For the World Cup 100 km 2004 in Winschoten, 231 participants have been entered by the team managers, comprising 28 men teams (with 161 runners in total) and 14 women teams (70 runners). Besides these competitors in the World Cup, there are another 145 entries for the Open Race: an additional 128 men plus 17 women. So the total number of entries is 376 (after the final corrections and additions as of 7 September), and hopefully this will result in a start field of over 350. This will then be just above the current record of the number of solo starters in Winschoten: the IAU World Challenge of 1995 in Winschoten had 342 or 346 starters – the little difference is depending what source you consult. The other previous World Challenges in Winschoten were the 1997 WC with 306 starters, and the 2000 WC with 305 starters.
There are 28 official men teams, plus 3 single World Cup entries from Germany, Greece and Andorra. There are 11 men teams that form the intercontinental part of this IAU World Cup 100 km: from the USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Namibia, Swaziland, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
There are 14 official women teams (with 3 or more participants) plus 3 single World Cup entries from Hungary, Turkey and Canada. The 6 intercontinental teams in the women competition are from the USA, Mexico, Argentina, Japan, Taiwan and New Zealand.
The complete final list (dated 7 September) can be found on the website of the organising foundation ‘Ultraloop Winschoten’. It is now one long file that can be downloaded with Acrobat Reader: http://www.run.nl/Downloads/2004/Startlijst_solo_internet.pdf
An earlier, nearly similar version provided by the RUN-organization on 3 September was also published here on the UltraNed-site (and was subsequently copied by the IAU-site as well):
https://www.ultraned.org/n_item/f2393.php
Major change in the list from 3 to 7 September is that Latvia has cancelled the participation of the men and women team, unfortunately.
There are many well-known names on the start lists of the World Cup, but there will be also rather unknown candidates for the titles as well, we hope. All current World and European Champions 100 km will be present: Mario Fattore (WC 2003), Mario Ardemagni (EC 2004), and Monica Casiraghi (WC 2003 & EC 2004), all three from Italy! Will there be a battle of Mario versus Mario? Or will they have orders to grasp foremost the men team victory ? We will have to wait and see, obviously.
Jan Vandendriessche made a long overview of his expectations on the favourites in both the men and the women, see the IAU site:
http://www.iau.org.tw/news/news_detail.php?Id=272
{b}Some runners in the Open Race{eb}
From the entries for the Open Race, we will present here two participants that play a special role. Christian Hacker from Germany has been given a special start number: no 343. This is related to the date September 11, when terror struck the USA three years ago. Christian (age 32) is a professional fireman from Hersbruck (in the south of Germany) and will wear during the RUN a special T-shirt from the FDNY (Fire Department New York), with all the names of the 343 casualties among this department during September 11, 2001. Christian hopes that the sight of this T-shirt will message the spectators along the roads of Winschoten that it is a special day in the hearts of many people world-wide. In return, he hopes that the public will encourage him massively to keep on going, as Christian Hacker has never completed a 100 km race before. Regardless whether he will manage to cover the complete distance, Christian has arranged a special ceremony with FDNY commander Brian Whiston. Sometime after the RUN, Christian will present his T-shirt to the department in New York.
Hilary Walker from London (UK), with start number 720, is special as well. She won the RUN 100 km Winschoten way back in 1992 and therewith became the first European Champion 100 km, finishing in 7.55 just ahead of the Belgian Viviane Vanderhaeghe 7.59 and the British Eleanor Adams Robinson 8.06. A year later Hilary became second in Winschoten, with a new PB of 7.50, but behind Martha Vass from Hungary, who became the 1993 European Champion 100 km in 7.43.
What makes Hilary so special is that she is very active in the IAU, as Honorary Secretary helping Malcolm Campbell in the past years with all kinds of things to coordinate the smooth running of the IAU Council meetings. Have a look at the overview of the IAU elections – that will happen in Winschoten during the second IAU congress on Friday 10 September prior to the Race Day – as presented in the latest IAU Newsletter (Sept. 2004: page 22). There you will notice that Hilary Walker is the sole candidate for the position of IAU General Secretary. And one day later she will be the only ‘bobo’ that actually runs in the RUN 100 km !
{b}Live coverage{eb}
The start will be on Saturday 11 September, at 13:00 local time – is Mid European Summer Time, corresponding to 21:00 Japanese summer time, or to 07:00 New York summer time, for example.
All runners will act again on the well-known 10 km loop that runs through Winschoten and Heiligerlee. Each passage of the finish area will be recorded by the ChampionChip.
Live coverage, i.e. the regular presentation of the rankings during the race, is envisioned by the official website: http://www.run.nl
The program scheme is to list at least every hour the number of loops from the ChampionChip records for each participant, producing lists with the times realised per loop. The internet connection of the PC’s in the registration office of De Klinker is not super fast but webmaster Henk Bakker hopes it will be feasible to publish the rankings more frequently than once an hour and will strive for every half hour once the race has really started.
In addition, short reports in English on the atmosphere and the happenings in the race will be published on our Dutch/Belgium ultrarunners website UltraNED (UN):
https://www.ultraned.org
Please note that the UN-reporters Ton Peters and Martien Baars will use the same internet connection as the RUN-webmaster, so it is a bit hard to predict at what frequency these reports will appear. It is hoped a frequency of every 40-45 minutes can be maintained, in some synchrony with the loops completed by the front runners. However, don’t shoot the messengers if things turn out differently 😉
Anyway, the UN-reporters feel very fortunate that they can watch and feel the race in real life. We hope that we are able to transmit a little bit of the thrilling spectacle to those that are absent and who have only the internet to sense what is going on along the roads of Winschoten.
We invite you to be with us in virtual Winschoten by visiting these RUN & UltraNed sites regularly during the afternoon and evening of Saturday 11 September !
See you there, and best wishes Martien Baars
PS Forgive us for the Double Dutch (and the typos) in our contributions during Saturday. We hope that you will nevertheless understand what we like to say. And sometimes we also use Dutch jargon on purpose, like the word ‘bobo’ above, as it a familiar nickname in our country to denote officials.