If one would logically expect Swiss national championships to be hold inside of the country’s borders, it however wasn’t the case of the Middle Championships 2009, hold today in the Austrian town of Feldkirch – within a stone’s throw from Switzerland, true. Never mind: “the more, the merrier” could have been the possible motto of this competition week-end, as both Swiss and Austrian clubs collaborated in its organisation and a mixed austro-swiss crowd rushed at the start.
In separated classes though, and for different stakes. While the Austrian runners were struggling for the title of Austrian sprint champion yesterday in the town of Feldkirch itself, the Swiss runners were competing in this sprint as a “normal” Swiss national race. New day, new roles: it was the turn of the Swiss competitors to have their Middle championships today in the near Göfis, while the Austrians were running a “normal” Austria Cup race.
The classes were – for the most – however only separated on the paper, as the courses were strictly identical and thus allowed an international comparison. Talking about comparison, precisely: the one which could be the most interesting was the competition between the best Austrian sprinter, Gernot Kerschbaumer (9th at last WOC sprint) and the Swiss ones. It didn’t fail: Kerschbaumer finished just 4 little second behind first Swiss Matthias Merz and some 2 seconds before the Swiss but in Austria living (just to complicate the story…) Matthias Müller. Daniel Hubmann finished at a disappointing 14th place. Vice-Austrian champion became Christian Wartbichler, followed tightly by Wolfgang Siegert on 3rd place, both of them in their first elite year. In the Women classes, the Austrian title went to 1997 World Champion Lucie Rothauer, more than one minute before Ursula Kadan (see our past Q&A). Rothauer was however 1’40 slower than the first Swiss runner- 14 times World Champion Simone Niggli, winning with a very comfortable margin on Angela Wild.
The Swiss middle championships of today let very often pronounced and expected names resound once more, this time in the forest of Göfis. The terrain was caracterized by a mostly well runable forest with low vegetation and hilly relief, where a very dense net of controls was set. The last controls were to run in the town of Göfis. It is though with a very small margin of 6 seconds that Daniel Hubmann obtained the Swiss title, just before Matthias Merz, followed himself by Marc Lauenstein. Gernot Kerschbaumer, again first Austrian, would have inserted his name on 4th place of these Swiss championships and wasn’t worried by the following Austrian runners, grabing a 4 minutes advance on Markus Lang. It is also with a clear advance of over 2 minutes that Simone Niggli became Swiss champion on middle distance. Angela Wild (2nd) and Rahel Friederich (3rd) were however separated by only 2 seconds. In the Austrian women class, the podium was strictly identical to the previous day, with Lucie Rothauer winning ahead of Ursula Kadan (this time less than 20 seconds behind) and Jutta Krischan.
- Pictures
- Results Saturday: Swiss M21 / Austrian M21 and Swiss W21 / Austrian W21
- Results Sunday: Swiss M21 / Austrian M21 and Swiss W21 / Austrian W21
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