Nopesport

Matthias Merz once again took a convincing victory in the men's middle distance race today to take his second Gold medal of the week. Despite a 40 second miss towards the end of the course he maintained a comfortable lead of 36 seconds over Patrik Karlsson of Sweden, finishing with a time of 30:48 for the 4.9km course. For Britain's Graham Gristwood in third,an early 80 second miss at the second control will be rued, but to regain composure and run a fantastic medal winning race after such an early setback bodes well for more important races to come in Trondheim at the World Championships next month.

Doug Tullie and Oleg Chepelin posted times of 36:09 and 36.58 to finish in 32nd and 38th places respectively, while Scott Fraser missed the race due to an allergic reaction. Scott should be fine for the relay, and after the promising results over the past few days, Britain will be looking to take home their third medal of the championships.

In the Women's race Czech Republic's Radka Brozkova led comfortably for most of the race to win with a time of 30:05 for the 4km race. Behind her Sofia Haajanen of Sweden almost threw away Silver, with a couple of mistakes leaving her only seven seconds clear of Ines Brodmann of Switzerland, finishing in a time of 31:38. 

The British women posted their best results of the week, with Anne Edwards just pipping Jess Halliday by 17 seconds to finish up in 23rd and 24th places respectively. Hollie Orr finished in 44th, while Laura Daniel had a race to forget after a 10 minute miss at the third control which caught a number of runners out.

Men's middle course, GG missed #2, Merz missed #12

Results

Men: 4.9km 260m climb

       Name             Nation     Time      
1.    Matthias Merz        SUI    30:48    +00:00
2.    Patrik Karlsson        SWE    31:24    +00:36
3.    Graham Gristwood    GBR    31:44    +00:56
4.    Johan Runesson        SWE    31:54    +01:06
5.    Olli-Pekka Koistinen    FIN    32:13    +01:25
6.    Erik Rost        SWE    32:35    +01:47

32.    Douglas Tullie        GBR    36:09    +05:21
38.    Oleg Chepelin        GBR    36:58    +06:10
52.    Nicolas Simonin        IRL    39:24    +08:36
87.    Colm Hill        IRL    46:12    +15:24
    Scott Fraser    GBR    dns   


Women: 4km 255m climb
       Name         Nation     Time      
1.    Radka Brozkova    CZE    30:05    +00:00
2.    Sofia Haajanen    FIN    31:38    +01:33
3.    Ines Brodmann    SUI    31:45    +01:40
4.    Sara Lüscher    SUI    32:25    +02:20
5.    Saila Kinni    FIN    32:30    +02:25
6.    Rasa Ptasekaite    LTU    33:23    +03:18

23.    Anne Edwards    GBR    36:30    +06:25
24.    Jess Halliday    GBR    36:47    +06:42
46.    Hollie Orr    GBR    41:50    +11:45
62.    Niamh O´Boyle    IRL    44:09    +14:04
78.    Laura Daniel    GBR    50:11    +20:06
 

Full splits, results and routes available from the WUOC website.

You can follow the relay live here from 9am tomorrow.