A few interesting WOC observations.. from Charlotte and Adrian!

For those of you who don't know, Lausanne is the home of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The WOC organizers this year are really going all out to make sure the IOC notices WOC, in the hope that orienteering can one day make an olympic debut! Charlotte noted that she has never seen so many downtown banners and advertisements for WOC before!

The sprint final started in the park that houses the IOC headquarters, ran through a bit of the town, came through the arena and then around the Olympic Museum grounds. And fittingly the arena area is called “place de la navigation”. Unless the IOC are all in London already, they couldn't have missed the action!

Camera drones recorded the crowds at today's event.

For those of you who watched the live TV coverage, you may have noticed the sweeping shots of the arena. The video feed came from these camera drones. Check out the video below to see one in action. How cool are they?! Very high tech, and give a really great perspective for viewers at home.

Adrian Zissos is at WOC to support Team Canada, and run the spectator races. He is also attending some of the IOF meetings. Here are some of his insights so far: "Yesterday I attended the IOF Map Commission's conference and learned, among other things, that including all the WOC competition maps, the WOC training maps, and the maps for the public races, the organizers:

* spent 340,000 CHF (10% of the total event budget)

* made 30 maps, covering 91 sq km

* designed 364 courses

* printed 55,000 maps

Interesting side note, at least for some, is that the sprint maps were MORE expensive than the forest maps, averaging 5,000CHF/sq km compared to 3,000CHR/sq km for forest maps (FYI - 1CHF = $1.03 CDN).

Only 1755 are registered for the public races. This is a little bit of a shock for the event organizers who were expecting no fewer than 2,000 and probably closer to 3,000 so I was told. There are many theories about why so few people are coming to race, including:

* Switzerland is very, very expensive

* Many people have raced already in Switzerland and are interested in making trips to other places instead

* The terrain is not very exciting for holiday orienteers - it will be more fun in 2014 when the Swiss 5 Days returns to Zermatt."

We look forward to more insights from Adrian and Charlotte throughout the week!