ÖTILLÖ Swimrun Isles of Scilly
Team Ark Swimrun Take A Second Consecutive Win At Ötillö World Series Isles Of Scilly
Press Release / 08.06.2022
This race became a clean race from the beginning to the end for the top team in the world today! Hugo Tormento (FRA) & Max Andersson (SWE) pulled out all the stops to take the victory with 30 minutes to spare. It was impressive to see the speed of this team.
Max & Hugo pulled away on the first swim and never had to look back. The battle of the race was between the first mixed team Richard Stannard (UK) & Sarah Richardson (UK) and the first women's team Desirée Andersson & Fanny Kuhn (SWE) who switched positions all though the race until the second to last swim where Fanny & Desiréé pulled away and finished in a third place overall!
Yesterday the Sprint & Experience races were in challenging conditions with some wind, waves and fog. Today the sea was almost flat, the sun came out and it became a lovely day of racing.
This race course is so demanding with the first and last swim out of eight being over 2000 metres long in the open-ocean.Together with technical trail-running on single track it demands so much skill from the racers to be so fast. The winning team managed to pull away from the beginning to finally be able to cruise to the finishline with a little more than thirty (30) minutes to spare.
THE WORLD SERIES RACE
The second stop in the 2022 ÖTILLÖ® Swimrun World Series was in the spectacular Isles of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall in Southwest England. These islands set the stage for a very different and quite magnificent race.
The nearly 150 starting racers were challenged by this stunning course where they ran along beautiful trails and did some major ocean swims. The total distance was 37,1 km of which 8,4 km was swimming (8 sections) and 28,7 km was trail-running (9 sections).
Two of the swim sections were longer than 2 000 metres in the open Atlantic Ocean. Depending on conditions, these stretches could be very rough. The water was around 14 degrees C and the swims were a difficult challenge even for the fittest. Today the race weather was near perfect. Very little wind and sun that came out in the afternoon.
The trail running sections were more than 75% on technical, single track trails with constant ups and down. The swims, eight of them make for lots of transitions between running and swimming where it is easy to lose lots of time. During the swims the racers were challenged by tidal currents and sea weed.
Several top ranked teams made the competition stiff up front. The teams represented a total of 16 nations.
The big race in the race was who would be first between the first mixed team and the first womens team where the current World Champion Desirée Andersson and her former partner Fanny Kuhn showed why they are among the best swimrunners in the world coming third overall.
Over the weekend close to 500 persons representing 17 nationalities were signed up in three distances, of which two were on Saturday (below). All distances had team and solo racers.
THE SATURDAY RACES
On June 4th ÖTILLÖ® hosted two shorter distances making the sport available to anyone.
The Sprint distance was 15,4 km. It also had 8 sections of swimming and 9 sections of running. However the total distance of swimming was a little short of 2,5 km and the trail-running was 12,9 km. This course circumnavigated the island of St Mary's. The name eludes to the distance and not to the speed.
The Experience distance was 7,6 km. It had 3 sections of swimming and 4 sections of running. The total distance of swimming was a little short of 900 metres and the trail-running was 6,8 km. This course did a beautiful loop around the Garrison and the west-end of St Mary's.
Both of these race distances are open for teams of two and for solo racers.
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