Swiss Women and Swedish Men win Relay - Luder is Queen of OL WM 2003

The Swiss Simone Luder remained unbeaten also in the relay competition, which was the final race of the World Orienteering Championships. Brigitte Wolf and Vroni König-Salmi, her teammates starting in front of her, had already handed over first. Luder as the last runner of the team secured the gold medal for Switzerland on the Pfannenstiel before Sweden and Norway in front of 6,500 enthusiastic spectators. The Swedish men won ahead of Finland and Great Britain.

Already after the single events Simone Luder was the dominating person of these world championships with her three gold medals. In the relay on the Pfannenstiel near Zurich the 25-year old biologist picked up also the fourth gold medal out of four disciplines. On the first leg already Brigitte Wolf took the lead for Switzerland. Vroni König-Salmi expanded the margin on the second leg even further, and anchorwoman Simone Luder kept Jenny Johansson successfully away on the third leg – Johansson, by the way, runs in Sweden for the same club Ulricehamns OK as Luder.

The Swiss women have been waiting for this gold medal for many years. Looking at the abilities of the single runners the team would have been ready for WM gold a long time ago – however it just did not work out until the WM at home now. Like the first place, the second and third places were fixed in the women’s race already after the first change. Sweden and Norway kept the medal positions until the finish.

More overthrows than in the women’s relay could be watched in the men’s race. At the first change France looked like a certain candidate for a medal as Francois Gonon passed on to Damien Renard at the same time as the leading Jani Lakanen (Fin). As final runner the French fielded the world champion over the middle distance, Thierry Gueorgiou. Renard however was not fast enough for the world-championship pack in this race under these high temperatures and fell behind by almost seven minutes – end of the dream. Instead, the lead went to Sweden thanks to Mattias Karlsson who finished 21 seconds ahead of long-distance world champion Thomas Bührer. Bührer, the Swiss relay world champion from 1991, 93 and 95 demonstrated again his abilities in his last international competition and led Switzerland from position six to position two. The young final runner Marc Lauenstein, however, could not hold this position. Behind the winning Swede Emil Wingstedt, Mats Haldin advanced to the silver-medal position, and sprint world champion Jamie Stevenson secured bronze for Great Britain while pushing the Swiss team on the fourth place.

Posted: 2003-08-09 17:36:30