NOC Middle MAP

Middle distance is a discipline in which no mistakes are allowed and the speed has to be 95-100%. This day was the day of the fins. Mats Haldin finished 3th in men’s class and Jarkko Huovila first. He even had time to run in the wrong direction from the last control till the finish (lost about 3-4 seconds there). Only David Anderson managed to get in between them and ended in 2nd place.

The terrain was really nice again. The 11th control was a bit tricky. Vegetation wasn’t really clear. If you didn’t decided to take the path at the right it was hard to attack the control. Holger Hott Johansen and Matthias Merz lost about 30-40 seconds there. But Merz lost it all on control 18 and 19. Maybe he tried to push to hard.

In woman’s class it was a bit more tight for first place. Mina Kauppi only needed 3 seconds more than Simone Niggli. She is definitely not undefeatable. We can expect some big battles this year. Helena Jansson proves again her good shape. It seems she lost some weight during winter of this year. Kajsa Nilsson, Heli Jukkola and not to forget Hanny Allston will probably be medal candidates for world cups as well. And what about the young finnish girl …
She became 3rd today just before Helena Jansson.

In the M-20 race the Swedish boys, Jerker Lysell and Mikael Kristensson took silver and gold just before publics favorite: Søren Bobach. It was very close in this race, number six was less than one minute behind number 1. In Fifth place we see Olav Lundanes again.

The crowd got really wild watching the W-20 race though. Here it was Maja Alm who represented Denmark. She was some seconds behind at the spectators control. At the finish though she had an advantage of 30 seconds. No other girls could threaten that first position so Denmark had a gold medal. In 2nd place we had Jenny Lönnkvist for Sweden and Ida Marie Næss Bjørgul finished 3th for Norway in exactly the same time as Silje Ekroll Jahren.