USA, Austria and Switzerland: gold medals at the 9. World Long Distance Mountain Running Champ. 2012
6317 were in total the runners who finished races: 4868 men and 1449 women and more than two hundred runner did not arrived to the finish. A record of participants!
Medal table of the 9. WMRA World Long Distance Mountain Running Challenge 2012 saw USA with 4 medals (2 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze) in the leader position, then Austria with 3 medals (1 each gold silver and bronze), Hosting Country Switzerland with 2 medals (1 gold and 1 silver), Slovenia with 1 silver medal and Germany and Kenya with 1 bronze each." "
On Saturday 8. September, with a come-from-behind victory, American Stevie Kremer bested the field of the runners to win gold in a time of 3h22.42.
",The race was nothing short of spectacular,", said the 28-year-old Kremer, ",From the organization to the support, to the course and the views, this was an amazing race. I am thrilled to have been a part of it and so proud and excited for TEAM USA!",
Kremer refers to Team USA's gold-medal team victory in the World Long Distance Mountain Running Challenge division of the race. The team of five, with three to score was selected in mid-June before Kremer indicated her interest in racing Jungfrau, so she was not a scoring member for the team.
Silver medal was Austrian Sabine Reiner (time 3h24.10) and leading Team USA - an all-Colorado squad - to the gold medal was third-place finisher Kim Dobson who posted a time of 3h26.58.
Dobson won gold team medals together Melody Fairchild, (ninth), Brandy Erholtz, (16. place), Ashley Arnold (32. place), and Gina Lucrezi (35. place).
In fourth position finished French, Aline Camboulives, just before the first swiss at the finish,
In the first ten position to note the presence of Angela Mudge (Scotland, 7. - many times medalist at World Mountain Running Championships) and Hakenstad Evertsen Anita (Norway, 8 - European Mountain Running Champion , on 201 at Cauterets).
The scoring for the World Long Distance Challenge is calculated based on combined times of the top three scoring runners. Team USA won with 11h00.50, by nearly ten minutes over home country Switzerland (11h09,53). Austria finished in third position with 11h35.39.
Eleven national teams are in the results: in the order from the fourth position to the eleventh: Germany (4.- 11:39.13), , Russia (5. - 11:48.57), Scotland (6. - 11:55.54), England , (7. - 11:58.54), Australia (8. -12:32.10), Slovenia (9. - 12:42.05), Wales (10. -12:57.22) and Czech Republic (11. - 13:02.23
How the race unfolded was described by Bryant, team leader coach of USA team: ",With the easy first 15K at Jungfrau, the race started fast. None of the American women, including Stevie, were with the front pack. At 15K, Stevie was in the second or third pack of women and Kim was a little farther back with about 1-2 minutes on the rest Melody, Brandy, Ashley, and Gina running as a group. They all ran so smart beginning to move up as the climbing began, then continuing to move forward as the sustain climbs of the second half of race wore on. The race gains more than 2200 meters over the 42 kilometer course. We were able to see the women several times as we progressed from train stop to train stop, plus passing them and cheering from the train",.
The day after, with similar weather conditions, Austrian Hohenwarter Markus was always on the top position of the race: before together Kenyan Hosea Tuei who finished third (3h01.24) and then alone. Hohenwarter won gold medal with , a time of few seconds less than three hours: 2h59.42.
Silver medal finished the defending title 2011 Slovenian Mitja Kosovelj who run second part of the race crossing over a lot of runners and arrived at the finish lane in 3h00.47.
For Long Distance Challenge, in the team result, triumph for the Swiss team , with total time of 9h32.11 (Wieser Patrick 4. - 3h03.11, Lauenstein Marc 14. - 3h12.45, Mathys Christian 21. - 3h16.14, Birchmeier Ralf 25. - 3h16.30 and Wenk Stephan 38. - 3h28.34,6). Second and silver medal was USA team with time of 9h38.20 and third and bronze medal was Germany with time of 9:42.22.
Thirteen national teams are in the results: in the order from the fourth position to the thirteenth
Scotland (4. - 9h44.50), Wales (5. - 9h53.12), Slovenia (6. - 9h53.14,5), Austria (7. - 9h59.43), England (8. - 10h15.18), Czech Republic (9. - 10h46.49), Mexico (10. - 11h05.19), Northern Ireland (11. - 11:24.41), Russia (12. - 11:38.02) and Ukraine (13. - 14:56.55).
All the present congratulated LOC, in particular Christoph Seiler and his staff, for the great organization of the event and the general opinion was that in the future the European mountain running championships or the World mountain running championships could be organized by this LOC on this wonderful part of Switzerland!
Attended to the event President of the Swiss Athletic Federation, Hansruedi Muller, and for WMRA the President, Bruno Gozzelino, and two Council members, Wolfgang Munzel and Tomo Sarf.
Next edition 10. WMRA World Long Distance Mountain Running Challenge 2013 will be held in Poland, at Szklarska Porę,ba on 3. August 2013.
Watch for full individual and team results at www.datasport.com.
News by WMRA President, Bruno Gozzelino
Photos
On front page:
- the first three women with Seiler, Umberg, Gozzelino and Cooly, mascotte of the European Track and Field Zurich 2014. Source by swiss-images.ch.
On second page:
- podium team women. Source by Winfried Stinn
- Hohenwarter at the finish Source by swiss-images.ch
- the first three men. Source by swiss-images.ch