Day 3 of Cape Wrath Ultra: Injuries take their toll on ascent to Achnashellach
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It was all change at the top of the leaderboard on day three of the 2022 Cape Wrath Ultra.
After sustaining knee and shoulder injuries on day two, race leader Simon Roberts was unable to continue, while Laura O’Driscoll slowed after sustaining an ankle injury during the 68km and over 2300m of ascent from Kinloch Hourn to Achnashellach.
The new overall leader is Graham Walton, while Despina Berdeni is in first place in the women’s race.
Simon Roberts said: “After all that hard technical running we had to do yesterday, lots of bog, steep descents, I fell over on a nice flat piece of forestry trail. Just tripped over my foot.
"It was a stupid fall, but I damaged my knee and shoulder. So, I’m not going to start today unfortunately.
"I was loving the adventure so far. I had a small taste of the Highlands so I am really gutted I’m not going to see the rest of it.”
Laura O’Driscoll completed the day, but after hurting her ankle, was not confident that she would be able to start day four.
She said: “You never know, miracles could happen. It was a good day apart from that. It happened at about 30km, but then it got progressively worse, obviously from running on it. I’m just raging.
"I would have loved to race that – it was such a nice course.”
Elsewhere in the field, sole Ukrainian runner Andrey Prihodko continued to make good progress, but the race was taking its toll, and more runners dropped out.
After day three of the 2022 Cape Wrath Ultra, the leading runners are:
Male
1st Graham Walton (20:53:29)
2nd Thomas Øderud (20:53:55)
3rd David Barry (21:16:45)
Female
1st Despina Berdeni (21:43:26) – fifth overall
2nd Laura O’Driscoll (21:56:55) – sixth overall
3rd Vicky Savage (24:28:08).
Day four has begun. It’s a shorter leg, of 35km and 1298m of ascent from Achnashellach to Kinlochewe, but with plenty of challenges and rough terrain.
You can read more about today’s route at The Route — Cape Wrath Ultra®.
Track the runners’ progress live at live.opentracking.co.uk/capewrathultra22.
