An important day for the mountain running: wonderful World Championships in Kamnik.
08/09/2010
“About 350 athletes of 39 Nations run in the 26th World Mountain Running Championships in Kanmik (Slovenia) on 5th September 2010. It was the record of Nations present.
One third of these Nations (13 in total) won at least one medal.
Four Nations won gold medals: three each for Turkey (plus two silver) and Eritrea (plus one silver) and one each Italy (plus one silver and two bronze) and Austria.
Switzerland took one silver and one bronze medal, instead Germany, Romania and USA won each one silver medal.
Finally one bronze medal each was obtained from Belgium, France, Great Britain, Russia and Uganda. “
“Both senior races (women and men) were really the greatest race ever run.
In the senior women category the runners who finished in the top five position was really the strongest runners at the moment in the discipline: first Andrea Mayr (AUT), second Valentina Belotti (ITA), third , Martina Straehl (SUI), fourth Svetlana Semova (RUS) and fifth , Mateja Kosovelj (SLO) run a memorable competition. Team result saw the victory of Italy only four point less the Switzerland (second), whilst Russia was third. 13 full team finished in the final results.
The senior men race saw the triumph of African runners. Six of them finished in the first six position: four Eritrean (first, Samson K. Gashazghi, second , A. Teklay Weldemariam, fourth, Petro Mamu Shaku, and sixth, Abraham K. Habtom) and two Ugandan (third, Geoffrey Kusuro, and fifth, Stephan Kiprotich). Pluri-European Champion Ahmet Arslan (TUR) finished seventh, six time World Champion, Jonathan Wyatt arrived seventh in front of another Eritrean, Haben I. Mohamed, and Joe Gray (USA) closed the first ten positions. First Italian runner at the finish was Gabriele Abate (11th).
Significant placement by Swedish athletes for the first time partecipant to the WMRA World Mountain Running Championships: first of Swedish runners was Anders Kleist (36th place). Also Yujiro Iida, the only Japanese athlete present for the first time to this event, run a great competition among the top level’s athletes of this discipline in the world finishing in 45th place.
Unforgettable was the podium in the team senior men race with three Continents: Eritrea for Africa as gold medal, USA for America as silver medal and Italy for Europe as bronze medal (after that in the past Italy won in the men team of World Mountain Running Championships 23 gold medals and 2 silver medals!). Important were the 20th place of the Hungarian team and the 22nd place of Albanian team: both Nations at their debut in the WMRA World Mountain Running Championships. There ,were 24 full teams in the final result.
Junior race, women and men, were dominated by Turkish athletes who won three gold medals of four. Both teams competition and the junior race women with Yasemin Can who confirmed her title of last year, in front her Turkish colleague Burcu Dag and French athlete Adelaide Pantheon.
Eritrean Yossief T. Andemichael won gold medal in junior men race finishing the race three minutes and thirty second before second, Turkish Ridvan Bozkurt, Third was Belgian Jente Joly who was third also in the last European Championships 2010 in Sapareva Banya (Bulgaria).
In the junior women teams result Turkey was first, second was Romania and third finished Great Britain (19 full team in the final result), instead in the junior men teams result Turkey won gold medal in front of Germany (silver) and Italy (bronze) with 17 full team in the final result.
Thousand spectators applauded the athletes on the wonderful track marked in Mountain Velika Planina, near Kamnik, and during opening and closing ceremonies held in the central square of the town.
A report of 20 minute was showed in the national Slovenian television.
The event must be considered a great success for mountain running discipline.
Bruno Gozzelino by WMRA
Photo:
Flower ceremony of senior women race.
Flower ceremony of senior men race
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