Top 10 in World Orienteering Championship in France

This year, the World Champs were in my home country and I had a bronze medal from last year to defend, so I was very motivated to run this competition. The WOC 2011 was held in the Savoie District and I was running the shortest distance: the Sprint. Contrary to the other orienteering distances in forest, the particularity of the sprint is to get closer to the public so the courses are in urban area. The WOC sprint qualification was in the city of Aix-Les-Bains while the final was at Chambery. The particularity of the qualification terrain was a mix of wooded, parks and urban area; that why the X-talon were a perfect choice with a good grip everywhere. The main difficulties were to find the good rout choices and stay careful to avoid impassable fences and forbidden areas… Even with some mistakes and hesitations, it was no problem to get the final.
(Map)


The arena close to the qualification finish was already crowded of spectators but it was nothing to compare to the final: There, the spectacle was splendid for an impressive public! People could see us several times in the arena (already from the start) and there were also many cameras along the course and they could see us on the big screen. The course was spectacular but also interesting with passages in narrow streets and tunnels. My shape was not as good as expected maybe due to the warm sun of this day, but I’ve still done an OK race without big faults (just some small mistakes as for the 3rd and 12th and bad route choices for the 14th and 16th). That why I got the 10th place just 10 seconds to 5th place but quite far to the podium and more than 1 minute behind the impressive winner: D. Hubmann.
(Map1, Map2, Results and live video)

The other races of the World Champs were clearly dominated by the French guys with middle and long victory for T. Guergiou and a beautiful relay victory!
Finally, it was a really great and unique experience for us to run the World Champs ‘at home’ with many supporters (as friends and family) who cheered us very well; so we should remember this competition for a long time!

On the way to the World Orienteering Champs (WOC) in France!

Since the world cup in Scandinavia (NORT), I had a quiet busy month of July:
Firstly, some test race in Slovenia to try to get selected for WOC middle, long and relay. We run on demanding, interesting and relevant terrain for WOC as you can see the map with Tero’s route (maps and the results).

As the French team has only 3 places for Middle and Long and we have 3 very strong guys (T. Gueorgiou, P. Adamski and F. Gonon), I ‘wasn’t good enough to take a place to run this distances at WOC, so I should focus on my main goal: the sprint.

Then, after some sprints training in Corrèze (Example) , I flied to Rio-de-Janeiro for the Military World Games.

My tripe there was rather short but long enough to climb to the CORCOVADO to see Rio from the top, to swim on the Ocean, to see some monkeys on trees, and occasionally to run and to orienteer in Eucalyptus forest…

Concerning the competitions, I run first the short distance where I mad too much mistakes and I took the 26th place. Then I must have understood better how to run in this terrain for the long distance and I took the 6th place just 1’07 from the 2nd place (2’31 from the winner).
Long map (with G. Kerschbaumer’s route).
Results.

Just after my come back in France, we had our selection races for WOC sprint with a rainy 5000 m on track where I run in 15’04 (not my personal best: 15’00), and 2 interesting sprints in Ussel and in Brive-la-Gaillarde. The Inov-8 X-talon proved to be the ideal choice when the terrain is mixed with urban sections and both park and forest, while Inov-8 f-lite suit perfectly when it’s only road and urban sprint.

Finally, I did 2 fairly clean sprint races and a rather fast 5000m so I get selected to run the sprint for WOC in France: now I can be 100% focus for this next event on the 16th of August.
It must be a great and unique experience as an athlete to run the World Champs on our own ground and we should have more supporters ‘at home’ than usually, so I’m really looking for this goal!

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;