Merrell King Winter
A Winning Return for Team Oure
Rob Howard / 11.01.2014
It has been a long day for everyone on the Merrell Kong Vinter race, and as the race moved into the night the first finshers began to return to the race HQ at Gribskovhallen. Those who were first back were on the Challenger course and had opted to miss some of the optional checkpoints along the way, with Petri Forsman and Paula Porkka among them. Petri may be a legendary racer but it was Paula’s first race and the slippery mountain biking was proving perilous so they cut the day short while they were still enjoying it, as did many others.
The first team back who had completed the full course were Oure Sport, coming into the finish at 20.15. “We thought we were doing well,” said Jeppe Christenen, “but had an idea a male pair were ahead of us so didn’t expect to be outright winners. As it turned out they were 15 minutes behind us.”
“We were alone at the start,” said Marie Tindborg, “as we went a different way to everyone else, but I think we got an advantage.”
“We did well on the long orienteering, it seemed to flow,” said Christensen, “and we got to the ropes first so there were no queues there ... and we were encouraged to pass Petri Forsman too! You never really know though as others are doing shortened courses, so you see teams and headlights ahead and behind all the time and it makes you concentrate on your own race.
“We thought we might be caught some towards the end when Marie’s bike broke and we had to push or pull her on the uphills. In the end we couldn’t do it and she had to run, so we finished more slowly than we might have done.”
The team had mixed feelings on the toughest part of the course. Robert Mortensen thought it was “everything after the ropes”, but Christensen said it was either the first cycle stage or the steep and slippery running in the gravel pit section.
Amazingly the team had not raced together for several years and got back together for this race with Mortensen and Tindborg doing almost no training. Their team is named after the boarding school they attended, where Jeppe Christiansen is a teacher and the others were his pupils who took part in adventure racing as a sports activity. They explained they took part 3 times a week and even competed in 24 hour races with the school.
Christensen will be the Race Director for the Danish National Championship this year with a 24 hour race on the Isle of Fyn and he said it will feature lots of kayaking. The team do plan to race again in some other races this year, so they won’t leave it years to compete together again. Christiansen is expecting his former pupils to take part in the National Champs too.
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