European championships preview.
Leading contenders for medal positions.
4 July 2005
Italy defend team titles in Heiligenblut
160 athletes from a record 27 countries will take part in the 4th European Mountain Running Championships in Heiligenblut, Austria, on Sunday 10 July 2005.
The European Mountain Running Trophy was organised annually by the WMRA from 1995 and in 2002 it was recognised as an official European Championships by the EAA for the first time. Since then the number of countries competing has increased each year and in 2005, most notably, Finland is sending a team for the first time. Countries can enter up to four athletes in the men’s and women’s races of which three will score in the team competition.
The European Mountain Running Championships are held annually with the races over either an uphill and downhill or uphill only course in alternate years.
This year’s races are uphill only and start in the village of Heiligenblut at 1301m and finish on the Kaiser Franz Josefs Höhe at 2370m. The races take place on the lower slopes of the Grossglockner which at 3798m is the highest mountain in Austria.
Men’ Preview
The men’s race, which takes place over just under 13km with a total climb of 1520m, will be contested by all three medalists from last year’s Championships, Italians Marco De Gasperi (Gold) and Marco Gaiardo (Bronze) and Florian Heinzle from host nation Austria who took Silver at the age of just 22.
De Gaspari is best known as an ‘up and down’ runner so he could be upstaged by Gaiardo this time. Gaiardo was the winner the last time the Championships took place over an uphill only course in front of his home fans in Trento in 2003.
The Italians have taken the team title in all three European Championships and in fact the last time they were beaten in the European Trophy was in 1996. They are also regular winners of the World Mountain Running Trophy team title and will again be very tough to beat. The two Marcos are joined by Davide Chicco and Gabriele Abate who like their team mates finished in the top 20 at last year’s World Trophy.
Host nation Austria also have a strong team with, in addition to Heinzle, Markus Kröll who finished fifth the WMRA Grand Prix rankings last year, Alois Redl who was 16th in last year’s World Trophy and Alexander Rieder who finished eighth in the first European Mountain Running Championships in 2002.
Great Britain finished second team last year and two of that team start, including Andy Jones who finished in the top 20 last year, as well as Martin Cox who took an individual fourth place in 2002.
France also have a strong team led by Raymond Fontaine, the Bronze medalist from last year’s uphill only World Trophy. Also in the field is the man who finished fourth in Trento last year, Helmut Schiessl from Germany.
The Czech team boasts the current leader of the 2005 WMRA Grand Prix rankings, Robert Krupicka, who finished third on the uphill course at the 2003 European Championships. One of the men who lies joint second in the rankings, Vicente Capitan, starts for Spain. Switzerland’s best hope is Alexis Gex-Fabry, the winner of the first Championships in 2002 who also finished sixth in 2003 and eighth in 2004.
Women’s Preview
The Czech Republic’s Olympian Anna Pichrtova will start as favorite in the women’s race which is over 10km with a total climb of 1335m. Pichrtova will be defending the title she won last year and she also finished second in last year’s World Trophy, on both occasions ahead of Austria’s Andrea Mayr.
Italy will be defending the team title that they won in 2002 and 2003 (they also took the team title at the 2004 World Trophy) but are without individual World Trophy winner Rosita Rota Gelpi who was third in this race last year. However, they have the women who finished seventh and eighth last year, Antonella Confortola and Flavia Gaviglio, who were also in the top ten at the World Trophy. Confortola in particular could challenge for individual honors having finished third in the uphill Championships in 2003.
Host nation Austria took second in the team competition last time and will be counting on the same four athletes as last year to perform in front of their home crowd – Mayr, Sandra Baumann, Patrizia Rausch and Petra Summer.
Last year’s team Bronze medalists Great Britain again have a strong team, but have been weakened due to injury to Angela Mudge, but her replacement, Vicky Wilkinson was World junior champion in 1997. Tracey Brindley and Lyn Wilson both finished in the top ten at last year’s European Championships and Brindley took the individual Bronze medal in the 2003 World Trophy and was fifth last year.
The overall winner of the 2004 WMRA Grand Prix, Izabella Zatorska, who also leads this year’s Grand Prix rankings and took seventh place in last year’s World Trophy, starts for Poland. Russia have Svetlana Demidenko who finished sixth in last year’s World Trophy in their team.