Although the course of the long-distance race did not leave us completely satisfied, the course of the middle distance offered us all the ingredients that an event of this dimension should have: a physically demanding course, with multiple changes of direction, controls that required precise orienteering, different areas where you need to change the type of technique, switches from good to poor visibility, some legs with a route choice, and a final control (penultimate) where you risk spoiling a good race a few meters from the arena. Great job course-setters!
In both the men’s and women’s classes, we could see very solid performances and clean executions throughout almost the entire course. Although the route choices weren’t too decisive either, they did give an interesting range of possibilities in some legs and served to round off a great race.
Here you can see how both courses were pretty similar 🙂
We can analyze some of the most interesting legs
MEN’S & WOMEN’S CLASS: START – 1
The first leg, both for men and for women, was pretty similar and the athlete needed to decide fast how to start the race on the first slope down. In both cases, the straight option was slightly better, especially for the women who have their control in a northern location.
MEN’S CLASS: 10-11 & women’s class: 7-8
In this case, the leg was exactly the same for both classes and the options chosen were also very similar among both classes. The best option was running as straight as possible, an option taken by Fosser and Gemperle who got the best times on the leg (even if the image shows that Gemperle is slower than Alexandersson). The second fastest option goes a bit south to the red line and it was taken by Eidsmo (he got the 6th best split here, and finished at 25th place) and Alexandersson (she lost only 6sec with Gemperle), which makes us think both options were quite equal, being more decisive how strong the athletes were able to push on the uphill. Some more “right” variants were also used (as Aebersold-Perrin) but they look to be at least 30sec slower.
It was, definitely, a great leg as a transition between two detailed areas, physically demanding, and making the legs and brains of the athletes tired before going to the second part of the course, where the visibility was lower and the controls tricky.
MEN’S CLASS: 18-19 & women’s class: 15-16
In this leg, both classes finished on the same control, but the men’s one was starting further away. It is not a particularly complicated leg, difficult to execute or where there is a decisive route choice, but when coming at the final part of the route, ending in a diffuse area and very very close to the finish line, it often creates problems for the athletes, for oversimplifying and focusing more on pushing than on reading the map. And so it was, we see how some routes move away from the red line (for justified no reason) and we could see how some runners made mistakes there. For example, Gemperle almost lost the bronze medal in front of the camera!
It was exciting to follow and high-quality event 🙂 Looking forward to the relay!
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Orienteering Coach 