World cup 5th place on knock-out sprint

This year, the world cup season starts with the NORT (Nordic Orienteering tour).

This includes 3 world cup rounds in 3 Scandinavian countries:

The first stage was at Porvoo in Finland where we had a middle distance as a qualification on the morning and a sprint for the final. My technical performance in qualification was not good enough to be able to run the final as you can see on the GPS.

The men final was absolutely dominated by the Swiss team while the Swedish girls took the top places among the women.

Then, after running the mythic Jukola relay with our club in Finland, we went to Goteborg in Sweden for the second stage:

There, it was a ‘normal’ sprint as qualification followed by a ‘Knock-out’ sprint (spectacular race where 6 runners start together on the same course and the 2 first to cross the finish line are qualified for the next step). This time, even with some small difficulties on the beginning, I passed safely the qualification with a 10^th place. Then, the quarter-final and semi-final went good for me, so I got one of the 6 tickets to run the final. The final was more tough for me because I took wrong route-choices and I had difficulties to punch one control so I was struggling the whole race on the end of the peloton. Finally, I cross the line in the 5^th place, 8 second after the very fast Swedish guy: Jerker Lysell.

To conclude, this competition was a really nice experience (a little bit different than real classical orienteering but still interesting) where I took one of my best individual results!

Here is the live TV for the semi-final and final.

(Here is an article from the French federation).

Next stage of the NORT is a chasing start with the start time based on the NORT overall time standings after the two first stages (you can follow Live and GPS).

TIOMILA : The mythical Swedish relay

Last weekend, as every year at this period, it was the Tiomila at Tullinge close to Stockholm where I was running the 10th leg (so the last leg) for my Swedish club OK Hällen. Last year, we did a strong 10th place so we had an ambitious goal for this year too. My teammate had done a very good job before me and they give-me the relay in a good 13th start position. I was started together with strong anchormans from other Scandinavian club. So it was a fast race and after some 84 minutes in the rather technical forest, it was a tight finishing in the battle for the 10th place where I crossed the line in 12th position for the team.
You can see the GPS track here:

Even if I can be a little bit disappointed to miss the 10th place for some second; it was still a very good performance for the club as the second best result ever (after last year 10th place). I can also be satisfied for my race because I did one of the best times of the last leg with no big mistakes.

Photo: Tomas Lundström

Season 2011 is started

April comes with the beginning of good weather, nature is growing up, birds are singing… and the orienteering season starts. After a good winter training, mostly held in France and without any big injury, it’s time to see the improvement and how it will go during the competitions.

For me o-season started the 9^th and 10^th of April with Suisse Sprint and Middle Championships that we ran as selection races for the French team. There you could have found very strong competition - the best Suisse, Czech and Finnish runners. It was a really sunny and warm weekend, and the races were very fast in a typical Suisse village and in a quiet flat Middleland forest. My shape was not on the top because I was a little bit sick but the main problem was my mistakes. For example, I lost 25’’ in the second last control in the sprint where I finished 19^th (48’’ after M. Mertz). And in the middle distance I lost 1’ on the way to the second control and so I was 12^th (2’23 after M. Mertz again).

Then, this weekend, there was The Swedish Sprint Championships in the nice old city of Visby, in Gotland. The qualification was in quite open terrain while the finale took place inside the big walls of the medieval town where we could have found interesting route-choices as you can see an example (1^st control) here:

After the victory in my qualification heat I started as the last runner. But because of some wrong route-choices (to controls number 4, 9 and 11) and mistake around the 10^th control, I wasn’t able to manage better than 6^th in the final (28’’ after fast J. Lysell). Here is the GPS tracking;

Other Inov-8 runners also ran the Swedish champs, as Scott Fraser who took the silver medal and Graham Gristwood who finished 5^th (3’’ faster than me).

Because it’s my first article, you can have a look at this recent article from the International Orienteering Federation, page 7 & 8, that introduces me more;