Student Ski-O World Championship with Medal Potential
My second and last WUSOC took part in Estonia, Tartu. I was really looking forward to this event. We had a damn great crew! B-)
We were welcomed in the ski-o fairy tale! Very cold sunny weather and white countryside.
I had big ambitions and (hopefully) peak shape of the winter. I believed Estonians terrains could fit me despite I've never done ski-o in Estonia before. Simply, I was dreaming about a medal.
Already at first race I could have reached it. But I didn't handle an unusually big map size well and got confused on the way to the first control. I had a good start but standing on the correct way trying to understand the map and reality cost me too much of a precisous time. The rest of the race went pretty smoothly. I only missed one cross junction in downhill and had to turn. At the end it was more than less paměťák. A part of my map with the course ending didn't fit in my map holder so it was flying and I was not able to read it while skiing. Another important seconds. Seconds which means a lot at sprint. It was enough for 11place. Two places better than at last WUSOC but I wanted more.
The day after was sprint relay. Really cold weather didn't stop my excitement and motivation. Girls started first. I ran together with Argi. I had a great flow thourgh all my loops. Full speed no mistake. Unfrotunately, Argi did't avoid mistakes and we ended 10th. This year both teams from every country counted so we got a result despite being beaten by the other Czech team. Jyri was also running for 2nd team of Finland. His woman leg didn't do so well so me and Argi was fighting closely with Jyri's team. Unfortunately, they bet us by one place. Jyri did a good performance soo so I counted our times just for me. If me and him running together we would be just behind 3rd team. One of us should probably change the nationality ;)
The third day was a rest day, as usual. We took advantage of staying in a nice hotel with spa for free. We worked on strenghtening our international relations ;)
And of course, cool run through Tartu with these crazy girls!
The day after it was time for a chasing start. I felt good and ready to chase some positions. Unfortunately, I started with three girls at the same time and one of them threw accidentaly snow on my map holder. I didn't want to loose the contact and continuted skiing without cleaning the snow away as I remembered couple of upcoming cross junctions. When I got to place where I didn't know where to go, it turned out, the snow got frozen on my map holder. I couldn't put it away and didn't see the map. **** As it was a chansing start I did believe we shouldn't have a different control point before a first map change. I risked it and followed girls. When we hit a wide road I finally had more opportunities to clean the map holder with both hands. What an unpleasant surprise when I found I am totally wrong. Too big mistakes and this fast race. I lost lot of places due this mistake and some more during rest of the race. I was struggling to read the map all the way through due to rests of snow and ice. I got very dissapointed with my performance.
The day after was my last chance. Middle mass start. I had a very strong start and was leading the starting field going to my forking. I did a good race preparation and felt very sure about what's the best route choice to the second control. Unluckily, the route choice which was fastest a day before turned out much slower that day. Generally, I did a good race but many bad route choices. It is interesting that three days earlier I did did all route choices correct at the same terrain and that day almost none. I was quite dissapointed with my result as I felt like I did good. But results were very tight and my loss wasn't big.
As we Czechs didn't reach any medal this time, we climbed to reach the highest point of Estonia last day. Tough one ;)
As I didn't secure any flower from a flower ceremony by myself, Jyriczech save the situation. Cograts for your 2nd place!!!!
Last evening we enjoyed the banquet in the pub with the highest ceiling in Europe.
And finally someone defended Czech colours! Verča represented us great and won 2nd place in the huge beer krígl holding contest just behind Russia!!
It was a good party, organizers treated us well!
As we were leaving at about 10o'clock in the morning, we couldn't miss one more spa session (well needed after danceful night). A jako správní Češi, we eat as much as we could at hotel breakfast. We couldn't eat whatever we wanted in previous morning due to races, but this day jsme si to pořádně vynahradili!
I would sum up my performance as quite good, great, very bad and OK. Beside from sprint, my results were worse than two years ago in Russia. But this time the athletes field was far stronger. The differences between girls are getting smaller. Time to work even harder!
Or change the kind of sport? ;)
