Full analysis of the middle distance WRE from Aguiar da Beira “O” Meeting 2017.
As the course setter of the course, I tried to make the course with varied types of terrain – from fast and flat, to hilly and with route choices – but always with longer legs to increase the amount of navigation without the confirmation of the control points.
At the end, interesting battle between Thierry Gueorgiou and Olav Lundanes – with only 5 seconds separating these two amazing runners in the end.
From the performance index we can see that Thierry had quite diffuse race – with really good beginning but losing some time at the end. Like Thierry said on the interview, at the end of the race he was almost losing contact with the map.
Also interesting to see the time loss by leg lenght. Thierry better on shorter legs, Olav better on longer legs.
From the GPS data, we can see that Thierry had a really strong start of the race until control 11. At that control, Thierry had a lead of 1min! (based on split-times)
But on the final part of the race Olav was stronger. From control 11 to the end, Olav got 55seconds on Thierry.
The first leg where Thierry lost quite some time was control 14 – with a quite safe but slow route choice.
Then came the decisive route choice to control 16. Thierry and Olav both used the best route choice to control 16 (but Olav with a faster running to control 16 and 17 managed to get some time on Thierry). Note that Albin Ridefelt (3rd at the finish) was only 34 seconds behind Olav Lundanes at control 15, but a bad route choice made him lost a lot of time.
As course setter I’m very happy to have such a decisive route choice. This route was carefully planned. Here athletes could mainly choose between going up the hill and having a nice line into the controls or have an easier first part of the leg but very hard time going into the control.
The illustration above shows that Albin was faster going out of the control, but lost a lot of time in the end of the leg.
Even tough Olav and Thierry use mainly the same route choices, there were several legs with a lot of different variants. And one of the decisive controls being control 1.
See some of the main route choices below.
Control 1
Control 7
Control 8
Control 14
Control 16
Women Elite
Svetlana Mironova (Koovee) won 32 seconds ahead of Ulrika Uotila (Koovee) with Ekaterina Nikitina (Rehns BK) in 3rd at 0:47.
The fight for victory was close; Ulrika Uotila (lost 1:04 at leg 3, finished 32 seconds behind in 2nd), Ekaterina Nikitina (lost 1:44 at leg 6, finished 47 seconds behind in 3rd), Heini Saarimäki (lost 2:46 at leg 1, finished 1:15 behind in 4th) and Maren Jansson Haverstad (lost 4:28 at leg 1, finished 4:05 behind in 9th) were only one control away from beating Svetlana Mironova.
How the race developed
Svetlana Mironova was in the lead all the way from the first control to the end of the race.
Note that at control 14, Ulrika Uotila was only 9 seconds slower than Svetlana Mironova – close to the victory.
The most decisive leg was leg 1 – we can say that it was here that Svetlana Mironova won the race. For example, the overall winner of ABOM2017, Maren Jansson Haverstad, lost 4:28 on leg 1 and ended 4:05 behind Svetlana Mironova.
Svetlana Mironova vs Ultika Uotila
Svetlana Mironova vs Maren Jansson Haverstad
Where did Svetlana Mironova lost time?
Control 6 – choosing a bad line into the control, into really bad runnable terrain
Control 14 – again, bad line between controls. The final part of the leg is really bad runnable area, much better using the rock faces up on the slope like Ekaterina Nikitina.
