Czechia and Ukraine are the new World Champions in O and P class respectively in the Relay, with the Open class resolved in a tense and exciting climax at the final spectator TempO station. Both Italy and Slovakia finished within 2 minutes of the Czech score.
The Relay competition for teams of three consists of a PreO course, followed by two TempO stations where all 5 tasks are timed, and finally there is a spectator TempO station where the final leg athletes for each team compete in reverse order of the results up to that point and have to solve five tasks.
In the O (Open) class, six nations completed the PreO section without any of the three team members making a mistake, so all then depended on performance in the TempO section. Here it was the young Czech team that emerged victorious, with 22-year-old Ondřej Macek, world champion in TempO 2 years ago, on the last leg taking the nerve-wracking final spectator station. The Czech success was down to the TempO performance of all three members of the team: they had only two wrong TempO answers in total, whilst the next-best team had five.
Italy overtook Slovakia in the final stage, their final leg athlete Aaron Gaio being the only person in the competition to complete the 5 tasks at the spectator TempO station without fault. Home nation Slovakia were very well set to challenge for gold at one point, but had ten wrong answers in the TempO section, including 2 at the final station, and had to settle for the bronze medals. Spain, whose athletes have performed well throughout the championships so far, finished fourth, Finland were fifth and Croatia sixth.
Ukraine produced a very strong performance in the P (Physically Challenged) class, and in the end won over Spain by more than 5 minutes. The 3 members of the Ukrainian team had two PreO mistakes in total compared to Spain’s seven, but were almost matched in the TempO tasks, where Ukraine had 11 task errors in total and Spain 13. Sweden, always a favourite for medals in this class, took bronze with only 10 TempO errors, but were slower than the other medal-winning teams.
Tomorrow is the final day of the championships. TempO Qualification is in two heats, and the best 18 from each heat qualify for the TempO Final in the afternoon. Here, athletes start in reverse order of their morning success, and the last TempO station is with spectators and where the whole competition can be decided. O and P class athletes compete on equal terms in TempO, so there is only one class in this competition; there are almost 60 competitors in each qualification heat.
Leading results, Relay
O class
- Czechia (Šimon Maraček, Pavel Ptáček, Ondřej Macek)
- Italy (Alessio Tenani, Marcello Lambertini, Aaron Gaio) + 1.11
- Slovakia (Jonatán Furucz, Šimon Mižǘr, Pavol Bukovac) + 1.47
- Spain + 2.33
- Finland + 2.39.5
- Croatia + 3.36
P class
- Ukraine (Serhii Bialenko, Valerii Lytvynov, Vladyslav Vovk)
- Spain (Sergio Martin Carrasco, Juan Emilio Montero Sánchez, Alejandro Aguilar Lara + 5.21
- Sweden (Ola Jansson, Rolf Karlsson, Michael Johansson) + 6.39
- Czechia + 7.25
- Poland + 7.26.5
- Italy + 12.28