Merino Muster

Also stage two of Worldloppet´s season 2015/16 was a big success. The Merino Muster, New Zealand, began with light snow at 10:00, Saturday morning and ended with the last skier coming in at 4:30 as the light was starting to fade. The entries were more than double the year before and almost broke the 300 mark. The most participants started the 42Km race with large numbers of overseas skiers outnumbering New Zealanders by 2/1. Many of the overseas skiers were Worldloppet masters who have achieved gold status after competing in more than 10 overseas races other than their home base.

The main race was won by Canadian Brian McKeever who is a Canadian National adaptive member and a former 2x winner of the Merino Muster.  He just pipped his fellow Canadian Graham Nishikawa. with a time very fast time of 1 hour 51 minutes and 15 secs.  Andy Pohl the NZ team member was third in 1.53.11.The ladies race was won by Chisa Obayashi from Japan (National team member) in 2.01.30 with Brandy Stewart of the USA second and Nicole David from Australia although currently living in NZ, third.

The 42Km Marathon had a large Japanese and Korean contingent, a Canadian Club known as the Rocky Mountain racers who are Andy Pohl’s overseas club and are now training Tristan Mckenzie from Gore who is hoping to compete at the IBU World Biathlon Championships early next year in Rumania.  Tristan was pleased with his top 10 finish.  The Americans and Australians provided most of the specialist Worldloppet skiers who compete around the world and delivered fun uniforms and a really unique attitude to the racers.

Also a large group of Kroean biathletes and Japanese and Canadian paralympians were taking part in the 21km race at the Snow Farm, the venue of Merino Muster. One of them is a sit skier from Canada who has to rely on his arms only for propulsion.

So also the second WL (summer)marathon ended as a great success and we are awaiting the third race in August, the 42km Kangaroo Hoppet in Australia this saturday.