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by Carl Underwood
At the beginning of this past summer I went to Wejherowo, Poland to compete in my second Junior World Orienteering Championships. I arrived to the training week a few days late because my high school graduation was on Sunday the 26th, so on the 27th I flew to poland to join the team. It turns out that it may have been luck to arrive late; the day after I arrived the majority of our team, along with the Swedish team, had food poisoning. Everyone was throwing up and were sick for at least a day after becoming sick. Luckily a few others and I managed to stay healthy and were able to train every day.
During the training week the woods were beautiful; they literally clean their woods. You could see very far ahead of were you were and could easily pick out spots in the distance and find them on the map. Then there were basically two types of terrain: one was hilly with large contours and bland hills, the other was relatively flat but was filled with pits and small hills.
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.