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!