Maprunner

OpenOrienteeringMap from Start to Finish

2010-06-29T06:56:00.015+01:00

Fancy putting on an orienteering event anywhere in the world but don't have a map? Then you've never heard of OpenOrienteeringMap. This amazing concept allows you to generate an orienteering map of just about anywhere based on OpenStreetMap, which describes itself as "a free editable map of the whole world". What this means is that thousands of people have been out and mapped everything they can find to create an on-line map. This has the huge benefit that it is open data, licensed under a Creative Commons licence (CC-BY-SA). Subject to certain conditions it is therefore essentially free to use as source data for other maps.

Ollie O'Brien, the man behind YepSport and the mapper for the London City Race amongst other things, has developed OpenOrienteeringMap that now allows you to generate an orienteering map based on OSM. This has been used by SLOW for their monthly street-O events around London. Last night I put on a Street-O in St Albans as part of the HH Summer Series to find out what was involved in staging a race like this.

First step as ever was to select an area. The north-east corner of St Albans is an area known as Jersey Farm. This has some complex housing estates joined by a network of paths which seemed just about right for a Street-O. To make life easy I decided on a 45 minute score event. So let's see what an OOM map of Jersey Farm looks like.

1) Go to http://oobrien.com/oom/. The default view shows Docklands. You can enter a postcode to go directly to somewhere in the UK, or use the zoom facilities to move to wherever you want to use for your map.

2) The default values of the various options are OK to start with. You have a choice between "Street-O Map" or "Pseud-O Map". The Street-O map is black and white and only shows features such as roads, paths, railways, rivers and large buildings. The Pseud-O map attempts to reproduce a standard orienteering map using the ISOM map specification. To me this looks much nicer, but for a street event it really isn't needed, and it's simpler to stick with the black and white version.

3) Once you have moved to the area you need then you can generate the map. Click on the "Create a map" button. This brings up the Map Builder window. You can then select the paper size, map scale and map type. There is also a check box labelled "Include controls". If you leave this box checked then you can add start, finish and controls to the map when you generate it. For my event I wanted to use OCAD for the course planning so I cleared the check box.

4) You then need to left click on the map to mark the centre of your map. This brings up a brown rectangle showing the exact size of your map. You can move this around as necessary by left clicking again, or by selecting a different scale, page size or orientation. For Jersey Farm I went for a 1:10,000 map. Once you have the correct area click OK, and then add a map title if needed, and click OK again.

5) You will now get the message "Creat PDF". Click the button labelled "Go!" and you will get your very own map in PDF format. This is named oom.pdf by default, so it is safest to rename it straight away and save it on your computer. You may well end up generating several versions of the map during the planning process so you need to make sure you are using the correct one.

Now to plan the course. To make life easy you don't want to have to put out controls so you need to find some other way of proving people have visited the correct sites. SLOW use questions about something in the middle of the circle ("what is the name of the pub" and even "what sort of elephant is this" for example) . For me this is too complicated, since it makes life difficult for the planner to create the questions in the first place, and it is annoying as a competitor having to stop to write down long answers or hunt around for obscure answers. I therefore went for something simpler. Jersey Farm is covered in green telephone connection boxes, most of which have a nice painted number such as AL062 20. Getting runners to write down the last two digits seemed the best idea. A quick run around the area and I had found about 50 possible control sites. I still had a few parts of the map with no controls, but a quick hunt around on Google StreetView helped find a few more. It also raised hopes a few times when I spotted a fuzzy green shape in the distance only to find it was a green recycling bin. It turned out that runners at the event had exactly the same problem. The photos aren't quite good enough to read the labels so I had to do another run round to check them. In the end I went for 55 controls. This was probably a little over the top, but it does give runners something to think about.

The event does of course rely on the quality of the OSM base map. In general it was pretty good, but whilst checking sites I did notice several things that needed changing or adding. The great thing about OSM is that you can always make the changes yourself. That isn't really what this is meant to be about, but for those who are interested I used JOSM to edit the map and add the odd extra road, several missing paths and some parks.

I wanted to use OCAD to generate the course. This won't accept PDF files as a background map so I first converted the PDF file to a JPG using GIMP. You can then use the standard OCAD course planning features. This allowed me to add the rules, a set of boxes for answers plus some extra logos. You can always use the built-in OOM function to add start, finish and controls if you don't have OCAD.

And so to the evening of the event. With no controls to put out it was simply a case of turning up at the start with a pen, clipboard and watch and setting people off. I put the start and finish at a green box so that people could see exactly what they were looking for before they started. Everybody got at least 19 controls, with the winner managing 42 in the 45 minutes available. You can see what routes some of the runners took on the HH RouteGadget site. The comments were all very positive, no doubt helped by the good weather and the interesting nature of the terrain. As ever there was much discussion about the map. The main issue was one I was already aware of from some of the SLOW events: open areas such as parks and fields do not show up. You can therefore end up staring at a large open space in front of you and wondering quite where you would come out if you ran across it, and whether you'll get stuck behind an uncrossable fence before you reach the road or path you want to be on. There's no easy answer to this, but it is generally fairly obvious once you get to the particular location. Using the full-colour Pseud-O map would help, and several people commented that they would prefer it.

Overall this event confirmed that it is perfectly possible to hold an event based on OOM. Jersey Farm itself turned out to be perfect, with surprisingly little traffic. Next time all I really need to do is move the start and finish and we could use pretty much the same set of controls. And then there's other bits of St Albans, and Mike said that Harpenden looks possible, and I've always wanted to do something in Hatfield, and then we could try Shenley or Welwyn or even bits of Watford. Looks like the Hertfordshire Street-O League may not be far away.

Orienteering meets art in Trafalgar Square

2009-09-13T08:12:00.019+01:00

On Friday September 11th 2009 Adrian had his hour of fame on top of the 1.7m (wide) x 4.4m (long) x 8m (high) fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of Antony Gormley's One&Other project. This provides a chance for 2400 people (one an hour for 100 days) to occupy the fourth plinth and do whatever they want. Brooner came up with the great publicity angle that this could be the world's smallest orienteering event. Around 20 other orienteers and even a few members of the public took the chance to run in the first orienteering event to be held in Trafalgar Square.

The whole thing was broadcast live on the internet, as indeed all 2400 hours of the project will be. Looking at the coverage afterwards it may have been a bit difficult to work out what was happening at the time, and even if you were there it wasn't immediately obvious. Adrian was so far above us that it was quite hard to communicate, especially over the noise of the fountains. The theory was that he would run a course on the plinth and then someone would run the equivalent course in the square. It soon became obvious that this was a bit difficult to synchronise so it turned into more of a straight relay.

The extra complication was that each course would outline a letter and everything would be recorded on a GPS watch that was passed from runner to runner, and if we got everything right then we would spell out a message. Alan Leakey was given the job of official starter and a set of maps with courses labelled O, N, E, &, T, H, R, P, L, I and G. His job was then to hand these out in the right order to spell the message. Orienteers from London Orientering Klubb, South London Orienteers, Southdowns Orienteers, Hertfordshire Orienteering Club, Chigwell Orienteering Club, Havering and South Essex Orienteering Club, Saxons Orienteering Club, South Midlands Orienteering Club and possibly a couple of clubs I didn't spot took part. The South Midlands runner was Roger Williams, who had already had his own hour on the plinth a few days earlier.

Discussions with Adrian before the event had concluded we had a chance of managing "ONE & OTHER PLINTH O" in the one hour available, but the unofficial target was to try to manage "ONE & OTHER PLINTH ORIENTEERING". As we came towards the end of the hour we had got to the T in orienteering, but Alan was desperate to finish off. The bright yellow cherry picker drove up to get Adrian down and replace him with the next plinther, but we relocated the start and finish a few metres and continued around it. I spotted that we could stop at "ORIENTEER" and that would still make sense, and even provide a better reference to the person who had started all this off in the first place. And so at just past 14.00 I set off on the final R, telling each control holder as I passed that we had finished. In total we had run 24 courses covering 8.56 kilometres in 52:47.

After the event it was simply a matter of downloading the GPS track and extracting the message. The good news was that we had a full trace from the whole race. The bad news was that my vague idea of doing something in Routegadget to extract the letters didn't really work. After some experimentation the final method turned out to involve quite a complicated process as follows:

1) Read GPS trace from Garmin Forerunner 205 using SportTracks and create a GPX file for each letter.

2) Import each GPX file into QuickRoute and use this to create a JPG image showing the letter. QuickRoute had the nice extra that allows the colour at any point to indicate how fast you are running. Thus green sections show bits where people were moving fast, whilst red is slow.

3) Use IrfanView to do a batch conversion of the JPG files. This provided an easy way to crop and resize all 24 letters without doing it painfully one at a time.

4) Create a 9 by 3 Word table and import the JPG letters into this for final printing.

And so as a contribution to the art created in association with this project we come to the final result, as shown below.

The start and finish are at the bottom left of each letter, and this means courses have to be planned so they don't go through this point. That explains why the E is backwards, the T is on its side and the L is upside down.

A few related links:

Trafalgar Square map and courses.
Maprunner photos.
Photos by Ali Hooper who ran the first letter O.
Maprunner video.
Adrian's blog.
Photos by Roger Williams.

Tower, 52m, northern foot

2009-09-10T19:21:00.005+01:00

Any suggestions where this might be? I guess it's not really that difficult to work out that it is Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square. Tomorrow the general public will be getting the chance to orienteer around the square when Adrian Bailey spends an hour on the fourth plinth as part of the One & Other project. Helen and I have been helping to set things up so I am mapper and planner and Helen is organiser for what promises to be an interesting experience. We're still not quite sure exactly what will happen, but we have maps, control flags and SI kit so it should look like a proper race. Brooner has found an interesting publicity angle, claiming it to be the World's smallest orientering event.

You can get a sneak-preview of the map in Routegadget.

If you can't be there, don't miss the live web broadcast from 13.00 to 14.00 BST.

And that should provide a perfect warm-up for the 2009 London City Race on Saturday.

City of London Orienteering Race

2008-10-16T19:20:00.000+01:00

What an event. If you haven't seen it I recommend starting by looking at the map and courses in Routegadget and then seeing gg's video. Then there are the results plus lots of pictures, discussion and comments from officials on the official event web site.

The map, produced by Ollie O'Brien, is a pure work of art. There laid out in front of you is the whole City of London, from the remains of the Roman walls (in the olive green just north of control 135) to St Paul's Cathedral (control 151) to modern skyscrapers such as the Gherkin (control 137).

This was a chance to orienteer around the streets of London, which on its own would have made a great day out. The street network is not particularly complex, but it is good enough to make the navigation interesting, and around every corner you find a view of some well-known building to distract you. The start and finish were in Broadgate Arena next to Livepool Street Station (as shown in the photo of prizegiving on the left). The majority of the 400 competitors arrived by public transport and could sit in the warm sunshine while they waited to start or to discuss route choices after they had finished.

But the added element on top of all that was the final few controls spread around the Barbican Centre. The is spread over multiple levels, and proved a real challenge to map. Never before have so many people been so confused by so few controls.

It's also worth looking at Ollie's web site where he explains some of the technology behind the race.

Don't Miss This

2008-09-17T19:36:00.004+01:00

I spent last Saturday checking control sites for the City of London Orienteering Race on October 11th. All the photos in the mosaic on the left were taken from somewhere on one of the courses. Despite having lived and worked in London for over 25 years I still visited places I had never been to. At one point I was in a deserted maze of narrow alleyways behind the Bank of England when a lone runner came round the corner at high speed. It was Brooner, the Event Organiser, out test-running the long course. I said these alleyways were just like Venice. He thought it was like Istanbul. In future you can say that other places are just like the City of London. Ten minutes later I met him again in a deserted churchyard. The map is a true work of art on its own.

Don't miss it. This will be something special.

Click here for an enlarged version of the picture.

Golden Graham (and JD and Jamie)

2008-07-20T21:37:00.004+01:00

What can you say. GG cruises round to come back fourth. JD decides that isn't good enough and comes back in the lead. Jamie is caught by Thierry and then Novikov. Clive Allen convinces us all that France and Russia are fighting for the Gold with GB settling for Bronze. Jamie suddenly catches Novikov back up despite a longer gaffle. Thierry swallows a bee, gets stung and ends up walking. Jamie's TracTrac route shows him missing control 25 by miles, but somehow he ends up in the lead at the next control and is clearly running much more strongly than Novikov. And that's the race over. JD and GG struggle to keep up with Jamie down the run-in, Dave Peel gets in on the act on the finish line and GBR have a third WOC Gold medal. Just how WOC should always be.

There has been much Nopesport comment about the shorts. You will see from the attached photo that GG was already sporting them at WOC 2008 in the Ukraine when they lined up for this "we'll be World Champions this time next year" photo.

Having now had a chance to watch the Czech TV coverage it strikes me that it was excellently done, especially given that it went out in real time. (The internet streaming from the Czech TV website simply wasn't up to it during the race itself). TracTrac almost proved its worth, but the loss of contact and occasional strange position reports mean that it can't quite be relied on to fill in the gaps between even quite a large number of TV cameras. Clive did a valiant typing job, which I then had to balance with numerous (and in fact too many) on-line radio controls, plus trying to keep up with the Test Match at Headingley and the Open Golf at Royal Birkdale as well. If I was a betting person I might be asking for a steward's enquiry to work out quite what went on in that mad last ten minutes, and I'm sure we'll be hearing a bit more detail from those involved.

But for now we can just celebrate the new records: first British Relay Gold, Jamie becomes a double World Champion, GG becomes the 10th Brit with a WOC medal (and saves himself a BOF membership fee for life I'd expect). And just for me, my ongoing prediction of the emergence of China took a step forward with 7th place in the Women's race, and we had a fourth WOC race where Sweden, Norway and Finland failed to win a medal, and the third of these four where GBR won the Gold. Quite astonishing.

Another Full Set

2008-07-18T06:56:00.004+01:00

How many runners have claimed a WOC medal in all four disciplines, counting Short and Middle as equivalent for these purposes? Remember Sprint only started in 2001 so many people never had a chance.

A quick think about it brings up the obvious candidate: Simone Niggli. After that I was struggling, but some analysis showed that Minna Kauppi has also got one of each. And then at yesterday's Middle race a third person joined the elite group when Vroni Koenig-Salmi claimed silver and completed a full set of Sprint, Middle, Long and Relay medals. The photo shows her on the way to Gold in the Sprint in 2001 in Finland.It also shows what may be the least attractive control site in WOC history: Tampere Greyhound Stadium toilet block, NW corner.

So who else could join this group in the near future. Looking just at runners at the 2008 WOC with three types of medal already we find people missing teh following types of medal:

Sprint: Heli Jukkola, Marianne Andersen
Middle: Andrey Khramov, Emil Wingstedt , Matthias Merz
Relay: Yuri Omelchenko
Long: Jamie Stevenson, Pasi Ikonen, Thierry Gueorgiou

The Sprint and Middle are over, so those five have missed out. I can't see the Ukraine sneaking a relay medal so it surely won't be Yuri. Pasi and Thierry aren't running the Long so it won't be them. But it just could be Jamie. One extra thing to cheer him on for on Saturday.

(Just for completeness, Valentin Novikov would have needed a Long and Sprint medal.)

And one final statistical excitement from yesterday. The men's race was only the third race in WOC history that Norway, Finland and Sweden all failed to win a medal. Unfortunately for me this was the first time it had happened when Great Britain didn't claim the associated gold medal.

Looking for a Level Playing Field

2008-07-16T19:38:00.005+01:00

I'm fascinated by the question of which countries do best in which races. I guess this is partly driven by the British love of the underdog, so any "unexpected" success is to be applauded. Come on China (as long as you don't beat the GBR runners).

So it's time to look at the numbers. Take all individual WOC finals since 2001 (when the Sprint race was introduced). Allocate 50 points to the winner, 49 for second and so on for all finishers. Add up the scores for each country. Then to allow for the fact that I have included the 2008 Sprint race result already, normalise by looking at percentage of the total number of points scored. What do you get and what does it mean?

What you get is the table at the bottom of this post. What it means is much more open to question but let me offer some thoughts. Little if any of this is statistically significant, but it's fun anyway.

1) The totals column shows that world orienteering falls neatly into four groups.

At the top we have the big four: Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and Norway. They are in fact remarkably evenly balanced on the calculations used here.
Then we have a group of eight countries with consistent solid results: Russia, Czech Republic, Great Britain, Denmark, France, Lithuania and Australia. Russia are probably making the move towards the big time, but I'd need time to do some moving average calculations to back this up. Lithuania and Australia are possibly surprise nations at this level.
The third group consists of Estonia, Ukraine, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Spain and New Zealand.
And then there is a fourth group of everyone else, none of whom are even yet close to making the move up to the third division.

2) Looking at the Sprint race column:

Finland, Norway, Russia, Estonia seem to do worse in Sprint races than their overall performance. Norwegian and Finnish results appear very bad indeed in comparison with the other two disciplines.
Great Britain, Austria and possibly Japan, the United State, China, Croatia and South Africa seem to do better in Sprint races than their overall performance

3) Looking at the Middle race column:

Great Britain, Denmark, Bulgaria, Hungary and Belgium seem to do worse in Middle races than their overall performance.
Finland, France (the Thierry factor), Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and the Netherlands seem to do better in Middle races than their overall performance

4) Looking at the Long race column:

France, Lithiuania, Australia, Poland and Japan seem to do worse in Long races than their overall performance.
Norway, Russia, Estonia and Germany seem to do better in Long races than their overall performance.

5) Switzerland and Sweden are notably consistent across all disciplines.

6) A final note of hope for the smaller nations: the only appearances of a "big four" nation in the "worse than normal" list are Finland and Norway in the Sprint race. This is the discipline where you probably have the best chance of success, whatever that means.

It's the Middle race tomorrow. Watch out for Finland, France, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and the Netherlands I reckon.

TV or not TV...

2008-07-14T20:37:00.002+01:00

Well that was fun. Everything about the Sprint Race looked good, with a fantastic old town centre as a start and finish area, a detailed area of parkland and gardens right next to the town to provide some intricate control picking, some really tricky long route choices and more TV cameras and radio controls than I could believe. Juggling the internet technology proved quite hard as you ended up trying to keep three or four split time windows open at the same time as leaving the live TV feed visible. The TV quality via the internet was a bit variable, and the radio controls seemed to stop updating occasionally, but overall there was certainly enough to keep me interested for both races.

Czech TV seemed to settle for presenting the event as a race rather than anything more complicated, which seemed to work fine. There was no tracking, and only brief glimpses of a map, so the navigational element of the coverage was minimal. But for sprint races you can get quite a good feel for what is going on just by watching someone standing still and panicking for two or three seconds just the wrong side of a flower bed. And there was certainly some pretty impressive control flow to watch as well as contrasting techniques for crossing the water feature. Trying to make the coverage any more complicated, especially in real time and with such a short winning time, probably isn't worth the effort. Maybe it would have been interesting to focus in the big route choice decision from the start triangle: left or right? The first starter went left, most of the rest seemed to go right. Perhaps the Czech commentary picked up on this. They certainly spotted Emil Wingstedt leaving out a control, although this led to little more than slightly raised voices talking a little faster than normal. We got to see people clearly running very fast and also clearly having to navigate very carefully. Overall I thought it was great, but I guess the question is whether it would attract non-orienteers.

In terms of results it looks like a game of two halves: men and women. For the men there were 11 countries in the top 12 places, with many of the lesser nations such as Slovakia, Lithuania, Austria and the Ukraine fighting for top places. Khramov and Hubmann were simply in a class of their own, but the next 30 runners finished within a minute. The women's results show a different pattern. In what should surely be the most open women's race of the Championships the top 17 places all went to runners from the traditional orienteering strongholds (allowing myself licence to include Great Britain and France in there). The first "minor" nation was China in 18th place. Two of the three Chinese women mispunched, but they can clearly run pretty fast. Surely the sprint will be where they finally break through, but how long will we have to wait?

Born to Run

2008-07-12T12:33:00.003+01:00

So was JWOC the biggest thing to hit Gothenburg last week? To be honest it probably didn't even make it to top of the list of little things to hit Gothenburg last week. Dominating the city were two things: Bruce Springsteen playing two nights at the Ullevi Stadium as part of his latest World tour, and the Partille Cup. This seems to be the handball equivalent of O-Ringen, and had attracted 20,000 handball players from around the world. Walking around the city centre there were flags and banners publicising handball everywhere, as well as many teams all of whom seemed to be six inches taller than the average Swede. As for Bruce this seems to be the biggest thing that will happen to Gothenburg this year judging by the newspaper coverage it generated. Ironically some of the JWOC runners I talked to didn't even know who The Boss was, but he does let me get in one of the all-time classic orienteering song titles. For me he also provides one of my main memories of APOC 1990 in Canada when a "three in a row" slot on the radio featured Bruce as we travelled through Calgary.

But getting back to JWOC it was really business pretty much as usual for the Long and Relay. No great surprises at the front (other than possibly how close the men's Long race was), and another set of British results that were difficult to get excited about but equally weren't too bad. How many times have I said that about Brits at a World Championships? Given the other distractions in Gothenburg it was always going to be difficult to get much attention for JWOC. Even so it did seem to be a very small and inconspicuous event, and I was particularly surprised at how few Swedes turned up on home terrain to cheer on a stream of medals.

WOC 2008 starts tomorrow in the Czech Republic with the Sprint race. One question that does arise is to what extent success at JWOC feeds through into success at WOC. It seems clear that not every JWOC champion progresses to the very top level at senior level, and it is equally clear that success at JWOC is not necessary to make it to the top at WOC. Perhaps something to look at further when I have some time, but for now the real thing is about to start. Time for some serious internet spectating I think.

Fair to Middling

2008-07-04T12:55:00.003+01:00

Another day of unbroken sunshine shone down on another small crowd at the JWOC Middle Race Final. The Danes re-appeared to make some noise, but the Swedes stayed away again, possibly because it was difficult to find out exactly what was going on and where. As Middle races go this was was rough, tough and technical. The courses were dominated by semi-open rocky ridges with legs across them requiring quite an effort to stay upright on the rocky surface as you scrambled up and down. Add in some bushy vegetation in places and it was perhaps unsuprising that the Scandinavians dominated the results, with the Swedes really getting it together on home terrain. For the Brits it wasn't the greatest of days, but then it wasn't the worst of days either. Let's see how the final two races turn out.

Loking at the results it was probably the French who had most to celebrate amongst the lesser nations, with a bronze medal plus a 10th in the Women's course. Perhaps Thierry has been passing on his secrets.

A Qualified Success

2008-07-02T14:58:00.003+01:00

After a brief interlude for the Model Event yesterday it was back to real business today with the Middle Race Qualifier. The Sprint and Long are run as straight finals (on the basis that there isn't time to stage the necessary qualification races) but the Middle has a proper Qualifier with the added pressure that brings. Nobody won a medal today, but some may have lost one by not making the final. The JWOC Rules allow everybody to run everything, so with a possible team of six men and six women several countries were aiming to get twelve runners into the A Final by finishing in the top 20 of their heat.

The sun shone down on the Race Arena in a shooting range that was doubling as a commercial stinging nettle plantation. As ever at Qualifiers the atmosphere was restrained, and even the Danish fans seemed to have stayed away for this one. The normal stream of runners emerged at various speeds down the hill and into the field, and the confident ones then jogged effortlessly to the Finish. For most people this was a last chance to pick up one or two seconds that might be vital at the end of the day, even if it would have been easier to save the one or two minutes that had disappeared at controls in the forest.

And as ever the question was simply how many people did you get in the final? A quick look at the results (helped by using some of the clever analysis features of Winsplits Pro) produced the table below. Norway managed a perfect 12 and I would probably have guessed the top eight countries correctly beforehand. Great Britain look to have had a pretty good day (helped by what seems to have been a late disqualification), and ended up doing better than the in-form Danes. Further down a few things strike me It seems odd that France only have a team of nine. Three Belarus qualifiers out of five looks like a pretty good performance. Canada and the Netherlands will probably be pretty pleased to get runners to an A Final, but Australia look like they had a bad day, especially when New Zealand ended up doing better. The Ukraine are probably the most surprising absentees from the A Final. And as a final note it seems like this is a very similar set of results to what you would get at a full World Championships. Is the terrain here in Sweden just too technical, or is there really no change in prospect to the world order just now?

Country	Qualified	Ran
Norway	12	12
Finland	11	12
Sweden	11	12
Russia	10	12
Switzerland	10	12
Great Britain	8	12
Czech Republic	7	12
Denmark	7	12
Estonia	6	11
France	5	9
Germany	4	6
Poland	4	8
Hungary	4	9
Belarus	3	5
Lithuania	3	12
Belgium	2	6
Austria	2	10
Italy	2	10
New Zealand	2	10
Spain	2	10
Netherlands	1	3
Bulgaria	1	4
Canada	1	8
Latvia	1	10
Australia	1	12
Croatia	0	1
Slovakia	0	1
Romania	0	2
South Africa	0	2
Slovenia	0	3
Ireland	0	4
Hong Kong	0	5
Portugal	0	5
Ukraine	0	7
USA	0	9
Japan	0	12
Turkey	0	12

JWOC (and Database) Up and Running

2008-07-01T10:52:00.004+01:00

Here we go again with more reports from another World Championships – but this time it’s JWOC, the Junior World Orienteering Championships in Gothenburg. The first thing to say is that the Maprunner website has now been updated and includes a fully searchable JWOC Database in a similar format to the WOC Database.

This is my first time at a JWOC, and it’s not something I’d normally expect to be at. But next year I am the IOF Event Adviser for JWOC 2009 in Italy, so this is a chance to find out exactly what is needed and how JWOC differs from the World Championships themselves. A quick visit to the Event Centre at an army camp this morning felt almost as if nothing was happening, with little sign of what was going on other than in the Event Office. This had the normal stream of last-minute queries, plus a host of competitors and officials gathering to use the wireless internet access.

A short bus trip to the start area for the sprint race and things began to look a bit more hopeful. Teams were setting up tents around the start, even if things were still quite low-key. The ten minute walk to the Race Arena in a football stadium was surprising mainly because it was through a large wooded area with outcrops of bare rock and no sign of the “80% urban terrain” promised in the details. The Arena gradually filled up, and as we reached 12:30, first start time, it began to feel like something was happening. Even so there are very few people present, and to an outsider it’s probably quite difficult to work out what is going on.

The terrain from what can be seen near the finish turns out not to be anywhere near as “urban” as expected. Walking along the road that passed the last few controls on each course there were runners coming down quite steep semi-wooded rock outcrops to pick up the road on the way to controls spread around groups of cottages. Only those making mistakes (of which there seemed quite a few) ended up on the wrong side of the road and in the housing estates and car parks. Even the last control on the children’s play area caught some out as they ran around in the bushes behind it. Having had a chance to run the course later in the spectator race it turned out to be quite an interesting combination of houses surrounded by rocky outcrops and woodland.

Talking of the spectator race this would have been really quite a select event if it was really restricted to those who turned up to spectate, since the number of spectators was quite small. Apart from the expected small groups of proud parents the only real group to make their presence felt was from Denmark, and it was almost impossible to tell that the race was taking part in Sweden. Loud outbreaks of cheering, clapping and flag-waving met each Danish runner as they entered the football stadium and sprinted the final few metres on fast running provided by the artificial turf. The only thing to slow people down was the 90 degree bend they had to negotiate half way down the run-in. They then passed through the latest high-tech finish arch, which not only had a light beam for timing but also a magic device to read the runner number from the bib. Final details asked runners to use eight safety pins to ensure the bib stayed on during the race. The good news for the Danes was that all their noise had the desired effect, with gold for Emma Klingenberg in the women’s race and bronze in the men’s race. Stephan Kodeda of the Czech Republic won the men’s race, with six different countries represented in the top six including a notable fifth place for Andrea Seppi of Italy.

And then it was off (via a complicated arrangement of buses and trams) to the Liseberg amusment park for the opening ceremony. Being a true connoisseur of such things, this got several aspects right including being relatively short and avoiding the temptation to display any form of traditional dance activity. What it did have was a very loud rock band and a lot of bemused locals looking on as they tried to work out what was going on. It also had Kent Olsson to declare JWOC open, looking somewhat older and larger than I remember him. He was World Champion in the Classic Race in 1987 in France. I know. I was there.

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WOC 2007: More of the same but faster

2007-08-26T19:40:00.000+01:00

And so we have made it to the final day of WOC 2007, and we start as we began with the sprint. By now the routine is familiar: dodgy breakfast in the Hotel Tourist (porridge, muesli or omelette are the three choices for the "sport" menu, plus tea or coffee if you persist long enough, and milk to put in it if you grab a carton from an adjacent table), a steamy trip in a packed metro, and arrival at a sunny event arena to find Per Forsberg on the commentary gantry getting excited about just about everything as only he can. The men are off first in the sprint, and the Botanic Gardens provide quite a nice setting, even if there does seem to be an awful lot of tape around trying to keep spectators away from places they really would like to go.

For the first time we get to see runners starting, and then there are two spectator controls on the edge of the arena plus a long finishing straight that is to prove decisive as it turns out. Sprint ace Emil Wingstedt starts early after his scare in the qualifier and puts in a good time, but it will not be enough. We then concentrate on the three Brits starting at two minute intervals. They all have excellent runs (GG 12th, Jon 16th, Jamie 18th) and Britain finishes top country based on the finishing position of their third runner. GG gets most attention at the finish as he runs into third position with over half the field already finished. Yet another good day in the sprint for the British.

Sirmais comes in near the end to give a Latvian leader, but is narrowly overtaken by Hubmann and then Johansson. At this point there are seven seconds covering the top five runners. Matthias Merz reproduces his form from the long to open up a massive 19 second gap at the top and there is only one person left on the course. The flying Frenchman appears at the final control and no-one can be sure who will win. Thierry gives it everything to take one second off Merz on the run-in and claim the gold by nine tenths of a second. Pure genius.

The women's race wasn't quite as exciting, but the result was again pretty predictable. Niggli first, Kauppi second, and eight Finns, Norwegians and Swedes in the top 10, joined only by new World Champion Niggli and ex World Champion Allston. Is women's orienteering really that boring and predictable in what should be the discipline most open to other countries?

After everything was over I happened to be in the right place at the right time to buy a sprint race map from an enormous scrum of people, so took the chance to have a jog round some of the men's course. The area was a mixture of formal gardens, buildings and thicker wooded areas with quite a dense path network, all set on quite steep hills. There were some significant route choice options, although it may have been more a case of picking one and doing it well rather than finding a killer route choice. Talking to GG afterwards he said he really wasn't sure about some of the routes he took, but clearly the final result was OK.

As I jogged past the arena at the end I heard an announcement that the WOC Tour prize-giving was about to take place, so Helen and I just managed to get back in time to claim our certificates and cuddly toys for hard-earned second and third places overall. Then it was time for some final sight-seeing on the last afternoon. The nearest attraction was the enormous (over 60 metres) "Iron Lady" statue that dominates the Kiev skyline from the east. We led a group of other orienteers down path that eventually ended up leading us through a cemetry and past an underground church before emerging on a dirt track through what looked like somebody's garden gate. We later found that everybody else had come down this way as well. The dirt road turned out to be up-market Kiev and was lined with enormous houses complete with CCTV and tinted glass in the large cars parked in each driveway. Finally we got to the bottom of the valley and started the climb up to the status and associated war museum complete with tanks, missiles, guns, boats, helicopters and huge statues of a kind only Eastern Europe ever seems to produce. From there we decided to get a taxi to the other end of town to see the final remaining sights: St Andrew's Church and the road leading down from it lined with people selling all sorts of Ukrainian items ranging from the expected postcards and Russian dolls to the slightly less expected deer skins complete with attached deer heads.

WOC 2007 Relay: No change there

2007-08-25T21:48:00.000+01:00

Today was relay day and we were back amongst the windmills in the same event arena as for the long race. If you don't want to know the score look away now... All six relay gold medalists from Denmark in 2006 won again today, with an unchanged Russian men's team and Finnish women's team coming home first. To be honest there were no real surprises at all, with the top 10 in both races looking fairly predictable. But the races themselves did provide some decent head-to head competition.

The women set out first, in temperatures which were at last a bit more bearable than earlier in the week. Pippa Whitehouse had a great run for GB on the first leg coming back in sixth place just ahead of Switzerland. The Finns gradually pulled away on the second leg, but Norway and Sweden were together in a battle for the places, with Simone Niggli setting out in fifth place on the shorter last leg with an outside chance of a medal. In the end the Swedes just beat the Norwegians to take silver, and the Swiss ended fourth.

Graham Gristwood set out on the first lap for the men and was in the leading pack out of the field. He was still in the lead at the first radio control before losing a few places and eventually finishing 15th, but under two minutes down. Things continued pretty tight, and Jon Duncan moved up a few places to send Jamie Stevenson out with Thierry Gueorgiou in a fight for sixth place and the last spot on the podium. Thierry won that battle, whilst at the front the Russians were opening up a small but adequate lead ahead of Finland and Sweden.

And then after what had already been a very long day for spectators it was time to head out on the WOC Tour races and get a chance to sample the terrain at first hand. My start time was 17:34, and which point I had already been in the field for nearly eight hours. Despite this I managed a pretty reasonable run. The complicated valley network turned out to be even steeper and muddier than expected, and my route choice along a marsh in the bottom of a valley was a little on the slow side. There was quite a lot of the course through the cottages and other buildings in the museum itself, and then a final two kilometres through very fast white woodland with excellent visibility, very similar to the Chilterns in places. The museum is enclosed within a three metre high metal railing fence, and World Champs runners had been provided with bridges to get over this. For some reason the organisers decided that mere mortals could do without this luxury, so we were left to climb these fences or find unmapped gaps in them. Helen ran past a pile of wood that turned out to be the dismantled bridge that she was looking for at the time, and I had to help a woman over a fence before I could cross it. Our course was pretty much the same distance as the last lap of the men's race, and the good news is that my time means I would be a safe bet to make the Kazakhstan, Israel, Hong Kong and South Africa teams, and even the Chinese team which is a bit of a surprise.

Helen had already predicted that getting home that night would be a challenge, especially when the organisers announced that the last bus would leave at 19:00, despite the fact that many people would not have finished by then. We finally left the event arena about 19:15 and got to the bus pick-up point at around 19:30. Given the events of previous days we decided it was safer to get the public bus that arrived not long after, so seven of us set off on a mystery tour hoping to find a metro station, at the extortionate price of 15p each. This worked OK, and we finally got back to the hotel at just after 20:30, a mere 12 hours after we had set out. You have to be fit to be a spectator at this WOC.

WOC 2007: Independence Day

2007-08-24T19:45:00.000+01:00

Today was Independence Day in the Ukraine and so a public holiday. The good news was this meant that the metro was a little less crowded than normal, at lest going into town in the morning. We had decided to do some quick sightseeing to tick off a few more major sights before heading for the WOC Tour Sprint Race. We started out at what should have been the Great Gate of Kiev, or at least a replica of it. It was a bit difficult to tell what it was at all since everything was covered in scaffolding and blue plastic sheets. Next we headed for St Sophia Cathedral, only to find it swamped by a huge crowd sitting out in the bright sunshine listening to long speeches, complete with marching bands and live TV coverage. Many of the crowd were dressed in full dinner suits or posh dresses, often topped off with what appeared to be paper hats to keep the sun off. Interestingly this turned out to be the only occasion in the week when we saw any giant TV screens: they never made it to any of the events.

A quick stroll down the boulevard led us to St Michael's Cathedral, and then there was just time to get the funicular railway down the hill to the metro station and head south to the bus pick-up point. We got there 10 minutes before the first bus was due to leave, and just managed to get on before it set off early. We were then dropped off in a park not far away, and wandered around watching the various festivities going on. A large stage was set up next to the finish, and at various points through the afternoon had magicians, dancers, bands and various other forms of entertainment. There appeared to be some sort of sporting festival going on as well, with people playing table tennis, football, darts (I kid you not, although they were throwing from about 5 metres away which reduced the skill level somewhat) and an entertaining variation of skittles that involved throwing metre-long sticks at assorted blocks of wood to try to knock them out of a marked area.

There was also a dog training class going on, with some rather large and fierce dogs doing tricks. This somewhat complicated the orienteering when the organisers emerged to set up the spectator control on a tree in the middle of the dogs. Some runners later in the day weren't willing to risk getting too close to the dogs, and decided not to punch the control. Ukrainian SI kit is of the ultra-robust variety. All control units come encased in a metal box that is screwed to two stakes. This is then connected by a wire to the nearest large object. This is so big that it can look like a taped route away from the control at times. It also provides quite a trip hazard, and several times during the week I ran into the wire at speed. For some reason the World Champs competitors have missed out on this technology, and get standard boxes plus back-up punch on their stakes. It then seems that the organisers change every control site before the WOC Tour starts.

The sprint race itself was in very pleasant terrain being mainly very runnable open forest with scattered open areas, although it was quite steep in places. Our planning featured an unfortunate dog leg at the end when we ran all the way to a lake at the bottom of the hill before running back up the same hill to the finish, but overall it was a chance to run at a sensible speed at last. Helen even managed to win her course.

Then it was back to the hotel for the traditional British Team picnic. This took place on the 24th floor of the Hotel Tourist, providing spectacular views over the Dnipro River towards central Kiev. Attendance was a little on the low side, given that so few spectators have been brave enough to make the trip. Later that night we returned to the 24th Floor to watch what was meant to be a spectacular fireworks display at the end of Independence Day. This turned out to consist of individual fireworks going off at quite long intervals, so we soon gave up and went to bed. Apparently the real display started just after that.

WOC 2007: Phew what a scorcher.

2007-08-23T18:24:00.000+01:00

So far the week has been hot. Today it go hotter. The spectators could look forward to four hours in a field with temperatures in the high 30s and no shade. This was probably only marginally less physically tiring than having to run 18 kilometres with over 500m of climb as the men had to do. We got an early lucky break when the organisers suddenly found an extra bus to take people direct from the hotel to the event, rather than having to brave the metro again. The bus dropped us off at the entrance to the Ukrainian Museum of Folk Architecture and Life, a huge open-air museum consisting of cottages and churches spread around semi-wooded countryside. Those of us who stopped to take photos of the two windmills near the entrance found we needn't have bothered, since the event arena was dominated by five windmills on a hill top, with a sixth acting as a spectator control. Somehow the organisers managed to squeeze the spectator control and map exchange into a tiny corner of a huge field, so photo opportunities and spectating were not what they should have been. Helen, James and Peter spent most of the day sheltering under a makeshift tent made of towels over a fence post near the last control.

It was clear from early on that the courses were long and tough. The commentary team hinted that there was one leg of over three kilometres: this later turned out to be predominantly through or round a built-up area. Early starters looked hot and tired as they ran down to the windmill for the map exchange and the final loop, and were significantly down on predicted times. Gradually the times got faster, as they are bound to do given the reverse start order from qualification, but there was seldom any real excitement in the field. It was probably just too hot.

In the women's race it was business as usual, with the top 6 being no surprise at all. What was a surprise was that Kauppi and Jukkola took exactly the same time (80:17) to give Finland two gold medals, and that they both beat Simone by well over a minute. The splits show Jukkola lost 10 seconds running the wrong side of the building at the last control, but they then both did 22 seconds (fastest time for any woman) down the run-in. Helen Winskill ended up 32nd and Pippa Whitehouse 42nd.

In the men's race two big names dropped out before the race (Lauenstein ill and Lakanen injured), and seven more failed to finish or were disqualified. Matthias Merz of Switzerland took his chance to do a Thierry (who had opted not to run the long) and won by a huge 3:38 margin. As with the middle, there was then a large group, with ten runners in the next four minutes. Jamie Stevenson finished 9th and Jon Duncan 18th.

We couldn't face any more time in the heat so left before the prize ceremony and headed for the beach again. It's a day off for the big boys and girls tomorrow, but we get a chance to see what the sprint qualifier area was like. Strangely the whole of the sprint qualifier area is on the long race map, and provides an interesting comparison of a 1:15,000 map and a 1:5,000 sprint race map.

WOC 2007: Return of the King

2007-08-22T18:53:00.000+01:00

At the press conference after his victory Thierry said that at the start of the middle qualification race he looked at the map and immediately knew it was his sort of terrain. Everybody in the crowd knew that it was his sort of terrain. At the radio control in the final he went through a minute clear. By the run-through in the spectator area he had nearly caught Valentin Novikov who had started two minutes ahead of him and was running fast enough for bronze. By the final run-in he had overtaken Novikov and had a winning margin of over two minutes. Tero Fohr in second place was less that two minutes clear of 2006 middle race World Champion Holger Hott, but he finished only 15th. The King is back with a truly amazing victory, but one which everybody expected. It was great to watch.

Simone managed to prove that the Queen is back as well, but for some reason this just didn't feel as much of an achievement or cause for celebration. Elsewhere a number of big names came to grief in another area of low visibility and vague contour detail, perhaps marginally slower than the qualifier had been due to thicker ground cover, at least for early starters before the elephant tracks started forming.

The mortals got a chance for a run later in the afternoon and found out how difficult it was to get one control perfect let alone all of them like the King must have managed. And so another red-hot day in the Ukraine came to an end, or at least it should have done. We joined the bus queue at around 17:30, along with over 100 other runners. A single bus arrived an hour later and took half of the people away. After that the organisers started flagging down taxis and cars on the side of the road to take people the 20 minutes back to the hotels, and we entertained the crowd with a game of cricket. We finally got into a taxi at 19:45, at which time there were still over 30 people left waiting. Not a good end to the day.

WOC 2007: Open Sesame

2007-08-21T18:49:00.000+01:00

So after three days of races we finally get to the Opening Ceremony. For many runners who have failed to qualify for the finals their WOC is already over, which does seem a bit unfortunate. For others we are now at the point where the World Championships starts for real. But first we have a day to spend in hot and sunny Kiev. We spent the morning visiting various gold-domed churches and monasteries, complete with associated caves and mummified monks. The caves entrance is cunningly concealed as a corridor accessed via a building site, and even the Ukrainians appear totally baffled about where it is or what to do. But eventually we worked out where to buy the candles that were equivalent to an entry fee and

also served as a major source of light during the trip. They also provided endless opportunities for setting fire to the person ahead of you in the slowly moving queue as it passed through what turned out to be quite a short tunnel with various small rooms off it, lined with coffins containing embalmed monks. The boys liked it so much we had to do a second trip trough.

Then it was time to head for the beach at the Hydropark. This is a slightly aged fun fair complete with apparently dangerous roller coasters and other rides, plus the chance to ride on a camel, have your picture taken with a large bird of prey, eat all sorts of odd food, but most importantly cool down with a swim in the Dnipro River. There was a reasonable sandy beach, and the water was cool if a little brown.

And then it was yet another squeeze into the hot metro to get into the centre of the city. We emerged into Independence Square and took all the standard photographs of the statues and obelisks, and then followed a trail of orienteers towards the park overlooking the river. If you are ever put in charge of organising a WOC Opening Ceremony you will normally be given a large grassy field and told to get on with it. Kiev comes complete with a purpose-built open-air amphitheatre seating over a thousand, with stage, two enormous statues and an even more enormous metal arch over the whole lot. Add in a marching band, Ukrainian dancers and a surprisingly large crowd of orienteers to spectate and the whole thing was certainly one of the better examples of how these things should be done.

WOC Qualifiers - Hot, hot, hot

2007-08-20T18:54:00.000+01:00

So that's the qualifying done, and things can start for real on Wednesday. Kiev is hot, and sitting in the open watching the runners is hotter. Us lucky spectators then get a couple more hours in the hot sun before getting a chance to try out the forests on the WOC Tour races. The long qualifier area was rough and steep, with some significant cliffs and earthbanks to be negotiated. Today's middle qualifier was almost flat, with no more than one or two 2.5m contours needed for any of the features. Visibility was very low, so I have no idea how the mappers could see enough of the area to put in the large number of form lines showing subtle ground detail. Both areas were interesting and quite technical in their own way, but I think everyone is looking forward to some slightly faster running later in the week.

The Brits have had a solid if not spectacular time so far. Most people have made the finals but a few have missed out, mostly quite narrowly. There have certainly been a few surprises, with Moldova and Israel both getting runners to the finals.

For those still pondering on the previous question about the best WOC runner ever, how about a few suggestions. In recent times we clearly have Thierry Guiergiou (three consecutive middle race gold medals, and looking a pretty safe bet this week) and Simone Niggli (10 individual golds and 2 relay golds, including four gold medals at a single WOC twice: there was an entertaining argument today whene Simone was interviewed and corrected Per Forsberg about exactly how many gold medals she already had). Going back a little further Jorgen Martensson (11 long race finals, including two golds and never lower than 15th) or Annichen Kringstad (three long gold, three relay gold, and the second-biggest winning margin in WOC history when she won gold in 1983. A look at the Maprunner WOC ranking list throws up another suggestion. Perhaps I'll go for a definitive answer later in the week.

The Ukraine is turning out to be a game of two halves. Some aspects (hotel rooms with no air conditioning or bath plugs), hotel breakfast (grey omelette: how do they cook it like that?), toilets at events(best not to provide any details), somewhat chaotic transport arrangements) are somewhat behind what you might expect, whilst others (high-tech shopping centre with free wi-fi access) are as good as anywhere you'd find. Tomorrow it's the opening ceremony and a chance to see the centre of Kiev for real. Then teh action really starts with the middle final on Wednesday.

WOC 2007: Some follow-up questions

2007-08-17T15:26:00.000+01:00

Today's question: Who is the most successful orienteer in World Championships history? It's clearly open to debate but later in the week I'll suggest some ideas once you've had a chance to think about it.

Now for the answers to yesterday’s questions.

1) Which are the only two WOC races where Sweden, Norway and Finland all failed to win a medal? And which country won gold in both these races?

The first occurrence was the unforgettable gold medal for Yvette Baker at the Short Race at WOC 1999 in Scotland. She was followed home by Lucie Bohm (Austria) and Frauke Schmitt Gran (Germany). The second occurrence clearly needs a British gold again so must be the Sprint Race at WOC 2003 in Switzerland. Second was Rudolf Ropek (Czech Republic) and third was Thierry Gueorgiou (France). Remarkably the leading Scandiwegian (SWE-NOR-FIN for those not in the know) was no higher than 9th.

(Having just checked Google it shows only 649 occurrences of Scandiwegian. That is just about to go up.)

2) Name every country that has ever won a medal at WOC.

The full medal table is here. It breaks down into three major groups. First there are the big five: Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland and Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic. Then come the a group of countries with regular medals but not in such large numbers: this covers Great Britain, Denmark, Russia/Soviet Union, Hungary and France. Between them this top 10 have won every WOC relay medal ever. And finally there are a few outstanding individuals who have picked up a small number of medals for the Ukraine (Yuri Omelthcenko), Austria (Lucie Bohm), Germany (Frauke Schmitt Gran) and Australia (Hanny Allston).

3) Which country has won a women's relay medal at every WOC?

Sweden. Probably an easy one to guess but still an astonishing run, or streak as the Americans would have it. I'll leave you to ponder on the concept of the Swedish women's relay team streaking.

4) Which of the previous three questions will have new answers after WOC 2007?

Time for some inspired guesswork hiding as detailed analysis. Men's middle and men's sprint look outside candidates for no SWE-NOR-FIN. Even the men's relay could go that way: what about three from Russia, Switzerland, France, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Great Britain grabbing the medals. Difficult to see any new medal countries, but if one does appear it will surely be Eastern European. I suppose Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania or Slovakia could sneak in. Or what about a surprise Italian medal. I don't even know if Mamleev is fit and in the team. Will the Swedes sneak a women's relay medal? Switzerland and Finland look real threats, so could Russia, Norway, the Czech Republic or even Australia help to break the sequence? History of course says no.

Latest news from Kiev is that the heat-wave has arrived, with temperatures expected to be in the 30s. At least that will make a change from Scotland last week.

WOC 2007: Your starter for 10

2007-08-16T20:28:00.000+01:00

1) Which are the only two WOC races where Sweden, Norway and Finland all failed to win a medal? And which country won gold in both these races?

2) Name every country that has ever won a medal at WOC.

3) Which country has won a women's relay medal at every WOC?

4) Which of the previous three questions will have new answers after WOC 2007?

Answers to the first three questions will come in a post later this week. You might want to look around the Maprunner WOC Database to confirm if your guesses are right before then.

The answer to the fourth question will take a little longer...

Having completely failed to write anything interesting about the JK, various British Championships, FROLICS, and a whole host of other races it is suddenly WOC time again. Helen has decided that a week in the Ukraine will be fun so we will set of on Saturday for yet another week of hard spectating and sightseeing. Kiev promises to be a bit more exotic than some of the other WOC locations, but having already survived two separate trips to Russia and a week at WOC 1991 in Czechoslovakia we at least have a vague idea what to expect.

Watch this space for reports throughout the week (assuming I can get internet access) and a few more WOC questions and answers as well.

Fame at Last

2007-04-24T23:26:00.000+01:00

Wow, guess who made the front cover of CompassSport this month. I think Nick got a little carried away, since I'm on page 2 and page 16 as well. The photo was taken at the final control at the HH Burnham Beeches event in March.

The JK has come and gone, and was a fantastic four days. The Assembly Areas are now dominated by club banners, and nearly every club now has one. This adds a lot of colour and atmosphere, and made it feel like each day was something special. As I write this Helen is at a JK2008 progress meeting where they will be trying to work out how we can do even better next year. Four more days of warm sunshine would be a good start.

And finally the CHIG event last Sunday that was noticeable for two things. Firstly it used master maps, a concept I thought had died out. This was the first time I have had to copy down my course for over 18 months, and I had forgotten how annoying it was. Second, and more important, we had a new family double. I won the brown and James won the white. The target now is for three family victories at an event if Helen can get her act together!

Next stop the JK

2007-04-05T19:42:00.000+01:00

Early tomorrow we'll be off to the JK. Last year we missed it and went to France instead, but this year I'm controlling the Sprint Race on Day 1. There are well over 900 entries, which will make it the biggest sprint race ever held in Great Britain. The venue is the University of the West of England near Bristol, which has proved to be perfect for sprint racing. I'd say it's nearly as good as the University of Surrey that was used for the World Cup in 2005. You'll need to beat over 200 runners to win the men's elite course. I guess GG must be favourite, but there are probably 10 men in with a real chance. It should be a really good way to start the weekend.

The other three days are in the Forest of Dean, which is an area I ran in regularly as a junior. It's hilly and green in places, but runnable and technical in others, and overall it should provide interesting orienteering. Helen is looking for top 15 on W45L, and I guess I should be aiming at top 20 on M40L. We'll see what happens. We both have pretty reasonable relay teams as well, so top 3 is an outside possibility for both of us. And James will be running M10B on his own for the first time at a big event. Entries are nearly up to 3000 which is quite encouraging even if not quite as high as the 5000 that Øystein Kvaal Østerbø suggested in the article he wrote.

The weather forecast for the weekend looks fantastic, with temperatures up to 20C and no sign of rain. Even if you can't be there you should be able to follow results as they happen on the Live-O site. Once it's all over you will be able to see what you missed since I've volunteered to set up Routegadget for each day. And if things really go well I hope to produce some videos of the event at a later stage.

It should be a great weekend. And then there will be under a year until JK2008 in the South East, where both Helen and I are heavily involved in the organisation.

APOC 2006: The emergence of China?

2007-01-10T22:10:00.000Z

A little late perhaps, but here are a few thoughts about the Hong Kong Championships and Asia Pacific Orienteering Championships (APOC) held over the New Year in Hong Kong. For those of us who had orienteered in Hong Kong before it was pretty much as expected: hilly, rocky and with some very thick vegetation in places. We certainly got all of that, plus two good sprint areas (an ornamental city park and a holiday camp with complex buildings plus interesting rock features). Ten minutes a kilometre proved to be quite an achievement even for the elite, but the courses were suitably shortened to allow for this. In other countries you could run 2.7km as a sprint rather than a middle race and 5.9km as a middle rather than a long race, but these courses proved about right for M40L.

A few things caused minor problems on the technical side (especially the use of Emit for a timed start) but overall things were fine, with good maps and reasonable courses given the nature of the areas. There were a few other minor scares, with a British runner ending up being rescued by a fire engine after running off the map during the Hong Kong night championships, and two Japanese runners falling into deep unmapped pits during the APOC relay and requiring medical attention. Fighting through some of the thicker vegetation caused several people to lose their maps, as well as a pair of glasses in one case.

One thing that struck me was the very poor attendance from traditional APOC nations such as Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada. These four countries scraped together only a handful of entries, leaving the top five nations to be Hong Kong (450), China (114), Japan (67), Great Britain (29) and Kazakhstan (24). There were also APOC entries from Taipei, Korea, Macau, the Phillipines, Singapore and Russia plus the normal scattering of Scandinavians and other Europeans. The Brits claimed their fair share of medals in all of the events (including four for Helen), and probably ended up about level with the Kazakhstanis in the overall medal table.

The most noticeable thing to me was the presence of large numbers of Chinese juniors. The Chinese had a few reasonable results at M and W21, but practically no representation in the older age classes.The photo shows the flag from the Beijing Bayi High School, a club that walked off with several junior medals. Given the nature of the maps and courses it is clear that these are competent juniors and that orienteering now has a reasonable foothold in China. It will be interesting to see how long it takes China to overtake Japan as the strongest Far Eastern nation, and then how long they take to move on to challenge at the very top level of elite orienteering. From the results at APOC I would guess that this might be sooner than people in Europe might expect.

A Few Quick Facts...

2006-11-22T21:51:00.000Z

Who is the only British orienteer to have been British M or W21 Champion at Long, Middle, Sprint and Night distances and also won the JK?

This is the sort of question that fascinates some people (like me) but until recently would have been incredibly difficult to confirm. But a debate on Nopesport somehow ended up providing lots of interesting facts, and I found a few spare moments to put everything in one place. So now there is one place where you can find a list of winners for all major British orienteering events, (at least for M and W21). There's clearly a lot more that could be added, but I reckon this is a pretty good start.

And the answer to the original question is of course Heather Monro, seen in action at the World Cup at Battersea Park in May 2005. I'll make the questions harder next time.

And finally... As winter at last begins to appear in the south of England I'm off to sample the delights of Hong Kong at the Asia Pacific Orienteering Championships over Christmas. Look out for event reports in the near future.

Oxford City Race: The first of many?

2006-11-07T20:51:00.000Z

Last Saturday nearly 300 orienteers experienced the delights of the Oxford City Race. In perfect weather we got a chance to run round all the tourist sights, scattering tourists as we went, and even managed to run through some of the colleges. As you can see, running under the Bridge of Sighs in Oxford is a bit drier than it would be if you tried it next week in Venice. The race demanded constant map reading and decision making, especially in working out how to get in and out of the colleges. There are a few more photos here.

Everybody who took part came back demanding more races like this, as you can see from the discussion on nopesport after the event. Oxford University Orienteering Club are going to be under great pressure to stage another such race, or even make it an annual event. Cambridge are likely to feel they have to do something similar. There is already an annual York City Race. People are beginning to see the attraction of sprint races in urban parks and university campuses. Perhaps Oxford will be the race that starts British orienteering off in a slightly new direction.

And finally... Whenever people start talking about annual events I always remember going to APOC 1990, based in Kamloops in Canada. After a race in the morning we went to the nearby town, which had decided to put on some suitable entertainment. This was advertised. in supremely optimistic fashion, as the "first annual Savonah Beach Festival". Many of us have often wondered if there was ever a second annual event.

Planning for London 2012

2006-11-01T19:33:00.000Z

There was an article in The Times today that looked at preparations for the equestrian events at the 2012 Olympics. These will be held in Greenwich Park, which is home to the Greenwich Royal Obervatory and also happens to have an orienteering map. It's not the most interesting park from an orienteering point of view, but it does have some contours and the views are truly spectacular.

The article discussed the planning for the cross-country stage of the three day event:

Benson, who rode competitively for 22 years, representing Great Britain in three European Championships, has established an outstanding reputation for fashioning courses and said that Greenwich is a “designer’s dream” because of the varied possibilities. “At this stage you have to have the imagination, thinking what you would have in a perfect world,” she said. “Then you have to be realistic.”

The complexity of laying out a cross-country course has meant that Benson has been appointed six years ahead of time. She can begin work on such ideas as whether it will be possible for the horses to go between the colonnades near Queen Anne’s house, or jump on and off the bandstand, and whether the Royal Parks will allow them to leap the hedges in the Rose Garden.

Paths will have to be covered, either by artificial or natural turf, and there is an existing pond for possible use as a water jump, one of the maximum of 45 jumping efforts that the horse has to make on the course of up to 6,270 metres. Always, Benson said, the horses’ benefit has to be a prime consideration. The hills must not be too steep for too long, the turns not too tight and obstacles must not be placed close to trees because the shadows could confuse the animals.

The comparison with the orienteering planning process struck me immediately. I then decided it would be interesting to see if we could run the Olympic three day event course as an orienteering race at some stage. And then I started thinking again about all the other opportunities that the Olympics will bring, even though there will clearly be no orienteering at the Games themselves. That doesn't stop us putting on events before and after to capitalise on the publicity and make use of some of the new facilities that will exist. Several of us in the South East have already been thinking about various ideas, but I'm not aware of any overall co-ordination yet. Maybe I need to suggest something to someone. Watch this space.

Pin Punches: An Endangered Species

2006-10-28T20:31:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow's event at Chobham Common will mean that I have gone a whole year (and 55 events) since I last used pin punching. The graph shows how pin punching has almost died out at events I have run since I first used Emit at an event on 28th June 1995 in Norway. The only upward trend on the manual punching curve was in 2004 when I ran several of the Sydney Summer Series races which still use pencils to write on control cards! The start of the SI take-off was the Scottish 6-Day in 1999, after which most of Great Britain bought SI equipment. The apparent recent rise of Emit has two main causes. It is now used widely in the South Central, so that gives me five to ten races a year. It is also used at various overseas multi-day events I have been to, such as the WOC spectator races this year. My guess is that future years will see a fairly steady trend of SI above Emit, with the odd rare pin punching event.

Out of interest I've looked at when I last used pin punching at various types of event:

Badge Event: Virtuous Lady (DEVON) on 28 May 2000.
National Event: Brown Clee Hill (HOC) on 26 March 2000.
JK: Winterfold, Hombury and Pitch Hills (SEOA) on 4 April 1999.
British Championships: Graythwaite (NWOA) on 8 May 1999.

This weekend is also exactly 9 years since the first use of SI at a race in Great Britain. This was at the short race at Euromeeting 1997 held in the Lake District. I was one of those helping out behind the scenes and trying to work out what to do to make the system work, whilst the world's elite runners went through the same experience out in the forest. Everybody coped OK and the rest is history, as shown by the graph. For those desperate for more information I wrote a CompassSport article in 1999 that outlines the history of electronic punching in Great Britain.

Virtual orienteering heaven

2006-10-17T21:09:00.000+01:00

The new release of Catching Features has finally arrived. If you've never tried it then I suggest downloading the demo immediately, and then paying your money to buy the full version. It is a fantastic orienteering simulation, with a huge range of maps and courses to try out, plus a world-wide ranking system and on-line competitions. Don't miss downloading the World Championships maps and courses from Japan 2005, Sweden 2004 and Switzerland 2003.

The main feature of the new release provides a vastly improved map conversion utility. This takes in an OCAD map and spits out a virtual model of the map that you can then set your own courses on. People have managed to make some pretty impressive maps with the old editor, but it was hard work and took a long time. The new editor is simply amazing. I've had a quick play with some real OCAD maps and within just a few minutes you can produce very accurate conversions. As an example, the left-hand picture is a screen shot from a conversion of Campbell Park, as used for the British Sprint Championships this year. The right-hand picture is one of the photos I took whilst checking sites before the race. The main difference is the fence in the converted map, which hadn't been put up when I took the photo!

I'm sure we'll start to see even more conversions of world-class areas in the near future so you can spend the long dark nights practicing your O technique, just like Thierry does. It strikes me that we could be getting close to a new discipline: indoor orienteering. It doesn't look too difficult to connect Catching Features up to a treadmill, and then you could make the running speed in the game proportional to the speed of the treadmill. You could then have indoor orienteering races just like they have indoor rowing world championship s on rowing machines. Just a thought.

WOC Database Updated

2006-09-26T22:24:00.000+01:00

I've now managed to get all of the WOC relay results in to the Maprunner WOC Database. The individual runners from each team are still missing, but all the team results are there. There has been quite a lot of interest from around the world, so I'll keep adding things when I have time.

A few interesting things I spotted whilst getting the relay result queries to work:

- Great Britain had their worst-ever relay results for both Men and Women in Denmark 2006.

- No Swedish relay team has ever finished lower than 4th (discounting disqualifications in 1997 and 2001), and they have won 41 medals out of a possible 46: truly staggering. At least I assume the Swedish men were disqualified in 2001 in Finland, since they don't appear at all on the results list on the IOF web site.

- Five countries have won 128 relay medals between them. That's over 92% of the possible medals. Five further countries have won the remaining 10 medals.(Try naming these 10 countries before looking up the answer here.)

Parrakeets at Hampstead Heath

2006-09-11T13:51:00.000+01:00

I controlled the London Orienteering Klubb event on Hampstead Heath yesterday. Hampstead is only four miles from central London, but offers fantastic terrain with open fields, heathland and even some reasonable areas of wooded contour features. The weather was great with bright sunshine during the day, even if there had been thick mist when the controls were being put out.

LOK used pre-marked maps printed on Pretex again, after a first test at Trent Park earlier this year. This seems to have overcome most of the problems of previous types of waterproof paper that have been tried for orienteering maps, and everybody I spoke to felt that it was worth trying to use it more widely.

Despite having mapped, planned and controlled on Hampstead Heath many times, yesterday was the first time that I had seen the exotic new population of ring-necked parrakeets that have taken up residence around the lakes near Kenwood House. These bright green birds are unmistakeable, and even if you don't see one you will certainly hear them. My previous most exotic sighting on the Heath was probably the comedian and TV presenter Michael Palin who ran past when I was hanging controls for an event about 15 years ago.

The Power of World of O

2006-09-08T21:33:00.000+01:00

My website normally goes along averaging about 200 hits a day. So why did I suddenly get 10 times the traffic on Wednesday? Because Mike Eglinski wrote something in his OKansas blog that was reported on World of O and lots of people found it. The story goes back even further, because Mike wrote the article because I'd emailed him about something else that he'd written a few days before, that I had read because of his link from World of O. How many other sports have such a powerful gateway into all aspects of the sport from the very top (read all about Simone's trip to a Robbie Williams concert!) to the very bottom (power is now restored at the BOF office!).

I've had a quick look through some of the other statistics for Wednesday. The average orienteer is running Firefox on Windows XP. Internet Explorer was used for well under 50% of accesses, which I guess indicates that orienteers are quite sophisticated when it comes to the internet.

It's noticeable that the most-read articles on World of O fall into two main camps: websites of the superstars, and anything written in English. I can struggle through Thierry's site in French, and get through various Swiss sites in German if assisted by Babelfish. I know a few key words in Swedish and Norwegian, and there's always the maps to look at. How long before you'll be able to get a translation from any language to any other language for any website? Stars who post in English are guaranteed a large audience, so thanks to people like Holger Hott Johansen, Oystein Kvaal Osterbro and Pasi Ikonen for letting us in on their secrets.

Today's thought that struck me whilst writing about something else: Everybody in orienteering knows who Simone, Thierry and Jamie are without needing any further information. Looks like you can add Hanny to the list.

Running to catch up

2006-09-06T19:53:00.000+01:00

After a period of silence it's time to try to catch up. There have been all sorts of things I have been meaning to write about, but just never seemed to get round to. The moral is to do it little and often, rather than trying to write carefully crafted pieces as you would elsewhere. Let's see what you missed:

The World Rowing Championships, which were held at Dorney Lake near Eton. We went along to one of the qualifying days just to get a feel for what the World Championships of another sport are like. Lots of similarities, lots of differences, but it must be said that orienteering came out OK by comparison with what is meant to be a much higher-profile Olympic sport, and one which clearly has a lot more money involved. WOC 2006 definitely had a bigger screen than them!
The World University Orienteering Championships. GB showed yet again that they have potential, even if not quite in the expected places. The men had an average week, but the women got it all together and won the relay. Again.
The BOF Major Events Conference. I was drafted in at a late stage to present the planning sessions, and spent an enjoyable weekend in Slimbridge with the key officials from BOC, BRC, JK and National Events in 2007 and 2008. This reconfirmed the dedication of people to putting on high-quality events, but also reinforced that we still aren't finding enough new people to take on major roles. I was the youngest person there. We even managed to get a few more things sorted out about JK 2008, which will be in the south east.
The WOC database that I have now got to a stage where it is producing quite interesting results. More coming soon about that one...

WOC Results and Statistics

2006-08-18T07:30:00.000+01:00

I've commented previously that it turned out to be very hard to find a good source of results for WOC. I'm looking at setting something up to allow a bit of research into how results have changed over the years and produce some statistics. Watch this space. Whilst doing this I have finally found a fantastic site with everything I needed. This is maintained by Bryan Teahan on behalf of the New Zealand Orienteering Federation.

And as a taste of what might be coming, how about this table. It is a full list of all GB runners who have reached the top 10 at the World Championships. Congratulations to Graham Gristwood and Helen Bridle who put themselves on the list in Denmark this year.

Pos	Name	% behind	Race	Year	Country
1	Jamie Stevenson	0.00%	Sprint	2003	Switzerland
1	Yvette Baker	0.00%	Short	1999	Scotland
2	Yvette Hague	4.30%	Long	1995	Germany
2	Yvette Hague	1.20%	Short	1995	Germany
3	Heather Monro	7.00%	Sprint	2005	Japan
3	Jamie Stevenson	0.50%	Middle	2006	Denmark
3	Yvette Hague	5.90%	Long	1993	United States
4	Steve Hale	3.90%	Short	1993	United States
4	Yvette Baker	1.60%	Long	1999	Scotland
5	Jamie Stevenson	3.40%	Sprint	2001	Finland
6	Helen Bridle	7.60%	Sprint	2006	Denmark
7	Carol McNeill	7.60%	Long	1979	Finland
8	Heather Monro	4.40%	Long	1999	Scotland
8	Jamie Stevenson	4.90%	Long	2004	Sweden
8	Steven Hale	4.70%	Short	1999	Scotland
8	Yvette Hague	7.30%	Long	1997	Norway
9	Graham Gristwood	4.50%	Sprint	2006	Denmark
9	Heather Monro	10.00%	Middle	2004	Sweden
9	Sarah Rollins	10.10%	Sprint	2003	Switzerland
9	Yvette Hague	9.10%	Short	1993	United States
10	Heather Monro	15.50%	Middle	2003	Switzerland

A Great WOC, That's For Sure

2006-08-10T06:50:00.000+01:00

Is this the real star of WOC2006? The photo shows Per Forsberg, chief speaker for WOC 2006, and apparently a well-known TV commentator on football and athletics in Sweden. Many of you will already be familiar with his fast, loud and enthusiastic commentary, and will also recognise his many catch phrases, especially "he's too late" and "that's for sure". For those who have never heard him, think Jonathan Pearce with a slight Swedish accent.

Per kept up what seemed like a continuous stream of well-informed commentary throughout the whole of WOC. He was clearly supported by an extensive array of radio control times, TV cameras and real-time tracking information from TracTrac, as well as a team of helpers who were picking out the real action. The spectators got only part of this information, with limited viewing of the tracking information. The big screen was the biggest I've ever seen, and was used well to present a mix of split times, finish times and shots from the forest. From what I can tell it would appear that people watching via the internet probably had more information available, since they could access everything Per had. So in some ways this was the first year when watching from home really seems to have been a valid option.

So what did you get from being there? I guess it's the same question for any sporting event. There was a real sense of atmosphere at every race, with an awful lot noise (especially from Swiss cow bells) and huge numbers of flags, especially Swiss, British, Finnish and Swedish. The race arenas themselves were in fact marginally too small for the numbers that turned up, and the main spectating areas were very hard to move through at the Middle and Relay races because there were simply too many people crammed in. Apparently the Sprint race could have used an athletics stadium for the finish, but the organisers were worried that this was too big and would have looked empty. There were excellent facilities at each race, with huge tents supplying food and drink, plus an ice cream van and beer van each day, and the weather overall was warm and sunny, with just an occasional thunderstorm. And of course you have to be there spectating in order to be able to run in the forest afterwards to find how hard it really was.

There were also several points where the reaction of the crowd really added to the suspense. Remember that an orienteering crowd is extremely knowledgeable about what is going on, and has a pretty good idea of who should be doing what and when. The things that caused the biggest gasps or cheers throughout the week were:

Simon Niggli punching the spectator control 6 seconds down on Hanny Alston. That was the point when the crowd worked out there was a real prospect of a huge upset.
The tracking display of the long leg on the Men's Long Final, showing runners taking very different route choices. The biggest shock was when Jani Lakanen appeared to stop dead, but we then worked out that this was because we had caught up to real time and he was still doing the leg.
David Andersson of Sweden punching the spectator control at the Middle Final and then running the wrong way along the tapes and starting the last loop backwards. I'm surprised that the gaps from the crowd weren't enough to tell him something was wrong.
The many mistakes that showed up on the tracking for the Middle Race and Relay, where what we all thought were the world's best orienteers proved that they were human too. Particularly for the Relay it seemed that nearly everyone had a go at making a serious mistake when in or near the lead.

And finally a thought that no-one else seems to have picked up on yet. The Middle Race was originally meant to be include a Micro O section to add spectator interest. Luckily, in my opinion, the WOC organisers failed to get the financial support to do this. What we saw was a fantastic, and spectator-friendly, Middle Race with no need for gimmicks or compromise. Let's stick with proper orienteering for the World Championships, and let the races speak for themselves.

WOC+8: Who wants to win the relays?

2006-08-05T21:02:00.000+01:00

A weird day at the relays, where several of the top teams got into a good position only to throw it away with quite serious mistakes. Norway, Sweden and Switzerland were all guilty, leaving Finland to take the Women's race and Russia to take a surprising gold in the Men's race. The French men were never in contention, and the two British teams both started well but faded away.

The overall TV coverage and commentary was excellent and made following the races very easy and exciting. The tracking system also showed numerous errors at critical points. It was a strange decision to show tracking on aerial photographs rather than the O map until most of the third leg runners had started, sinc eteh critical information was all available to the watching runners (gaffling, left and right route choice options).

So that's WOC for another year. Who fancies a week in Kiev next year?

WOC+7: Jamie Stevenson World Champion TM part 2

2006-08-05T20:55:00.000+01:00

Well maybe not World Champion again, but a bronze medal in the Middle Race was a pretty impressive achievement. The crowd was crammed onto a steep slope overlooking a spectator control and the run-in. Crowd highlight of the day was undoubtedly the Swede who punched the spectator control and then followed the tapes the wrong way and started running the last loop backwards.

The tracking today showed a lot of quite critical errors, with several medal contenders making mistakes that cost critical seconds and even minutes. Thierry made a large error at number 4 that cost him the race, but several others threw away the gold medal as well. In the women's race it was another close call for Simone but she just held on.

In the afternoon we got a chance to try for ourselves and found quite how intricate the contours were. Strangely the area was very similar to parts of the North Downs (Leith Hill or Holmbury for example) and the Brits should certainly have felt at home.

WOC+6: Picnic time

2006-08-05T20:49:00.000+01:00

A day off for the big boys, but day 4 of the WOC Tour for us, and a chance to see the Long Distance area. Pleasant enough but nothing special was how I felt afterwards. Not as physical as the qualifier, and actually quite dull at the end when the contours ran out and the navigation got simple. Looking at the men's course it looks like they suffered the same fate, with a ditch junction near the end being a particularly poor control site.

And then on to the traditional British Team picnic. After various exotic locations this one ended up in a corridor in the Radisson Hotel. The British supporters turned out in force and filled the corridor, much in the way that the various events seem to have event arenas not quite big enough for the crowds turning up.

As you may have guessed, it's proving hard to keep up to date, so expect some short reports to follow, with quite an exciting thing happening very soon...

WOC+5: Normal service is restored

2006-08-03T17:50:00.000+01:00

The long distance final restored normal order, but only just. Pre-race favourites Simon Niggli and Janne Lakanen took gold, but it was close at the top, with several nations having a good day. The GB team had one of those days we now expect: nothing spectacular but pretty reasonable really. Difficult to cheer, but better than it feels at the time, as I seem to have written so often in reviewing WOC history.

From the spectating point of view the event arena was good, with everything in a long thin field in a valley. The run-in was along the bottom, with spectators sitting on the side looking down on the action. There was the token spectator control. This was a wooden platform behind the run-in that, as usual, meant a run down to it and then back out without providing any real orienteering merit other than to show the runners to the crowd. The big screen is really very big, and people are beginning to understand what to show on it. The TV control had enough cameras to build up some tension as people approached and you could see the runner's position gradually slipping down the field. There was a brief appearance of the tracking system, showing a long leg on each course and giving a first idea of how critical some of the route choices appear to have been. However it is still very difficult to integrate this into a real-time commentary, and I still think it is more useful for a highlights programme after the event.

Without seeing the splits it is difficult to be sure, but it seems there were some fairly large packs forming again. Lakanen certainly ran a large portion of the race with Gonon of France, dragging him into the top 10 (or was it the other way round?). Jamie Stevenson apparently ran the whole course on his own, which must have cost him time. Just one of those things if you accept a 2 minute start interval.

So two races gone, two to go. Another rest day for the poor elites whilst we spectators get to see what the area was really like.

WOC+4: Queen of the South

2006-08-02T07:04:00.000+01:00

So now we know Simone can be beaten, and by a junior at that. Hanny Alston from Australia took gold in the sprint final at the end of a hectic day for the elites, the also-rans and I'm afraid to say the event officials.

Didn't have time to fit in a visit to spectate at the Qualifier, but the news was good for GB with everybody through. My secret weapon in the O-Manager game, Troy de Haas of Australia, got disqualified and then reinstated after they decided two controls were less than 30m apart. An Irish runner got re-instated because a car was parked in front of a control. The perils of sprint race planning and controlling.

WOC Tour race in the morning was pleasant but nothing special. Heather Monro came out of World Championships retirement to win W21E.

Car parking for the Opening Ceremony was chaos. Glad I don't live in one of the local streets. Ten minute walk through light rain to get to the arena, but the weather then brightened up nicely until everything was over. The opening ceremony was slightly strange and one of the worse examples of its kind. It never really got going or seemed to have any point. The Crown Prince of Denmark did a short speech in which he attempted, and managed, simultaneously to sound like Prince Charles and Tony Blair. The finish area itself was quite impressive with massive grandstands for the spectators, even though the sight lines weren't particularly great. Finish out of sight to the left, spectator control out of sight behind the stage. The Swiss won the "bring a flag" competition, and it looked like Norway had forgotten there was an event on. Perhaps they knew what was to come, with Norway having a terrible set of results.

The men's race was looking good for GB all the way. BJ came in early and in the lead, GG had an absolute stormer and was in the lead at the spectator control. He lost a few seconds in the last loop, and reckoned his ninth place could have been a top six. Matt Speake got disqualified for crossing an uncrossable fence. So did Troy de Haas; the first person ever to be disqualified in a World Champs Qualifier and Final on the same day? The British women went even better than the men, with Helen Bridle finishing sixth, Pippa Whitehouse 12th and Sarah Rollins 16th. But is was the last few moments that will be remembered. Hanny Alston finished to take the lead, having been towed round the last loop by Helen. Just after that Simone punched the spectator control and we knew she was six second down on the lead. Could she do it? Not this time. Perhaps she'll have to settle for only three golds this year. Or is someone else out there going to take another one away?

WOC+3: WOC Tour Day 2

2006-08-01T08:20:00.000+01:00

Another day, another event to run. This time the WOC Tour was just south of Arhus in the forest along the coast. This was predominantly beech with some interesting contour detail at 2.5m, not too much unpleasant vegetation but a very dense path network. It was certainly a bit easier to run than the previous day, and speeds increased all round.

Then it was another hard day sightseeing (bog man plus Viking and Roman remains in the Moesgard museum, which just happened to be the car park for the event) followed by a quick trip to the beach (water temperature 21C if you believe the sign by the life guard's hut).

And now the real event starts. Looks like we won't have time to make it to the qualifieer in teh morning, so it's WOC Tour Day 3 first (same place as yesterday) folowed by the Opening Ceremony followed by the first final. Optimistic British spectator view says six through to the final, top 10 places for Sarah Rollins and BJ. Super-optimistic British spectator view puts GG in the top 10 as well, and gives BJ a medal. Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia and even countries like Italy and Australia will also think they've got a chance of a medal.

WOC+2: Long Distance Qualification

2006-07-30T20:50:00.000+01:00

After a hot day spectating and competing in the Danish sunshine we can now start to answer those important questions that all spectators need to ask. Nobody has gone for a really outlandish new O-suit this year, and the new British kit is a subtle red, white and blue that seems to look better in photos than it does in real life. The Norwegians are still running round in kit that looks like it has been washed too often, and at least some of the Swedes have thrown away the sleeves of their O-tops along with the rule book that says they should have them. Enough on the fashion report.

Second important question is what is the terrain like. My WOC Tour M40 course of 7.8km took 84 minutes, which sounds pretty awful until you factor in 430m climb (that the Danes cunningly avoid bothering to mention). I could say it's like Cannock Chase or the Chilterns or Bury Walls or Mytchett but the thing it is most like is of course Denmark. Pleasant enough in most places, but with some truly horrid walk (I didn't risk the fight) and relentless short sharp climbs. Vegetation turned out to be better than I'd feared, with a fair amount of quite low bracken, and some stinging nettles hiding to keep you awake when you ran into them by accident.

As for the WOC Long Qualifier it was basically more of the same. All the big names got round safely, with the superstars making it look easy. Simone, Thierry (the only two qho qualify as first names only), Nordberg, Lakanen, Novikov and Jukkola all cruised in. The Brits had a standard mix of solid (Jamie Stevenson, Jon Duncan, Alison O'Neill and Rachael Elder), nail-biting (Jenny Whitehead qualifying by two seconds in 15th place) and huge disappointment (Oli Johnson controversially disqualified for mispunching). Performance of the day must go to the Chinese girl Mingyue Zhu who qualified for the final in 15th place: time to start getting worried about the emergence of a new orienteering superpower?

And now those poor elite runners are so tired they need a day off, so that's it until Tuesday for them. Seems a strange timetable, but at least us also-rans are made of sterner stuff and have a race tomorrow. Then there's time to speculate on who might win what on the form we have seen. It still looks to me like things are going to be very close. All 45 men's middle race finalists finished withing 4 minutes of the leader in the qualifier, and the spread today was only 10 minutes. Perhaps that's why we seem to have reverted to results in 10ths of seconds. So roll on the Sprint Qualifier on Tuesday morning, just in time for some people to have their last run at WOC before the opening ceremony and sprint final on Tuesday afternoon.

WOC+1: Here we go

2006-07-29T18:43:00.000+01:00

Two days of silence whilst we were traveling avoided the problem of getting to WOC-0, since I clearly miscalculated two weeks ago.

Anyway, the day on the ferry to Esbjerg was fine, and we spent the evening in a pleasant log cabin with swimming lake right next to it.

The following morning the weather broke for real, and we had torrential rain and thunder and lightning for two hours. After debating the options we pressed on and spent the day at Legoland, which turned out to be not too bad. There was only one surreal ride on a boat round famous locations in the pouring rain, but otherwise the sun returned for the assortment of trains, boats, fire engines and various other rides I was forced to go on.

Got to the WOC camp site in Arhus later in the evening to find it was not quite what we had hoped, lacking in nearly all facilities other than a flat grass field. We shall see how long we last here.

And then WOC Day 1, as things started with the Middle Race Qualifier. As a seasoned WOC Spectator this was one not to miss, but the rest of the family convinced me that the beach was a better bet. We even found a Viking Festival going on, complete with several hundred Vikings and horses acting out a pitched battle, plus a huge area of tents selling all sorts of Viking things (honestly).

On the results front it seems that the Brits did pretty well without me, with all six making it to the final. WOC for real tomorrow as we'll be at the Long Qualifier before starting Day 1 of the WOC Tour.

WOC-2: Looking East from Down Under

2006-07-26T08:22:00.000+01:00

WOC 2005 was in Japan, so just for a change I decided to spectate from Australia. I spent the summer working in Sydney, and therefore ended up catching some of the races over a wireless link to my laptop sitting in various cafes in central Sydney. Technology at my end had certainly moved on, even if the internet coverage was still confined to split times and results.

This time it was Heather Monro we were all yelling for. She'd taken a medal at the World Games, in Germany, and this was going to be her last WOC. Could she finally get it all together on the big day? Of course she could: bronze in the sprint race and she became the third Britain, after Yvette and Jamie, to take an individual World Championship medal. Elsewhere it was Simone and Thierry showing how it should be done. Simone did the impossible again, taking all four gold medals. Thierry only won the middle race (and nearly the relay) but that did mean he'd won three World Championships in a row.

So that's all there is from my personal history of spectating at WOC. This afternoon we set off for Harwich to get the ferry to Esbjerg. On Friday we're going to Legoland (since it's on the way to Arhus, honest). All that's left to do before we go is to pick my own WOC team in the O-Manager game? Do I pick the Brits and hope they do well? Can I resist picking Simone (or can I even afford her)? Will the Swiss, Finns, Norwegians and Swedes dominate, or will the French, Brits, Russians, Czechs and Australians have a good week. How good are the Danes on home terrain? Will it really be as hot and sunny as the weather forecast says? We'll soon find out.

WOC-3: Return to Sweden

2006-07-25T22:44:00.000+01:00

WOC 2004 was in Sweden, just one year after Switzerland. The IOF had decided that more World Championships was what the sport needed. As I spectator I wasn't sure this was true, and it made it easier not going to Switzerland since I knew I couldn't possibly keep going every year. The new format it is beginning to grow on me and I guess I've at least moved to being neutral now. Not sure about some of the runners though.

This was therefore another chance to test the remote spectating facilities of the internet. The main thing I remember is that they put the maps up during the race so you could see the course people were running and get an idea about the critical legs. As far as results went for the Brits this was another year of not bad but not great results. To be honest I can't remember getting particularaly excited at any point, other than possibly trying to work out how Simone had lost so much time early in the classic race.

So a bit of a non-event altogether. Perhaps you had to be there.

WOC-4: Jamie Stevenson World Champion TM

2006-07-24T21:44:00.000+01:00

The sequence was never going to go on for ever, so I didn't make it to WOC 2003 in Switzerland. Instead I had to settle for sitting at home with an internet connection to find out what sort of facilities the Swiss had managed to provide. Luckily I have a job where I can work from home occasionally, so I managed to arrange to be in for the main races. The strange thing about Switzerland is that we probably didn’t have particularly high expectations. Heather and Jamie were clearly in with a chance, but after Finland the thought of medals had receded.

I don’t remember exactly what facilities were provided on the internet, and this is an area where things have changed quite a lot recently. I certainly remember listening to the audio feed from the commentary team, and I think there were real-time results from the finish and probably some intermediate controls. What I do remember is realising that Jamie was on a flyer half way through the sprint race, and then that he finished in the lead. There was then a tense wait for everybody behind him, before it was finally confirmed that Jamie Stevenson (World Champion TM, for trade mark, as he soon became known) was Britain’s second orienteering World Champion. I went downstairs and broke the news to Helen, and then went back upstairs to work. There was probably a slightly larger party amongst the fans in Switzerland that night.

The only thing I remember about the middle distance and long distance was the debate about whether Simone Niggli-Luder could really win all three individual titles on home terrain. We all know now that she is the greatest female orienteer ever, but this was the week when it first became apparent. She won the relay as well to take four golds out of four, to add to her gold and bronze from 2001. Another long-term star came to the front of the field with Thierry Gueorgiou winning the middle race to take his first world title.

And for British fans the finish to the week was as exciting as the start had been. The men were always in the fight for medals in the relay, and eventually Dan Marston, Jon Duncan and Jamie Stevenson World Champion TM came home third to take bronze. Sitting at home spectating wasn’t quite like being there, but at least we knew in almost real time what was going on. The main thing you miss is the chance to run on the areas themselves and find out quite how technical and physical they really were.

WOC-5: Going to the dogs?

2006-07-23T20:46:00.000+01:00

WOC 2001 took us to Tampere in Finland. This was a chance to see the first of the new "spectator-friendly" World Championships. So what difference did it make?

On the face of it there were several "firsts". There was the first running of a new event - the "Sprint". There was the first real-time tracking of competitors in the Classic Race. For the first time the women's relay was finished before the men started. And for individual events the start was right next to the finish, rather than hidden away in the depths of the forest. But it was the TV coverage that came to dominate the week.

The first event of the week was the Sprint. This was a last-minute addition to the program, and nobody seemed really sure what it was meant to be. Most people seemed to be expecting a Park race, but the event was in a wooded area. The most controversial aspect was that competitors were given a map and allowed to train in the forest beforehand. Course planning turned out to be roughly equivalent to an Orange course, despite the fact that the area had intricate contour detail. Spectators were allowed anywhere on the main path network, although most stayed within about 100 metres of the start/finish. I wandered out to the edge of the map and found a bizarre control site. I now have what may be an extremely valuable photograph of the new World Champion, Vroni Konig of Switzerland, punching a control on the corner of the toilet block at Tampere Greyhound stadium. Back at the finish we had the first sighting of the massive TV screen and results board that will forever be a symbol of the week. The screen was the size of a double-decker bus, but then that is effectively what it was, since it came complete with its own driving cab. The results board was almost as big. The crowd spent most of its time watching the screens, which unfortunately meant they had their backs to the finish run-in, and so there was often very little noise and cheering even for the home runners.

The big attraction of the Classic race was meant to be the real-time tracking system. All competitors had to carry what was effectively a combined mobile phone and GPS receiver. This fitted into a vest which was large enough to ensure that every runner looked like they were running in a white O-top rather than the national team colours that people expected. TV coverage from the forest was extensive, although once you've watched one person slog uphill in hot sun to a control there is not a lot else to see. The trick as a runner was to make sure you started early and had a good run. As soon as you were outside of the top two or three that was your chance of TV fame gone, and the cameras moved on. TV is about winners. The situation was summed up when Yvette Hague finished in silence, and without any mention by the commentators, since she was only 11th and we already knew who had won the three medals. As for the tracking, it was as close to a non-event as it could be. We probably saw about three or four glimpses of the map with tracks on through the whole day, and this was unintelligible even to the experienced orienteer. Denmark promises the latest version of the technology. Will it be more intelligible this time?

Relay day provided more of the same, lots more of the same. If anything there were too many TV controls. With one every 10 minutes, it meant that the coverage never really got past the top three or four teams before moving on, which meant that most of the interesting racing was missed. The course planning was undoubtedly compromised by the spectator controls. It included a dog-leg which a C5 planner would be ashamed of with runners coming down a path to the assembly field, punching at a fodder rack 20 metres into the field, and then going straight back up the path. TV highlight of the day was the slow-motion replay to decide second and third place between Norway and Sweden in the Women's race. The Norwegian forgot to dip and lost it on the line.

I didn't see the Short race, since I was on the way back for the Scottish 6-Day. I've got a pretty good idea of what it was like though. Especially since it was on the same area as the Relay and the Short Race qualifier.

Overall I don't think things were as bad as I may have made out above. The areas were reasonable (though definitely nowhere near the best in Finland) and the weather was mainly sunny (apart from the odd thunderstorm). Great Britain didn't come back with the hoped-for medal. TV did dominate, but it was easier to follow what was going on than ever before. Apparently there was a two minute report on Transworld Sport on Channel 4. I missed it; I was in the shower at the time. But then I had of course seen the live version.

WOC-6: Yvette first, the rest nowhere

2006-07-22T20:23:00.000+01:00

Most British orienteers go to the Scottish 6-Day at some point, and 1999 was just another 6-Day to some. The difference of course was that WOC 99 just happened to be going on in parallel. It was yet another week of hot weather for a World Championships, with the event centre in Inverness and races spread over a wide area, and it was yet another year where we all hoped that Yvette would finally grab the victory she deserved. Yvette warmed up by winning the World Cup Short Race in the Lake District, and the crowd went wild. Could she do it again when it really counted? Just to cause confusion, she got married and suddenly we had to learn to cheer for Yvette Baker.

The classic race qualifier and final were in Glen Affric. Steve Hale and Heather Monro both had excellent runs to finish 12th and 8th respectively. Yvette finished the Classic Race with the leading time, and said she was happy with her run. But one by one the rest of the field came in, and it was finally to end up as 4th place. Perhaps the Short Race then...

The Short Race qualifier went to plan, with Yvette winning her heat, leaving her to start last but one in the final. I spent the race in the forest with a Swedish TV crew. We were positioned to capture the spectator control, and then a quick dash allowed us to see runners at the penultimate control as well. The radio split times sounded encouraging and suddenly I looked up to see a crowd of runners at the spectator control. Unbelievably Yvette had caught all three runners ahead of her. The four runners set off on the final loop leaving the crowded finish field to wait in hope. I crossed over to the penultimate control and waited. We already knew that many runners were missing this control and ending up on the hill to our left. I saw a group of three people coming round the edge of the hill. This was it, but Yvette wasn't with them. And then all I remember is a British O-suit flashing past away from the control and towards the finish, leaving the others to loop back and punch Then the cheering started and we strained to make out what the commentators had to say. World Champion. Gold medal. Yvette, we never doubted you. It's worth recording that this was also the start of a real new world order. Yvette was followed home by Lucie Bohm of Austria and Frauke Schmitt Gran of Germany. For the first time ever there were no medals for Scandinavians in a World Championships race.

And there was still the relay. This turned out to be in probably the best setting of any World Championships race I have been to, and it certainly had the best commentary. I'd swapped the Swedish TV crew for a Finnish TV crew, and got to see some of the race in the forest, as well as from high up on the hill overlooking the finish. I will never forget the noise that the crowd made as Heather Monro punched at the last control and brought the Brits into first place after two legs. Yvette was running last "Relay stalwart in anyone's dream team" CompassSport had said in the preview. She went out in fourth place, just seconds behind the Swedes. The radio reports all around the course simply told us that it would be Sweden or Britain for bronze. And by the end it came down to a straight sprint into the finish field. The yellow and blue of Sweden just held off the red, white and blue of Great Britain.

So Great Britain now had a World Champion. Was this the start of something big, or just a one-off? The British spectators knew what they wanted to believe, and from now on expectations would be even higher.

WOC-7: Bushmen in a Norwegian Wood

2006-07-21T18:08:00.000+01:00

By the time of WOC 97 in Grimstad in the south of Norway we knew that Great Britain would be staging the next World Championships. That meant a large GB team of officials going out to watch what happened behind the scenes, see what to do and what not to do, and push out as much publicity as possible. Helen and I were part of that team, and spent a hectic week spectating, competing and having all sorts of meetings.

This was another of those "high expectations, good results but not quite what we'd hoped". World Championships. The problem was actually worse than that. Four medals at the previous two World Championships meant that the British spectators expected a medal. No matter what the real expectations should have been, the number of medals was always going to be the test of how well we'd done at all World Championships to come. Yvette had injury problems beforehand, and was never quite up with the pace. Steve Hale was the other great hope, but he too wasn't quite up with the leaders. I seem to remember that this was a "peaked too late" problem and that just after WOC he won the Swedish Championships instead.

From the spectating viewpoint this was a pretty reasonable WOC. The weather was sunny all week, and the areas were generally runnable and not too hilly so the spectator races were enjoyable. The opening ceremony was memorable in the sense that it went on for ever and seemed to have little to do with orienteering. The commentary at each event included live feeds from the forest where a whispering commentator provided information on who was going through a particular control site. This was a bit strange at first, but ended up being quite entertaining. But it was the WOC song that really sticks in the memory. Instantly referred to as "Bushmen", since the chorus started with the line "We are bushmen", this was one of those annoying tunes that you end up humming all the way around a course and stops you concentrating properly. It was played at every opportunity at each event, and really deserves greater exposure to a world-wide audience. I greatly regret not buying the CD that was available at the time.

Whilst I was looking around for some background information it struck me that a lot of the events from the early days of the internet have effectively disappeared. Blair Trewin's site was great for events up to 1993, but he then settles for links to event sites that no longer exist. I can't find a full set of WOC 95 or WOC 97 results anywhere, and I think I'm about to discover that WOC 99 is the same. The IOF site appears to have everything from WOC 2001 onwards.

But anyway, the story has now come full circle and the spectator's tale has reached a World Orienteering Championships in Great Britain. There was only one question that anybody was really interested in: could Yvette win a gold medal at last?

WOC-8: This precious stone set in the silver sea

2006-07-20T21:13:00.000+01:00

WOC 95 was in Germany, based in the town of Detmold. If you think it has been hot this week in Britain then think again. Germany was hotter. And it had hills. And vegetation. And more British medals, so the travelling fans had quite a lot to cheer about. And for the techies amongst you, this was the first WOC to use electronic punching. The Emit system caught a few out, but was here to stay.

The short race produced one of the first signs of the Swiss women's coming dominance, with gold going to Marie-Luce Romanens. Yvette Hague took silver, and we cheered a lot. But the men's race, and particularly the prize giving, was more interesting. An unknown (at least to most of us) Ukrainian stormed round to victory. Yuri Omeltchenko was such a surprise winner that the team manager had to sing the National Anthem at the prize giving since they didn't have a tape to play.

The classic race included a lap of the enormous statue on the main hill overlooking the town, followed by some typical continental terrain with fairly straightforward contours with big hills, detailed vegetation and an extensive path network. All the talk beforehand and the analysis afterwards focused on how critical the long route choice legs would be. One day I'll get round to writing up the details that show this was all nonsense. The long leg on the women's course produced different route choices where the leaders all turned out to take about the same time. A trivial path leg near the end was much more critical, where the Hungarian Katalin Olah took nearly a minute out of nearly everybody else on what looks like a leg with no technical merit at all. She was simply running faster than anyone else when it mattered. Behind her Yvette took another silver medal. The British spectators were getting spoiled by this stage, and I don't think we ever appreciated what a performance it was to take two silver individual medals at the same World Championships.

The relay changeover was in a field on top of a hill. The last leg seemed to involve a huge climb up the hill, and finishers looked suitably shattered as they came into view. The British men were fighting for the sixth and last podium place on the last leg, and Steve Hale was announced at the radio control at the bottom of the hill at the same time as Carsten Jorgenson of Denmark. Everyone thought it was clear that Steve would be outrun up the hill by the man famous at that stage for being European cross-country champion. But it was Hale who made it to the top first to take sixth place. We cheered a lot. Carsten is clearly still in good shape, and has just been selected for WOC 2006. His unmistakable running style will certainly give the home crowd something to look forward to.

And finally some good news for British fans David "BJ" Brickhill-Jones has been declared fit and will take part in the sprint race. August 1st could be another historic day for British orienteering.

WOC-9: The Fab Four

2006-07-19T21:32:00.000+01:00

There is no doubt that WOC93 was, and still remains, my favourite WOC. The areas, in Harriman State Park just north of New York, were fantastic. The Americans surprised everybody by managing not only to put on the World Championships but also to stage a very large multi-day event for spectators as well. Yvette finally got the medal we all knew she would get eventually. And to top it all, the British men had one of those days that you can only dream of, and took away a silver medal in the relay.

I've written previously about both the classic race, where Yvette finally got her first medal, and the week as a whole. All of the relevant facts are there already: Hale running the wrong side of a tree to miss a medal by one second in the short race; the pouring rain and rugged terrain that was the classic race; hoping but not knowing for sure that Yvette had her medal, until the sound of the Clive Allen interview told us she must surely have done it this time; the gradual realisation that first Palmer and then Hale were taking the rest of the world apart to put Britain within sight of the gold medal as the injured Swiss runner collapsed over the line to win. This is definitely what being a spectator at the World Championships is all about.

What you won't find in those reports are those other little details that I can still recall. The chaos of New York traffic as we crossed some enormous bridge just outside the airport with John still not really sure what side he should be driving on. The indoor swimming pool with rooms arranged around it in the Suffern Holiday Inn where we stayed for the week. The trip to New York on a rest day, including a trip to the top of the World Trade Centre back in the pre-9/11 days when the world was a different place. Managing to lock the keys in the car just minutes before my start, and discovering how many Americans come equipped with all sorts of dodgy tools for breaking and entering. Nearly managing to break 10 minutes/kilometre with a good run over the boulder fields and hills where Hale had managed to break five minutes/kilometre. This too is what being a spectator at the World Championships is all about. Let's hope Denmark provides equal memories.

I've been back to the World Champs areas twice since 1993. The first time was for a 6-Day event in 1996, which I cunningly managed to fit in as part of my honeymoon. (The other part was of course the Canadian Championships the week before.) The second return was for a single race that happened to fit in with a trip to Boston to attend a friend's wedding. We stayed in the Suffern Holiday Inn for old time's sake. I've still got Harriman State Park in my all-time top 10 of places to orienteer. Go if you get a chance.

WOC-10: Czech out Chapman

2006-07-18T19:39:00.000+01:00

WOC 91 in Czechoslovakia (as it still was then) started early, with a bit of test spectating at the British selection races, held in conjunction with the Scottish 6-Day. I distinctly remember a young Heather Monro having a fairly terrible run and blowing her chance of selection. Despite this she still insisted that the results were changed to spell her name correctly. Her time was yet to come. The other main item of note was a great run from Mark Chapman (a LOKkie like me) which was then ignored by the selectors who left him out of the team. The massed ranks of SHUOC rallied round and the end of the week saw an outbreak of "Czech Out Chapman" protest t-shirts: civil disobedience comes to orienteering.

This was to be my first trip to Eastern Europe. We did it in style, flying to Nuremburg and driving the short distance to the spa resort of Marianske Lazne (or Marienbad as it was better known in the West, having starred in some cult movie I hadn't seen) in a friend's black top-of-the-range BMW. This was to be the cause of many envious glances through the week. Spectators had a 3-day event to warm up, in typical hilly and varied terrain. Star attraction at each event was the beer lorry, where a trifling sum bought you a large glass of ice-cold beer to celebrate getting round. We were living it up in real style at the hotel, although the menu left a little to be desired, especially as it was the same every day. Star attraction was the "fried earp" which we worked out was meant to be "fried carp" but normally turned out to be boiled trout if anyone ordered it. Our hotel was just a short stroll from the musical fountains and formal gardens of the main spa area, and altogether it was a very cultured week. We even set out for a day trip to Prague on a rest day, but decided it was too hot and stopped half way. We found a fantastic monastery to visit on a back road, but I've no idea what it was called.

Ironically after all the fuss it turned out that Chappers made the team, since injury forced Steve Hale (I presume it was him) to withdraw. Mark did what only he could by promptly getting disqualified for punching a control on the wrong bush in the short race qualifier. He was in good company, since Yuri Omeltchenko did the same thing. He's another who will feature again soon enough. But it wasn't the disqualifications on the men's course that caused the major row. Instead it was the disqualification of medal hopes Ragnhild Bente Andersen of Norway and Yvette Hague (yes, GB's own superstar), both for punching slightly out of the boxes on the control card. Younger readers will be unfamiliar with the concept of control cards, for the very good reason that the development of electronic punching was a direct result of these disqualifications.

The short race final was based in the grandstand of a horse racing track, and provided little interest to the spectator. Runners emerged from the forest about 400m from the crowd, and proceeded to run across a flat grassy area before finishing. The Brits did nothing in particular, and the main point of interest was double gold for the home runners: almost certainly the first World Championships individual races where a Scandinavian had failed to claim a gold medal.

The classic race returned to normality with Mr Orienteering, Jorgen Martensson of Sweden, claiming gold, even if it was a Hungarian, Katalin Olah, who won the women's race. The courses started with a huge climb out of a river valley, before a slightly less gruelling run around typical rocky outcrops in mixed forest. The spectator race I ran avoided the early climb, but had the same last 12km as the men. IOF guests were less lucky in the traditional IOF race. They got the first, hilly, half of the course instead.

The relays were held near Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) but I remember little of them. Overall the British week was unspectacular again in terms of results, but the spectator races were better than previous World Championships I had been to. The final memory is of somehow managing to get on the plane home without my passport. I talked my way through immigration at Heathrow on the basis of a London Underground travelcard and three friends wearing identical World Championships t-shirts to mine.

WOC-11: Sweden, the home of orienteering

2006-07-17T20:09:00.000+01:00

I still don't know why I decided to go to WOC 89 in Sweden. Clearly I had some holiday to use up, since I'd certainly been to the Scottish 6-Day a few weeks before. Whatever the reason for going, I remember little of what was certainly the least impressive World Championships I have attended. The weather was unspectacular, the British results were unspectacular, the areas were fairly boring considering what Sweden has to offer, and I spent a week camping next to a Volvo factory. The highlight may well have been the start draw that I attended and that had to be redone after some minor technical problem came to light. And I had a good night out in Liseberg, the amusement park in Gothenburg, on the way home.

Hale and Hague led the way for GB, but again it was solid top 20 results rather than anything more to celebrate. Looking at the results now I guess that four Brits in the top 33 on the men's course was quite a good performance, but it's a bit difficult to cheer results like that. The good news is that this was the last WOC with only one individual race, so from now on there would at least be more chance of medals. Or so we hoped.

Today's news from Denmark is that Jamie Stevenson seems to have won the Danish long selection race. Seems a bit odd, but that is what the results show. Good for his confidence if nothing else, but Jani Lakanen was nearly 5 minutes faster in the Finnish selection race so who knows what is really going on.

WOC-12: The French Connection

2006-07-16T17:06:00.000+01:00

And so we come to the first WOC I attended, based in Gerardmer-La Bresse near the French border with Germany. It seemed obvious to take in the 2-Day event in Holland on the way down, and we then managed a day of non-sightseeing in Amsterdam. For reference the Rijksmuseum is closed on Mondays (or at least it was in 1987). For some reason we decided that Strasbourg was the next place to visit on the way south, and eventually arrived at some sort of hostel that I can't remember at all. As a spectator it pays to know a few people, and this time round we managed to tag along with the GB B Team Tour, on the basis that two of them (Rob Lee and Mark Seddon) were in the car with us.

I vaguely remember getting to the qualification race as it finished, and then going to a training area covered in nettles in the rain. This was Les Xettes and for a long time had the distinction of being the only area I had run on beginning with the letter X. Some years later it was joined by Xian Yang, one of the areas for the Chinese 3-Day in 1995.

This was still a time when WOC was only a long race and a relay. British hopes focused squarely on Yvettte Hague, as they would do for several years to come. I seem to remember she'd won a World Cup race in France the year before, which was being optimistically seen as some sort of form guide. GB spectating at WOC is characterised by high hopes before the big races followed by what are normally pretty reasonable results considering, but not quite what you had hoped for. Every now and then the team slip in something completley unexpected, but that was yet to come, and for now we were still at the "not bad but not quite what we'd hoped for" stage.

Yvette managed 17th, and Bilbo managed 16th on the men's course. Not bad but not quite we were hoping for, as I said. So we left the sun-baked hillside after a day of spectating and settled for an evening of ethical discussion. The next day there was a French National event, and everybody knew that they would be running the World Champs course. Should you look at the course beforehand? I was pretty convinced it would make no difference to me, so I looked. Lots of others pretended not to, but who knows for sure? Anyway, the next day I got to run up the ski slope and out into the open area where the TV cameras weren't any more and down the staggeringly steep final hill and finally dragged myself round the 17k with 1000m of climb (or so it felt). My time was quite reasonable I thought, but we'll never know for sure since I don't think the French have yet got round to publishing the results even to this day. Running the actual World Championships course was one of the real attractions for spectators, but it seems to be one of the things that has now disappeared.

I don't rememebr much about the relays at all, other than waiting at the changeover to take a photo of Julie Martindale starting for Ireland on the last leg. Julie was in LOK, the same club as me, which is another of the attractions of orienteering at this level. It doesn't seem to take long before you get to know somebody who is a competitor, or at least that you run against regularly, or see at events. As another example of the rather small world of orienteering, the person handing over to Julie in France was Anne May, who I didn't know at the time. I have since got to know both her and her husband, who will turn up in a few days time sharing a hotel room with me on a trip to WOC 2001 in Finland.

Meanwhile back in Denmark I see that Jamie Stevenson won the middle test race. Probably doesn't mean a great deal at this stage, but one thing to note is how tight the times have been on all the courses so far. Looks like we might be in for some very close races indeed.

WOC-13: We interrupt this broadcast...

2006-07-15T17:07:00.000+01:00

There I was all set to tell you about the delights of WOC 87 in France when various other things came up which seemed more interesting in the short term.

Firstly I have just had an email from Nick Barrable, the CompassSport editor, asking me to do an article for CompassSport about the spectator point of view. Not a problem, but what interests me is how he spotted that this blog had started, since I haven't publicised it at all yet. Better email him to find out.

Secondly this is a chance for some first thoughts on what might happen in Denmark in two weeks time. The sprint test race in Arhus has just finished, so we now know a bit about the technology that internet spectators can expect, as well as a bit about who is in form. The coverage included a fixed video stream of a camera showing the finish line, with commentary by that well-known Dane Clive Allen. Clive is not the most animated of commentators (certainly not in comparison with Per Forsberg who will presumably be doing WOC itself) but he clearly had a reasonable supply of information available, even if it didn't include the name of the mysterious New Zealander who kept getting mentioned. The real-time results seemed a bit hit and miss, and need a bit of work. The presentation of information itself is good, but results seemed be missing or not working for a long time. At one point I'm sure they had runners shown against the wrong courses, and the M21 results still aren't complete. Anyway, you can see what's on offer at http://live.woc2006.dk/ which will have coverage tomorrow (middle) and Monday (long).

Weather in Denmark looks pretty much like it is here in St Albans at the moment. Unbroken sunshine, with temperatures in the mid 20s. We're camping for the WOC week, so I guess it will be raining by then. The main point of interest on the video was the park road that finishers crossed about 10 metres from the finish line. I assume there was someone controlling the traffic just out of sight, but several times a car shot past just before or after a runner. I also spotted several runners going for the "extended map" technique to cross the finish beam that extra few milliseconds earlier. Does this really save more than you lose by having to slow down to throw your arm forward in the first place?

Least surprising result of the day was clearly Simon Niggli's win, but a margin of 53 seconds over Mina Kauppi is enormous, even if the Finn was on a slightly different course. There was good news for GB, with Sarah Rollins, Pippa Whitehouse and Graham Gristwood all having good runs. David Brickhill-Jones was announced just ahead of GG, but then the commentary said he'd been disqualified. Still no information on the results web site on this, so we'll have to wait and see if BJ has recovered after his JK injury. Final concern for the organising team will be that the men were at least a minute slower than expected: time for the planner to lose 200m from the WOC final?

Perhaps tomorrow I'll get on to what happened when I went to my first ever WOC as a spectator.

WOC-14: News travels slowly

2006-07-14T23:10:00.000+01:00

The first 10 years of my WOC spectating career was spent reading about the events in The Orienteer and CompassSport, normally several weeks if not months after the events had taken place. If you were lucky you might see the results themselves in The Times or The Daily Telegraph, but that was about it. This was a time when British medals were no more than faint hopes, so there was no real prospect of any coverage unless someobody wanted a "look what these strange people do" type article.

There was no internet to provide instant global access to everything that was going on, and the concept of actually going to watch the World Championships simply didn't feature in my plans. Instead I was too busy trying out the delights of the Swiss 5-Days, the Swedish O-Ringen, the Sorlandsgaloppen, the Danish 3-Day, the Scottish 6-Day and various other multi-day events around Europe. So WOC78 in Norway, WOC79 in Finland, WOC81 in Switzerland, WOC83 in Hungary and WOC85 in Australia largely passed me by.

Perhaps my first conscious sighting of a World Champion was seeing a skinny Norwegian winning the Swiss 5-Day event in 1980: Oyvin Thon had become World Champion at WOC 79 in Finland. This was a time of complete domination by the Norwegian men. They took the first three places in 1979 and 1981 and, unbelievably, the first four places in 1983. The women's race was dominated by one woman rather than one country. Annichen Kringstad of Sweden was World Champion in 1981, 1983 and 1985. Anybody care to predict the result of a Kringstad race against Simone Niggli?

Back in the present day, I've just spotted that the Danish selection races are being covered live on the internet tomorrow afternoon. Time for a spot of spectator training I think.

WOC-15: How it all started

2006-07-13T07:10:00.000+01:00

I guess I should start with WOC 76 in Scotland. Not that I knew anything about it at the time, but this was what got me started orienteering. The event itself appeared to get little publicity and I was certainly unaware it was happening. But somehow a film got made about it, and the film got shown on television over Christmas, and suddenly orienteering in Great Britain started growing. I vaguely remember that Chris Brasher was somewhere behind the scenes writing articles in newspapers and getting the film shown on television. Whatever, there was an increase in the number of people orienteering in 1977, and one of those newcomers was Brian Johnson. Brian attended the first ever Scottish 6-Day event in 1977, which was specifically organised to make use of all the areas mapped for WOC 76. Brian just happened to be a teacher at my school. He convinced me to try orienteering, and my first event was on 27th November 1977 at Denny Wood in the New Forest.

Looking at the WOC 76 results now there are many familiar names both in the GB team and elsewhere. Geoff Peck and Carol McNeill led the way for GB, and these, along with Chris Hirst, were the names that I was to become familiar with as I gradually found out what orienteering was all about. In those days there was only a long race and a relay. Egil Johansen of Norway won the men's race, Liisa Veijalainen of Finland won the women's race, and Sweden won both relays. This was still a time where Norway, Sweden and Finland dominated the results and most of the rest of the world were nowhere. In the men's race the first 18 places went to four NOR, four SWE, four FIN, three SUI and three CZE. For the women it was four FIN, four SWE, four NOR, four SUI and one DEN in the top 17. One thing is for certain: there will be a much greater spread of countries in with a chance in Denmark this year.

WOC-16: The blog starts here

2006-07-12T20:05:00.000+01:00

So here we are two weeks away from the World Orienteering Championships. I'll be in Denmark to cheer on the GB team, so it seemed like a good idea to try to provide some comments and background information as things happen. This is intended to be the start of a regular series of items providing the thoughts of a regular WOC spectator. Let's see how far I actually get.