Hollie Orr (Clyde), Doug Tullie (EUOC and RR) and Hazel Wright (MAR) represented Great Britain last weekend in the Junior European Cup in France.
This event is regarded as the unofficial Junior European Champs, and our athletes competed against some strong nations including Norway, Denmark, Russia and Switzerland. Most countries fielded up to 24 athletes - GBR, due to funding constraints, only sent 9.
The terrain was fantastically complicated, thick green bushes on open grassy terrain with huge areas of incredibly detailed rocky terrain - so detailed that the classic had to be run on a 1:7500 map.
Our 3 Scottish athletes faired excellently in the tough terrain. In the Sprint distance Doug was 18th and Hollie 13th. In the Classic Hollie and Hazel were one place apart in 19th and 20th in W18, while Doug achieved the best male result of the day with 10th place in the M20 class.
The following day Doug then produced one of his most impressive results yet. Starting on first leg for the men’s relay team he was 4 minutes down at the first spectator control. By the second spectator he had the lead pack in his sights. By the finish he’d pulled up over 15 places to finish in 2nd, less than 5 seconds behind the leading Czech team. An amazing comeback from a poor start!
Race details, maps and results can be found on the event website.
Hollie, Doug and Hollie have been selected for the 2008 GB Junior Squad of 10 athletes - all aiming for top performances at next year’s Junior World Championships in Gothenberg.
(posted on behalf of Jason Inman)
Posted by on 18th Oct 07 Filed under: News