Omega wins Night Relay

Today, at the domain of De Kluis, part of the larger Meerdaalwoud, the Flemish night relay championship took place. As usual in relays, the race was exciting to watch, with surprises until the finish.

Huge favourites for the victory today were Trol 1 (Laenen, Vervoort, D. Franssen). Trol won last year's event, although the team was quite different now. They did not make it, after a pretty bad start from Laenen and finally ended fifth.

Thanks to the small domain, course setter Miek Fabré could show the masses of spectators a lot of runner passages: two already for the starting runners. The mass start had a lot of good runners in it. At the first passage, Bart Mellebeek of hamok 3 was in the lead, a few seconds ahead of Borasca 1 with Jan Oeyen, Kol 2 with Bruno De Lat, Omega 6 with Bart Delobel and hamok 2 with Thomas van der Kleij. The picture changed at the second passage, where van der Kleij took the lead, followed closely by Oeyen. That was also the order in which the runners arrived at the finish.

Borasca's team had Anita Baerts as a second runner and she was quickly passed by hamok's Marc Hermans. Not that far behind was Bart Van de Moortel (Omega) and by the spectator control, it was Van de Moortel who was leading the pack (of two runners, that is). Although Hermans was quite satisfied with his performance:

I did not run as fast as this in daylight this year

, he had to settle for second place.

The race seemed to be over then, as it would be strange if hamok's Luc Cloostermans could close in on Roel Van de Moortel, who was now in the forest for Omega, and indeed, at the spectator control, Omega had a steady lead by now. Surprisingly, the second team was not hamok, but it was Wannes Hendrickx, for Kol 1, who sneaked into second place. Cloostermans arrived shortly thereafter, but could not close the gap anymore. He even had to let team Asub pass him, so the third place was for Asub. Hamok ended fourth, and as already mentioned, it was Trol that arrived in fifth position.

Van de Moortel and Delobel at the first changeover

• .: Results
• .: Photos
• .: Map: part 1, part 2