World of O News
The World Championships in Kongsberg in 1978 featured a tough long distance course. The route choices were not the most tricky ones though – is was a lot about running direct here. Note also how “modern” the map looks – this doesn’t really look like a map from 1978?
The race was won by Egil Johansen and Anne Berit Eid – both on home ground.
It is usually difficult to find information about orienteering races in the 1970’ies online – but for WOC in 1978 there is a lot of information available in this PDF – including many newspaper clips (all in Norwegian though). One of the newspaper clips entitled “The race area – a well kept secret” is included below. Another one entitled “Complicated TV setup behind direct broadcasts” is included below.
If your Norwegian is good, you should really take a look at the 45 page PDF: In addition to the articles included below you can read about the course setter Morten Berglia – only 20 years old and according to the article the youngest course setter in a World Champs so far.
Video from WOC78: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJTSznHP9u8
I seem to remember that Egil J won (in spite of two significant misses) due to a few crucial route choices, one being the leg from 11 to 12 where most of his competitors ran down along the road and back up, and then after the final mistake on 16 he took a big chance on the long leg to 18, going straight over the big final hill.
Several years ago Eiker hosted a big event in the same area, I had a leg that was very similar to the 11-12 leg, with the same ending control afair.
Remembering Egil’s winning route choice I ran along the hillside just like he did!
The organizers intentionally repeated several of the 1978 WOC legs, just so that we could compare our split times to those of the old champions.
We returned to this area in 2010 for the veterans’ championship, including a similar leg through the same hillside:
http://tmsw.no/qr/show_map.php?user=terjem&map=221
Closer to today the traditional Eikerløpet event took place two years ago beside the final WOC control:
http://tmsw.no/qr/show_map.php?user=terjem&map=543
Notice that our final controls were in the same big hill where Egil decided WOC in 1978. I was a few seconds in front of Harald Thon who represented Norway in several of the following WOCs.
TM says:(in spite of two significant misses) due to a few crucial route choices…
The result: 15,7 km – 1.31.44