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Wageningen third in Batavieren race

Wageningen's fastest students did not manage to defend their title in the 41st Batavieren race. The university team came third after Nijmegen and Eindhoven.

The university’s runners were disappointed, says Remi van Balen, student of International Development Studies and one of the team leaders. ‘We did hope to win and we did out best but the competition was too stiff.’ Nevertheless, the Wageningen team have every reason to be satisfied. Under the circumstances (in the weeks preceding the race runners dropped out due to illness and injury), their result was a great achievement, says Remi. ‘One of the students, Arend Mulder, ran the last lap of 10 kilometres in 31.39. Even under normal conditions that is superfast, but he hadn’t slept all night.’ With this time, Mulder was the fastest runner in the race. Mischa Petie, Joep Kluwen and Ruben de Vries won their laps too. Among the women, Esther Swart was the first over the finish line. ‘Wageningen is only a small town, so finishing in the first three is definitely a really good achievement.’ The Batavieren race is the biggest relay race in the world, with 8500 students taking part. The course goes from the University Sports Centre in Nijmegen, into Germany, through the Achterhoek region of eastern Netherlands and ends at the University of Twente campus. A distance of about 175 kilometres.

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