A long exciting day with many ups and downs.
The relays (3 team members pass onto the next) were held near Osku, not all that far fromn the area I did the model event on the day I arrived in Veszprem.
In the morning the Worlds (open) and Juniors had their go, in the afternoon the Masters. A couple of the juniors were promoted to Open to make up the teams, so we had 2 open teams, 1 junior boys and one M40.
Large open grassy paddocks with drying grass. Riding off tracks is fine, but a bit bumpy in places, so sometimes debatable whether it’s worth cutting a corner or not. Of course some controls weren’t on tracks at all, so riding off was essential.
Good maps will appeat here in time: http://www.mtbo.hu/mtbwoc2012.php/routegadget. In the meantime, here is my relay variant.
The junior race was a nail biting performance, with Chris F coming in an amazing 2nd on the 1st leg, followed by a blistering ride by Marc G maintaining 2nd, but with an even quicker time. Tom looked good on the 3rd leg at the first radio control, but then disappeared from all ken. Other riders came in and finished, still no sign. Poor Tom must had had a gut wrenching time as the seconds and minutes slipped by and the chance of a placing faded into the distance. Turns out he’d become navigationally challenged, rather than mechanical breakdown or injury. They still managed a credible 8th, but the tension was hard to take.
Meanwhile the day grew hotter and hotter.It was painful and exhausting to stand in the sun, so we took to slinking about in whatever shade we could find. Now I know those experiencing winter will be thinking “bring-it-on”, but it was 39Deg by the car thermometer as we departed.
So at 1:30pm Richard R started our 1st leg in M40: http://youtu.be/R9o_Le2Ydsc
Peter C and I waited and waited in the sun for his return. We knew he had to come through the spectator loop first, and also followed the radio control progress on my phone with the live web updates (they provide WiFi at the event site, but only to access the MTBO website).
I headed off on my (2nd leg) dead last. Well, nowhere to go but up ! Despite the conditions I rode OK and navigated reasonably well. I really had no concept of how well I was doing, but turns out I took us from 8th place to 5th place. There were 9 M40 teams started, but 2 had miss-punched already, so we were down to a field of 7. I took 57 mins, Richard had taken 64 mins (but had seemed longer as we were waiting). The top gun UK team who had been leading the field had also miss punched ! Only 6 teams left. We watched the phone as Peter C took us all the way to 4th place with a fast first section, but he obviously flagged a little and dropped us back to 5th (by only a 2 min margin) as he finished. Somehow he lost his water bottle on the course, so we were able to throw one at him as he rode past the spectator.
So, since they have all the first 6 up on the podium at the presentations (held back in Veszprem, always with a precurser of usually tedious singing or dancing troupes, in a rapidly heating city hall), we were actually on the podium in 5th place. For a short while the official results even declared us 4th, and one of the Czech teams “nc” (whatever that means), but this seemed to be modified back again later. Oh well. I wore my Australiana ARDF top, as I had it with me anyway for Serbia later.
Incidentally, due to vagaries of the web entry system, the team name was “Bayside Kangaroos”, so it was a BK podium finish for the day. Certainly beat my last 2 event results anyway 🙂
Tomorrow is our last day of competition here. The Long Distance race. This one apparently finishes in Veszprem city centre (near the rocking horse above) and with a map changeover, so it could be an exciting race.
Probably another hot one …..
Last blog: https://ardf.org.au/WordPress/2012/wmmtbo-sprints-sprung/
Cheers, Bruce
PS: Did anyone watch the sprints video(s) from yesterday ? The laptop had to run all night to render and upload them, so apologies that they probably weren’t there when you read the blog orginally. Try again now !