European Champs are over and of course there are some words to say. The last week down at the black sea was just perfect for me. Winning 3 of 4 medals is a balance i've never expected! I'm pretty curious now what the rest of the season will bring...

Sprint, 30.05.10

The week started with the Sprint qualification and final on the same day. The qualification was no problem and i could start get a late starttime in the final startlist. The surprising start place at the finish-arena didn't irritate me at all and i got a really good start for the first controls. But i managed to take the time i needed to decide the routechoices in the beginning (2-3, 3-4, 4-5). In the following technical part i could keep the speed high and open up a gap of 25" until control 16. On the final part at the beach it was only aboutto stay focused and not to do any stupid mistake! I finished with a clean race and found myself back in top spot on the result board! What a start of this week! 

map qualification / final
results qualification / final

Relay, 02.06.10

After a lot of strong performances of all the guys from the swiss team, we were really looking forward to the relay. So we knew we will be one of the favourites and everyone of us was eager to do a good job! Matthias Müller on the start leg did exactly that and finished 5th, some seconds behind the lead. A nice starting position for me on the second leg. My race was again very clean and physically i had a very good day, and due to Anders Holmberg (Sweden 2) was running most of the time at my side (same forking all the way!) i was pushing very hard. So Anders and me finished in the lead with some gad down to the other teams. Matthias Merz on the last leg did a tactical strong race and we could celebrate the Golden one! Fantastic to win with the team!

map
results

Middle, 04.06.10

On this day something went wrong. I don't know yet what it was, but my technical performance was far away from all the others earlier this week. Maybe the second straight gold in the relay made me a little bit too satisfied... It started already at the second control where i made the most tipical type of mistake you can make in this terrain. Parralel mistake, running up one reentrant to much to the right... One minute lost or ten places in the final results! The rest of the course was without any biger mistake, but having a bad and slow feeling all the way, missing the flow. The 16th place in the end was a disappointment. 

map qualification / final
results qualification / final

Long, 05.05.10

The last race of this years EOC was the longdistance. During the past years i showed good performences in all distances except the longdistance. This spring i did for the first time good jobs on long courses, what made believe to make a breakthrough in this discipline this year! So for this week it was the race i was most looking forward to. But the race started not as i wished to. Good first controls were followed by a 1' mistake at control 6 and a 3' loss at 11. The second one was actually pretty stupid, because i was at the rigth place, but just didn't look deep enough into the reentrant. After that i thought that was one mitake too much, but when i heard at the spectator control that i'm running for the medals, i was happy again and concentrated once more for the last loop. It went very well and finally my race was still good enough for the Bronce medal! Maybe the most valuable medal for me this week. And the splittimes showed me that i was keeping the speed of Daniel Hubmann most of the time, so there is some potential;)

map qualification / final
results qualification / final

I'm extremly happy with EOC and my results! But the season is continuing and there are a lot of competitions following soon. Next step are the relay swiss champs next sunday and then the trip to finland with World Cup and Jukola to go...

(Fotos: Philip Indermühle)