Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Canada at the World Games in Poland


Canada qualified 4 athletes for the 2017 World Games in Poland. The World Games is a multi-sport games for sports recognized by the International Olympic Committee, but not on the Olympic program.

The athletes representing Canada are:

Emily Kemp
Tori Owen*
Damian Konotopetz
Will Critchley

*Tori is replacing Louise Oram who was unable to attend.

 All about orienteering at the World Games - a great summary from World of O

Schedule
  • Tuesday July 25th: 11:00 CET Sprint Women. 12:00 CET Sprint Men
  • Wednesday July 26th: 09:30 CET Middle Women. 11:30 CET Middle Men
  • Thursday July 27th: 09:00 CET Sprint Relay
The starting order in individual races will be based upon the IOF World Rankings with best ranked starting last.

Internet live coverage of all Competitions will be streamed on Web TV, and is accessible through LIVE Orienteering.

Start lists and results are here.

Technical information is in Bulletin 4.

Follow Orienteering Canada's social media for more pictures and info
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Here are the Canadian results from the sprint at the World Games:
Damian Konotopetz - 28th
Will Critchley - 37th
Tori Owen - 35th
Emily Kemp - mispunch
There are 40 men and 40 women competing.
Full results here.





Saturday, July 22, 2017

Getting Ready for JWOC

JWOC Training week (July 2nd-8th 2017)

Tampere, Finland, where the 2017 Junior World Orienteering Championships were held has some pretty different maps and terrain from what I’ve seen in Canada, and there’s only so much I could learn by doing map study from afar. For example, I can tell there are bare rock hills scattered throughout the map, but what does the bare rock look like? How precisely is it mapped? Finding out the answers to these kind of questions is why the Canadian JWOC team came together for about a week prior to JWOC and trained on maps similar to those that we would later race on.

An old map of the area of the middle distance race that we studied beforehand

The big goal of the pre-JWOC training week is to get used to the different terrain. There are some challenges with this though: although my JWOC team mates and I might want to spend as much time in the terrain as possible, we still must also be tapering so that our legs aren’t too tired to run at JWOC, and some of us were also getting over jet lag.

While several European orienteering nations had already held multiple training camps in the area, being so far away from Tampere, we didn’t have that luxury. Luckily, a few of the team members were at the HPP training camp in Tampere last summer, and several others trained on their own or with groups such as the American team for a bit before the Canadian team got together.  Those who didn’t just had to learn quickly!

The first step of our training week was getting to Murikka, our accommodation for that week and also the JWOC week. Even though the place was under construction, we got lovely rooms with very fancy showers, connected to a common area where we would eat lunch, study maps, and watch WOC races live. That was only for the first week though- stay tuned to hear about the next week’s accommodation!

Meals at murikka.jpg
Evening snack on the first day we got to the accommodation

Then, on to actual training. We started with orienteering at a walking pace and figuring out what different features looked like, and then progressed up to race pace. To answer my previous questions about the bare rock: it’s not really bare. It is distinctive, but rather than slabs of rock it’s normally rock covered with a layer of light-coloured lichen.

This mossy-licheny area is mapped as bare rock. Can you find this area on the map?



As we had four different race types to prepare for (middle, sprint, long and relay), we did a variety of different trainings. One of the trainings we did was a mock race at the sprint map nearest to the area that the actual sprint would be held to practice our warm up routine, get into the racing mindset, and see some similar terrain to the sprint. In hindsight, it turns out that it wasn’t actually similar... but that’s another story.

Another example of a training, one of our final ones, was a relay training with the American team. We had several short forked mass start courses that were about three controls each. We started these races against a varying number of other orienteers to simulate not only the technical/orienteering aspect of  the relay (forking and terrain), but also the mental aspect- racing head to head against different orienteers from different countries who were going to potentially the same controls, or nearby ones.

One of the mass starts:
Photo: Robert Svoboda

Besides actually orienteering, we were still pretty busy- getting interviewed by a local newspaper, practicing route choices on courses on the old maps that coach Jeff drew up, or making maps of what we thought the area for the JWOC sprint would look like now, based on google earth, satellite photos, and more.

Watching WOC with some friends from other countries counts as training if we study the route choices, right?

After the week of orienteering in Tampere terrain, we were ready (or as ready as we were going to be) for JWOC.


-Emma S.

Monday, July 10, 2017

2017 JWOC - Team Canada Results

Monday July 10th. Middle Qual  (09:00 – 12:45 local time)
Tuesday July 11th. Middle Final. A-final  (13:15 – 16:15 local time), B/C-final earlier
Wednesday July 12th. Sprint   (10:00 – 13:35 local time)
Thursday July 13th. Rest day.
Friday July 14th. Long  (09:00 – 16:15 local time)
Saturday July 15th. Relay  (13:30 – 17:15 local time)

Relay


Long Final

MEN
Jan Erik Naess - 80th
Michael Svoboda - 89th
Christian Michelsen - 114th
Leif Blake - 118th
David Bakker - 133rd
Caelan McLean - 157th

WOMEN
Emma Waddington - 51st
Emma Sherwood - 119th
Nicole Whitmore - 133rd
 


Sprint Final

MEN
Jan Erik Naess - 51st
David Bakker - 105th
Christian Michelsen - 114th
Leif Blake - 147th
Caelan McLean - 157th
Michael Svoboda - DQ

WOMEN
Emma Waddington - 33rd
Nicole Whitmore - 118th
Emma Sherwood - 121st

Middle Final

MEN
A Final
Michael Svoboda - 37th
B Final
Jan Erik Naess - 5th
Leif Blake - 17th
David Bakker - 27th
Christian Michelsen - DQ
C Final
Caelan McLean - 15th

WOMEN
B Final
Emma Waddington - 45th
C Final
Nicole Whitmore - 10th
Emma Sherwood - 20th

Middle Qualification ResultsTop 20 from each heat qualify for the A final
21st - 40th qualify for the B final
41+ go into the C final

MEN
Heat A
23 - Jan Erik Naess
49 - Caelan McLean
Heat B
33 - David Bakker
35 - Christian Michelsen
Heat C
20 - Michael Svoboda
34 - Leif Blake

WOMEN
Heat A
41 - Emma Sherwood
Heat B
33 - Emma Waddington
Heat C
46 - Nicole Whitmore



Friday, July 7, 2017

2017 Junior World Orienteering Championships




The 2017 Junior World Orienteering Championships are about to start.

The following athletes are representing Canada at the 2017 Junior World Orienteering Championships in Tampere, Finland.

Women:
Darya Sepandj
Emma Sherwood
Emma Waddington
Nicole Whitmore

Men:
David Bakker
Leif Blake
Caelan McLean
Christian Michelsen
Jan Erik Naess
Michael Svoboda

Head Coach: Jeff Teutsch
Team Manager: Sabine Schweiger
Official: Erik Blake

World Of O's: JWOC 2017: All You Need To Know

Be sure to watch Orienteering Canada's social media for results, updates and pictures.... and stay tuned to this blog
Key links


JWOC 2017 Detailed program
All times are given in CET (or actually Central European Summertime; local time is one hour more).
  • Monday July 10th. Middle Qual 08:00 – 11:45 CET (09:00 – 12:45 local time)
  • Tuesday July 11th. Middle Final. A-final 12:15 – 15:15 CET (13:15 – 16:15 local time), B/C-final earlier
  • Wednesday July 12th. Sprint  09:00 – 12:35 CET (10:00 – 13:35 local time)
  • Thursday July 13th. Rest day.
  • Friday July 14th. Long 08:00 – 15:15 CET (09:00 – 16:15 local time)
  • Saturday July 15th. Relay 12:30 – 16:15 CET (13:30 – 17:15 local time)



Team Canada WOC 2017 Recap

The 2017 World Orienteering Championships were held June 30 to July 7th, 2017.

Team Canada members:
Emily Kemp
Emma Waddington
Wil Critchley
Eric Kemp
Damian Konotopetz
Coach: Raphael Ferrand
Team Manager: Meghan Rance

WOC 2017 web site: woc2017.ee
World of O: "all you need to know" WOC2017 resource from World of O
Official results are here


Canada Results at WOC 2017


Sprint Qualification
Emma Waddington - Heat B: 22nd
Will Critchley - Heat A: 25th
Damian Konotopetz - Heat C: 14th
The top 15th in each heat advance to the Sprint Final

Sprint Final
Damian Konotopetz - 44th

Sprint Relay
Emma Waddington
Damian Konotopetz
Will Critchley
Emily Kemp
Emily did not start the 4th leg (resting for forest events) so Canada's result is listed as a "mispunch"

Long Final
Emily Kemp - 23rd

Middle Final
Emily Kemp - 5th
Damian Konotopetz - 45th
Eric Kemp - 59th

Relay
Canada did not have a women's relay team
Emily Kemp ran on the men's relay team
Canada Men's relay - 20th
Leg 1: Damian Konotopetz
Leg 2: Eric Kemp
Leg 3: Emily Kemp




Monday, July 3, 2017

Recovery Week (One Step Closer to JWOC)

Read more here

After a hard week of training with the Americans I needed both a mental and physical break before making my final JWOC preparations.

I used this time to visit a few friends in Helsinki who were kind enough to show me around and take me out for runs. First I stayed at my friend Essi's whom I had met two years ago when she was on an exchange year in Chicago.

To read about several races that I attended during this week click here: Link