MAROC in Italy & Croatia 2014
2014 Croatia Open
The Musgrave / Dunn clan headed for the Croatia Open via the last 2 days of the World Champs in northern Italy and a week in the mountains of Slovenia. Read more for Sarah’s account of the trip.
The Croatia Open was based in the small town of Delnice in forested mountains in the north of the country and close to one of their few National Parks. On arrival Jon and Sarah decided to loosen their legs at a nearby training area and were provided with a map from which all of the tracks had been removed, as "they're not very distinct any more after an ice storm damaged the forests early this year". This was the warning that we didn't heed. After 2 controls Jon had had enough of scrambling through a mix of deep rocky sink holes overlain with a thick layer of fallen branches. Sarah persisted finding a few more controls and eventually managed to cover the grand distance of 2km in 45'!
Fortunately, the organisers had done some serious re-planning of the event following the ice storm, which had badly damaged 80% of the deciduous trees in the region, and the areas used for the event itself were much more enjoyable, although still physically very tough. Jon got off to a disappointing start on the first day losing 6' to SYOs Tim Tett largely through a lack of preparation for racing in the previous few weeks. Sarah was quite happy with a solid run making a few small mistakes, but discovered she had some tough competition in a Finnish competitor who took 2 1/2' out of her. Ewan, running up a class to M12, got off to a good solid start that he was able to maintain throughout the week.
Day 2 was an away day on the island of Krk, billed as chance to do a bit of touristing and get to the sea. Sadly the weather wasn't playing ball and we were personally less than excited by the masses of crowds filling the narrow streets of Krk. The race itself was in another small old town, Omisalj, and was a really fun and well planned sprint, made all the better by the bottles of local olive oil that we all managed to win! Despite the dreich weather the sea was still enticing enough for a swim at the finish.
The next 3 days were all in forests quite close to Delnice with day 3 on the edge of the town itself, and days 4 and 5 on a forested plateau higher up. The terrain for each of these was very enjoyable. Day 3 was classic sink hole karst with some big hills and steep slopes. Days 4 and 5 at Petehovac was more varied with intricate rocky slopes and mixed runnability. Going into the last race Jon had not lost any further time to Tim since Day 1 and was some 20' clear of 3rd place, Ewan was also in a solid 2nd, well clear of 3rd and Sarah had a very narrow 44'' lead ahead of the Finnish lady, with a big gap to 3rd. Jon finished his race first to take the day from Tim by 30”. Ewan had the biggest challenge of the week as his course had somehow been planned to a light-green / green standard, but he rose to the occasion and finished in a respectable 33' against a winning time of 29'. Sarah was well hyped up for her final race but managed to hold herself together to put in a good clean run on probably her most technical course of the week. As a result she was only mildly disappointed to discover she'd been beaten on the day by 1' to lose the overall title by 16" after 5 races. So it was a family trio of 2nd places to end the week and 3 copies of the same limited edition print as prizes to bring home! Overall the event was thoroughly enjoyable and ran very smoothly despite being organised by only a handful of people. Delnice is very undeveloped and we felt we had a flavour of real Croatia that you don't always find when travelling."
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