After the main goal of the year for most of us: the WOC in France; it was our last chance to win some points for the World Cup ranking:
At Liberec in Czech-Republic, we run first a middle distance on the Saturday followed by a chasing start on Sunday with the start time based on the results of the middle distance. The terrain there was quite similar to our training forest in France so we weren’t like fish out water. My technical performance was OK even if I have done some mistakes especially due to bad compass directions (like at controls 3, 10 and 14) as you can see on the GPS-tracking. So I managed to take the 24th place 3’41 behind the leader Pasi Ikonen from Finland (results).
This race had a really good live on the Czech TV as you can see here.
On the chasing start, I started on the 24th position (as you could guess if you followed well above) in a quite crowed forest. Indeed, as the middle distance results were very tight, we started very close each other. I started quite well so I could climb many places on the beginning until the changing map, but after, I did some mistakes when I was alone in the second butterfly (see GPS tracking), so many runners catch me and we finished the race in packs where I arrived in 15th position 6’31 after the Swiss guy: Marc Lauenstein who won just before Thierry Gueorgiou (our teammate for France) (results).
The last World cup weekend was held in Switzerland (in the Jura Mountain close to the French border). It was a middle distance on Saturday, with a first part rather technical in typical karstic forest and a last part easy through fields to finish in a village some meters below. However, my performance there was really bad: I quickly catch up the British guy who started 2 minutes before me and, and that probably why I wasn’t careful enough and I left the 4th control too rapidly. That led a huge mistake on the way to the 5th where I lost more than 5 minutes. But, as it was not enough, I did another big mistake to the 14th control… (GPS and Results)
The World cup final was the Post-finance Sprint (like the last few years) in La-Chaud-de-Fonds: The atmosphere of this race is always impressive with many spectators rather noisy and it’s great to experience it as an athlete (it’s not so often to feel like a star in orienteering). There is also a good TV live. I had some troubles to begin the race, to be focus and to find the good routine: I lost some times on the beginning especially at the 3rd control and I got the 13th place. (GPS and Results).
To conclude the international season, after I’ve taken some points during the Nordic Orienteering Tour in June, I took a respectable 10th place at WOC, and I finish rather well the season with this 2 last weekend. So I’ve finally gotten the 17th ranking at the overall IOF world cup standings.
Even if I didn’t get any medal like last year, my improvement is still really positive as my overall World Cup ranking increase well the last few years (2008 : 110th ; 2009 :70th; 2010 :30th ; 2011 : 17th).
Now, after club relay races like 25-Manna, some rest will be good for the body before thinking to the next season…
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