Report, map and results Belgian relay champs 2011

Last sunday the Belgian relay champs took place in Sterrebeek. It was a nice and tight competition. The organisation was very good: perfect map, nice arena, a speaker, spectatorscontrol (which was maybe a bit far away for the spectators),... The only comments i heard was about the courses. They were really fast and technically not the most demanding. In mens class most of the runners succeeded to finish their race without any mistakes.
Also about the forking i heard some little critics. The forking was very different sometimes (controls which were located far away from each other) which didn't create much contact between the runners. But mainly all participants were very positive about this relay champs.

Favourit KOL won in men elite class:
Thibaut Derenne was dominating the mass start and went into the forest as leader (it was the first and last thing we heard from him and his team). Ken Peeters (Trol1) was the next leader and showed up as first at the spectatorscontrol, closely followed by all the favourits. At the first change over we had Kol1 with WOC runner Tomas Hendrickx already more than 1 minute ahead of Trol1 with Ken Peeters and Gert Claes (Kol2) in 3rd position, another surprise was Hamok2 (Benjamin Anciaux) as 4th in front of Hamok1 (Dries van der Kleij as 6th). Outsiders Omega (Joost Talloen 7th), Asub (JF Krier 5th) and HOC (Joel Drygalski 12th) had to try to catch up some teams.

The gaps between the runners were still very small. For sure when Pieter Hendrickx (Kol1) made a small mistake at the 3rd control and Trol1 (Desmond Franssen) saw him running in front of him on the path towards control 4. But Hendrickx ran without mistakes and really fast during the rest of the race and succeeded to run the 2nd besttime of everybody. He ran away 2 more minutes from Franssen and the others. In the background Hamok2 (Thomas van der Kleij) overtook some teams and came in as 3rd (but couldn't get any closer to Kol and Trol). The next teams at the changeover were Omega (Wouter Leeuws), Hamok2 (Jeroen van der Kleij) and Asub (Christophe Bernard). Also Hoc (Johan Tinchant) gained some places and came in as 7th.

Yannick Michiels (Kol1) could enter the forest as anchor legrunner with 3min ahead of Sergey Fedatsenka (Trol1). Michiels made some small mistakes in the beginning of the race to make it even more tight. But in the end he was still 1min ahead and won his first Belgian title in elite class together with the Hendrickx-brothers. Trol succeeded to win the silver medal. Jeroen Hoekx (Hamok1) came into the finish as number 3 far ahead of Omega (Bart Delobel) and Hamok2 (Tom Herremans). Fabien Pasquasy (Hoc) ran the best time of everyone today and made the top6 complete.



CO Liege dominates the womens race:
In womens class the race immediately started with a big suprise. Almost all 1st leg runners made several mistakes, but specially big favourit Omega ruined their race here. Veerle Tulleneers came into the finishline as 2nd, but she didn't punch the last control. The other Omega runners (Kim Geypen and Miek Fabre) succeeded to finish as 1st, but the team was disqualified. So it was Co Liege with Muriel Vandermeulen who came into the finish as 1st after 1 leg. She was 5 minutes ahead of Vinciane Mulpas (Asub) and Karoline Andersen (Trol).

During the 2nd leg Asub succeeded to make the race exciting again. Annamarie Viriekko (Asub) ran 3 minutes faster than Fanny Tilkin (Co Liege1), who was still leading. Hamok with Greet Oeyen arrived at the changeover in 3rd position.

During the last leg we could expect a fight between Aline Hermans (Co Liege) and Catherine Hoofd (Asub). Both ran a good race, so Hermans succeeded to stay in front and took the Belgian title with Co Liege. Catherine Hoofd (Asub) finished as 2nd, 2 minutes behind Co Liege1 and 29 minutes before Co Liege2 (with Caroline Blockx).

Maps men elite: part1 and part2 (routechoices Michel Bastin)
Results
Photos

The next important clash will be the Belgian long champs at Gruitroderbos. The participantslist is ready with 30 runners in H21E and 12 runners in D21E.