Sunday’s sprint at the World Games in Chengdu, China, featured several surprises.
Both Hungary and Spain won orienteering medals for the first time in World Games history, while gold medals went to Simona Aebersold (SUI) and Yannick Michiels (BEL).
It was rainy and cooler than the previous days in Chengdu when the athletes started the technically challenging sprint on Sunday morning.
The courses went in the Jiangxi River Ecological Greenway park, which had a multitude of small, intricate gardens and, combined with constant route selection challenges, it was almost impossible to avoid small or large losses of time.
All photos: Erling Thisted
Two golds for Aebersold
In the women’s class, Simona Aebersold lived up to her reputation as the favorite and won her second gold medal in Chengdu with a large margin of 53 seconds over compatriot Natalia Gemperle, who ran a particularly strong second half of the day’s sprint.
The biggest surprise of the day was Maria Prieto (ESP), who delivered an impressive performance and took the bronze medal, 1:25 behind Aebersold.
Hungary’s Rita Maramarosi was in the running for a medal for a long time, but lost time in the final legs and had to settle for sixth place behind Sandra Grosberga (LAT) and Tereza Rauturier (CZE).
Michiels’ first championship gold
In the men’s event, Yannick Michiels won his first gold medal at a championship after a strong performance without any major time loss. Tomáš Křivda (CZE), who won World Games bronze three years ago, was completely level with Michiels after 10 minutes of running, but a small mistake in stage 17 meant that the Czech ended up with silver.
Zoltán Bujdosó was eight seconds behind Křivda and took a historic bronze medal for Hungary.
He was followed by three Swiss athletes, Riccardo Rancan, Fabian Aebersold and Tino Polsini. The latter had a great start today, but lost precious time to control 13 and was eliminated from the medal race there.
Find the TV broadcast, results, GPS-tracking and photos in IOF LIVE
The final orienteering competition at the World Games is the sprint relay, which will be held on Monday morning, Chinese time.
The mass start is at 10:10 (UTC +8) and IOF Live serves you with GPS-tracking and live results.