8th World Rogaining Championships
5 days Until the Start of the 8th World Rogaining Championships
Kristjan Gans / 09.09.2008
This year championships are bigger than ever, around 800 competitiors from 23 countries will start the competition this Saturday. Also, it is expected to be very high-level competition since in most of the competition classes, the title-holders as well as recent years European champions will attend.
The main favourites are Chris Forne and Dennis de Monchy from New Zealand who won the last World Rogaining Championships in Australia 2006. Chris Forne is also an adventure racing world champion. They will be countered by this years European champions - the czech team of Miroslav Seidl and Petr Boranek, who have won several medals from the last three World Championships, but are still missing a gold medal. This time they are very likely to be on the podium again.
Also, there seem to be some very strong Russian teams – for example Evgeny Dombrovskiy-Pavel Shestakov and Sergey Yashchenko-Oleg Kalinin, who have won medals from the European Championships and can not be underestimated.
The weather in Estonia has been rather exceptional this summer as since August it has been raining twice the average and almost every day. The weather forecast predicts showers also for this week.
Considering the short terrain description in the beginning of article it seems most probable that the water level in bogs and swamps will not go down as expected. Those who take part should be prepared for wet conditions, and the readers following our news should be prepared for surprises in the results, as the terrain will demand only correct decisions and a mistake might put a team face-to-face with uncrossable watercourses.
We will come back with more precise news from 8th World Rogaing Championships in Estonia on Saturday morning, a few hours before the start.
Until then follow the news and forum from the official web site at http://8wrc2008.rogain.ee/index.php
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