Prague Easter with technical orienteering in sandstone terrain, Postas Cup with technical sand dune terrain, the traditional JK Trophy in Great Britain, and several other interesting World Ranking events. Those are some of the highlights of the international fixtures list for April 2010. Read on to see a list of the top April events.
In the Top O-Travel Picks-series of articles we will take a look at the most interesting events of 2010 for travelers – month by month – to guide you through the fixture list. Focus is on multiday-events and World Ranking events, as these are events which typically attract traveling orienteers.
Map samples
A map says more than 1000 words – at least to an orienteer. Fortunately several of the event organizers have added map samples in World of O Calendar – take a look below to see map samples for some of the Top Picks of April 2010.
Prague Easter in Czech Republic has been a personal favorite of mine for years – I’ve been participating there three times, and would love to go back!
Postas Cup in Hungary looks very interesting – being one of the largest events in Hungary. After being in Hungary at the World Orienteering Champs last year, I would really like to travel there again – and this terrain looks very nice. The organizers say “The terrain of the first day has never been used for orienteering before, it is partly open and is rich in contour details. The terrain of the second day will be the same technically complex sand dune terrain that we used in 2008. The vegetation in the whole area is very varied: juniper, pine, oak and acacia forest is mixed with the occasional large clearing and semi-open areas of mixed cover.”
JK Trophy is usually a very nice event in Great Britain – this year in the South West. I found no map samples, but the terrain description says “Forestry Commission coniferous plantation of different ages and runnability, with some patches of older deciduous woodland.”
Easter Twenty 10 in Australia looks like a great event. Take a look at the old map for the WRE event at Day 1 – the terrain is a mixture of complex granite with fire regrowth, providing for sections of extremely technical orienteering. A part of the map is open grassland with some scattered granite.
I ran Kurzemes pavasaris in Latvia a few years ago – and it was a great event in very interesting terrain – I’m sure it will be a nice event this year again. Finnspring and Les 3 jours du SUD OUEST also look like interesting events.
Your favorite?
Are there important events missing in this overview? What is your personal favorite orienteering event in April 2010? Have you got map samples for some of the events? Please use the comments to give additional information to the readers.
March is another month in which typically athletes from Northern Europe travel to Southern Europe to be able to combine a training camp with a few orienteering races. However, in March you don’t have to travel that far south to get good conditions in a normal winter, and therefore we find events in Slovenia, Serbia and even Denmark and Great Britain in addition to Spain, Portugal and Italy.
In the Top O-Travel Picks-series of articles we will take a look at the most interesting events of 2010 for travelers – month by month – to guide you through the fixture list. Focus is on multiday-events and World Ranking events, as these are events which typically attract traveling orienteers.
Here is the list of the Top O-Travel Picks for March 2010 – based on what was in World of O Calendar at the time of writing. See below the table for more details about some of the events – and map samples at the bottom the page.
March events: Spring Cup international season opener
Historically, Spring-Cup in Denmark has been the main event on the international orienteering scene in March. The last years travelling has been getting less expensive, there are more quality maps in southern Europe, and thus many skip cold and snowy Sprint Cup in favor of events in the south. It looks like POM (see the Top O-Travel Picks for February) might have taken over as the event which attracts most of the World Elite during the winter months (the organizers have announced that Daniel Hubman, Thierry Gueorgiou, François Gonon, Emil Wingstedt, Tero Föhr, Valentin Novikov, Simone Niggli, Helena Jansson, Signe Søes and Eva Jurenikova among others will visit POM in Portugal). However, Spring Cup is still the international season opener for many runners – especially in the Nordic countries. The Spring Cup organizers did unfortunately not add any map sample to World of O Calendar, but expect that the terrain will be typical for Spring Cup (here is a map from last years event).
World Ranking Events
In addition to Spring Cup, there are two other World Ranking events in World of O Calender in March. These are XXII Trofeo Internacional Costa Calida in Spain March 5th-7th in Spain and Forth Valley Orienteers WRE-event in Scotland March 27th-28th.
The Trofeo Internacional Costa Calida is said to be a technical area with hundreds of small re-entrants spurs, hills and not many rocky details. The forest is mainly white but with areas of light green. The competition weekend consists of three events – one long distance Saturday (WRE), a sprint Saturday afternoon and a middle distance Sunday.
The terrain for the WRE-event in Scotland has some similarities with terrain in Western/Middle Norway (see map sample below), and the organizers hope that some might want to use the event as part of their preparations for the World Orienteering Championships in Trondheim.
Other events
There are several other interesting events in March 2010.
Beograd Open: Two-day event in Serbia. According to the organizers with sand dunes terrain. First day – flat, micro orienteering, second day – hilly, route choice.
MOC GP Sprint: Two sprint races with PWT style in Italy: Castellaneta and Matera. One middle distance race in Pineta Chiatona. I have been running a training in Matera – and must say that that is one of my top sprint experiences!
Early Spring Cup: 2 days, 3 races in Poland. 1. long 2. night middle and 3. relay.
Lipica open: 2 day event in Slovenia. Another one of my favorite terrain types. If the weather conditions are good, you can’t go wrong with this one! See some nice map samples below.
Bizkaia Sari: 2 day event in Spain. Karst terrain with the typical morphology of a high plateau. Grand amount of depressions and slight re-entrants. Alternation of beech dominated forest and semi open terrain with whitethorn bushes that force the runner to adapt the orienteering technique. The open and slightly hilly terrain allows easy navigation whereas in the areas with developed karst more sophisticated techniques will be necessary.
ROME MMX – Rome Orienteering Meeting 2010. This looks like a very nice orienteering weekend for somebody interested in sprint orienteering – and wanting to combine it with vacation in a big city. 2 days 3 races Run under the aqueduct in a suburban park (Saturday) and… in the amazing city center between Colosseo and Piazza di Spagna.
CESOM 2010: National Ranking Competition Middle, Sprint and Long Distances in Slovakia. Plain terrain, sandy dunes, clear, runnable pine forest. Dense paths network, many contour details.
Strazilovo Cup: Two-day event in Serbia. 2-days individual competition, middle and sprint distance. Terrain is hilly, middle slope, all cover by forest with mostly good runnability.
Note that only events included in World of O Calendar will be considered. If you are an organizer – please add event information as soon as possible, including map samples and a description of the event – to make sure that your event is included. You may also add event information for the month presented in the comments if your event was not picked for the current month.
Note also that I have added quite a few WRE events by going through the IOF calendar of WRE events and inserting the events missing in World of O Calendar. For these events, there is no location! If you know the location of one of the events with missing location – or have other information about the event – please modify the entry for the event in World of O Calendar!
It is time to dig into the extensive report on separating runners in orienteering again. This time we take a look at the different separating methods discussed in the report – and their applicability to a long distance race with a high quality start field. We also take a look at the runners comments to the different separating methods – the fairness issue is given special focus in this regard.
For background information about the report, see part I which gives a general overview of the report along with main conclusions.
Start Interval
The second article related to the report on separating runners in Orienteering, part II, considered the start interval for World Orienteering Championships long distance. It was interesting to see that only 7% of the 460 voters wanted to keep the start interval for WOC long distance as short as it is today (2 minutes) or make it shorter (1 minute). A large majority – more than 80% – want a longer start interval (at least for the red group), whereas as much as 10% of the voters want to have a mass start instead of individual start for WOC long distance. Out of interest, I’d like to check if the percentage is even higher than 10% when the question is posed more directly:
The report has an interesting section about what went wrong in previous Championships. This gives a good background for discussing separating methods. The complete section is included unabridged below:
In some World class events there has been large groups forming. WOC 1993, 1997 and 2005, WC Switzerland 1996 and Sweden 2002 comes to mind. Is it possible to find a common theme?
We have found that groups mostly form when a (weaker) runner makes a mistake (near the control) and is overtaken by a stronger runner. We would thus expect any system that mixes weaker runners (which are more likely to make mistakes) with stronger runners (that make less mistakes) to prevent bunching. The World Cup races in Switzerland and Sweden were mass-start races so here the weaker and stronger runners obviously were mixed.
WOC 1993 (USA) was without qualification races. This implies that every nation had the right to one runner in each start group. This also means that there were a few weaker orienteers started in the last start group as also the weaker nations could put one of their runners in this group. Maybe more important for the formation of large groups it also meant that the stronger nations had one of their runners in an early start group with many weaker runners. It has also been examples of races with qualification heats where one of the pre-race favourites makes a relatively large mistake in the qualification, and then acts as a broom sweeping through the field in the final. The women’s middle distance in WOC 2007 is one recent example. In the races mentioned above we would expect many of the groups to be H-groups [Editors note: See the report for definition of H-groups.]
WOC 1997 (Norway) took place in extremely detailed and difficult terrain, with rather rough ground. The start interval was reduced to 2 minutes for the first time. There were qualification races over similar terrain, using the same map. It is difficult to measure the difficulty by objective means, but the qualification races seem simpler than the finals. For this championship there were also only two qualification heats with 30 from each heat to the final. The course for the final had many controls (24 for the men) and many short legs.
WOC 2005 had the qualification race in a relatively simple terrain, while the organisers (like all other organisers) spared the most demanding terrain for the final. A simpler orienteering for the qualification race meant that some weaker runners could obtain a good start position in the finals. The final map contained many short legs in the beginning of the course.
In WOC 2001 (Finland) and 2004 (Sweden) the finals took part in detailed terrains, but without many groups forming. Here the qualification races were in equally difficult terrain, thus the weaker runners were already sorted out. In WOC 2006 (Denmark) and WOC 2007 (Ukraine) both the qualifications and (long) finals were in fairly simple terrain. Again there were few groups forming.
It should also been noted that NOC (Nordic Open Orienteering Championships) which uses a fairly strict ranking system for the start list have had no problem with large groups forming.
Thus the main conclusions from previous “disasters” is that equal difficulty should be used for qualification and finals, there should be qualification races, and that the first part of the course should not contain many short legs with difficult orienteering.
A number of different separating methods have been considered in the report. The following table taken directly from the report summarized the findings:
Regarding use of the separating methods for a WOC long distance with individual start (or similar event), the following conclusion is given in the report:
The state-of-the-art methods to avoid grouping during the last years are butterflies and the last years also phi-loops. In addition course planners have had some focus on optimizing course characteristics. The other separating methods discussed in section 6 [Editors comment: given in the table above] do currently not seem to be able to replace butterflies / phi-loops for the WOC long distance.
In part I of this article series, the section in the report giving overall considerations that one should take when implementing phi-loops were given. In this article, I take a better look at phi-loops and how to implement them in practice.
Phi loops (taken directly from the report)
The loops are named after the Greek letter phi because they look somewhat like this letter [Editors comment: At least in its basic implementation]. There are two controls that are visited twice. At the first the runners are sent different ways through the phi-loop. At the second they are sent out in the common last part of the course. This method for separating the runners may involve one or two map exchanges in which case there is an additional “element of surprise” in the method (used at WOC 2007 long distance) – but may also be used without map exchange. For the case with map exchange(s), it requires more work for the organizers. As for butterflies it steals much of the total course length, and might make it more difficult to plan long, good route choice legs. The runners does not approach any control more than twice. The Ultuna-method is a variation of this with one (or more) controls along the diagonal as well [Editors comment: see illustration at the top of this article].
A special feature of the phi-loop method is the “element of surprise” which may be introduced by the fact that the runners can (in theory, but the course layout may tell something) never know if his/her next control is the same as another runner until after the map exchange. If more than one phi-loop is used in the course (i.e. a short second phi-loop towards the end of the course around the passing of a spectator control) and a course layout as shown to the right in Figure 18 is applied for the first part of the course, the “element of surprise” is extended to large parts of the course
This element of surprise may be introduced either by a normal phi-loop – or as a special variant of the Ultuna-method were the diagonal is outside of the phi-loop as shown to the left in figure 18. For the latter case, the “element of surprise” is extended to much larger parts of the course. The disadvantage is (1) potential unfairness due to some runners get the legs marked 1-3 early in the course – others late in the course and (2) you cannot compare split-times until after the phi-loops as runners have run different controls. Making running time for 1-3 and 10-13 as equal as possible – and also technical challenges and terrain as equal as possible, would address both these disadvantages.
On the other hand, if the running time for 1-3 and 10-13 differs by e.g. one fourth of the start interval (30 seconds for a 2 minute start interval), the probability for groups to form between control 3 and 10 would increase as effective start interval would be alternating between 1.30 and 2.30 – but the effectiveness of the spreading for 10-13 would increase significantly as there would be a time difference of 30 seconds built in to this part of the course. For a 3 minute start interval, this time difference between the legs of the phi-loop could be increased to 1 minute. The disadvantage here would be that you cannot compare split-times until after control 13. You could, however, in theory use extensive test-running to pre-calculate a time to be subtracted/added to the official splits published.
One advantage of phi loops compared to butterflies is that with phi-loops you reduce sharp angles – and thus it is more difficult to see other runners when approaching a control.
Phi loops: Implementation
Map from WOC 2007 in Ukraine, the only WOC where Phi-loops have been implemented.
In the following I take a look at how a good phi-loop spreading method could be implemented in practice. Here I depart from the report, which does not discuss practical implementation of phi-loops in detail.
In my opinion, a good phi-loop spreading method should always include at least one map exchange (like in WOC 2007 in Ukraine).
The main argument against it is that it is more complicated for the organizers. This is a valid argument for smaller events, but not for large events like e.g. a World Ranking events, National Championships, or the World Orienteering Champs.
The main argument for it is “the element of surprise”. I have had discussions with people claiming that this “element of surprise” is not important for top elite orienteers as they are excellent map readers. However, I think this element makes it more important for the runners to orienteer with highest accuracy in larger portions of the course, as they can not be 100% sure that they have the same control as other runners they meet in the forest.
Lets look at one example from the WOC 2009 Long distance map. This is not a perfect example, as I’ve not put the spreading method into two different parts of the course as in the figure at the very start of this article, but rather used the area of the butterfly from the WOC long distance course. Thus it is a lot easier to spot where the spreading occurs than what could have been possible with optimal placement of the spreading method. However, it is still instructive to compare this to the butterfly used at the championships. First we look at the butterfly used at WOC:
Then we look at one kind of phi-loop implementation (surely not the best, but still an example to let you see how the method can work). We start with the map the runner gets. Can you guess which of the controls which is different from the other runners? (Remember that the runner can not know if the different control was even earlier in the course. In theory it could have been already at the second control)
Then lets take a look at what the runner sees after the map exchange:
And finally the complete course in this area:
Note that I do not claim that this specific phi-loop implementation is better than the butterfly used in the WOC course – it is just an example of a phi-loop in a natural setting.
Have you got any comments about separating methods? Can you come up with a better example of a phi-loop? Have you examples of phi-loops which have worked well in competitions? Please add a comment below! Below you see one example – a phi-loop used at the start of a mass-start event in Mjølfjell, Norway (no map exchange),
In the Top O-Travel Picks-series of articles we will take a look at the most interesting events of 2010 for travelers – month by month – to guide you through the fixture list. Focus is on multiday-events and World Ranking events, as these are events which typically attract traveling orienteers.
February events
First off is February – a month in which typically athletes from Northern Europe travel to Southern Europe to be able to combine a training camp with a few orienteering races. This is also reflected in the events picked in the “Top Travel Picks” for February – the events being in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Israel and Turkey.
Spain, Portugal and Italy
My experience with the February-March events in Spain, Portugal and Italy is that the quality of the events with WRE-status is generally excellent. Also for the larger events without WRE-status, the quality has generally been very good.
Of the Top Picks for February, only two events have added map samples to World of O Calendar – Portugal O-meeting (POM) and the Mediterranean Open Championship (MOC). The terrain for both these events looks technically and interesting – and of the February events these two events have typically been two of the events with highest profile and attracting a quality field of top runners.
An interesting side-note: The highest scored World Ranking points ever was at POM 2007 by Thierry Gueorgiou with 1516 points. Damien Renard (2nd, 1473 points) has the third highest World Ranking score ever from the same event. The highest scored World Ranking points in 2009 in the mens class was also in Portugal – Matthias Merz at XI Meeting Ori do Centro in February 2009. Simone Niggli scored the 4th highest World Ranking points in 2009 at POM 2009. Portugal seems to be a nice place to fill up some World Ranking points…
Two of the more exotic races to choose from in February are the Israel Open Championships in Israel and Antalya O Days in Turkey. The Israel Championships have attracted quite a few foreigners the last years, and is supposed to be very nice and interesting races (I was checking air-fares and considering traveling there last year). Usually you have been able to combine events two weekends and do training between.
The Antalya O Days is more of a newcomer, but based on the reports from several Norwegian groups who have been in the area training the last months, this might also be an interesting alternative to Portugal, Spain and Italy for February Orienteering Travels.
Top O-Travel Picks: February 2010
Here is the list of the Top O-Travel Picks for February 2010 – based on what was in World of O Calendar at the time of writing:
Note that only events included in World of O Calendar will be considered. If you are an organizer – please add event information as soon as possible, including map samples and a description of the event – to make sure that your event is included. You may also add event information for the month presented in the comments if your event was not picked for the current month.
Note also that I have added quite a few WRE events by going through the IOF calendar of WRE events and inserting the events missing in World of O Calendar. For these events, there is no location! If you know the location of one of the events with missing location – or have other information about the event – please modify the entry for the event in World of O Calendar!
A new knock-out sprint format will be used at the Nordic Orienteering Tour (NORT) in June in Sweden – the second race in NORT and also the 5th World Cup race in 2010 – following the format used in Cross Country skiing closely. The qualification race in the morning for allrunners will be a normal sprint (12-15 minute winning time) with a 1 minute start interval. The top 30 athletes qualify for quarter finals, of these 12 qualify for semi finals and 6 runners will run the finals.
Overall, when looking at the NORT concept, it is easy to see that it is based on the successful Tour de Ski concept – which you can follow at WorldofXC.com these days. According to Bulletin 2, the prize money will be awarded to the best athletes in the overall NORT and to the best in each stage. The total amount will be at least 27 000 EUR
Nordic Orienteering Tour 2010
According to the World Cup Special rules, the Nordic Orienteering Tour consists of three races in three countries,
Thursday June 17th, Finland. Middle and sprint mix.
Tuesday June 22nd, Sweden. Knock-out sprint.
Saturday June 26th, Norway. Prolonged middle chasing start.
Middle and sprint mix
Middle distance and Sprint combination. There will be a map change at the arena with a change of scale and map standard. The overall winning time will be approximately 35 minutes. There is an individual interval start with no prior qualification. The start interval is 1 minute.
The quarter-finals are for the top 30 athletes from the qualification race. There are 5
consecutive mass-start quarter-finals each running the same course with a 6-8 minute
winning time. Quarter-final A: 1st, 10th, 11th, 20th, 21st and 30th of the qualification; quarterfinal B: 4, 7, 14, 17, 24, 27; quarter-final C: 5, 6, 15, 16, 25, 26; quarter-final D: 2, 9, 12, 19, 22, 29; quarter-final E: 3, 8, 13, 18, 23, 28.
The semi-finals are for 12 athletes. The first two runners from each quarter-final, and the two overall next fastest times from the quarter-finals, qualify for the semi-finals. There are 2 consecutive mass start semi-finals each running the same course with a 6-8 minute winning time. Semi-final 1: 1st and 2nd of quarter-finals A and B plus 2nd of quarter-final C and the runner with the 11th fastest time in the quarter-finals; semi-final 2: 1st and 2nd of quarterfinals D and E plus 1st of quarter-final C and the runner with the 12th fastest time in the quarter-finals.
The final is for 6 athletes. The two fastest runners from each semi-final and the two runners with the next best times qualify for the final. The final will be a mass-start sprint with a 6-10 minute winning time.
Prolonged middle chasing start
For the prolonged middle distance chasing start (women 40 minutes, men 50
minutes), the start times are based on the NORT overall time standings after two days. Only runners who were placed on NORT day one and also in the qualification race on NORT day two may compete on day three. The NORT overall time standings after two days are calculated as the time on day one plus the time for the qualification race on day two less the following bonus seconds:
NORT day one positions at the end of the middle distance section: First 60 bonus
seconds, second 45 sec., third 30 sec., fourth 20 sec., fifth 10 sec. and sixth 5 sec.
NORT day two: The 6 runners in the final will get bonus seconds 120-90-70-60-55-50. The other 6 runners in the semi-finals will get bonus seconds 40-38-36-34-32-30 according to their running times in the semi-finals. The other 18 runners in the quarter-finals will get bonus seconds 18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 according to their running times in the quarter-finals. If one or more runners are not placed in the quarter-finals, semi-finals or finals, they will be regarded as being placed at the end of that group and are awarded bonus seconds accordingly. The first runner to the finish is the NORT winner.
Nordic Orienteering Tour webpage
The webpage of the Nordic Orienteering Tour is to be found here. According to the page, it is going to be released in December 2009 – expect it to be updated soon. According to Bulletin 2, all existing maps can be found on www.nordicorienteeringtour.com in pdf format (not yet available, thus expect them to be available there soon).
14.03: TeamTurbo: Johaug & Kristoffersen Folkefest i kollenSå er prøve VM ferdig for i år og vi som utøvere kan konkludere med at Norge, Oslo og Kollen virkelig kan å arrangere skirenn. Dette er en folk ...
14.03: Marcus Hellner En oväntad pigg Marcus = 3:a!Formen verkar hålla i sig! Var rätt spak efter femmilen imorse, prologen kändes ok men var ruskigt nära att åka ut. Ibland har man marginalerna ...
14.03: Dario Cologna Sieg am Engadin Skimarathon 2010Bei schönstem Sonnenschein und besten Verhältnissen liess Dario nichts anbrennen und setzte sich im Finale des 42. Engadin Skimarathon sou ...
14.03: Emil Jönsson 1:a Totala Sprint värdscupen!Då var det klart!Dagens 7 plats säkrade segern i den totala sprintvärldscupen och det känns helt fantastiskt!Vilken säsong det har varit! där ...
14.03: David Ekholm Dagsprogram08.10 Uppstigning och frukost09.19 Sjöng ja må han leva för CJ samtidigt som jag hoppade i hans säng.09.30 Avresa med buss till Stadion09.55 Ank ...
14.03: Björn Ferry Oslo nästa!CJ skenade på fint idag, Magnus också!Jag har tränat på hyfsat några dagar. Kan bli kämpigt att vara i praktslag n ...
14.03: Anne Maria Nilsson Sprint och jakt i FinlandHelgens tävlingar är nu gjorda. Jag blev 60 prick på sprinten efter ett dåligt stå skytte, noll i ligg men sedan tre bom i stå. Det är topp 6 ...
13.03: Marcus Hellner Trött och men rätt nöjd!Känslan var bra idag! Femmil är inte min starkaste sak och en 8:e plats är nog bästa jag gjort på den här distansen. Dock är det ju aldrig ku ...
13.03: Anna Carin Olofsson KontiolahtiJa då var det ett tag sedan igen. När jag kom hem från Vancouver blev både Liam och jag magsjuka, men det tog kanske inte s&a ...
13.03: TeamTurbo: Johaug & Kristoffersen Hel Norsk dag :Djeeeeej.. team turbo Therese gikk inn til en kanon bra 3 plass på 3 mila i dag.. Var rått at det ble trippel norskt, og vibeke fulgte opp med 9 pl ...
13.03: Jean Marc Gaillard Oslo, cest quand même beau !!!!Le scénario du 50 km dOslo aujourdhui était tout simplement passionant ! Quand on ajoute à ça deux français monstrueux ( vincent et maurice ) d ...
13.03: Robin Bryntesson Dags för För VM.!Dags för För-VM i Holmenkollen!Efter några dagar med laxmacker till lunch å brunost till frukost, så är det nu dags f& ...
13.03: Astrid Jacobsen KollenbrusetJa, da er 30 km gjennomført, og jeg føler selv det er fortjent å ligge på sofaen med beina høyt. Ingenting er som å gå skirenn i kollen - sel ...
13.03: Remo Fischer 21. Rang am 50km Weltcuprennen in OsloRemo erreichte mit dem 21. Rang nicht die erwartete Platzierung im für ihn letzten Weltcuprennen in dieser Saison
The loops are named after the Greek letter phi because they look somewhat like this letter [Editors comment: At least in its basic implementation]. There are two controls that are visited twice. At the first the runners are sent different ways through the phi-loop. At the second they are sent out in the common last part of the course. This method for separating the runners may involve one or two map exchanges in which case there is an additional “element of surprise” in the method (used at WOC 2007 long distance) – but may also be used without map exchange. For the case with map exchange(s), it requires more work for the organizers. As for butterflies it steals much of the total course length, and might make it more difficult to plan long, good route choice legs. The runners does not approach any control more than twice. The Ultuna-method is a variation of this with one (or more) controls along the diagonal as well [Editors comment: see illustration at the top of this article].
A new knock-out sprint format will be used at the Nordic Orienteering Tour (NORT) in June in Sweden – the second race in NORT and also the 5th World Cup race in 2010 – following the format used in Cross Country skiing closely. The qualification race in the morning for allrunners will be a normal sprint (12-15 minute winning time) with a 1 minute start interval. The top 30 athletes qualify for quarter finals, of these 12 qualify for semi finals and 6 runners will run the finals.