Amazingly, the world record pace is continued by the front runners. The sequence after 5 hours was: Nunes, Hrmo, Taelman, Beckers (!), Kurbatov.
In the womens field, Edith Berces (Hungary) increases her lead, still followed by the Russians Lioudnila Kalimina, Itrina Reutovich and Irina Koval. The fifith woman is Hiroko Okiyama.
The two women that completed the Spartathlon two weeks ago, are still in the race: Heike Pawzik, and Barbara Szlachetka.
So far, three runners have quit the race: Jaroslav Kocourek (Cze), Jan Bujnak (Svk), and Carrie van de Beek (Neth)
Ger Janssen, the chairman of the club De Keien has predicted the winning distances:
263,800 for the male and 247,300 m for the female winner.
The prediction by Henk van Kasteren, Technical delegate of the Royal Dutch Atletics Federation KNAU:
262,000 and 234,000 m
Marcel Bos, one of my helpers here in the technical centre of the club building:
258,700 and 242,300
Martien Baars
PS Please don’t mind my Double Dutch.
PS2 We hope that the intermediate results after 6 hours will appear on the website of De Keien around 20:30 local time (Mid European Summer Time = Greenwich Mean Time plus two hours)
Please note that the intermediate results after 3 hours are now available on the website of the club De Keien (= Dutch for ‘The Aces’):
http://www.dekeien.nl/docs/ifp/nav/322/index.htm
(then it looks you get an ‘empty page’ but please click in the menu left !)