Today's Long race at Pirto proved to be a tough challenge, both mentally and physically for the team, and it was undoubtedly a difficult day for many of the runners involved. The distances (M20: 15k & W20: 10.2k) were some of the longest ever recorded at a JWOC and this, coupled with the heat, meant that the individual's conditioning was tested to the absolute limits. Coping best with this challenge were the two top athletes from the team, with Fiona Bunn narrowly missing out on replicating her top 20 from last year, coming home in 23rd, and Matthew Fellbaum recording his first top 30 result at JWOC, with 27th overall.

Fiona dropped some time early on in the technical, scrappy green section, but from the first radio control onwards was running as fast as the other girls in the top 10, aside from the remarkable Swiss winner, Simona Aerbersold, who took Gold by over 5 minutes. Matthew felt his run was reasonably composed, with only a few small time losses here and there, but he just felt that the conditions were too quick and didn't suit his style of technical orienteering. He will be hoping that the slower conditions of the Middle race later in the week will play to his strengths. Kapser Fosser (NOR) dominated the race, winning by over 4 minutes.

Across the rest of the team, very few athletes were happy with their runs and were left ruing a number of mistakes and missed opportunities. The key now will be their ability to extract the positives from the race and refocus in time for the Sprint tomorrow, a discipline where historically GB runners have done very well and many will be hoping to repeat their good showings at last year's JEC in this discipline.

GB Results: