Gernot Kerschbaumer (Austria) and Minna Kauppi (Finland) took the victories in the highlight of this year’s Portugal O Meeting – the World Ranking Long distance race at Day 3.

Kerschbaumer – from start until finish

Gernot Kerschbaumer had a steady race, in the end beating Albin Ridefeldt (Sweden) with 1:07 and Aaro Asikainen (Finland) with 1:09. The below split graph shows how the top runners compared in the race. Kerschbaumer has the lead nearly from start until finish. Asikainen is less than 30 seconds behind at the arena passage, but loses time towards the end. Baptiste Rollier (Switzerland) has a good middle part of the race, being in a clear 2nd place before doing a mistake to control 18. Frederic Tranchand (see the lower splitsbrowser) did very well on parts of the course, but big mistakes on the first two controls and on control 22 cost him the possibility for a top result.

Kauppi in her own class

In the women’s class Minna Kauppi was in her own class – winning with more than 3:30 down to Saila Kinni (also Finland) in second. Galina Vinogradova finished 3rd at 4:27 down from Kauppi. Based on the splits, Kauppi did simply have better speed than the others today. This looks very good for Kauppi after many injury problems last season.

Maps

The terrain was typical Portuguese Sand Dune terrain. There were not too many real route choice challenges – the leg with the largest differences in route choices was the leg from 5 to 6 shown above. Although there are some differences between the top runners here, the routes were not the decisive today. Rather it was to keep pushing all the way – without doing any mistakes.

Results

Men SuperElite

1. Gernot Kerschbaumer OKPanKristians -OPORSWE 01:26:11 2. Albin Ridefelt OK Linné – OPORSWE 01:27:18 3. Aaro Asikainen KRFIN 01:27:20 4. Valentin Novikov RUSRUS 01:28:19 5. Rollier Baptiste Swiss O Team – OPORSUI 01:28:23 6. Kiril Nikolov KRFIN 01:29:01 7. Hubmann Martin Swiss O Team – OPORSUI 01:29:26 8. Robert Merl Austria O Team- OPORAUT 01:29:28 9. Scott Fraser Interlopers – OPORGBR 01:29:49 10. Severi Kymäläinen TPFIN 01:30:11 11. Magne Dæhli Halden SK O-PORNOR 01:30:16 12. Bartosz Pawlak SNOSWE 01:30:28 13. BASSET Lucas Pôles France U -OPORFRA 01:31:27 14. Hector Haines Interlopers – OPORGBR 01:31:52 15. Jakob Enmark SNOSWE 01:32:12

Women Elite