Top O-Travel Picks: February 2010

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…

Portugal ‘O’ Meeting 2010 Portugal – 2010-02-12	Portugal ‘O’ Meeting 2010 Portugal – 2010-02-12	Portugal ‘O’ Meeting 2010 Portugal – 2010-02-12
Norte Alentejano O’ Meeting 2010 Portugal – 2010-02-19	Norte Alentejano O’ Meeting 2010 Portugal – 2010-02-19	MOC 2010-Mediterranean Open Championship Italy – 2010-02-26
MOC 2010-Mediterranean Open Championship Italy – 2010-02-26	MOC 2010-Mediterranean Open Championship Italy – 2010-02-26

Israel and Turkey

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:

12.02	–	14.02		IV PREMI D’ORIENTACIO DE LA COMUNITAT VALENCIANA	Spain
12.02	–	16.02		Portugal ‘O’ Meeting 2010	Portugal
19.02	–	21.02		Norte Alentejano O’ Meeting 2010	Portugal
19.02	–	20.02		Israel Open Championship	Israel
20.02	–	21.02		NAOM-Norte Alentejano ‘O’ Meeting	Portugal
24.02	–	28.02		Antalya O Days 2010	Turkey
26.02	–	28.02		MOC 2010-Mediterranean Open Championship	Italy
27.02				Trofeo Diputacion De Malaga	Spain

World of O Calendar

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!