Results of the second race of the WMRA Grand Prix series.

Wyatt and Pichrtova move ahead of the Grand Prix field

The second of the six WMRA Grand Prix race series took place to the top of Mt Grintovek on Slovenia’s northern border with Austria. This was the steepest race in the series with the course climbing 1960m in 9.5km in which both men and women ran.
Jonathan Wyatt (NZL) and Anna Pichrtova (CZE), both Olympic marathoners, established themselves firmly as favourite to win the series as they recorded their second victories by large margins.
Wyatt was more than 5 minutes ahead of the second placed Roman Skalsky (CZE) and third Ben Dubois (AUS). These Three now occupy the top three positions in the overall placings. Wyatt’s time on this tough course was an astonishing 1 hour 15 minutes 43 seconds which took two minutes off the course record held by Marco Gaiardo (ITA) who was not running on this occasion.
Pichtrova’s winning margin over local girl Mateja Kosovelj (SLO) was in excess of four minutes and placed her 18th in a field of 250. Iva Milesova (CZE) placed third to put her in overall second position in front of last years grand Prix winner Izabela Zatorska (POL).

The small country of Slovenia (Population two million) once again impressed with both its organisation of and performances in this demanding branch of athletics.

Full results and Grand Prix ranking after two events should shortly be seen on the ‘results’ tab of www.wmra.org . The race results are also shown on event web page accessed via the wmra link..

The third Grand Prix takes place next Sunday, 6th August in Telfes, Austria, where the popular Schlickeralm race has attracted a high quality entry.