Turkish delight for UK mountain runners
The senior women's team podium
Britain’s mountain running team found much success in the hills of Denizli, Turkey, this weekend, with a team gold for the senior women, silver for the junior women and a majestic individual gold for young Annabel Mason…
Conditions were (as you might expect) hot, and the route was a super-quick up and down affair on the interesting Pamukkale heritage site, with around 240m of ascent to be negotiated on a 4km lap.
Annabel Mason - European junior champion
Junior events have always been strong for the UK in these championships and Annabel Mason continued this tradition, blasting her way around the 4.4km course to win in 20.25, a full 49 seconds clear of Turkey’s Eytemis. Helm Hill’s Mel Hyder ably backed-up Mason with a brilliant 4th place, meaning a team silver. Laura Riches ran very well for 6th.
UK’s junior men found this a little more difficult with Peter Harrison leading the way in 14th. Joseph Johnson (22nd), Max Wharton (28th) and Nathan Jones (29th) also showed good character on the 8.3km course, leaving GB in 6th in the team race. Turkey tasted more gold with Ahmet Ozrek taking the individual title to add to the team prize.
In the women’s race there was more medal success as Mary Wilkinson, Emma Clayton and Katie Walshaw brought it home for a magnificent team gold.
Wilkinson leads Clayton at the EMRC 2012
Wilkinson and Clayton went hard from the gun and after going through checkpoint 2 (around 4.3km) in the lead things looked very good for the UK women. However, they were caught in the second 4km of the 8.3km race leaving Mary in a tantalising 4th place (still just 3 seconds down on a medal and only 16 secs back on winner Monika Furholz).
Monika Furholz
Emma ran an excellent race for 6th, and with Katie running very strongly for 10th, UK closed the gold, comfortably ahead of Italy.
The senior men’s race was (almost predictably these days!) won by Ahmet Arslan, winning a majestic 6th title on home soil. Amazingly the Turkish international is still only 26 and could well add a fair few Euro crowns to that tally before he is done.
As far as the UK men were concerned it was a hot day at the office as Stockport’s Steve Vernon led the way. His 11th place was a brilliant effort against some top European mountain running talent, which included Ahmet, Marco de Gasperi, Julien Rancon and Robert Krupicka in the top 10.
Steve Vernon mixing it at the Euros
Robbie Simpson was an excellent 19th (and we believe second or third U23), with Chris Smith finishing in 35th. Orlando Edwards had to unfortunately withdraw after two and a half laps. Italy took team gold, ahead of Turkey and France.
Loads of great images on Facebook, with this set by Emma Clayton.
Full results now online via this link.
