Back from the European champs with 1 medal and 1 diploma :)

European Orienteering Championships in Portugal:

While having a new situation and especially new training environment this year, it was really interesting to see how well (or bad) it would go to be for the first main goal of the season: Finally, I think that I can be quite satisfied about the performance-level as it seems that I had the speed to be among the best on the sprint, the long-distance, and on the first-leg relay.

- Sprint: 13^th (14’56 / +31’’)

Quite typical performance of the last few years for me: some good parts, but big mistake(s) costing too much time to get a high result (here, at least 1 big crash of ~30’’ when leaving the castle). But at least it was positive to punch all the controls and in the right order, this time…

For more analyses details (for the ones who haven’t seen it yet): everything has been made very well by Jan Kocbach on this link.

- Long: 5^th (1h32’04 / +1’41)

Very pleasing performance for me and best result ever in a long distance at this level: On this physically and mentally demanding race, it seems that I started quite fast (maybe too fast?) but unfortunately I lost a bit focus after about 1 hour leading necessary to mistakes and especially 1 big crash that probably costing me a chance to be on the podium (+~1’15).

Again great analyses by J.Kocbach here.

- Relay: 3^rd

I think that the relay is always a little bit special competition for an individual sport like orienteering because we are fighting for the team and then we share the emotions of the result together. It’s especially motivating when you have great team-mates like we have in France. ;)

Even if I had good statistics in EOC relays before the race with 2 medals from 2010 (Silver) and 2012 (Bronze), each time finishing the 1^st leg in a leading position, I couldn’t start with a very high confidence as my last 1^st leg-relay race was last year at WOC when I spoiled all team’s ambitions after 2 controls… But it went pretty well this time and I could throw L. Basset in a good spot. Then he also did an excellent job as Tero on the last leg and at the end, on a tight competition, we finally got an enjoyable Bronze medal behind the Swedish and Czech teams that seemed stronger this time!

All the pictures from "Club-France de CO" et FFCO

All the maps with GPS tracking can be found here

More info like pictures and videos here.

Articles from the French Orienteering Federation (in French):

About finals / qualifications events.

This EOC has also been marked by several organizational problems that have been hardly corrected somehow. I personally felt quite sorry for the organizers (rather than angry) as we all know how difficult it is to organize an orienteering event and we can imagine how hard it should be for such big event in a place where orienteering is a small sport. Especially E. Jurenikova can know as she organized the EOC in 2012 and she has written some comments and advices that the IOF should probably read (if not done yet) to improve the next organizations: http://www.evajurenikova.com/index.html

At this period, it’s like a perfect time for an orienteer to be in Scandinavia and especially in Turku’s area to get very qualitative and nice competitions. That how, during the Easter weekend, right after coming back from Portugal, I could find the “Kevätyön Viesti” night relay (map with GPS tracking / results) and the “Silja Rasti” (Map with my GPS route/ Results). It was especially interesting to see the good improvements of this winter in Finland and to get ready for the coming Tiomila.

Now the focus is, of course, on the World Championships next July in Italy, but also before on important goals like test-races in France to get to the National team next weekend, and the great Swedish Tiomila–relay in 2 weeks where we can have some great ambitions with Paimion-Rasti after the performances of the weekend ;)