Gueorgiou beats Haldin

The Frenchman Francois Gonon started as runner number 8 and he run the first strong time. The distance of the men A-final was 3,3km, and Gonon run 14'50 during his race. A lot of good runners tried to beat him, but failed. One of them, the Finnish runner Tero Föhr, started as number 32 and finsihed 18'' slower than Gonon. He lost all the time in the first part of the race.
But it had to be possible to run a faster time; Vesa Taanila started 8'' faster during the first 1,6km, but he couldn't hold this same speed.
The Swedish runner Emil Wingstedt (and always good in sprintraces) was the next one who tried to beat Gonon. He started very fast, 16'' faster than Gonon at the first radiocontrol (1,6km). He was the first one who was able to hold his high speed (and his advantage) till the end. The run a new best time: 14'38.
Marten Bostrom and Jonas Pilblad started too slow to win. So only the 3 qualification winners still had a chance to win the final: Audun Weltzien, Thierry Gueorgiou and Mats Haldin.
And it became a very exciting end. The 3 famous runners started very strong and were all top4 at the first radio control. The first one who made a mistake was Audun Weltzien, and a big one. He lost nearly 2' and fell back into last position.
The fight between Gueorgiou and Haldin was very close, they changed over the 1st position several times. Three controls before the end Mats Haldin had a gap of 7'', normally this was enough to win. But he lost 4'' on his way to the 2nd last control and even 18'' to the last control. Thierry Guergiou took his chance and won the exciting WC-sprint final.

Results:
1 Thierry Gueorgiou 14:20.9
2 Mats Haldin 14:36.8 +15.9
3 Emil Wingstedt 14:38.6 +17.7
4 François Gonon 14:50.1 +29.2
5 Mårten Boström 14:59.1 +38.2
6 Tero Föhr 15:08.2 +47.3
7 Jarkko Huovila 15:11.9 +51.0
8 Anders Nordberg 15:13.7 +52.8
9 Damien Renard 15:14.3 +53.4
10 Valentin Novikov 15:15.1 +55.2

All results



B-final (Top5 selected for A-final in Norway):
1 Martin Johansson 15:03.8
2 Øystein Kristiansen 15:44.1 +40.3
3 Evgueni Fadeev 15:57.9 +54.1
4 William Lind 16:08.4 +1:04.6
5 Klaus Schgaguler 16:13.3 +1:09.5
8 Fabien Pasquasy 16:20.9 +1:17.1
35 Joost Talloen 18:05.2 +3:01.4
Etienne Van Gasse DSQ

Fabien Pasquasy once again 8'' too slow. A really unlucky day for him. At the 2nd last control he was still running in 4th position, but he made a mistake to the last control. He lost 50 seconds and his top5 spot, so he has to run a B-final in Norway...
Etienne didn't punch the 2nd control (his time: 17'51). It's possible that Etienne made the same mistake as Daniel Hubman (who was ill last week). Hubman explained that the 2nd control of the men-track was placed very close in the neighbourhood of a 'women-control'. Without checking the number, Hubman punched here the wrong control.
Joost Talloen run a good race without big mistakes. In Norway (middle distance event) Christophe Bernard will also run for the Belgian team, and ofcourse he has to run in the B-final too.
Maybe the position will still change because some runners had a 'DNF', but when you check their splittimes, they took all the controls. But only Olle Kärner run 2'' faster than Fabien. So he's still 8'' too slow for a 5th spot, a pitty.

All results B-final


Movie:
The Swedish youngster Elin A Skantze made her first appearance at a worldcup event. Simone Niggli-Luder took the victory only 3,7seconds faster than Helena Jansson. And Thierry Gueorgiou tells us more about his race. All this subjects are visible on this video made by orientering.se.

Aangezien ze op de Nederlandse site onze artikels mooi vertaald hebben, kunnen jullie hier terecht voor de Nederlandstalige versie ;-).