Veni Vidi Vici

Are those the words Giaime 'Jimy' Origgi thinks about when he comes to Belgium for a week-end with his girlfriend? We believe it is, because after his complete domination at the Belgian MTB-O championships in june 2012, he was back in town this week-end to take another prestigious victory to Italy: Slok's annual Jenever Relay. Of course, he wouldn't have won yesterday without his very powerfull teammate Jiri Bouchal (CZE), who was clearly not impressed by the area knowledge of most of his opponents in the mass start and showed some very solid and fast orienteering in the snow of Arenbergpark.

Maybe he took soms advantage of his Czech roots, as he declared afterwards he did not feel the jenever at all and suggests Slok will provide wodka for all competitors next year... We suggest we only provide it to Czech competitors.

In Italy, there is a likewise competition each year, but warm wine, but it was clear the Italians could appreciate the jenever as well.

It was nice to see people came from all around to join the jeneveraflossing: besides Italians and Czechs, we saw the finest orienteers from Liège, Brussels, Lommel & Antwerp! Maybe because no selection races are held to enter this competition?

At the line up it was clear that it would be an interesting race for the enthousiastic supporters with a lot of strong teams to be formed. While some were maybe reading the comments on Hte Laatste Post with a bowl of popcorn next to them, the orienteering fun was going on in Leuven!

It was an exciting race as runners who are supposed to know the area, were misled anyway and found themselves in front of a non passable wall etc... So apparently course setter Miek Fabré did an excellent job, as positions changed a lot during the race. But Jiry and Jimy managed to build a comfortable lead and Jimy could cross the finish line alone.

In 2nd position another international combination: Christian 'truiton' Bastin and his Czech teammateVendula Doležalová also proved they could handle the jenever and the snow really well. Christian, who was distracted by the croque monsieurs that reminded him a little bit of his favourite food "millefeuilles", managed to keep his focus anyway and treated himself afterwards wth croque monsieurs marinated with jenever.... For those who want to try, Truiton said it tasted good, but we know Truiton as a guy who eats almost everything all the time, so we cannot guarantee you a good taste.

In 3rd sport at least 1 Slok runner who made it into the top 3, Jeroen 'Hoekie' Hoekx and his Italian teammate Francesco 'Franz' Isella, who came all the way from Utrecht to join the relay, and who enjoyed the atmosphere of the race a lot. It even made him decide to come more often to Belgium to do some orienteering races.

 

In 4th position we remember it was Sara Sambi who came in, but I'm having troubles of remembering who her teammate was... (sorry!) (- it was JFK, An learned from the photos)
After that it all got blurry, as usual... Blurry but very cosy 'till late in the evening!

I realised that it is way harder to join this competition as a spectator than as a competitor, as you're standing in the middle of all these jenevers all the time and you don't run them out of your system...

So I hope to be back as a competitor next year (I had a cold and tried to knock it down with lots of jenevers, not sure it worked out though)

 One last warning for Jimy: if you consider taking a tattoo, don't do like J. Legear.

(Guest post by An Frederickx)