“It’s good to have a second team!”

“It’s good to have a second team!”

When Stine Bagger Hagner passed the arena after half of the last leg in the Sprint Relay on Friday she got to know that she was really more than just the last leg runner in the second team.

“I understood I had to pass Lea Vercelotti in the French team,” she says. The reason for doing so was given by a clear message from the Danish head coach Lars Lindström. “The first team is disqualified!” the trainer yelled when she passed. He also got her to know that she had to pass one team so that Denmark could win the first-ever Sprint World Cup overall.

Support each other

In the first team was the Danish “dream team” from WOC, who won silver in the Relay, plus three of the four got a medal individually. But all the Danes have been working hard together with sprint for months, also before WOC. “Now I haven’t done a sprint since O-Ringen at the end of July, but I know all about it. We have been doing it together and everyone wants the others to do well,” Stine says.

Didn’t see a control

The first team was disqualified after Søren Bobach had skipped a control. He didn’t see the 24^th control on the map, and went directly from the 23^rd control to the 25^th and saved quite a lot of seconds.

– You could do this with a superb second team?

“No, I tried to do my best,” he says and smiles. “But it’s good to have such a second team.”

Did what she had to do

21-year-old Stine did what she was told. She ran Denmark 2 into third place. Then Denmark also become the overall winner.

“EOC and WOC are the most important, but it’s very nice to win overall and it’s even a nicer victory when it was the second team that had do well and did it in the last race,” Lars Lindström says.

At the prize-giving both teams stood with Lindström up on the podium. A super start to the last World Cup round!