Americans at Tiomila

Tiomila is Sweden's biggest relay, normally organized around Stockholm in the end of April. This year was the first time the relay was held far away from the capital, in the south of Sweden, and it took place earlier than usual, April 18-19. The women's relay takes place during the day and consists of 5 legs, while the men run 10 legs through the night, finishing in the early morning, with legs ranging from 6km to the legendary Long Night leg - 18km in the dark!

There were a number of US senior and junior team members representing various clubs at Tiomila this year. Here is a summary of their results:

Women (310 total teams)
Karen Williams - IFK Göteborg 2 - 161st place on leg 4 - 136th place as a team
Ekaterina Orekhova - OK Linné 3 - 42nd place on leg 3 - 103rd place as a team
Sandra Zurcher - OK Tyr 1 - 57th place on leg 3 - DSQ as a team*
Eileen Underwood - Baekkelaget SK 3 - 294th place on leg 3 - DNF as a team**

Men (335 total teams)
Boris Granovskiy OK Linné 2 - 63rd place on leg 9 - 46th place as a team

* - When Sandra finished, she saw that she had no map to hand over to her 4th leg runner. It turned out that a runner from another club (IF Thor) took OK Tyr's map by mistake. Sandra's 4th leg runner was eventually handed a new map by the organizers, but the organizers scrwed up, giving her a leg 5 map instead, leading to the disqualification.

** - Baekkleagt SK 3 did not have a full team

Full results from Tiomila are here.
Boris' map from leg 9 is here.


Kat and Sandra after their races


Eileen training in Uppsala before Tiomila