Only Forest Race at World Cup 4

The sole forest race of the World Cup Final Round happened today in the famous bohemian paradise terrain near Turnov. With 4.3km/3.7km courses holding a large amount of climb for the men and women respectfully and winning times of 35mins, it was clear that the terrain would hold something special. Steep gullies containing massive sandstone crags, boulders, and often pillars covered most of the area, and although extremely technical and steep, the groundcover was relatively clean. This produced a difficult challenge for the Brits, most of whom had never experienced anything like it before.

Those who knew the terrain well and had the correct technical approach held a huge advantage today, with the best example being the Men’s winner Milos Nykodym (CZE) who used to live nearby. Karolin Ohlsson (SWE) took an impressive win in the Women’s race, and across both classes the Czech’s performed outright as one of the top nations, if not top.

The best of the Brits were Catherine Taylor (36^th) Jonathan Crickmore (38^th). Cat wasn’t too satisfied with her performance but put it down to a lack of experience in the spicy terrain. She said “the main difficulty was the route choices, not used to how far you have to run around for the best route! A great and challenging race but some work to do before WOC 2021”.