WOC Middle Final: Surprise by Leonid Novikov

Leonid Novikov surprised everybody – including himself – by winning the World Champions middle distance in Vuokatti, Finland today. Thierry Gueorgiou finished second after a one-minute mistake at control which he never managed to fully catch up. Sweden’s Gustav Bergman became third.

Below you see the mistake of Gueorigou at the second control – around one minute lost. You also see how Gueorgiou looses the flow on the following controls – letting the legs control instead of the technique.

Mistakes for Novikov

The illustration below compares Novikov and Gueorgiou on the last loop (Novikov’s GPS did not work between control 8 and 11). When Novikov caught Hubmann at control 10 (after a 50 second mistake by Hubmann), Novikov was in the lead with 9 seconds. To control 11 Novikov increased the lead to around 30 seconds – but from there on his orienteering was more unstable – maybe due to pushing the pace together with Hubmann (the two were mostly together on the last loop – except for the first part of 14-15). Novikov lost time to Gueorgiou both to 14 (route choice) and 16 (small mistake) – but in the end it was enough with 6 small seconds.

Maps

See below for maps / GPS-tracking:

• GPS-tracking
• Maps men and women

Results

Men

1	143		Leonid Novikov	Russia	37:45
2	140		Thierry Gueorgiou	France	37:54	+9
3	125		Gustav Bergman	Sweden	38:21	+36
4	144		Matthias Kyburz	Switzerland	39:08	+1:23
5	142		Daniel Hubmann	Switzerland	39:16	+1:31
	130		Fabian Hertner	Switzerland	39:16	+1:31
7	137		Carl Godager Kaas	Norway	39:21	+1:36
8	135		Edgars Bertuks	Latvia	39:51	+2:06
9	124		Denys Shcherbakov	Ukraine	39:59	+2:14
10	127		Peter Öberg	Sweden	40:22	+2:37
11	132		Oleksandr Kratov	Ukraine	40:30	+2:45
12	123		M rtiFa Sirmais	Latvia	40:33	+2:48
13	131		Lauri Sild	Estonia	41:02	+3:17
14	138		Johan Runesson	Sweden	41:08	+3:23
15	119		Gernot Kerschbaumer	Austria	41:10	+3:25
16	139		Anders Nordberg	Norway	41:42