VK Sprint: Michiels and Fabré

Yannick Michiels and Miek Fabré won the Flemish sprint championships in Ham today. In a partial forest race they were both a league on their own.

Michiels had the hardest competition of the two, though. Having already won the Walloon championship yesterday, or maybe "won" is an incorrect wording since he had a 4 minute lead in Marche, Michiels wanted to repeat his achievement today. With several good runners absent, especially triple Belgian champion Desmond Franssen was missed in the starting grid, his wishes were perhaps not too far fetched.

Genar, Michiels, Hoekx

During the first half of the race, the city-part, it was only your reporter who could somewhat keep the pace of Michiels, with Jeremy Genar not too far behind. In the forest part, all runners started making small mistakes and a large pack even formed for the last 2 controls, with Dries van der Kleij, Bruno De Lat, Jan Oeyen, your reporter and even Michiels saw them in front of him. All five of them missed the second last control for 25 seconds. This was not threatening for Michiels' lead, but it decided the second place, with Genar finishing 7 seconds ahead, still 43 seconds down on Michiels' best time.

Oeyen, Fabré, Pluymers

No such excitement in the women's class. Miek Fabré did what Michiels could only dream of. Not even Greet Oeyen or last year's champion Saartje Sallaerts came even close to matching the pace and clean orienteering of Fabré. She won with a comfortable margin to Greet Oeyen and Helena Pluymers and confirmed her great shape already shown during the selections races two weeks ago.

Results
Splits
Map (Jeroen Hoekx)
Map+report (Yannick)