Manchuan Ancient Town, located in Shaanxi, China, set the stage for the first event of the of PWT Asia Tour 2024. Manchuan can be described as a traditional Chinese old town, which today offered some fast-paced sprint orienteering challenges. But small alleyways, numerous local people spectating in the streets, and completely different architecture from what most runners are used to, made the race trickier than what it looks from the map.
The tour was set off the best by Shuangyan Hao (CHI) and Tomas Krivda (CZE).
The women’s race was super tight as Jana Peterova (CZE) lost only three seconds and Emma Bjessmo (SWE) another three more to Shuangyan Hao, who has several good positions from World Champs sprints.
The men’s race was less tight with Tomas Krivda making a 13 second gap to Yannick Michiels (BEL) and 36 second gap to Jonas Hubacek (CZE).
“I really enjoyed it out there today. It was a lot of fun. It’s my first time in China so I am very excited to see what’s in front of us here. I really enjoyed not knowing beforehand what kind of terrain it would be today. It would be fun to have this kind of sprint experiences more often, where you don’t really know what’s coming. The course was good – quite normal, but the town was very different from my expectations adding to the challenge. I made a clear mistake to the second last control [note. which probably cost her the victory] but otherwise it was mostly OK. It’s cool to be here and I am looking forward to the upcoming experiences here.”, said Emma Bjessmo (SWE) after her race.
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PWT Asia Tour is organized in collaboration between Park World Tour, Beijing Learnjoy Sports Marketing, and local Sports Bureaus. The tour will continue already tomorrow with a WRE sprint in Qinling Tianzhushan Scenic Area. The last two events will take place a week later in Beijing.
