Andersson replies to Gueorgiou.

With Thierry recently talking about the things that happened between them at the World Cup relay in France on his website, David Andersson gives now a reply on his own website.
Here a translation of what he has to say on the incident:

“This year’s season has been succesful and I feel I am on the right track for the future. It was of course a disappointment not to achieve my goals at WOC in Denmark, but with highlights as EOC gold in the relay, Swedish champion relay, as 2 individual 4th spots at the World Cup final in France, I have even managed to get a star like Thierry Georgiou loose focus!
Thierry has described the final moments in the World Cup relay in France on his website , we both mispunched at the second last control. This mispunch was one of the many mistakes I have made the last half year (missed a control, mispunched, broken shoe). These sloppinesses is something I’ll start working on for next season. For the rest I have learnt something about tactics for the final moments in a relay: I definitely function better in a more offensive role as at EOC relay than in a defensive role as I had in France. And, even if you have won 3 World Cup races in a row, you can fail…” from David Andersson's website


Thierry’s side of the story (from his website) :

“After four really good individual performances, I was wishing for a last good race on this terrain. But with the relay, I ended my week with a spectacular crash…. "
He then goes on: “…. I saw then the back of a Swedish runner (David Andersson) and immediately remember what our coach Petter Thoresen told us at the end of the European Championship's relay : Never loose again against a Swedish runner.
Once in the area of control 20, I was maybe preparing already too much the final last meters when I saw a control. I punched it without checking the code. What a mistake.
Game was over, and the end of the course belongs thus to anecdote. Meanwhile going to the last control, I stopped in the middle of some green area, and David Andersson said to me “you can continue 'cause I will follow you anyway…”. I felt a little bit angry and decided to try to stick to Petter’s sentence…”

I guess this is not the first story of things happening and being said between runners when ending up together in the forest....