Press release, WOC 2007: The newly released Bulletin 3 gives the athletes and other some more information about how the WOC-races will be. And the longdistance will create a historic moment with the longest WOC-courses ever for both men and women.

The men will fight on a course of 18,1 kilometer with 28 controls. This is the first time a WOC-course will pass the 18 km mark. The previous record was in Sweden 1989, 17,7km. Last years course in Denmark was also long, 17,5km.

The womens course for the longdistance will also be the longest ever, 11,9km. This is just 100 meter longer than the course in Switzerland 2003.

There will, however, not be a record for number of controls. The mens course in Switzerland 2003 had 34 controls. It remains to be seen if the races will be the fastest ever for a longdistance. Petter Thoresen ran close to 5min/km in 1989, and this means the race this year must have a winning time close to 95 minutes to be the fastest race ever. Will it be possible?

Come to Kiev and see it yourself on the 23rd of August!

Links:

• WOC 2007 homepage
• Bulletin 3

Source: Press release issued by the WOC organizers. World of O will cover WOC 2007 fully.

All four courses from World Cup round 2 in Bykle, Norway (both A and B-finals), are now available in Routegadget. The B-final courses where by some test-runners said to be better and more interesting than the A-final courses, as they did not have to pass the finish area. Now you can have a look for yourself…

• Routegadget World Cup 2 - 2007

The jury in the Jukola video competition along with the Jukola organizers have made its decision: The winner of the Jukola video competition came from Sweden: Jukola promotion video, made by Jesper Eriksson, OK Ravinen was chosen the best video. The winner takes it all - and the prize will be posted to Jesper. Virkiä Jukola will say big thank you to all competitor in this competiton - read more at the official Jukola page.

Results
The best videos was shown in Jukola giant screens 4-5 times during the Jukola weekend and they looked great! Here is the list of final results:

1. Jesper Eriksson: Jukola Promotion Video

   Some thoughts about the video: The forest can be used in many ways, like Jesper did. Not always running. Every orienteer should do sometimes like Jesper. Orienteering is fun and everything can happen…

2. Niccolo Castelli and Mattia Capezzoli: Simone Luder in action

3. Stefan Lombriser: Switzerland west - Two of the best

4. Petteri Vigren, Asko Hämäläinen and Rami Haapala: Training for Jukola

5. “Join O-sports Team”: Join O-Sports

6. Samo Kofol: Piran 2006 WRE

As you see, the jury decided to put both categories together for the final results. If you have any questions regarding the final results, please direct them to the Jukola organizers.

Prizes to linking pages
As promised, there are prizes to pages linking to the Jukola video competition poll. These are going to the following pages:

• For the web-page which refers the most visitors to the poll, ASSOCIAZIONE SPORTIVA TICINESE: Two months of a free text-ad on the front page of World of O for any orienteering related site.
• For an arbitrarily drawn web-page from all web pages which link to the poll, I-OL.nl: One month of a free text-ad on the front page of World of O for any orienteering related site.

Please contact me at jan@kocbach.net for details.

Big Thank You
Finally, a big thank you for all of you contributing your videos, all of you linking to the Jukola video competition, and all of you voting in the poll! Sorry for results occurring this late - I hope you can forgive the Jukola organizers for this - they probably had the busiest weekend of their lives.

See all videos
You can still see all videos entered in the Jukola video competition here:

• Catchy clip category
• Documentary clip category

Above you see the mens course from the World Cup in Bykle, Norway - including the route choice of Thierry Gueorgiou. Gueorgiou did a very good race - making only some minor errors in the end.

The two absolute world number one runners - Thierry Gueorgiou and Simone Niggli-Luder - were again the best here at the second World Cup round in Bykle, Norway. They both had fantastic runs - and got very clear victories.

• Results (unofficial)

Fabien Pasquasy and Becky Carlyle are the first man and woman to head into the forest at this second World Cup race of the year here in the beautiful Norwegian mountains at Bykle/Hovden. Everything is set for a very interesting middle distance race, with most of the absolute world elite present.

The Norwegian runners have an advantage in this terrain, and hope to repair the not-so-good results from this years NOC and the first WC round in Finland. Will Thierry Gueorgiou be able to take the Norwegians Holger Hott (who just let go of the Johansen name) and Anders Nordberg on homeground? Will Marianne Andersen show Simone Niggli-Luder the way in Norwegian terrain? Follow the live results from 18:00 (see link below) to get the answers in an interesting middle distance World Cup race here at Bykle by Hovden.

Just now, the last of the 2400 “normal” orienteers - participating at the Norwegian O-festival - are getting out of the very same forests as the world elite will head into now from 18:00 - and as one of these 2400, I can tell you that the World Elite will meet very interesting mountain terrain - with many open marshes and partly stony ground. The orienteering can for a large part be categorized as quite easy, but if you loose control - the errors may become large. Also, there are some tricky green areas where you have to know which side of the tree and stone you are heading to not loose time.

Maps with courses will be available here after the event.

• Start list Results (will be updated during the race)

I was asked to make a video with highlights from the first World Cup round to be shown at the international coaching seminar at the free day between the first World Cup round and the Jukola relay. Being only one man with one camera, I knew that I had to do something untraditional to catch the interest of the audience, which mostly consisted of trainers and part of the world orienteering elite.

I decided that I would try to show the audience how the winner in the women’s class, Simone Niggli-Luder, experienced the race. I wanted to show the competition as she saw it, and get her comments alongside. I had a few problems, though: The organizers would not let us see the maps until 10 pm in the evening, so I could not get Niggli-Luder comment her race with the map in front of her (she had to leave before the maps where released). Also, I did not get her exact route choices as we had no map to look at. But nevertheless, a big “Thank you” to Simone for helping me out with her comments about the race here - she gave me all the help she could!

When I finally could run through the course at 10 pm, the rain was really pouring down, and it was ice cold. To top this, I run through the course with the camera mounted the wrong way the first time (pointing into the air and showing everything upside down), so I had to make a rerun to get usable material. When returning to the lodging, there were only 12 hours until the coaching seminar started, so I was not able to put too much work into the details for the video.

Nevertheless, I think this is an interesting concept, which with further development could be used to show the action and beauty of orienteering. Short clips of this type could be included in TV broadcasts from orienteering events. Longer clips could be used as a training tool to develop orienteering technique. I am planning to work along both lines - the next step being to integrate a GPS into the setup…

Comments
Please leave a comment about suggested improvements to the concept. Things I know: It is too long for a casual viewer (I might make a shorter version), and the music maybe isn’t top notch - but this one is free to use.

The video: In the footsteps of Simone Niggli-Luder
Below you see the resulting video. You should definitely download it and see it in full quality (it will take some time, but it is worth it). At the coaching seminar it was shown on a big screen, and that’s the way it should be seen. What about putting it up at the next club evening? If you have problems downloading the video in full quality, please contact me to get help.

Links

• Full results, World Cup round 1, women
• International coaching seminar - invitation. More about this later on.

Jukola video competition
A small not about results from the Jukola video competition: I am still waiting for the final result list from the Jukola organizers - and will publish results as soon as I get them.

Kalevan Rasti with Thierry Gueorgiou went out in the lead about 1 minute before Halden’s Mats Haldin on the last leg of this years Jukola relay - and everything looked like this would be another Jukola thriller. However, Gueorgiou and Haldin decided the race already at the very start of the leg - Gueorgiou by running an excellent first 30 minutes, and Haldin by loosing 2 minutes.

• Results

Minna Kauppi did a magnificent run on the last leg in todays Venla relay, and took Asikkalan Raikas to a very popular victory here in Lapua, Finland.

Below you see an interview with Minna Kauppi after her run by woO-TV:

• Online results - follow the Jukola relay from 22.00 CET

Pictures from todays qualification of the heat-winners. From the top: Thierry Gueorgiou, Audun Hultgreen Weltzien, Mats Haldin, Simone Niggli-Luder, Lena Eliasson and Paula Iso-Markku.

• Full results