Anne Lenz, Bianka Schwehm and Olga Kwiecień win curious final in Wülfrath

The Gold Rush Competition 2022 has found three new individual winners. Namely Anne Lenz with Vis, Bianka Schwehm with X and Olga Kwiecień with Mojo. The fact that these three names are there was not a matter of course in Neil Ellis’ rather demanding, even interesting course. The Briton asked the dogs for a lot of obstacle recognition. Not once, even in two places in the course. And so the amazement, suffering and joy of the numerous viewers on site and in the stream was all the greater. When registering several dogs, most of the German teams had to choose just one. The organizers used this restriction to create a few additional places for other international teams. A decision that was more than worth it in retrospect, at least in terms of the ambiance .

In the Large competition there is a German double victory with Anne Lenz with Vis and Sabine Kreutz with Foo. Only 0.06 seconds difference between 1st and 2nd place. Among other things, the time that Sabine and Foo lost after a short excurse after the dog walk. Third and fourth place went to the two Britons Naarah Cuddy and Martin Reid. Naarah Cuddy and Border Collie Lemon were also only just 0.30 seconds off the best time. This shows the enormous strong density impressively.

Individual  Large (full results)
  Anne Lenz with Vis
Sabine Kreutz with Foo
Naarah Cuddy with Lemon

The Medium teams made a little more effort. There was not a single clean run in the entire final. And so in the end four teams, each with one mistake on their account, fought it out for the podium and the gold. All of them where from Germany. The fastest time was achieved by Bianka Schwehm with X, a good second ahead of Alea Heinen with Loo and just over a second ahead of Meike Weidner with Elmo. As with the Large, there were many teams that just barely failed at the end. Instead of taking the slalom, some dogs turned into the tunnel a few meters before.

Individual  Medium (full results)
 Bianka Schwehm with X
 Alea Heinen with Loo
 Meike Weidner with Elmo

In the Small competition, Olga Kwiecień with Mojo from Poland used all her experience. Top-trained dogs and a strong running performance help her to victory. A confident run, apart from a little uncertainty in front of a tunnel. In concrete terms, this meant a one-second lead over Noemie Weiss with Bee. The two also delivered a sovereign run without any major incident. In the end, the speed wasn’t just quite enough compared to Olga and Mojo. Third and at the same time the only male participant on the podium of this year’s Gold Rush Individual Competition is Ismael Fernandez Estevez with Time. He loses 0.71 to second place. Fourth is Oleksandra Ivashchenko. In contrast to the other three opponents in front of her, she loses some time at the two key points of the course. Otherwise, a podium for the Ukrainian would have been in there.

Individual  Small (full results)
  Olga Kwiecień with Mojo
Noemie Weiss with Bee
Ismael Fernandez Estevez with Time

Team Large (full results)
Dani Fischbach, Linda Köhler, Mona Grefenstein, Anne Lenz
Naarah Cuddy, Anne Lenz, Martin Reid, Olivier Maunaert
Annika Af Klercker, Sophie Rosenberger, Anka Kunz

Team Medium/Small (full results)
  Andre Mühlebach, Silvan Zumthurm, Michael Schwager, Martin Eberle
Aneta Obrusnikova, Anne Lenz, Maurice Münch, Olga Kwiecien
Alisa Dürrschmid, Tanja Emig-Schmitt, Jennifer Schilling, Michael-Ivo Ehrmann