Portugal O-Meeting 2013: Preview

Portugal O-meeting (POM) has been the international season opening the last years – with most of the world elite on the startlist. With the World Cup opening in New Zealand this year, the start field is a little bit weaker than normal ; still 5 of the 10 highest ranked on the World Ranking in the mens class are on the startlist – and several of the Top 10 ranked women.

The men’s elite class has nearly 250 registered runners – and is thus divided into a super-elite and a normal elite category.

This will be the first time we see two of the biggest stars of the orienteering elite this year – Simone Niggli (Switzerland) and Thierry Gueorgiou (France) – both skipped the World Cup opening in New Zealand.

Full of rocky details

The highlight of Portugal O-meeting is the World Ranking event on Monday February 20th – a middle distance race. All runners are expected to run at full speed on Monday – the other days there will be more variation as the athletes are in a training period.

The terrain in this year’s POM promises to be very interesting – rocky, technical and open. “Moderatelly hilly oak terrain, full of rocky details. Runnability alterning between very slow and fast,” is the description for the terrain of the third day. A perfect fit for middle distance

Who can beat Niggli and Gueorgiou?

In the men’s class, POM will be an interesting fight between Gueorgiou, last year’s World Cup winner Matthias Kyburz (Switzerland) and last year’s World Champion on the long distance, Olav Lundanes (Norway).  It will also be interesting to see if last year’s WOC silver medalist Valentin Novikov (Russia) is in early shape.

In the women’ s class, Simone Niggli is the big favourite. The biggest fight will come from Annika Billstam (Sweden) and the Danish women – it will be interesting to see if Ida Bobach (Denmark) can beat Niggli on a technical middle distance race.

Links

• POM 2013 webpage
• Startlist POM 2013 (only available by club)
• POM 2012 report: Day 3 (WRE), Day 2 and Day 1