After an intense 24 hours of racing it was no surprise that a Kiwi pair topped the rankings at the World Rogaining Championships in New Zealand this past weekend, nor that they are well know adventure racers. <P>
The winners were Chris Forne and Marcel Hagener with a total of 4365 points scored in 24 hours, and they were an amazing 850 points on their nearest rivals. Forne is a former rogaining & AR world champion, and is best known for racing with Team Nike (and more lately Team Blackwater). Hagener is German, but has lived in New Zealand for many years now and raced with several top AR squads at major events all over the world. <P>
Forne is currently living in Norway and travelled home to race. He said he took a conservative approach to route planning, which paid off. While other pairs had to change plans when the terrain proved more demanding than expected and missed some valuable CP’s, he largely stuck to his plan, and this paid off. The winning pair cleared around 90% of the checkpoints and said their AR experience helped them manage their time to best effect. While it was Hagener’s first title, Forne regained the title he first won in Australia 4 years ago with Dennis de Monchy.<P>
The challenge to this strong pairing did not come from the defending Russian title holders , but from fellow adventure racers. (One of the top Russian pairing fell out and split up!) In second place were two members the South African team, Cyanosis. Nicholas Mulder and Ryno Griesel racked up 3515 points to take a position which will have surprised many, as they were not among the favourites. It surprised the successful racers too, as they didn’t know they’d done so well until the prize winners were announced! (Nicolas previewed the event for us and we’ll publish his race report shortly.)<P>
In third place were another strong orienteering and rogaining nation, Estonia, represented by a team of 3, Tõnu Lillelaid, Karli Lambot and Rait Pallo. Lillelaid and Lambot were part of the Salomon ACE Logistics team in the most recent Explore Sweden race and their team took third place on time after finishing with an equal points total to Greig Hamilton and Phil Novis of New Zealand. Australian pair Philip Whitten and Joel MacKay finished 5th and top Australian AR racers Damon Goerke & Rob Preston were sixth.
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In the women’s competition the Australian entry was stronger and Gill Fowler and Alexa McAuley took the world title ahead of their fellow countrywomen Kathryn Ewels and Kirsten Fairfax, while Fleur Lattimore Georgia Whitla of New Zealand took the final podium place. In the overall medal table across all classes New Zealand came out ahead of Australia, with Finland in third place. <P>
Full results are <a href="#" onClick="javascript:newsitewindow('http://wrc2010.org.nz/sectionwinners.htm')" class="main">here</a>.
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