Spain closed the European trail race with a bronze and two fourth places

Spain closed out the European Trail Championships this Sunday with bronze in the men’s sub20 category in the ‘mountain classic’ event and two fourth places the senior men’s team and the women’s under-20 team.

On another cold morning with the constant threat of rain, the athletes in the U20 category covered 6.3 kilometers in a linear fashion with 340 meters of positive gradient. For the senior category, the route, starting in Menthon Saint-Bernard and ending in Annecy, is 16 kilometers with 940 meters of positive gradient.

The European champion is the Frenchman Antoine Puydeboiswhich led to a good performance by the locals, occupying the first four positions in the race.

The best Spaniard was Pere Menéndez, eighth with 29:37, nearly two minutes behind the winner. Eduardo Hernández was tenth in 29:45, Adrián Macías was fifteenth in 30:12 and Asheber Díaz was nineteenth with 30:33.

The efforts of the four parts of the Spanish team were rewarded with a bronze medalwhich added to the silver earned yesterday by the women’s team in the long event.

“The start was very fast and the terrain was better than Friday“We ran a lot and the sensations were brutal,” said Pere Menéndez upon reaching the finish line.

Along with the sub-20s, but with more ground ahead, the men came out in the senior category, where Spain’s hopes were high with the presence of Álex García and Jan Torrella, sixth overall and fifth sub-20, respectively, in the World Cup in Innsbruck in 2023, apart from Miquel Corbera and Pablo Bautista.

Swiss Roberto Delorenzi, fourth on Friday in the vertical, took the victory in a very tight final with German Lukas Ehrle. The podium was completed by the French Theodore Klein, third.

The first Spaniard at the finish line was Jan Torrella, eighth, two minutes and seventeen seconds behind the winner, putting in a great performance and stopping the clock at 1:13:45. Álex García is twelfth with 1h14:17, Miquel Corbera twenty seconds with 1h15:37 and Pablo Bautista in thirtieth with 1h17:46.

The fourth place in the senior men’s teams was also repeated in the women’s under-20 category, where Marina Pujalte was the best classified, finishing fifth at the finish line with a time of 32:54.

The winner was French Margot Dajoux with 31:50, silver went to Norwegian Ingeborg Hole (32:07) and bronze went to British Eve Whitaker (32:18). The next Spaniard across the finish line was Inés Herault, ninth, who came to this event after being world runner-up in 2023. Andrea Buenavida was eighteenth in 36:05 and Sandra González twenty-sixth with 37:59.

The last race this morning in Annecy was the women in the senior category, where Onditz Iturbe from Biscay, who also ran in the vertical before, repeated. He was joined by the Valencian Júlia Font, a specialist in the classic distance, where he was seventh at the European Championships two years ago.

Victory went to Finnish Susanna Saapunki in 1h25:25 and the best of the two Spaniards was Júlia Font, who crossed the finish line in sixteenth position with 1h29:15. Iturbe was twenty seconds behind with 1h30:44.