Adrian Jackson earned another silver medal today at the World MTBO Championships, this time in the Long distance race.

Adrian completed the 38.1km (1,250m climb!) course in 1:55:05 to be 2nd, 2 minutes behind the gold medallist Anton Foliforov of Russia.

The other Australians competing today also recorded some great performances.  In the women’s event (30.2km, 935m climb) Melanie Simpson finished 20th in a time of 2:14:04, and Mary Fien also rode strongly, finishing in 28th place at 2:18:45. Christine Schaffner of Switzerland won in a time of 1:54:05.

Alex Randall was 27th (2:08:19) and Steven Cusworth 48th (2:20:27).

The Junior Men continued to learn from these events and again recorded competitive performances in the tough conditions.  The event was won by Pekka Niemi of Finland in 1:46:00 just one second ahead of Maciej Gromadka of Poland.  Marc Gluskie was highest placed Australian at 24th (2:10:57), Luke Poland 29th (2:18:26) and Chris Firman looks to have lost a lot of time early to finish 37th (2:31:35).

The winning times for all the courses indicated that the terrain was steep and physical.  I look forward to riding the course from the luxury of my computer screen in the next few days.  The maps will be available here: Long Distance Results, Splits, Maps and Photos.*

*Website no longer available