The Italian job

The Italian job

5 August 2020

DROMARA runner Zak Hanna took on some of the best mountain runners in the world at the weekend.

The 24 year-old flyer finished third in a gruelling vertical kilometre race in Italy on Saturday and just 24 hours later took fifth place in another energy-sapping race.

His double feat comes a fortnight after he won a mountain race in Co Wicklow by over eight minutes.

His weekend of racing was based in the village of Malonno in northern Italy some 100 miles northeast of Milan.

The races themselves started with athletes one metre apart on the start grid and having to wear a ‘buff mask’ for the first 200 metres until the field thinned out sufficiently.

First up was the Piz Tri Vertical Kilometre race on Saturday. Most of Europe was basking in a heatwav and race morning arrived with temperatures already at 30 degrees.

The race statistics were scary with 1,000 metres of climbing to be covered in only 3.5km race distance. The ‘wall’ to the finish line had a maximum gradient of an eye-watering 47%..

In the early stages Hanna found himself in the leading group of five with the cream of the Italian mountain racing scene.

Included in the quality field were ‘vertical kilometre’ specialist Henry Aymonod, Davide Magnini, one of the best uphill and sky runners in the world, former European mountain racing champion Martin Dematteis and Frenchman Sylvain Cachard.

At around half distance Aymonod put in a surge and Hanna tried to follow with Dematteis being ped from the group.

On to the upper slopes and Hanna was at the back of the group of three in fourth place. Then with less than 100m nearly vertical metres to go, he surged past Cachard to move into thirrd place and crossed the line in 35 minutes and 14 seconds. The winner, Aymonod, was home in 34:10 with Magnini second in 35:01. Hanna’s training regime, which included running upwards of 95 miles a week near his home on the Slieve Croob, gave him the strength to tackle back-to-back races.

So after the lung-bursting steepness of Saturday, Sunday morning at 9:30am brought the challenge of the Fletta Trail over close to half-marathon distance with climbing and descending back to the starting point in the village of Malonno.

Francesco Puppi, the local Italian favourite and second in the World Long Distance Championships in Patagonia last November and world champion in 2018, was in the race, fresh after not racing on Saturday.

Seasoned Italian international Cesare Maestri was also in the field and he too had not raced the day before.

As the race set off, these two were joined at the front by France’s Sylvain Cachard. Hanna settled into the next bunch, finding his climbing legs quickly and reached the summit in fourth place over half a minute clear of Martin Dematteis.

One of the best climbers in the field, Hanna continues to hone his descending skills too and he held on for a long time on the descent in fourth before being caught by Dematteis.

However, he achieved a brilliant fifth place finish, taking the scalp of the Aymonod, the winner the day before, and many other top runners.