Flemish universitary championships

Miek Fabré and Jeroen Hoekx (both KULeuven) were the fastest runners in the Sahara (map) today. Both of them also won the races in Helchterenbos last year and thus managed to defend their title.

Although Fabré was not quite satisfied with her performance today, she still had a four-minute lead to the other KULeuven star, Elien Melis. Suffering a minor knee injury, Fabré seems nonetheless ready for sunday's first national event in Dilsen. In third place, we find Ewa Fiuk (UA).

Hoekx, being a local, might have had a little home terrain advantage, yet that by no means meant an easy victory as several other runners also had the event high on their list. Ken Peeters, Desmond Franssen and Yves Briers were really keen on success, Briers even going as far as missing the tuesday evening training to rest. To be fair, Franssen also missed it, but that was due to a course given at such an awfully late time.

Since his race at the District championships, Peeters has upped his weekly training distance, which shows. Still, he had to give in almost four minutes to Hoekx, enough for the second place. Franssen made some mistakes early on, and got nearly caught up by Hoekx in the end, but he still ended up in third position. Briers fell right of the podium in his last chance to win the title and is now already focussing on the Belgian universitary champs for a revenge.

This event was also the selection race for the ISF championship in Edinburgh. You can find these results in the resultlist (splits).

More photos from the event were taken by Slok coach Thomas van der Kleij, injured, but still looking forward to defend his Belgian title in about a month.

Nederlands:
Vandaag vond in de Lommelse Sahara het universitair kampioenschap en de ISF-selectie plaats. Studenten uit het middelbaar onderwijs probeerden zich (ofwel met de schoolploeg ofwel individueel) te plaatsen voor het scholen-WK in Schotland.
In het Vlaams universitair kampioenschap waren het Jeroen Hoekx en Miek Fabre die hun titel verdedigden. Bij de mannelijke studenten waren de belangrijkste uitdagers: Ken Peeters, Yves Briers en Desmond Franssen. Bij de vrouwelijke collega’s moesten Elien Melis en Ewa Fiuk voor de tegenstand zorgen.
Thuisloper Jeroen Hoekx liet nog eens zien dat hij klaar is voor het nieuwe seizoen. Op 1 foutje na, liep hij een zeer sterke wedstrijd. Uiteindelijk eindigde hij met 3 minuten voorsprong op Ken Peeters. Desmond Franssen en Yves Briers volgden nog iets verderop.
Ook Miek Fabre slaagde erin haar titel te verlengen. Helemaal tevreden over haar wedstrijd was ze niet, maar desondanks had ze nog 4 minuten voorsprong op haar eeuwige concurrente Elien Melis. Ewa Fiuk vervolledigde het podium.

Kaart
Resultaten
Split-times

Foto’s