Born to Run

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

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

GB JWOC 2008 Team signalling for help

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

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 amusement 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.

WOC-3: Return to Sweden

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-11: Sweden, the home of orienteering

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.