Three Nordic Ultralongs, Three Ways to Race

Sweden offered a common course. Norway used butterflies. Finland combined multiple forkings through the Farsta method. Three national ultralong championships on the same Saturday, and three different ways of asking runners when to stay together, when to leave and whom to trust.

The most elaborate forking system produced the closest men’s podium: thirteen seconds separated the first three in Finland. Yet the same event produced the clearest women’s winning margin. That contrast captures what makes the races of 17 October 2026 worth comparing. Forking shapes a race, but it does not dictate its ending.

My interest here is in the decisions that the designs encourage. How much work should a runner do at the front? When does a disappearing rival represent danger? Can a route choice create a more meaningful separation than a fork? And what do we really mean when we call one format fairer than another?

Explore: Distances and times · Sweden · Norway · Finland · Fairness · Maps and replays · Your preference

One weekend, different endurance demands

Men

Women

Sources: Swedish Eventor, Norwegian Eventor and Finland’s EResults Live, linked from IRMA. The Finnish federation report also lists the elite top six.

The women’s winning times span more than 42 minutes. The men’s span just over 19. In Norway, the women’s course was about two-thirds of the men’s length; in Sweden and Finland, it was about four-fifths. Those are substantial differences in the demands placed on the runners, before we even discuss forking.

The fields also differed: Sweden had 52 male and 28 female starters, Norway 49 and 28, Finland 44 and 22. These were national championship fields with different absences and international participation, not a controlled comparison of national strength. Gustav Bergman withdrew from Sweden’s race after illness; Breivik himself noted the absence of Kasper Fosser and Lukas Liland in Norway. Winning pace per kilometre would be a poor shortcut for ranking the quality of the three performances. Swedish report · Norwegian report.

Sweden: the separation was a decision

At Boda, north of Falun, the ultralong shared the Daladubbeln weekend. Sven Olsson’s courses used a common control sequence without forking. The map combines forest, changes of vegetation, marshes and a network of tracks and roads. Long legs can therefore offer different ways of connecting the same two controls.

That distinction matters. A common course gives every runner the same ordered problem, but it does not give everyone the same role. One athlete may repeatedly decide; another may observe, check and conserve mental effort. Leaving the group means accepting responsibility for a decision whose outcome cannot immediately be checked against the runners beside you.

Viktor Svensk’s account in the Swedish federation report describes exactly that opportunity: before the last long leg, he prepared an independent choice, took a different route and committed to it. He won by 54 seconds over Max Peter Bejmer, with Simon Imark another two seconds behind.

This is a particular kind of pressure. When a group divides, the runner must compare a personal reading of the map with the apparent confidence of other good athletes. The difficult moment may be the instant after choosing, when another group disappears in the opposite direction. A strong long leg gives that choice enough duration to matter.

The women’s race shows why the same design does not guarantee the same development. Sanna Fasth won in 2:19:33, six seconds ahead of clubmate Malin Agervig Kristiansson and twenty ahead of Eef van Dongen. At control 26, the eventual first four were still within six seconds. The race narrowed to a small group, then required a strong finish. That is a different outcome from the men’s solo escape, within the same no-forking format. Results · Splits.

My reading is that Sweden demonstrates the potential of voluntary separation. Good route-choice legs can invite an athlete to break the group without prescribing different controls. The limitation is equally clear: if the alternatives are weak, obvious or too short to create a meaningful difference, the incentive to remain together becomes stronger.

A move like Svensk’s often makes most tactical sense towards the end of the race, when the group has less time to close the gap and the attacker has less distance to cover alone. But that is not a fixed rule. The same Saturday provided a clear counterexample in Norway. Minna Wingstedt (Halden SK) opened a substantial gap through her route choice to control 2 at Blodslitet, then ran the rest of the race alone to win the Norwegian D19–20 ultralong title. She finished in 1:39:19, with a 5:36 winning margin. Her race shows how a route-choice opportunity early in the course can shape the entire contest.

Norway: splitting the group is only the first step

Blodslitet, this year incorporating NM ultralang, used a new Gillingsrød map and courses by Espen Danevad. Both elite courses contained two butterflies, each with two loops to be completed in different orders. The system temporarily sends runners away from one another while preserving the total work.

The important feature was their scale and setting. These were compact butterflies in relatively quick terrain. Their capacity to create lasting separation was limited: they interrupted the group, but gave runners relatively little time to build an advantage before meeting again. A butterfly can create a brief independent navigation test without fundamentally changing the later race.

There was also substantial common running after the second butterfly. That changes the calculation. A small deficit can be recovered; a lone leader still has to decide whether to keep paying for an escape; and runners who rejoin can recover information about their rivals. The forking diagram alone does not tell us how long any separation survives.

The women’s finish was tighter still. Hausken Nordberg won in 1:59:45, four seconds ahead of Sweden’s Eleonora Alinder. Victoria Hæstad Bjørnstad was seven seconds back and Tone Bergerud Lye eight. The Norwegian championship medals went to Hausken Nordberg, Bjørnstad and Lye; Alinder was second in the open Blodslitet classification. Official results.

Hausken Nordberg described a patient race aimed at winning, with the rough ground on the approach to the final control playing to her strengths. The Kondis report describes the late separation across the clear-cut. At control 25, the eventual first seven women were within six seconds. The butterflies had not removed the need to race a closely matched group at the end.

This is why I would evaluate a butterfly by its effective separation: the time runners spend making decisions independently, the differences they can create and the terrain awaiting them when the loops rejoin. Counting butterflies is a weak measure of how individual the racing becomes.

Finland: the course also changed what runners knew

Suunta Jyväskylä’s championship at Tasainenkangas, in the Jyväskylä–Petäjävesi area, used the more elaborate Farsta approach. Forking was distributed through several combinations, with a map exchange in the forest. The organisers described the arrangement as a one-person relay. The terrain alternated detailed rocky areas with broader hills and forest-road choices. Race instructions · Course setters’ statement.

The published split tables contain 16 men’s variants and eight women’s variants. Comparing their control-code sequences confirms that, within each class, they contain the same directed legs, including the same repeated legs, in different orders. The total course is balanced. What varies is when a runner encounters each part and which other runners may be there.

That creates an information problem as well as a navigation problem. A competitor ahead may have completed a different amount of the shared total task. A runner who suddenly appears may not have gained the time that the encounter seems to imply. Responding to every sighting as if it were a reliable ranking can produce unnecessary accelerations or misplaced reassurance.

Enni Jalava’s account in the Finnish federation report illustrates that uncertainty. She started conservatively, could not confidently interpret the women she saw around the map exchange and only became certain of victory on the run-in. She won in 2:42:06, 2:28 ahead of Veera Klemettinen and 4:19 ahead of Noora Hyyrynen. Hyyrynen described a harder early approach and a more difficult latter part of the race.

The men nevertheless came back together. Eero Koskivaara caught the leading group late and won in 2:48:20, nine seconds ahead of Samu Heiska and thirteen ahead of Vinski Malinen. Heiska’s post-race reflection that another late fork might have helped him is particularly revealing: the preferred design can depend on the race a runner wants to create against a specific opponent. Federation interviews.

The lesson is not that Farsta succeeded in one race and failed in the other. A close finish does not prove that runners avoided independent navigation earlier. It shows that independently completed work can still lead to closely matched performances. Conversely, a large winning margin does not, by itself, prove that a forking system was fair or effective.

The variable between the forks: route choice

The comparison becomes more useful when we consider two ways of separating runners. Forking imposes a temporary difference in the task. Route choice allows runners to choose different solutions to the same task. Both can demand independence, but the psychological cost is different.

At a fork, the map tells you that you must leave. On a common long leg, you must decide whether leaving is worth it. That decision includes the terrain, your condition, confidence in the route and the cost of losing contact. A runner may correctly identify a good alternative and still hesitate because the group offers immediate reassurance.

Sweden’s men provide a clear example of a long leg changing the race through that decision. Norway shows why short, quick butterflies can have a modest lasting effect. Finland shows how multiple branch combinations can make the race harder to read even when the leaders eventually reunite. The meaningful comparison is therefore format plus terrain plus placement plus route-choice quality.

Which method is fairer?

I would separate three meanings of fairness. Mixing them together makes it too easy to praise whichever format produced the finish we happened to enjoy.

Farsta’s appeal is its ability to distribute repeated moments of independent responsibility. Its cost is reduced clarity about position and greater dependence on careful design and allocation. Butterflies offer a simpler interruption, but their effect depends strongly on length, terrain and what follows. No forking keeps positions easier to interpret, while placing more responsibility on route-choice quality and the runners’ willingness to act.

The general principle behind balanced forking is explained in Orienteering Tasmania’s course-planning guidance. I explored the same tension between a technically fair course and unequal race situations in my earlier article, WCup relay: Tight battle and the “unfair” fair forking. The fairness judgments here are my interpretation of these three races, rather than a claim that one result validates a whole method.

A preference, with conditions

For an individual ultralong championship with a mass start, my starting preference would be a design that repeatedly requires independent decisions, while preserving strong long legs and a meaningful common finish. A well-designed Farsta can serve that aim. It still needs to earn its complexity.

I would favour a good common course with decisive route choices over token forking that adds crossings and control numbers but little independent racing. And I would favour well-placed butterflies over a complicated system whose alternatives create unequal competitive opportunities. There is no useful winner in a contest between the labels alone.

The final common section deserves as much attention as the forks. Too much straightforward running after the last separation may allow every small gap to disappear. A very late separation may make branch order and the company available unusually influential. A long route-choice leg can preserve uncertainty through the athletes’ own decisions.

These three championships suggest that the best design is the one that makes the intended skills matter for long enough. The planner creates the opportunities. The runners decide what to do with them. A sprint finish, a solo escape and a patient late attack can all be convincing conclusions to an ultralong, provided the route to that conclusion has asked enough of the individual.

What the public discussion adds

The early discussion I could verify was thinner on format than on the experience of the events. In the Daladubbeln thread on Orienterare.nu, a spectator writing as Åskådarn praised the combination of youth racing, ultralong and live coverage. It is one observer’s view, not a consensus on the fairness of an unforked championship.

A broader, older Attackpoint discussion from 2022 presents mass starts and one-person relays as social, engaging formats. That is useful background, but it is not a reaction to this weekend. I found no substantial, verifiable public forum debate comparing all three 2026 designs at the time of writing. The strongest event-specific evidence remains the maps, official splits and attributed athlete accounts.

Full maps, replays and official results

Open each country below to view the complete men’s and women’s maps. Click a map to enlarge it. Replay links open the organisers’ tracking services; Livelox access can depend on the service’s viewing conditions. Norway shows one published ordering of the butterfly loops. Finland shows the combined variants, not a single runner’s competition sheet.

Sweden · full maps and race links

Official results · WinSplits · Men’s GPS replay · Women’s GPS replay · Livelox

Norway · full maps and race links

Official results · WinSplits · Men’s GPS replay · Women’s GPS replay · Livelox

Finland · full maps and race links

Results · EResults Live · IRMA event page · Federation report and top six · Official split times · Men’s GPS replay · Women’s GPS replay · Livelox

Sources and method

• Svenska Orienteringsförbundet: Viktor Svensk and Sanna Fasth, 17 October 2026; official event information.
• Norges Orienteringsforbund: Nydalens SK double at Blodslitet, 17 October 2026; organiser’s bulletin; Kondis race report.
• Finland: EResults Live classification, linked from IRMA; Suomen Suunnistusliitto: Koskivaara and Jalava, 17 October 2026; organiser’s race centre; course setters’ statement.
• Additional local coverage: Timin Sanomat. The organiser also links Keskisuomalainen’s report (subscription may be required; its restricted text was not used for this analysis).
• Results and course lengths were checked against the official lists. Selected cumulative splits were compared only at equivalent common controls, after the relevant forks had balanced out. Finnish variant equivalence was checked by comparing the full multiset of directed control-to-control legs in the published split tables. Intermediate ranks printed within an individual variant were not treated as overall race positions.
• This is an observational comparison of six races, with different terrain, conditions and fields. It does not establish that a particular forking system caused a particular finishing margin. Athlete intentions come from attributed interviews; the assessment of race dynamics is editorial interpretation. Sources checked on 18 October 2026.

Which format would you choose?

Choose the format you prefer, rather than the country whose race you liked most. Select one option.