Chloe Potter on the start line

The second race of the 2023 World Cup was a middle distance. It was expected that the men's race could be won by any of a dozen runners and the women's race would be won by Tove Alexandersson, the current World Cup champion. Tove won the long race on Thursday and has been the outstanding athlete in this type of race for some years. Compared to those expectations both results were a surprise.

Tove Alexandersson only came second as her compatriot Sara Hagstrom ended 10 seconds ahead in the 35 minute race. It was very exciting. Tove was 5 seconds quicker at the penultimate control, less than a minute from the finish. At the same time Sara Hagstrom was being interviewed as the big screen showed drone and fixed camera footage of Tove coming through the last control and dashing over the line, as the seconds ticked down.

Natalia Gemperle of Switzerland was third, just stopping a Swedish clean sweep as Hannah Lundberg of Sweden was only 6 seconds slower.

In the men's race it was not as open as many had expected. Although others ran well it ended with the familiar names of Kasper Fosser (Norway), Matthias Kyburz (Switzerland) and Gustav Bergman (Sweden) coming 1-2-3 spaced at 16 and 14 seconds respectively, and Gustav's margin over 4th-placed Emil Svensk was over a minute. There was a long leg (the women had the same leg) on which the top three were quickest and that was typical of how the whole race went.

Megan Carter-Davies was again the highest placed British runner, in 15th place. She had a really good run apart from the long leg, where she caught the runner who started before her. Megan went from 5th at the start of the leg to 19th at the end of it. Two minutes of her three minute gap behind the leaders were lost. Cecilie Andersen was 61st, Fiona Bunn 73rd, Chloe Potter 75th, Niamh Hunter 76th and Jo Shepherd 80th.

There were eight Swedish women ahead of Megan.

Ralph Street was the highest placed British man in 34th place. He was around that position for the whole race. Joshua Dudley was another runner disapppointed with a time loss on the log leg: he lost 23 places on the leg and eventually finished 65th. Joe Woodley was 83rd, Ben Mitchell 86th, Alastair Thomas 107th (a big time loss on the long leg cost 50 places) and Chris Smithard mispunched (punching the nearby women's course control 172 vs 152 early on.)

It's probably fair to say that amongst the British runners there was a fair amount of disappointment, with the notable exceptions of the less experienced runners Niamh, Chloe and Joe who all delivered runs that improved their world ranking scores. For the others it was more a day of what might have been.

Link to GPS tracking - World Cup 1 Middle Races