Freddie Carcas in the Sprint Qualification Race, photo: Clare Lines
The 2025 European Championships were in Belgium at the end of August. It was the turn of the three sprint disciplines, the first time at World Cup Level since the World Championships in Edinburgh 13 months ago. The cities of Hasselt, Geel and Lier hosted, and all races were accessible by train. There were accompanying spectator races called the "EOC Tour". The build up and lead-in events had been successful and it all went very well.
At the end the team of France were exuberant with their best ever results. The final day was the individual sprint, the show taking over the Market Square in Lier. Mathias Barros Vallet won, complementing Cecile Calandry's win in the knockout sprint two days earlier. Pia Young Vik of Norway took the women's sprint, and both Mathias and Pia were first time winners at this level. In fact for both, although they had strong results from lower level races and had shown well in knockout sprint (Pia won silver behind Cecile), it was their first finish in the top-10 of a World Cup individual sprint race, and of course it meant gold medals and a national anthem playing for them.
Norway also had a great championships. In the first race, the Sprint Relay, Norway took a first ever championship (World or European) win. In the men's sprint the men from their relay team took silver and bronze.
Sweden showed well in the men's knockout. Six men got through qualifying, they chose different quarter-finals, and all won through to the semi's. With four men in the final they took the gold and silver.
Results and Links
Sprint Relay
World of O Analysis - EOC25 Sprint Relay
Top-6:
- Norway,
- Switzerland,
- Sweden,
- Czechia,
- Great Britain (Cecilie Andersen, Eddie Narbett, Ralph Street, Grace Molloy),
- Hungary.
Finland would have taken silver had they not missed a control right at the end, thus falling to an unfortunate MP (mispunched). They were not alone; only 12 finished of 27 starting teams.
Knockout Qualification Races (12 / heat qualify, plus ties for 12th place)
EOC25 Knockout Sprint Qualification Races
Knockout Finals
EOC25 Knockout Sprint Finals Results
World of O Analysis - EOC25 Knockout
Top-6 Women: 1 Cecile Calandry FRA, 2 Pia Young Vik NOR, 3 Simona Aebersold SUI, 4 Elli Punto FIN, 5 Natalia Gemperle SUI, 6 Alva Sonesson SWE.
Top-7 Men: 1 August Mollen SWE, 2 Jonatan Gustafsson SWE, 3 Akseli Ruohola FIN, 4 Tomas Krivda CZE, 5 Timo Suter SUI, 6 Axel Granqvist SWE, 7 Martin Regborn SWE.
Sprint
World of O - EOC25 Sprint Analysis
Top-6 Women:
1 Pia Young Vik NOR
2 Hanna Lundberg SWE
3 Inka Nurminen FIN
4 Alva Sonesson SWE
5 Simona Aebersold SUI
6 Helena Bergman SWE
Top-7 Men:
1 Mathias Barros Vallet FRA
2 Kasper Harlem Fosser NOR
3 Eirik Langedal Breivik NOR
4= Jakub Glonek CZE
4= Yannick Michiels BEL
6 Tim Robertson NZL
7 Guilhem Verove FRA
Summary
It was a very successful championships, very well organised. There were plenty of private areas opened up just for the races, and lots of artifical barriers. There were very complex route choice problems. Home favourite Yannick Michiels was the face of the championships and was a popular figure throughout, missing a medal on the final day by just one second. The home country runners Wouter Hus and Warre de Cuyper also ran well in the sprint qualification making the cut for the final. Belgium were ninth in the Sprint Relay.
Yannick Michiels in Lier, photo: Rob Lines
Great Britain Team
Britain sent a very different team to the one for the (forest) World Champs. It was a team of fourteen, eight men and six women. As often it was a mixture of very experienced, somewhat experienced and those making their debut.
Women
Cecilie Andersen
Cecilie Andersen in the Knockout Qualification, photo: OnTheRedLine
Chloe Potter
Chloe Potter in the Sprint Qualification, photo: Rob Lines
Emily Gibbins
Debuting at this level, Emily is final year junior from Airienteers. She ran JWOC this year.
Emily Gibbins in the Knockout Qualifiers, photo: Rob Lines
Grace Molloy
Grace Molloy finishes the Sprint Final, photo: Cristiophe Amerijckx
Imogen Pieters
Making her debut at this level, Imogen is final year junior from South Yorkshire Orienteers (and Edinburgh University). She ran four JWOCs.
Imogen Pieters in the Knockout Qualifiers, photo: Rob Lines
Isobel Howard
A debut at this level for Isobel who is a final year junior from Edinburgh University (and previously Moravian Orienteers). She ran in three JWOCs.
Isobel Howard in the Sprint Qualifiers, photo: Rob Lines
Men
Charlie Rennie
Charlie is a second year senior from West Cumberland OC making his debut at this level. He ran JWOC in his final year as a junior.
_Charlie Rennie in the Knockout Qualfiers, photo: Rob Lines
Chris Smithard
Chris Smithard in the Knockout Qualifiers, photo: Rob Lines
Eddie Narbett
Eddie Narbett in the Sprint Qualifiers, photo: Rob Lines
Euan Tryner
Euan is a first year senior who has run JWOC and in the forest at a World Cup.
Euan Tryner in the Knockout Qualifiers, photo: Rob Lines
Freddie Carcas
Freddie Carcas in the Knockout Qualifiers, photo: Rob Lines
Nathan Lawson
Nathan Lawson in the Sprint Final, photo: Rob Lines
Peter Molloy
Peter Molloy in the Sprint Qualifiers, photo: Rob Lines
Ralph Street
Ralph Street in the Sprint Final, photo: Rob Lines
Wednesday Evening, Sprint Relay
There is a Street Art Trail in the pedestrianised centre of Hasselt
We were in Hasselt with an arena making use of a large terrace overlooking a stretch of water. There was a temporary pontoon bridge for the race's arena passage.
The race was very entertaining, despite a large number of mispunches. It has often been the case that Sweden or Switzerland (who between them have won every relay since COVID) run away with the sprint relay win, but that was certainly not happening this time.
The Great Britain Team of Cecilie Andersen, Eddie Narbett, Ralph Street and Grace Molloy
The courses were complex with plenty of route options and five two-way gaffles. As the race developed, teams were close together and the result was in doubt to the end. At the end of the first leg twelve teams were within a minute at the front of the race (although three had skipped the penultimate control.)
On The Red Line Perhaps the big screen showed more GPS than ideal, as the large buildings meant the GPS wasn't clear where the runners were going, but there was good use of static and running cameras. What would have been interesting is information comparing the route options.
Many teams fell away on the later legs but spectacularly the leading four teams were within eight seconds of each other with less than three minutes to the finish of the relay. Miaja Sianoja (Finland) was just in the lead, closely followed by Andrine Benjaminsen (Norway), Hanna Lundberg (Sweden) and Simona Aebersold (Switzerland). But there was one gaffle to go, and it was working out unequal, which usually means in a close race runners on the quicker one will finish ahead of those on the slower almost regardless of who they are.
This time the two leaders had the quicker gaffle and the two trailing the slower one. Had it been the other way round we could have witnessed an amazing finish! As it was, it was the runners already ahead and on the quicker gaffle that finished clear. But in a heat of the moment mistake, Finland (running a different route to Norway) had skipped the penultimate control in the same way several first leg runners had. Norway took gold and Switzerland overtook Sweden for silver.
GB were some minutes down but they passed some teams, got all the controls, and it was 5th place!
Incidentally this was the first time at a European Champs that nations were permitted only one team as at the World Champs. In the past Sweden 2 and Sweden 3 in particular were almost always a match for the leading teams.
Grace Molloy at the end of the pontoon bridge on the arena passage, photo: Rob Lines
GB on the Podium (as it got dark), photo: Rob Lines
Thursday Morning, Knockout Sprint Qualification
First starters in Men's Qualification Heats - Martn Regborn, Jonatan Gustafsson, Tuomas Heikkila, photo: Frank Weyler
We were now near the centre of Geel at the finish of courses that started further out of town. Highest ranked runners were running first, and the aim was finishing in the first 12 of your heat.
The heats for this are short: winning times under 10 minutes for the men and just over for the women. Two of the men who had run the knockout final in the World Champs in Edinburgh last year failed to get through: Joey Hadorn and silver medallist Jorgen Baklid. Of the GB runners, Cecilie, Grace, Freddie and Ralph made it through. (Only just in Grace's case as 1 second more would have been too long.) Peter missed by 4 seconds and Nathan by 6.
Afterwards the qualified runners gathered in front of big screen and chose their quarter-final (QF). There are six of these. It is generally thought that an early QF serves better if you reach the final as you get a longer rest between semi and final. So potential medallists, all other things being equal, should choose in the first four (and the first two best of all) rather than the last two. As a consequence if you ambition extends just to reaching the semi's, but you think the final is almost certainly beyond you, looking at QF5 and QF6 may be the thing.
On The Red Line This choosing has never worked that well, and this time there was the complication of more than 36 runners because ties for 12th place meant more qualifiers (which is better than a tie resolution mechanism.) This resulted in 7 spaces rather than 6 being made available in each QF, so the tactic of closing off a QF against a late choosing strong runner jumping in wasn't available. On the men's side there have always been such runners late to the choice, this time Fabian Aebersold and Axel Granqvist were there. It could have been better to add the 7th places to however many QFs were needed - presumably the earlier ones.
Ralph chose QF1, where the next day he would meet Riccardo Rancan, the current World Champion, August Mollen, silver medallist at the World Champs in Denmark, relay gold medallist Kaspar Fosser, 2023 JWOC sprint gold medallist Anselm Reichenbach and Martin Roudny of Czechia. Three to go through.
Emily Gibbins in the qualification heat, photo OnTheRedLine
Eddie Narbett in the qualification heat, photo OnTheRedLine
Friday, Knockout Sprint Finals
The Market Square was taken over for the arena where all the races would finish. The quarter-finals started elsewhere, the semi's and finals in the arena. Everyone knew beforehand that each race had no gaffling.
Not everyone is a fan of this form of orienteering. Whilst it is lovely to see the orienteers running fast up close, and to have first past the post finishing, the pre-eminence of the "sit and kick" tactic is making a lot of each race pretty uninteresting. Of course the end is nearly always entertaining and it produces worthy winners.
All finals finished with a longer route choice to the last control in the arena. In terms of rewarding both route choice and execution, this seemed to work well in the final, medium well in the semi's, and not so well in the quarters.
It was thus very useful to study the end of the course before the race got to that stage, and most runners had the tactic of staying in touch with the others and look ahead, until the race reached the final stage. A few tried alternate routes erlier on but in slower moving races with quite short legs that seldom helped.
The women ran before the men, and the twelve quarter-finals fired off in turn - all using the same course - each starting before the previous one finished.
Winning times for the women's races ranged from 7:36 to 8:14, for the men from 6:36 to 7:16. So some races were quite fast, some quite slow.
Men's QF4 was only 5 seconds quicker than Sanna Fast in Women's QF6 to control 7 of the 9. (Then 14 seconds quicker through control 8 to 9.)
In Women's QF1, Grace was a second behind at control 8 but was outrun by Simona Aebersold, Vilma von Krusenstierna and Anni Jantunen on the long leg to 9, finishing 4th.
In Women's QF4 Cecilie was up against fast runners. She led through the first 3, fell back to 5th and the race was too fast for her therafter (Natalia Gemperle, Eef van Dongen, Rita Maramorosi and Ana Isobel Toledo.)
Cecilie Andersen in the early stages of Women's QF4, photo: Frank Weyler
In Men's QF1 Ralph led through control 8 and picked a route to the finish. All but Kaspar Fosser followed, and three of the four were able to pass him: his split to 9 was 1:42, others had 1:37, 1:38 and 1:39.
In Men's QF2 Freddie did make it through: he ran 1:39 for leg 8-9, good enough for third place behind Tuomas Heikkila and Axel Granqvist.
Sunday, The Sprint
The Clocktower Lier
And so after a rest day for the athletes it was the sprint races day. Now we were in Lier, the Market Square taken over for the arena, where there was a runthrough (optional in the heats!) and both qualifiers and finals would finish.
Qualification
It was again three heats for both men and women, this time the men running first. Fifteen go through to the finals (plus any ties for 15th) with several hours between the heats and finals.
The heats used the area south and south-east of the square and being longer than for the knockout competition were not quite so unforgiving of small time losses. There are always people missing out by a small margin though: 20 by less than 10 seconds including Timo Suter (Switzerland) who had made the knockout final, Tille de Smul of the home country, and Imogen and Freddie of the GB Team.
Cecilie, Grace, Nathan and Ralph did qualify.
The Finals
For the men there was a map exchange, with each map having a flip. For the women there was an exchange and a flip on the second half - control 13 below.
Part of the Women's Final, showing the flip at control 13
The final section shown was the same for both men and women. The preceding control was the runthrough and after this it was a straightforward run-in.
Nathan had a strong run, rewarded with 15th place.
Ralph was disappointed with his run to 27th place.
Cecilia was lying 29th when she had a fall that required first aid attention after she finished in 37th.
Grace had a strong run, rewarded with 14th pace. Her time was just 10 seconds off the 6-runner podium.
Cecilie Andersen in the Sprint Final, photo: Rob Lines