Belgian long champs: starttimes

On sunday the most important individual race of the year will take place in Belgium: the national long distance championships. The race will take place in Chiny. This area has been used in 2002 for a world cup long distance competition.

Extract from the map

The long distance race in 2002 included 15540m (440m climb) for H21E and was won by Pasi Ikonen in 1h24'10. Ikonen was 1 minute faster than Novikov (RUS) and 2 minutes faster than Holger-Hott (NOR). For the Belgian long distance champs the elite runners will have to survive a 14410m course with 265m climbing. The winning time should be around 1h30 on sunday.

Another extract from the map

In women's class the champion was ofcourse Simone Luder in 2002. She completed the 9830m course in 56'09. In the end she was more than 3 minutes faster than the Swedish Grantstedt and the Norwegian Hanne Staff. On sunday the Belgian women will run almost the same distance: 9560m. We are curious who can beat Luders winning time.

This is how the forest will look like and the palce to be for control 101

4 athletes who were representing their country at the world cup in 2002, will be again present in 2014. Olle Karner from Estonia and Fabien Pasquasy from Belgium are not as young as in 2002 anymore, but still they are among the favourits for the victory on sunday. Both will probably fight against Tomas Hendrickx for the victory. Also Michel Bastin was representing Belgium in 2002 and is one of the outsiders on sunday.

The only female runner who was competing in 2002 and again in 2014 is Aline Hermans. At the moment she's in D40 class, but still fighting for the title in D21E. We expect a close fight between her and Miek Fabré next sunday.

The technical information about the long distance championships 2014

The organisation did great work with promoting the event on facebook. The expectations are very high now. Hopefully we'll experience one of the most technical and demanding championships since several years in Chiny.
Also the startlist has been published already. Be carefull it's been updated today and there are many changes compared to the previous startlist.

Results world cup 2002
Map and routechoices 2002 (Men final A - Women final A)
Startlist BK 2014