Team Geared Up

The Original Mountain Marathon took place last weekend in Galloway with new winners in the top elite category for the first time since 1992!!

The A Class win by Neil Northrop and Matthew Crane was the most convincing of the day. They extended their day one lead to win by an amazing 90 minutes and at the prize giving Steve Willis shook their hands and said, “It’s the Elite for you next year!” Both are also in the GB orienteering squad, so it was a good day for orienteering, showing a surprising strength in endurance racing.

The wait for the Elite winners took longer, and when they did appear it was Ifor and Alun Powell loping down the hill to take the coveted title. The brothers have come close before and won other mountain marathon titles, but this was the one they wanted and they were 25 minutes up on second placed Tim Higginbottom and Chris Near.

“We were not overly confident,” said Alun, “there was a lot of route choice today and you never know. After a couple of hours our pace slowed in the tussocks and we worried we were losing it and were looking over our shoulders.”

In the Score classes the only overnight leaders to keep their lead were Stefan Schlatter and Meike Jaeger – but only just. They won by 5 points from Tom Challands and James Reid despite scoring 65 points less on Sunday. They were also the only mixed pair to win a class outright.
In the Short Score class Darren Parker and Chris Pearson scored 180 on day two to move up from second overnight to win. Mixed pairs finished 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th and included two Parent and Child pairs. (John & Liz Britton were 4th and Helen &John Ashton were 6th.) In the Long Score Pat Barlett and Ben Stanfield had 20 penalty points but still pipped Darrell High & Jeff Green to win by a mere 3 points. All the winners received their prizes from the first ever winners of the KIMM, Ted Dance and Bob Astles, who also made presentations to those who had completed 20 or more KIMM’s over the years.