An excellent sprint relay in Boras ended with the combined team of the Netherlands (Eef van Dongen) and NZL (Tim, Joseph and Penelope) finishing a creditable 18th in the large field of 54 teams. Given that there were 4 Swedish teams, 4 Norwegian and 3 Swiss teams ahead of them, this is a wonderful result. As each nation has only 1 team at WOC, removing the duplicate national teams means that the combined team finished in 8th place!

The result was set up by an excellent run by Eef who came in 2nd on the first leg 22 seconds down on the leaders Sweden 2. Eef handed over to Tim who had a monumental tussle with Switzerland 1 and Sweden 1 coming in 4th place and dropping only 3 seconds on the leaders. Joseph on leg 3 ran a strong first half of the race but gradually lost time to the chasing pack, dropping 7 places as he handed over to Penelope in 11th position. Like Joseph, Penelope had her best run of the week, dropping only 53 seconds on Sweden 2 who continued to lead, bringing the combined team home in 58:10.

With the bulk of the WOC team still to arrive in Europe, and an almost full NZL team presence expected at the British Champs in two weeks time, the prospects for WOC look reasonably rosy. Tim is clearly in prime form and must surely be one of the favourites for WOC, Joseph and Penelope will learn from their first taste of top level competition, and with Lizzie, Tommy, Gene and Imogene training hard in New Zealand, the possible absence of Laura is the main cloud on the horizon.

1. Sweden 2 55:20, 2. Switzerland 1 55:56, 3. Sweden 1 56:36, 4. Norway 1 56:36, 5. Switzerland 2 56:56, 6. Britain 1 57:06, 18. Netherlands/New Zealand 58:10.