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Vacation in Kimba

After the organisors shortened yesterday's stage and let the runners rest after some exhausting hot days, they gave the competitors something to smile about yet again. Instead of an exhausting day that would have ended a few kilometers before Iron Knob, they decided on a short stage and spent the night in Kimba again.

A small town, whose slogan is "Half way through Australia", was still half asleep when the fastest runners crossed the finish line. The leading Russian Anatolij Kruglikov, who managed to win the tenth consecutive stage, crosssed the finish line just a little before 9 o'clock and then headed back to town with his team. The rest of the runners followed shortly. Cloudy and a little cooler weather would have been perfect for a long stage. ''When we run a hundred kilometers, the sun is burning like there's no tomorrow, but today the weather is just perfect,'' said Wolfgang Schwerk at half way of the stage as he was passing the motel he spent the night in.

Kruglikov won the stage comfortably, whereas there were three cadnidates for second place. The Japaneese Sakurai came up with a strong finish yet again, after he had been chasing Mravlje and Derxen for most of the stage. He managed to catch the slovenian runner, but he was about a hundred meters short of the strong Russian. ''He was running as if the past stages haven't taught him anything, like it was a one day race, but a minute in such a long race doesn't mean anything. I wouldn't like to see anything happen to him sameday,''commented Dusan Mravlje.

It looks like the Hungarian Molnar woke up again as he came up with some pretty good running, finished the stage in 8th place and is currently in 5th place. His advantage over Mick Francis before today's stage was an hour and eleven minutes, so he decided to keep the Australian in sight throughout the entire stage. If it would pay off remains to be seen on the longer stages when the Hungarian will have to run like he was running befor the injury, if he wants to keep the high overall place. The Latvian Jermolajevs outdid himself on this short stage and finished in sixth position. The rest of the runners finished in their usual positions. After a day's rest, the competitors will tommorrow run a 67 km long stage to the deserted town of Iron Knob, where once stood a rich iron-mine. Today only a few people live there. Up untill now, the ultramarathon runners have run a distance of 2331 km and Kruglikov needed 167 hours 27 minutes and 51 seconds to run the distance with the average ! speed (not counting the 1st and 28th stage where there was no time measurement) of 13,3 km/h, which hasn't been done before in such competitions. The slowest so far is the 65-year old Australian Geaorge Audley (311 hours, 53 minutes and 5 seconds), running with an average speed of 7.04 km/h and is also setting standards in his age catagory.

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