A Few Quick Facts...

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.

WOC-2: Looking East from Down Under

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-10: Czech out Chapman

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.