SWITZERLAND SEIZES GOLD AT WOC 2014 – NORWAY ABOVE ALL IN TEMP-O – 2014 WOC-WTOC in Italy’s Trentino and Veneto regions

 Switzerland jumped on top of the world in Trento (Italy) today, and became the first ever nation world champion in Sprint Relay, as today’s race was the official debut of the formula in an international tournament.

At the end of a dramatic race with heavy rain for almost the whole time, Swiss quartet Rahel Friederich, Martin Hubmann, Matthias Kyburz and Judith Wyder took the gold medal, ahead of Denmark (Klingenberg, Lassen, Bobach, Alm) and Russia (Tikhonova, Tikhonov, Khramov, Vinogradova).

After the first leg, the Danish team seemed to have the game in full control, but the Russian and Swiss team never gave up and on the second leg the fight was once again between Denmark, Russia, Switzerland and, quite unexpectedly, Belgium with an amazing performance by Yannick Michiels. On the third leg, new Sprint World Champion Soren Bobach of Denmark stepped in and Danish fans in main Trento square cheered him with loud screaming.

However, due to a couple of wrong route choices done by the Dane, Swiss Matthias Kyburz was the first to enter the arena at the end of leg 3, followed by Khramov (RUS) and Leandersson (SWE). On the last leg, Judith Wyder made the perfect race and Switzerland eventually got the second gold at these WOC 2014.

Today in Levico Terme, the first Trail-O medals were assigned and Martin Jullum of Norway is the new World Champion. He won the Temp-O race ahead of Finland’s Lauri Kontkanen and former World champion Pinja Mäkinen.

Info: www.woc2014.info

Results Team Relay:

1. SVWITZERLAND (Rahel Friederich, Martin Hubmann, Matthias Kyburz, Judith Wyder)

2. DENMARK (Emma Klingenberg, Tue Lassen, Soren Bobach, Maja Moeller Alm)

3. RUSSIA (Anastasiya Tikhonova, Gleb Tikhonov, Andrey Khramov, Galina Vinogradova)

4. SWEDEN (Helena Jansson, Jerker Lysell, Jonas Leandersson, Lena Eliasson)

5. UKRAINE (Olha Panchenko, Pavlo Ushkvarok, Ruslan Glibov, Nadiya Volynska)