Belgian Interclub Championship - St.Vither Wald

The Flemish club KOL once again won the Interclub championship this year in the forests around Sankt Vith, in the German speaking part of Belgium. Unlike its name suggests, this competition is not a relay, but a regular national event. Runners score points for their club according to how many clubs participate in their particular category. If there are runners of 10 clubs, the winner scores 10 points, the second one, even if he's member of the same club as the winner, 9 and then down to the tenth runner , who scores 1 point.

KOL scored a total of 111 points, 18 points in front of runner-up hamok. Last year's winner Omega disappointed with only 54 point, still enough to secure a third spot. All clubs lacked a lot of their regular runners due to foreign competitions and holidays. Some, however, did quite an effort to run for their club, most notably Greet Oeyen, already active in the five day events in Italy and France, yet still running today.

• Total standings (PDF)

You can see that KOL scores 18 points in the H21 category. It is strange and maybe a bit unfair that H21 runners score points for the Interclub. There is no belgian title in the H21 category, only HE is important there. Dropping H21 would not have changed the standings though, but it seems like a contradiction, especially when HB does not count towards the club total.

Elite categories

All Belgian WOC runners were absent, but there were still a lot of good runners in the HE and DE classes. They had to run quite a distance, the HE race totaled 15,4km, with 470m climbing. The DE course was slightly more human with 8,9 km and 240m climbing.

For the HE course, the expected winning time of 1:30 was far away, even for winner Nicolas Sillien (CO Pégase), with a time of 1:42:48. The second place was for youngster Thomas van der Kleij (hamok), 2:45 behind, almost two minutes faster than third place Geert Simkens (KOL).

In the DE course, the first two places were for CO Liège runners Severine Vandermeulen and Aline Hermans, with Vinciane Mulpas of ASUB in the third place.

• Results
• Splits
• HE map