JWOC Relay and WOC Sprint Preview

The relay was the last race of JWOC 2012. The women's race started at 10 am. Running first for Canada was Emily Kemp. After realizing the lead girls were taking an inferior route, Emily broke off from the pack and jumped into first, just in time for the first radio control. "The first girls have arrived at the radio and it's Emily Kemp from Canada in the lead!!!" cried the announcer. "I saw they were running too low and I said, 'I think I'll go this way!'" explained Emily. 

The top pack recovered and Emily handed off to Molly in 15th place, just 2 minutes behind the lead teams of Norway and France.

 Molly had a solid run and handed off to Kendra in 22nd position. Kendra had a great run and finished in 19th. When removing second teams and mixed teams Canada came 14th of official teams! Denmark beat Sweden by just 15 seconds to win the women's relay. Switzerland was 3rd.

Kerstin Burnett raced second on a mixed team of Delphine Poirot of France and Brenda Chan Hau Chan Wah of Hong Kong. 

In the men's race, Russia won by a minute over Denmark and Norway.

 The Canadian boys had solid runs, and with help of Emily Ross, got an official finish in the Men's relay. 

Thank you to Brent, Stefan, and Eric Kemp for all of your great updates and pictures for the blog (and of course all of your hard work with the athletes).


Congratulations to all of the JWOC athletes. We look forward to following your progress in the future!


This ends our JWOC 2012 coverage. The Canadian team is off to the banquet this evening but apparently we will not be getting any updates ;-)

Don't worry about going into orienteering withdrawal because the World Championships kick off in Lausanne, Switzerland Saturday morning with the sprint.


The women's qualification starts at 9am and the men start at10 am. The top 15 from each heat will go on to the sprint final in the afternoon. There are lots of options to follow along with the races including live radio, live results,  live blog, GPS tracking, and a tv broadcast with 38 camera positions for the finals!  The live site can be found here


 Louise Oram has decided to sit out the sprint to focus on the forest events so no Canadian women will be running the sprint. 
Robbie Anderson, Will Critchley, and Patrick Goeres will run for the men. 
Here is what they had to say about the upcoming race:

Patrick: "Feeling fit and fast and confident, can't wait!"

Robbie: "Its going to be super tight, and so I'll just have to give it my all and hope for the best."

Will: "After investigation of the likely qualification terrain, it’s hard to know what to expect. The university campus is very complex, almost too complex. How will the mappers map it? Will they generally avoid the super complex terrain to prevent inevitable complaints about the mapping, or throw us headlong into some massively confusing, multi-layer insanity? Either way, there will likely be mistakes, and safe routes on the tricky legs while opening up on the easier short legs will be key to getting through. And, as it stands, getting into the final is my only goal. We'll worry about the rest later."


Watch a video of what coach Magnus has to say about the WOC 2012 sprint

Start Times

Patrick Goeres - 10:07
Will Critchley - 10-13
Robbie Anderson - 10:39

The WorldofO website has an amazingly complete and detailed summary of everything you could ever want to know about the upcoming sprint in their all you need to know about WOC 2012 article. Here is a short snippet:

"Both the sprint qualification and final are city sprints. The WOC sprint this year is special in that none of the gold medalists from 2011 are on start this year. The sprint distance is the most open race with 10-15 possible gold medalists in the mens class and 5-8 possible gold medalists in the womens class. The biggest favourite in the mens class are the Swiss and Swedish men – all 6 Swiss and Swedish men on start are potential gold medalists – Matthias Merz, Matthias Kyburz, Matthias Müller, Jerker Lysell, Anders Holmberg, Jonas Lenadersson. There are actually Swiss runners which would have been clear favourites for gold which are not on the start list! Outsiders in the mens class are EOC sprint silver medalist Kiril Nikolov, WOC bronze medalist from WOC 2010 Frederic Tranchand (although he has not been in sprint form so far this season), 5th on EOC sprint Scott Fraser and previous sprint World Champion Andrey Khramov (although not been in shape this season).

In the womens class, home star Simone Niggli is the big favourite – as in all the races she starts in at this World Championships. However, the sprint is still very open as a small mistake can be enough for the others to pass her on the results list. Along with Niggli, all Swedish women are among the  gold favourites – Sweden took the Triple in the womens class at last years WOC sprint! And although Gustafsson is out, both Helena Jansson and Lena Eliasson are on the start with reigning long distance world champion Annika Billstam finalizing the team. Denmark’s Maja Alm is also a gold favourite after her 3nd place at EOC sprint earlier this year, 2nd place at the sprint World Cup in St Gallen in June and 4th place at last year’s WOC sprint. A gold favourite who is easily overlooked when looking at previous results is Norwegian Anne Margrethe Hausken. Just as Niggli she is back on the scene after childbirth – and at European Champs she was disqualified away from a bronze medal. Also count in the other Swiss women among the favourites – along with Finnish Venla Niemi who took the fourth spot in the St Gallen World Cup sprint."

We are looking forward to it! Good luck to all of the athletes.