Norway and Czechia emerged as winners of the two relay classes, O and P; the six sets of medals awarded today go to teams from six different nations.
All competitors completed a PreO course of 16 controls followed by two TempO stations, and the third-leg athlete had an additional TempO control at the end, in front of a crowd of spectators. Competition was close in both classes in attractive rocky park/forest terrain on a sunny day with a cold and gusty wind.
Mass Start of the Open class relay
Home nation Finland was strong as usual, and whilst unable to take medals, the Finnish second Open class team held third place in the race standings at the end.
Tomorrow is the final day of the championships, with TempO Qualification in the morning and the TempO Final – to be shown on IOF LIVE TV from 14.30 Finnish time – in the afternoon. The Qualification is in two heats and the best 18 from each heat go through to the Final.
Leading results, Relay
O (Open) class
- Norway (Anders Haugskott, Geir Myhr Øien, Arno Grønhovd) 7 mins. 57 secs.
- Finland (Teemu Niskanen, Pinja Mäkinen, Antti Rusanen) 8:29
- Italy (Alessio Tenani, Marcello Lambertini, Aaron Gaio) 9:37
- Germany 10:07, 5. Poland 10:31, 6. Lithuania 10:52
P (Physically Challenged) class
- Czechia (Bohuslev Hülka, Pavel Dudik, Jana Kostová) 19:21
- Sweden (Inga Gunnarsson, Ola Jansson, Michael Johansson) 20:08
- Ukraine (Serhii Bielanenko, Vladyslav Vovk, Valerii Lytvynov) 20:35
- Finland 21:32, 5. Italy 24:11, 6. Spain 26:02