2. Grand Prix race in Slovenia: winners from Eritrea and Czech Republic.
"
A record number of 268 Runners from 16 countries gathered on the start line of the 14th Grintovec race in a beautiful valley of Kamniska Bistrica 25km north from Ljubljana.
The weather forecast was promising sunny hot day with lots of humidity and light west wind above 2000m - not too bad conditions for the top runners who had plans to attack women's and men's course records from 2006." "The three Eritreans and Ahmet Arslan from Turkey started with a high pace although nobody knew the difficult 10km course with almost 2000 m elevation, all the other runners respected the famous runners and run their own race up to the middle of the course, where the leading runners started to pay the price of the high pace in very hot weather.
Azeryra Teklay was the only one who could keep the pace but the others were one by one overtaken by the runners who had more respect to the steep course.
Arslan kept the second position, but Nejc Kuhar, who is a specialist for such steep courses, improved his position in the last part to reach bronze medal.
In the women's race the situation was very similar - Mateja Kosovelj from Slovenia run the first part of the course with her normal pace for 45minutes races, in the upper part she was overtaken by Emma Clayton from GBR and later winner Iva Milesova from Czech Republic.
Emma was leading the women's race up to some hundred meters before the finish, where she was not enough attentive and she tripped up and Iva used this moment to get the gold medal.
Both course records will remain a challenge for the next years, Anna Pichrtova and Jonathan Wyatt will stay on the top positions of the ",all times top results",.
The organizers did a really great job, all the runners enjoyed the hospitality and excellent course preparation with lots of well supplied refreshing stations along the course.
The next station of the WMRA Grand Prix will be next Sunday in Mayrhofen/AUT.
Tomo Sarf for LOC
Photos by LOC:
on front page:
- winner Azeryra Teklay (Eritrea),
on second page
- Mateja Kosovelj (Slovenia) ,in action."
The weather forecast was promising sunny hot day with lots of humidity and light west wind above 2000m - not too bad conditions for the top runners who had plans to attack women's and men's course records from 2006." "The three Eritreans and Ahmet Arslan from Turkey started with a high pace although nobody knew the difficult 10km course with almost 2000 m elevation, all the other runners respected the famous runners and run their own race up to the middle of the course, where the leading runners started to pay the price of the high pace in very hot weather.
Azeryra Teklay was the only one who could keep the pace but the others were one by one overtaken by the runners who had more respect to the steep course.
Arslan kept the second position, but Nejc Kuhar, who is a specialist for such steep courses, improved his position in the last part to reach bronze medal.
In the women's race the situation was very similar - Mateja Kosovelj from Slovenia run the first part of the course with her normal pace for 45minutes races, in the upper part she was overtaken by Emma Clayton from GBR and later winner Iva Milesova from Czech Republic.
Emma was leading the women's race up to some hundred meters before the finish, where she was not enough attentive and she tripped up and Iva used this moment to get the gold medal.
Both course records will remain a challenge for the next years, Anna Pichrtova and Jonathan Wyatt will stay on the top positions of the ",all times top results",.
The organizers did a really great job, all the runners enjoyed the hospitality and excellent course preparation with lots of well supplied refreshing stations along the course.
The next station of the WMRA Grand Prix will be next Sunday in Mayrhofen/AUT.
Tomo Sarf for LOC
Photos by LOC:
on front page:
- winner Azeryra Teklay (Eritrea),
on second page
- Mateja Kosovelj (Slovenia) ,in action."