Emily Benham from Morgans Vale (currently based in Norway) achieved her second World Championship medal by taking silver in the middle distance race. Racing in the forests of Moedaku, Estonia, she had an almost flawless race to finish second 33 seconds behind the winner Marika Hara of Finland. Benham’s time of 40.04 was also 1 min 25 seconds faster than bronze medallist Susanna Laurila of Finland.
The middle distance course was 11.5km with 200m of climb and 17 control points. The first few controls took athletes into the technical section so the spectator control saw all the top athletes close together. The fast flat northern section saw the field split up into two groups: the Finns and Benham in the lead group with with Switzerland, France, Denmark, Sweden and Russia about a minute behind. The final part of the course returned to the technical hilly ski track section, which was provided interesting route choices over the steep hills and along the Cross Country MTB trails.
At the half way point, Benham had a small lead over the chasing Finns, Hara and Laurila. The toughest part of the race followed and Hara managed to overtake Benham to reach the finish and gold medal by a close 33 seconds. It was in this final section that Hara and Benham pulled a considerable lead over the rest of the field by executing the navigation cleanly and not making mistakes on the challenging course.
Emily only started Mountain Bike Orienteering in 2007 after having orienteered with Sarum Orienteering Club since the age of 11. She achieved four top 6 results from Junior World Championships in 2008/2009 and was chosen as Wiltshire and Swindon’s Sports Personality of the Year in 2010. In 2012 Benham won her first international elite medal with silver in the World Championships sprint distance which was followed in 2013 by winning gold at the European Championship middle distance.
See Emily’s blog for more details.
Mountain Bike Orienteering is an exciting outdoor adventure sport which involves cycling whilst navigating around a course using a detailed map and a compass. The aim is to navigate in sequence between a set of control points and decide the best route to complete the course in the quickest time. Further information can be found at http://www.bmbo.org.uk/.