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Photo: Hollie Orr at World Champs 2017, by Maprunner
With the international season over and only the last races of the 2018 season in Scandinavia before the snow comes, it is generally a quiet time for news. We do have a roundup of a few items of interest.
One is a run by JK Champion Hollie Orr, who wasn't at the World Champs this year, and has perhaps been doing as much fell running as orienteering recently. .
Whilst the final race of Orienteering's 2018 World Cup was happening in the Czech Republic, Kris Jones ran for Wales in the first Commonwealth Half-Marathon Championships in Cardiff. Kris ran a new personal best of 63:55.
Image: Map Extract, World Cup Final Middle Race - Embargoed Area
The final 2018 round of the World Cup - the last outing for the GB team this season - is this weekend in the Czech Republic. This item will be updated with news as the races happen.
- Thursday 4th: Knockout Sprint (Prague)
- Friday 5th: Sprint Relay (Prague) - starting 14:30 UK-time
- Saturday 6th: Middle Distance Race (Turnov – Valdštejn)
- Sunday 7th: Sprint (Mladá Boleslav)
Live Services - with a new TV service provider.
- Thursday TV starts at 14:10 UK-time.
- Friday TV starts at 14:15 UK-time.
- Saturday TV starts at 10:30 UK-time.
- Sunday TV starts at 9:00 Uk-time.
Control Description Sheet, Knockout Sprint Final
Euromeeting in Denmark was a runup event for the 2020 World Championships.
Not all countries sent full teams but plenty did, with a lot taking the opportunity to build their experience of competition formats at this level. It was good to see GB represented in strength.
On Friday 21st there was a Sprint Relay in Kolding. GBR-1 were ninth, fifth nation. GBR-2 were thirteenth. GBR-3 including a Swedish guest runner were 26th.
On Saturday there was a knockout sprint. Alice, Charlotte and Jonny got as far as the semi-finals. Cecilie got to the quarter-finals.
On Sunday there was a regular sprint race in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Christiansfeld. Alice Leake was 4th - a really good result. Charlotte Ward was 23rd. The leading British men were Jonny Crickmore 26th and Matt Fellbaum 27th.
Image: Wikipedia Commons.
Friday 21st - Sunday 23rd September is Euromeeting in Denmark, a runup event for the 2020 World Championships..
On Friday, 3pm UK-time, there is a Sprint Relay from Arena Kolding North.
On Saturday there is knockout sprint, with a qualification race in the morning, and then quarter-finals. semi-finals and finals from 2pm UK-time at Arena Assens.
On Sunday, from 9am UK-time, there is a sprint race in the Christiansfeld UNESCO World Heritage Site, founded in 1773 by the Moravian Church and largely built in the years up to 1800.
Update Sunday Results Added.
Update + 1 week England Team Manager's Report
The perhaps self-contradictory term "Home International" is used in the British Isles to describe sports competitions amongst national teams England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. In many sports Ireland teams are "all-Ireland" combining talent from the Republic and Northern Ireland (which is part of the United Kingdom.)
The first were football matches in the last decades of the Nineteenth Century - see Wikipedia - the British Home Championship.
In orienteering there are three "home internationals" and this weekend is the Senior Home International. It is organised by Pendle Forest Orienteers near Burnley in the north of England. Teams are 18 strong, six men and six women in the open class, and three men and three women 20 or under.
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Image: section from a previous map
Followers of the GB Orienteers need to have their eyes in more than one place this coming weekend, with World Cup forest races taking place in Norway ( starting on Friday, preview - World Cup Round 3 ) and the British Sprint and the British Middle Distance Championships being hosted by the South West Orienteering Association, Bristol Orienteering Klub and North Gloucestershire Orienteering Club.
Saturday is the sprints, Sunday the middle distance.
Image: from the special notes explaining the lower service area level at Bath University.
Followers of the GB Orienteers need to have their eyes in more than one place this coming weekend, with World Cup forest races taking place in Norway ( starting on Friday, preview - World Cup Round 3 ) and the British Sprint and the British Middle Distance Championships being hosted by the South West Orienteering Association, Bristol Orienteering Klub and North Gloucestershire Orienteering Club, near Bath.
Saturday is the sprints, Sunday the middle distance.
Photo: Megan Carter-Davies, WOC2018 Middle Race, courtesy of Janis Ligats / WOC2018 Latvia
With four disciplines to run, I thought the major challenge of the week would be physical: making sure I was in good condition at every start line. Of course, I've raced hard at the JK and World Uni's day after day so I knew I could cope well enough.
Anyway, it transpired that the biggest challenge I would face would be mental.
Photo: Alice Leake in the current leader's chair at World Champs Sprint Final, Riga 2018, by Maprunner
On The Red Line editorial. On Saturday 4th August, after qualification races earlier in the day, the World Champs (WOC) Sprint Final took place in Old Town Riga, Latvia, and Alice Leake, the current British Women's Sprint Champion, came eighth. Alice made her WOC debut three years ago, and in previous years was 35th, 22nd and 22nd. She said on Twitter "8th in the world. What is even happening." It was the highest position by an individual British athlete at the 2018 World Champs. It's the fifth best British Women's sprint result at WOC ever. Like many of her fellow athletes Alice combines full-time work with her orienteering and time and money are precious. The Riga race was rightly hailed as "a breakthrough performance".
Alice explains what happened.
Photo: by Steve Rush, Ali McLeod running in to win the JK this year
Many of the GB team travelling to Latvia have a single race at the World Championships that they are training for. This situation will influence the preparation and training for the weeks beforehand. The ideas below may help when you are thinking about an important race for you, be it the forthcoming World Masters, a home internationals, your club championships, or looking ahead at a particular championship race next year.
Photo Composition: GB WOC Team 2018 by On The Red Line
The World Championships are in Latvia with races from 4th - 11th August. They are also Round 2 of the 2018 World Cup.
An IOF article in January is entitled
A very special WOC on a very special year for Latvia
The championships in Latvia will be 35th WOC and the last one in modern history of orienteering with both sprint and forest races on the programme.
The British team is quite large, with seven women and seven men, all members of the senior squad.
Of the fourteen athletes, three are selected for sprint only, three for sprint and forest, and eight for forest only. We noted in our 'one race' article how half the team, seven athletes, are concentrating on a single race.
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Ralph Street has run his last race with Södertälje-Nykvarn Orientering (SNO).
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SNO teammate and contemporary, Jonas Leandersson, has left the Swedish International Team after winning three European golds and four World Championship golds - including the sprint race in Forres in 2015.