Sylvester day 1: T. Hendrickx and Fabré

The first day of the Sylvester 5 days took place today on the map Solterheide in Opitter. The DLP website was rather sceptical about this map on forehand, but has to admit that the coursesetter did a great job. Nobody had the impression that we were running on 'Folterheide' (folteren = to torture) because of the thorns. The coursesetter used the technical parts of the map as much as possible and only the longest courses had some 'just running parts'. But still we look forward to the nice maps on days 3, 4 and 5.

Looking at the results, it's quite clear that Tomas Hendrickx was the fastest runner today. He participated in almost no orienteering races this winter, but succeeded in making almost no mistakes (only at control 9 he lost 1 minute) and running at a high speed. Thomas van der Kleij (2nd) explained on his doma that he didn't find the good flow but made almost no mistakes (only a bad routechoice towards control 8). He was only 50 seconds slower than the winner. Jeroen Hoekx (3rd) could match the same speed as Thomas vdk, but made some smaller mistakes. After the race he was complaining about problems with his ankle. On 4th position we see the German runner Alex Lubina, 3min30 behind the leader. Desmond Franssen and Timo Avhehainen finished in 5th position with exactly the same time.

Results H21:

1.		Tomas HENDRICKX		BEL	K.O.L.	49:56	5'40"
2.		Thomas VAN DER KLEIJ		BEL	hamok	50:47	5'46"	+0:51
3.		Jeroen HOEKX		BEL	hamok	51:36	5'51"	+1:40
4.		Alexander LUBINA		GER	DJK Adler 07 Bottrop	53:26	6'04"	+3:30
5.		Timo AHVENAINEN		FIN	Lahden Suunnistajat -37	54:26	6'11"	+4:30
		Desmond FRANSSEN		BEL	TROL	54:26	6'11"	+4:30

Some remarks:
- the forbidden parts (the yellow fields) were a bit confusing. Is it allowed to run on the sides or not? Many runners didn't know what to do in this situation (control 21 to 22 for example).
- Aleksi Anttolainen made a big mistake towards control 4. He was surprised to see such a leg and mentioned that it's depending on luck to find this control. Also other runners complained about this control and thought that it wasn't totally at the correct position.
- Also control 19 was placed a bit too much to the south, according to several runners.
- The most tricky control was probably control 17 (with controlnumber 47). In the gully (under the red circle) was an other control with number 74. Three runners were trapped and got disqualified here (Wannes Hendrickx, Toon Melis and Frode Konst).
- Tomorrow we expect some new and strong runners at the startline like Yannick Michiels, Pieter Hendrickx, Ondrej Pijak, Benjamin Anciaux, Christoph Brandt (?) and Joost Talloen (?).

In the women's class, we saw a clear victory by Miek Fabré. She was almost 3 minutes faster than Swiss runner Sophie Tritschler (2nd). Even we saw Tritschler running at high speed and pushing hard in the forest. Greet Oeyen (3rd) completed the winners rostrum, 5 minutes behind Fabré. It's for sure that these 3 women (together with Anna Serrallonga who starts tomorrow) will fight for the overall victory.

Results D21:

1.		Miek FABRÉ		BEL	Omega	49:24	7'22"
2.		Sophie TRITSCHLER		SUI	OLG Zürich	52:09	7'47"	+2:45
3.		Greet OEYEN		BEL	hamok	54:07	8'04"	+4:43
4.		Hannah CULBERG		USA	Orienteering USA	1:03:26	9'28"	+14:02
5.		Anna MOILANEN		FIN	Kajaanin Suunnistjat	1:06:15	9'53"	+16:51

Results
Splits
Map (H21 - Desmond Franssen)
Map (H21 - Thomas van der Kleij)