JWOC ~ Sprinting!

If there's one event that's a whole pile of fun in old European cities, it's the sprint. Trying to navigate little passageways, stairs, crazy dead-ends, and multiple levels at top speed will keep even the best orienteers on their toes! Today's sprint did not disappoint!

Adam after the finish!

The courses started in a park area, then climbed up in the old town with legs up and down lots of stairs and terraces on the steep slope of the old fortifications.

This is the men's course ~ check out 11 to 12. You need to know your sprint symbols to help with this one!

On the men's side, Adam Woods had the best result of the day, 3mins 37secs back from the winner in 130th place. Training on all those sprint maps in Vancouver has obviously been paying off (Sprint Camp in February, everyone!!) Alex did a great job in 139th; Trevor was 147th, and Robbie finished in 160th.

Alex in the finish chute.

On the women's side, Kendra ran a solid race to finish 3mins 10 secs back from the winner in 88th place. Pia was in 113th, and Jen finished in 135th.

Kendra looking very strong in the finish chute.

Here's what the athletes, coach, and team leader had to say about the race:

"Stairs are friend, not your enemy! --Jen

Jen at the finish, happy with her race!

"I was glad to have started early and avoided running in the rain shower. The cobble stones seemed quite treacherous when wet. I was trying for a war of 18:12 re-enactment but the Americans weren't accommodating." --Adam (Ethan Childs and Will Hubsch both beat Adam....)

Robbie sprinting to the finish.

"Too many map details, I need glasses" --Robbie

"Our team raced hard without too many mistakes, but we need more training in urban European type sprint-Orienteering, and the results shows how fast the best orienteers really are." -- Coach Brian

"We need more medieval cities in Canada to hone our sprint skills" -- Team Leader Stefan

Trevor running so fast, the camera couldn't catch him in focus!

Team Canada's results:
Place   Name      Time    Time behind winner
 88       Kendra    17:43      3:10   
113      Pia           18:44      4:11
135     Jen            21:01     6:28

130      Adam      18:12      3:37
139      Alex         18:48      4:13
147      Trevor     19:15      4:40
160      Robbie    21:26      6:51

Pia punching the spectator control

You can view the full results, splits, maps, and GPS tracks for the women at http://www.jwoc2013.cz/  The GPS tracks are always fun to play with - you can select which runners you want to see, do a mass start to see which routes were faster, and so on. 

Team meeting for the relay tomorrow.

Tomorrow  (Saturday) is the last race of JWOC, the relay. At JWOC, participation is the focus for the races. This means that, unlike the World Orienteering Championships (WOC), countries can enter multiple teams, and mixed gender or mixed country teams are allowed (but are not eligible for medals). Our Team Canada athletes will run as follows:

Women
Leg 1: Kendra
Leg 2: Pia
Leg 3: Jen

Men
Leg 1: Adam
Leg 2: Trevor
Leg 3: Alex

Robbie is running leg 3 with Rafael Miguel (Portugal) and Niall McCarthey (Ireland). All teams should have GPS tracking, so make sure you tuned in for the women's race at 4am EDT (that's 1am PDT), and the men start at 6am EDT (or 3am PDT).

JWOC ~ Sprint Training in Kutna Hora

JWOC is not all play! Here the team is studying the event bulletin on Friday night. Lots of details to go through!

Saturday morning we drove to Kutna Hora, about an hour's drive from Hradec Kralove, for a bit of sprint training and sightseeing. Kutna Hora is a UNESCO World Heritage site and an old city with narrow cobble stone streets and massive cathedrals and buildings.

The official JWOC Opening Ceremony is also scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

From 2-3 ~ left or right??

I think the right route from 7-8 is faster ~ do you agree?

The sprint training gave some tricky route choices on the winding cobblestone streets.

 "Thank God the sprint has only 15m climb and not 60m because that is hard running up cobble stone streets"

--Jen

 "There was one giant hill in today's sprint. Thank God there isn't a hill that big in the JWOC sprint"--Trevor

"I just wish we had some maps like this in Canada!" --Kendra

After the sprint we walked up to the cathedral and then had lunch and another bit of wandering around the streets to get a closer look at the places we had run by earlier.

Tomorrow is a rest day for everyone to recharge their batteries before the long distance on Monday.

WOC Sprint Final & Long Qualification

This evening saw the sprint final close to Lake Genova; consisting of city and park terrain. Patrick Goeres was the only Canadian to qualify for the final, and started 8th. He had a solid run to finish tied in 36th place, which is his best WOC result to date. Congratulations to Patrick!

Results:
1. Matthias Kyburz: 15:32
36. Patrick Goeres: 17:54 (+ 2:22)

Check out the new Orienteering Canada YouTube channel, where you can view Patrick talking about his race!

Patrick starting the final

Overall, it was a Swiss sweep in the men's race. Matthias Kyburz finished 17 seconds ahead of Matthias Merz, with Matthias Mueller in third place (how confusing must those team meetings be?!). In the women's race, Simone Niggli came back from a 2 year WOC absence to clinch the women's gold, with Maja Alm of Denmark in second, and Annika Billstam on Sweden in third. Special mention to Ali Crocker of Team USA, who finished 20th in the women's final ~ great job Ali!

Crowds watching the final

WOC is much more online-spectator friendly than JWOC and WUOC. Head on over to the live page, where you can check out results, splits, and the GPS tracks (all runners in the sprint final wore a GPS unit, so you can watch them race ~ very cool!) There is also live TV coverage and GPS tracking during the finals, which we recommend you check out. It's just over $4 per race for the live TV, or around $16 for the package of all the races!

Tomorrow is the qualification race for the long distance. There will be 3 heats for men, and 3 heats for women, with the top 15 from each heat going through to the final on Thursday. The courses tomorrow are 12.2km with 280m of climb for the men, and 8.2 or 8.3km with 160m of climb for the women. The terrain is described as "typical Swiss Mittleland (translated directly as 'middleland')", Wondering what "typical Swiss Mittleland terrain" is? We asked Coach Magnus to explain: "Swiss Mittleland terrain is bland contour detail, with some ravines, and a LOT of roads and trails. The big areas of white are very nice open forest, but the green and yellow is really bad in the summertime."

Running for Canada is Louise Oram, Jeff Teutsch, Robbie Anderson, and Will Critchley. We asked Louise and Jeff to share some thoughts before the race tomorrow:

Louise - "There will be quite a bit of running on trails and trying to keep a high speed there, so the problem will be to stay focused and exit at the right point to transition into navigating smoothly in the forest. Additionally, if the controls are on vegetation features, or there are many blobs of vegetation around, it can be quite vague and the vegetation can obscure the visibility."

Jeff – "I'm definitely nervous to be running my first WOC race, but also very excited.  I've done all the prep I can at this point so it's all about controlling the nerves.  We've been out training on neighbouring maps and similar terrain a few times this week.  The terrain is a mix of quite open and runnable forest with very thick woods and uncrossable raspberry infestations wherever the sun gets in. All of this is crossed huge network of small slow trails and super fast large trails.  The trick is going to be finding those routes where you can run really fast and attack the controls from a safe direction.  I think compass bearings off of trails and not being afraid to attack controls from behind will play key roles."

You can also view Coach Magnus give his views on the race tomorrow on the Orienteering Canada YouTube Channel!

Let's hear your cheers; GO CANADA GO!

WOC Sprint Qualifier

Final results from the WOC qualifier
Robbie Anderson -15:38 (1:47 back from winner) 25 heat a
Patrick Goeres - 14:18 (56 sec back from winner13 heat b (qualifies for final)
Will Critchley - 14:28 (1:07 back from winner) 20 heat c


Congratulations to Patrick for qualifying! We're excited to see how he will do in the final this afternoon!

Patrick looking pretty happy that he qualified!

The overall feeling of the qualification race was that the navigation was very easy. Adrian commented that there's more route choice in the parkade of his hotel! As you can see from the times listed above, the slightest mistake was enough to miss qualification, as the running standard was very high. You can view the full results for the men here, and also the split times.


Here are some comments from the Canadian team:

Patrick:  I had a clean run, the navigation was easier than I thought it was going to be. During the race I thought to myself, “really? is this all there is?” I was expecting much trickier navigational challenges.  I didn't feel all that fast during the race

Robbie: I went out really fast on the first 4 controls, perhaps a bit too fast as I was red-lining it throughout the rest of the course. My running didn't feel great today. The course was easier than I thought it was going to be.

Will: I had a good, clean run, and the course was much easier than people thought it would be.

No Canadian women ran the sprint, but Alison Crocker of the USA qualified 3rd in her heat and Samantha Saeger missed out qualifying by just 5 seconds.


Women's Heat A Map
Women's Heat B Map
Women's Heat C Map
Men's Heat A Map
Men's Heat B Map
Men's Heat C Map


The unusual looking area in the centre-south of the map is apparently the Rolex Learning Center. You can find some photos from Adrian on his Flickr account. 


The finals start at 4pm Lausanne time. The women's first starter will leave at 4:01 pm and the men's first starter at 5:11 pm.


To watch the live tv streaming there will be a fee of 3 euros for the sprint or 10 euros for all of the finals payable by credit card.