UPDATED (28/10): World Cup in China: favourites win Middle Distance

Swedish athletes Tove Alexandersson and Gustav Berman won today’s Middle Distance races, the first-ever World Cup event to be staged in China and the last forest races in this year’s World Cup. This win confirms Gustav Bergman as overall winner of this year’s World Cup.

Alexandersson started strongly and was the fastest by 24 seconds at control 5, a lead that was extended to 48 seconds at the second TV control. She made a 40-second error in the later stages but so did her closest challenger, the Russian Natalia Gemperle, and the final result was a 30-second gap between the two. Switzerland demonstrated strength in depth in taking the next 5 places in the results, third place in the race going to Julia Jakob who was 55 seconds down on Alexandersson’s time.

Bergman also was the fastest throughout. Tim Robertson, New Zealand started equally strongly and was only 7 seconds down at the first timing point, but later dropped back. Joey Hadorn, Switzerland and Lucas Basset, France, finishing second and third, both had some problems early on but ran strongly in the second half of the race; Hadorn was 8th at the half-way point and Basset 10th. Switzerland again scored strongly with three athletes in the top six.

The races were held in quite hilly and very varied terrain that gave problems for many athletes. For both women and men, winning times were relatively long for a Middle distance.

Tomorrow is the Sprint Relay and on Tuesday the final individual race, a Sprint. Can Tove Alexandersson achieve a ‘clean sweep’, winning all the World Cup races in this season?

Results are now updated and are official. An issue involving several runners for crossing a narrow strip of land marked on the map as out-of-bounds has been resolved by the jury. Link to Jury decision published in Eventor.

Leading results, Middle distance

Women

  1. Tove Alexandersson SWE 41:33
  2. Natalia Gemperle RUS 42:03
  3. Julia Jakob SUI 42:28
  4. Simona Aebersold SUI 44:36
  5. Sarina Jenzer SUI 44:55
  6. Elena Roos SUI 44:59

Men

  1. Gustav Bergman SWE 40:12
  2. Joey Hadorn SUI 41:25
  3. Lucas Basset FRA 41:53
  4. Andreas Kyburz SUI 42:10
  5. Daniel Hubmann SUI  42:17
  6. Kasper Fosser NOR  42:26

Official Results