear that it could have been even more. If looks like Gueorgiou – starting 8 minutes later – caught Holmberg around the 10th control at a time when Holmberg was “in the pack” – and Holmberg seems to have had help from Gueorgiou to get a clear second spot. The victory might have been around 12 minutes if not (the splits might lie, but…). So – how many minutes start interval should we have at WOC 2011? In that regard it is kind of interesting to see the Norwegian Federations suggestion to have 1 minute start interval at WOC long distance in the future….

Men
1 GUEORGIOU Thierry 4201RA NOSE Fra 1:31:29
2 HOLMBERG Anders IMP004 SWE Team SWE 1:40:23
3 HUBMANN Daniel IMP001 SUI Team SUI 1:43:59
4 ADAMSKI Philippe 5907NO T.A.D. Fra 1:44:21
5 ROST Erik IMP004 SWE Team SWE 1:45:24
6 KRATOV Oleksandr IMP005 UKR Team UKR 1:45:49
7 ROLLIER Baptiste IMP001 SUI Team SUI 1:45:58
8 BOSTRÖM Olle IMP004 SWE Team SWE 1:46:11
9 MÜLLER Matthias IMP001 SUI Team SUI 1:47:57
10 NOVIKOV Valentin IMP003 RUS Team RUS 1:48:08

Women
1 BILLSTAM Annika IMP004 SWE Team SWE 1:09:11
2 JANSSON Helena IMP004 SWE Team SWE 1:14:24
3 ELIASSON Lena IMP004 SWE Team SWE 1:17:43
4 ALEXANDERSSON Tove IMP004 SWE Team SWE 1:19:11
5 GUSTAFSSON Linnea IMP004 SWE Team SWE 1:19:23
6 ALM Maja IMP006 DAN Team DEN 1:20:09
7 NOVIKOVA Julia IMP003 RUS Team RUS 1:21:10
8 JURENIKOVA Eva IMP007 CZE Team CZE 1:21:33
9 CLAESSON Emma IMP004 SWE Team SWE 1:22:02
10 CHATAING Amelie 4201RA NOSE Fra 1:22:52

• Results
• Split times

See also results of the Swedish runners is available here and the Swiss here (the Swiss explain their big time losses by “we still have to learn how to understand these maps”.).