WOC 2007 KYIV

[RogYoman]

craney lying second out of 7

[buzz]

Matt finished in 2nd fastest time, but Men's times much tighter than the womens and Matt down to 7th out of 17 runners at first radio, but still looks a steady run.

[RogYoman]

the live audio is great!

[bendover]

wingstedt ballsed it up...

[bendover]

thierry killing everyone at first radio... 13.08

quelle surprise!

[andy]

thierry's flying

[Becks]

My word... as Per said himself "It is fantastic, he is crazy!" What a race.

[RogYoman]

craney 26th

[EddieH]

Giorgiou is a class apart. Matt in 26th only 6 minutes behind silver.

[Joykok]

Just been on the phone to Marco Van Basten...the Dutch boys are lovin' it!!

Gullit's sparking up a big bifter.

Rikjaard is of to the cludgy with some hanky panky he picked up in Amsterdam.

And Ronald Koeman is celebrating by toe poking the tulips out of the windmill with his clogs on!

[buzz]

Giorgiou is a class apart. Matt in 26th only 6 minutes behind silver.

Actually Matt was only 4 mins behind silver, but he did get beaten by an Aussie which won't have pleased him given his current national identity crisis

Thierry is just a god amongst men!

Rach said she missed quite a few including 2 mins at the first and should have been closer to a top 10.

[Paul T]

Thierry is just a god amongst men!

Indeed ... but how does that work then? It was an ultra competitive race at the very top of a competitive sport, with 4 minutes covering places 2 to 26 .... and Tero wins by 2 whole minutes. If there were to be the same margin in the 10km in Osaka next week, then the silver medallist would be lapped. Perhaps that is not a great analogy but neither is it a bad one.

It seems that Thierry and Simone can regularly (not always, but often enough to be noticable) beat the rest of the world by a significant margin.

[ and, for the avoidance of doubt, this isn't a half arsed implication that they are on something - they aren't. Just curious what people think, that's all]

[andy]

Perhaps that is not a great analogy but neither is it a bad one.

Has a lot to do with mass-start dynamics and pack running tactics, orienteering is different given the seperate start times.

And you can't really go the wrong way in a 10k race

Peter Oberg (I think) had said he'd made 2mins of mistakes, so that'd put him within 1min of thierry. Theirry/Niggli are not only consistently good runners, their navigation is top notch too.

[greywolf]

well the simple explanation would be that maybe Thierry is a 28min/10k guy, and all the others are 30+mins. (I was slightly surprised to see in Focus that JS's best was 31 and a half, and to hear that GG had done 32, but had assumed that's because 10k PBs are [rightly] not a priority )

BUT looking at the splits suggests it's a bit more complex than that - the top few do seem to be running markedly faster than the rest - even on his best legs MC is 10% slower than TG, but Thierry's win is basically down to not making mistakes - he only "wins" 3 legs, but Tero Fohr, who's basically running the same speed, throws a minute and a half at control 5, 12 seconds at 12 and 22 seconds at 16.

he's just really really good...

[Nottinghamshire outlaw]

Fascinating route choices of the top runners now on the WOC web site - amazingly Tierry went straight on the longish leg where others aimed off for a path and then in - haven't looked at the splits to see if this confidence and strength on that leg gave him the edge.
Good to work out what route you would take before looking at where the stars went - I thought that the women would go straighter but see that the 'grab a handrail' which I thought was just an EM thing they do too!