ÖTILLÖ Swimrun Utö
A High Pace Start To The Ötillo Swimrun Season Under Difficult Conditions!
Press Release / 23.05.2022
Probably one of the tougher races when the 2022 season started on the Island of Utö under difficult weather conditions. Wind, 8 degrees in the air and about 8 degrees in the water saw many racers having to dig deep.
The front pack raced hard over 20 swims and very technical trail running. For the first third of the race 5 teams sort of stuck together. When the technical trail running sections started the field broke apart. Towards the end it was all about managing the cold and holding it together to the finish line. The winning team managed to pull away on the technical running section to finally be able to cruise to the finishline with a little more than eight (8) minutes to spare. The second team overall was a mixed team as were a total of three out of the top 5 teams overall.
MEN
Team ARK Swimrun - Hugo Tormento FRA & Max Andersson SWE - won the Mens race in 3 hours 39 minutes and 05 seconds. A little more than 10 minutes ahead of Team Envol - Guillaume Henneman FRA & Victor Dahl SWE . In Third place YO Running Club -Daniel Adams-Ray & Fredrik Axegård SWE finished in 4:00:47.
MIXED
Team ARK Swimrun - Adriel Young AUS & Amanda Nilsson SWE won the Mixed race and came second overall in 3 hours, 47 minutes and 21 seconds. A little more than 6 minutes ahead of Team Envol - Nicolas Remires FRA & Desirée Andersson SWE. In Third place Team Envol Head Zoggs - Sabina Rapelli CH & Alexis Charrier FRA - finished in 3:57:51.
WOMEN
Team ARKsouls - Helen Wikmar & Emma Wannberg SWE won the Womens race in 4 hours 30 minutes and 11 seconds, a little over 5 minutes ahead of Team Wild - Siri Ohrankämmen & Evelina Järvinen SWE. In Third place Team Aline et Julia - Aline Tavernier FRA & Julia Moustakir FRA finished in 4:37:27.
The Race
The island of Utö in the Stockholm Archipelago was the launchpad of the 2022 ÖTILLÖ® Swimrun season. The difficult conditions made racers suffer more than usual. We can now look forward to some warm weather racing hopefully.
The World Series race course was a total of 32,7 km long with 20 swim sections and 21 run sections. This race course was a little shorter than usual to adapt to the difficult conditions.
The trail running sections were more than 75% on technical, single track trails with constant ups and down. The swims, all 20 of them made for lots of transitions between running and swimming where it is easy to lose lots of time. No swim was longer than 600 metres, so very intense. All in cold conditions and wind.
The World Series race had 75 starting teams of two and 14 solo racers. Of these many were top ranked teams making up for a very stiff competition up front in all three categories. The teams represented a total of 22 nations.
For a big part of the race the front teams powered through nature trying to drop the other.
In the Women's race it was competitive with four teams pushing hard at the front. With a little more than an hour left of the race team ARKsouls created a gap. Behind Team Wild clinched the second spot after a tight race with the french women Julia & Aline.
In the mixed race ARK Swimrun with World Champion Adriel Young & Amanda Nilsson showed right away that they were going for the win. They finished second overall. The battle for second place became very exciting where the two Envol teams chased each other hard. In the end Nicolas Remires & World Champion Desirée Andersson pulled ahead of Envol Head Zoggs (Alexis Charrier & Sabina Rapelli).
During race day 155 racers also participated in a Sprint distance race (16 km) and an Experience distance race (8km). In total close to 310 persons raced in all three distances. All distances had team and solo racers.
Hopefully the rest of the season can see racing under better conditions!
