High-Speed Hendrickx wins stage 3

It's not speed that matters in orienteering. Velocity is where you win or lose: speed and direction. Pieter Hendrickx won the third stage of the Sylvester 5 days by keeping his focus until the very end. Second place Jörgen Wickholm took the lead with some 500m left to run, but then made a 1 minute mistake, allowing Hendrickx to win his second stage. In third place, we found an impressive Ken Peeters, matching or even surpassing the pace of both Hendrickx and Wickholm in some parts of the course.

In the overall ranking, Wickholm is in the lead, thanks to his performance during the second stage in Zwarte Bergen. The gap is small though, so the last two days will decide who will win. It's important to remember that only 4 days count towards the final standings, which means Hendrickx' 928 points of the second stage will likely be scrapped. Ken Peeters is in third position, rather comfortably. He's got an advantage of 100 points to the next runners, but is still 150 points short of the first two positions.

Hendrickx (l) and Oeyen (hidden)

Greet Oeyen won her third race in a row. But it hasn't been that close before. Saartje Sallaerts was just 6 seconds behind. Without Sallaerts losing a lot of time during the first three controls, it could have been different, but on the other hand, she got caught up by H45 Luc Cloostermans and together they could run at an elevated speed. Third place was once again for the Finnish girl Sabrina Meriheinä, some two minutes behind.

Overall, Oeyen is, of course, in the lead, with the maximal score of 3000 points. It seems like the only thing which could stop her from winning is herself, since she needs just one good race to win. The second and third places are also rather isolated, but they have to watch the lower parts of the ranking, with Kim Geypen having run only two races, but scoring quite well in those.

Results
Splits
Map (Lubina)

Today, Sanicol in Leopoldsburg is where the competition will continue. We'll keep you updated.