News
Update from Estonia
Posted: 29/08/13
The second race day of the MTBO World Championships was the middle distance event, with the start and finish in the town of Moedaka, deep in an Estonian forest. The terrain area was predominantly coniferous forest with scattered grassy clearings and fields. The map was split in two by an out-of-bounds road. The northern part of the map offered a regular grid formation of tracks, with rough off road vehicle tracks winding between them. On the south side of the road, it was hillier and the the navigation was a lot more intense with numerous tracks heading in all directions, heavily scattered with controls.After winning the European Middle Distance Championships earlier in the year in Poland, Emily Benham had high hopes for this event, and came into the event as one of the favorites. Thankfully Benham had a change of fortunes from monday's disqualification in the sprint race and finished in 2nd place, only half a minute behind Marika Hara. Benham had an almost flawless race and was very happy to set foot on the podium. Silver place a really excellent result for such a testing race!In the Junior Men's race, Edwyn Oliver-Evans was also hoping to reverse Monday's fortunes and come out of the middle race with a much better result. Fortunately his wish came true, and after only a handful of small mistakes, Oliver-Evans finished 17th. Not only was his time only 1 minute off a top 10 ranking, his position was the best ever achieved by a British Junior Male. A total reversal of Monday's flop in the sprint race.Finally, in the Elite men's race, Andy Douglas and Ian Nixon were still to battle out for the only British place in the long distance event. The highest placed rider would most likely be chosen to fill this position. First to set off was Ian Nixon, who had a mixed race, picking up a handful of mistakes along the way. In the end Nixon finished 71st, a few places lower than the sprint event. A couple of hours later, it was Andy Douglas' turn to take to the course. Douglas got a great start, and was far up the rankings coming out of the first radio control. However, a misreading of the map sent the Brit riding from control 12 to 20 then 19 causing a large extra loop after realising his mistake. In the end, Douglas still finished in a highly commendable 56th position, making him the favorite for selection for the long distance race.Today, the riders have a well deserved rest day, and return to racing on Friday, for the World MTBO Relay Championships.