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The NEOC Board of Directors recently voted to award travel grants to club members Alex Jospe and Ross Smith, who competed for the U.S. in this year's World Orienteering Championships.
These follow grants given earlier this year to other NEOC members: U.S. Teammate Sam Saeger; and Meg Parson and Carl Underwood, who ran in the Junior World Orienteering Championships.
Follow the U.S. Orienteering Team on their blog.
Photos courtesy of Team USA.
Today was the Long final, the traditional individual race, and it certainly kept with tradition in that it was long and it was hard. The fact that it was a beautiful day for spectating, but way too hot for the runners, just added to the challenge. There were still some brilliant performances, most notably that of Frenchman Thierry Guergiou, winning in his home country to the delight of the largely French crowd. And actually I think to the delight of most everyone, as winning the Long for the first time on his home soil, well, it just seemed like the right place and the right time. The women’s winner was Annika Billstam of Sweden.
For our qualifier for the final, Ali Crocker, it was not her best day, and she ended up being disqualified for not punching at one of the water stops.
So the Sprint final is over and Ali and Sam have done real good, 27th in the world for Ali and 38th in the world for Sam. I’m pretty sure that 27th is the best we’ve ever done at WOC.
The sprint was in the middle of the small city of Chambery, a maze of streets and small twisty alleys, plus a nice castle, with the start and finish right in front of the castle and all the streets blocked off to traffic. Just an amazing scene. Lots and lots of people, enthusiastic cheering and flag waving, a huge video screen, great announcing. Orienteering with the feel of a big-time sport, in other words. The eventual winners were a Swedish woman (with Swedes also second and third) and a Swiss man.
Today was the Middle qualifier. Once again we had one qualifier, Ali Crocker, again with another brilliant run, finishing 7th in her heat and beating among others, the women from Switzerland, Denmark, Russia, and Norway (with the Norwegian ending up 16th and not qualifying for the final). Ross Smith and Ken Walker both had really good runs, 34 minutes and 35 minutes. Don’t have their places yet, but something about 31-32 minutes was needed to qualify. Very close. And a good bit better run today for Alex Jospe which was nice to see.
Today was the Long qualifier, and might as well get right too it, bravo for Alison Crocker who finished 10th in her heat and advances to the final on Wednesday. Ali was reasonably pleased with her run (this was before she know she had qualified, when that was clear she was delighted), maybe two or three minutes of mistakes, but never anything real bad or total panic. Good for her!
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