NORT Final: Live from 14:00 CET!

With double World Champion Håvard Tveite as one of the course setters – a big fan of real forest orienteering on good maps – everything is set for a very interesting chasing start as the final competition in the Nordic Orienteering Tour. 4 x Switzerland – Hubmann, Kyburz, Merz and Müller – will all be heading out within 1.05 of World Champion Olav Lundanes in the mens class. And the womens class seems even more open and exciting if possible with 13 women within 3 minutes!

To bring the excitement home to you at home, there will be live GPS-tracking and live results – and if the load on the 3G connections by spectators is not too high, there will also be a live webTV from the event.

• Live GPS-tracking men – women
• Live results
• Startlist
• Webpage of NORT and O-festivalen
• Fantasy World Cup (set up your team by 14:00 CET)

This might ery well be the future format of one of the races in the World Orienteering Championships

This might very well be the future format of one of the races in the orienteering World Championships depending on what is decided this autumn in France – and today’s World Cup race in Nesodden south of Oslo might get important for that decision. This is especially the case if the race is a success.

And the setting for a success is perfect. A 50 minute chasing start for the men (7.5 km/375 m) – and 40 minutes for the women (5.6 km/250 m) – in “real forest” (see old old map above) as the last stage of NORT, it is going to be a real fight for the top position and the big money prizes (31.000 Euros overall in NORT). At least the top 5 men – probably also a few more may mix in on the fight for victory. Among the women it is even more open. Finnish Rantanen will head out 41 seconds ahead of Danish Maja Alm – with Billstam (SWE), Bagstevold, Fasting (both NOR), Alexandersson, Gustafsson (both SWE) all following within 1:40. All the first 13 runners have a realistic chance of winning with a perfect race depending on how the others perform.

We have got the unusual situation that it is tighter in the women’s class than in the men’s class – 20 men within 4:52 minutes and 20 women within 4:20.

Terrain description: Mainly old coniferous forest (pine and spruce) but also parts with mixed forest. Medium hilly with mostly good runnability.  Some marshes. In parts of the area there is a quite dense network of small and bigger paths.  There is quite a lot of blueberry heather in the open forest.  This is not marked on the map, but it affects the going.  There are patches of more or less stony/rocky ground in some of the slopes – the biggest ones are mapped.