The Missing Years

Mike Edwards spectating from the Commentary Box at WOC 2015

This blog started out to cover WOC 2006 in Denmark, and early posts covered WOC history to that date. Team Errington made it to the Ukraine for WOC 2007, but I've written nothing since the World Championships in the Czech Republic back in 2008, where Jamie, Jon and GG took an unexpected gold medal in the relay after Thierry's unfortunate meeting with a bee meant that he missed out on his first gold relay medal. So before things get started in Estonia on Friday there is just time for a quick look back at what the GB WOC supporters have had to get excited about over the past nine years.

WOC 2009: Miskolc, Hungary

GG, Scott Fraser and Pippa Whitehouse made the top 20 in a rather strange sprint race that was mostly in forest. GG was 9th in the Men's Long. But the talking point of the year was the Men's Relay. Swedish runner Martin Johansson was seriously injured after getting a stick impaled in his leg whilst in the lead on the last leg. France, Norway and the Czech Republic all stopped to help him, and Thierry had found a new way of not winning a WOC relay gold.

WOC 2010: Trondheim, Norway

GB performance of the week was Scott Fraser taking sixth in the Long: still our best male performance, with only Jamie Stevenson and GG having also made the top ten. Pippa Archer, Sarah Rollins and Helen Bridle all made the top 20 in the Women's Sprint. The men took fourth in the relay after Thierry had found yet another new way of not winning a WOC relay gold. This time he was in the lead half way round the last leg when he ran straight past the control before the spectator run-through. The crowd soon told him of his mistake, but running back to get the control left France in sixth.

WOC 2011: Savoie Grand Revard, France

The French found some crazily complex terrain and then set Thierry on it. He won the Middle race by over two minutes, the Long race by over four minutes and finally picked up a Relay gold as well.

British highlight of the week was the Men's Sprint, with GG an agonising fourth, Scott Fraser ninth and Murray Strain 12th.

WOC 2012: Lausanne, Switzerland

Switzerland is where Jamie Stevenson took gold in the Sprint at WOC 2003. It was a case of oh so near in 2012, as Scott Fraser ended up fourth, behind three Swiss men all called Matthias. Claire Ward was seventh and Tessa Hill 12th in the Women's Sprint.

Surprise of the week was probably Switzerland failing to take a medal in the Men's Relay (that's what you get if you only pick two people called Matthias), with victory going to the Czech Republic. Individual performance of the week definitely went to Edgars Bertuks who won Latvia's first WOC medals with gold in the Middle race and bronze in the Long race.

WOC 2013: Vuokatti, Finland

Finally the near misses ended, GB had another WOC medal to celebrate, and Scott Fraser came home with a silver from the Sprint. Murray Strain was ninth and Kris Jones 16th, and Tessa Strain showed the Women were world-class as well taking fifth, with Sarah Rollins in 20th. Cat Taylor snuck into the top ten in the Women's long.

For Sarah Rollins it was her 11th and final WOC; a new GB record at the time but now having been overtaken by GG who will be at his 13th WOC in Estonia. And this was also Simone Niggli's 11th and final WOC. She only managed the three gold medals this time, but that made it a career total of 23 gold, two silver and six bronze.

WOC 2014: Trentino-Veneto, Italy

The Italians somehow managed to hold the Sprint races in Venice. Murray Strain was 13th and Kris Jones was 18th in the Men's Sprint, and Tessa Hill was 12th in the Women's Sprint. Elsewhere there was a better than normal set of top-20 results for Hector Haines (12th in Men's Middle), GG (20th in Men's Long), Claire Ward (12th in Women's Middle) and Cat Taylor (19th in Women's Long).

2014 also saw the first appearance of the Mixed Sprint Relay, with teams of two men and two women. If you have been paying attention you will realise this would seem to be playing to GB's strengths. Cat Taylor, Kris Jones, Murray Strain and Tessa Hill came home in sixth place. On a personal note, it was good to see the Russians taking a bronze medal. I first met Gleb Tikhonov (or rather his parents)  on a boat on a canal outside Moscow in 1994 when he was still in a pushchair.

WOC 2015: Inverness, Great Britain

Back on home terrain for a third time, including a third trip to Darnaway, this time for the Middle and Relay races. The British team put in a very strong set of results and did pretty much everything but win a medal. There were top 20 results in every race, with the highlights being fourth in the Men's Relay, where Ralph Street couldn't quite hold on for a medal on the last leg, and Cat Taylor's fifth in the Women's Middle (with Jess Tullie in 17th) and 6th in the Women's Long. Yet again the Men's Sprint produced three top-20 places (Kris Jones eighth, Scott Fraser 13th and Murray Strain 18th) and Charlotte Ward was 17th in the Women's Sprint. And Hector Haines and GG did the double in the Men's Middle (10th and 20th) and Men's Long (17th and 18th ).

WOC 2016: Strömstad-Tanum, Sweden

I was really struggling to remember much about this, but as ever Jan Kocbach on World of O came to the rescue. Kris Jones led the way for GB with fourth in the Men's Sprint, with Ralph Street in 17th. The Mixed Sprint Relay team got it together and ended up fourth as well, and so did the Men's Relay team. Three fourths is difficult to celebrate, and other top 20 finishes were fewer than recent years, with  Hector Haines 19th on the Men's Long and GG 19th on the Men's Middle. And a new country took a first medal, when Anastasia Denisova from Belarus took third place in the Women's Sprint.

So that's the past eight years dealt with. Next it will be time to look forward to what might happen this year.

WOC 2007: More of the same but faster

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 a 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: Return of the King

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 Qualifiers - Hot, hot, hot

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 the action really starts with the middle final on Wednesday.

Virtual orienteering heaven

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 championships on rowing machines. Just a thought.

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-4: Jamie Stevenson World Champion TM

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.