WORLD CUP France - maps and terrains

In 2 weeks the world cup final will be in Clermont-Ferrand in France. Not much time to prepare.

"area of volcanic lava flow resulting in very detailed contours. No
footpaths." That's how the organisors describe the terrain.
Low visibility, stony underground and detailed map the hole course make it very hard to run fast. Concentration from start to finish is crucial. Loosing contact for just a few seconds can easily cause major mistakes.
The course setters expect very slow winning times in Middle Distance and long distance. A speed of 7'15"/km for men and 9'00"/km for women is very slow in comparison with other championchips. Matthias Merz and Ines Brodman ran at a speed of 4'32"/km and 5'55"/km last week at the middle champs of Switserland for example.

Maybe we can have surprising winners but Thierry Gueorgiou definitely is a big favorite for middle distance. He has been training a lot in this area. You can see some trainings of him in june on his site.

Norway (Øystein Kvaal Østerbø), Switserland (Simone Niggli-Luder) and Belgium (Fabien Pasquasy) have been training on the same maps as well. You can see extracts of the maps on their websites.

If you go there as a spectator you should definitely visit Puy de Dôme.
The competition starts the 2nd of october with the middle distance qualification.