Gold at EOC Relay

After a not at all succesfull middle distance for me, it now feels great to have finished the 2014 European Championships in the very best way possible: With a gold in the relay.

Before the start I felt so confident with my capacity, and I was just looking forward to being able to get out there in the forest and do my job. But first Jonas and Fredrik had to run, and they did it well. I was feeling a bit down when I realised that we were not going to be at the very top after 2 legs, and I felt like it the relay might be over for us, being more than 1.20 behind the leaders, but I decided to just go out there and do my job, and hope that I was going to have a bit shorter gaffle (which I was starting to suspect, since both Jonas and Fredrik seemed to have made good races and even so being quite far behind).

I went out as 10th, in a small group, and we pushed hard from the beginning. After about half the course, I realised that Jerker in SWE2 an Jan in CZE1, that I could see about 20 seconds ahead of me, probably was the first 2 teams, and naturally I got a little boost and managed to catch them up quite quickly. After Jerker had a longer gaffle before the arena passage, it turned out to be a fight between me and Jan about the gold.

And as I mentioned above, I was feeling really confident. I knew that I was going to be first over the finish line, if not something extraordinary happened, so in the last loop I just made sure that I took all the controls 100% perfect, so that he wouldn’t get any chance to get past me. Running down to the last control I had the gap I needed to not be threatened at all, I could relax a bit, and it just felt so great being met at the finish by Jonas and Fredrik. European Champions!