EOC 2014: All You Need To Know!

The European Championships in Orienteering (EOC) starts off with three days of qualification races: Middle Thursday April 10th, Long Friday and Sprint Saturday. The first final is the Sprint final on Sunday late afternoon – and the championships concludes with middle final, long final and relay without a single day off.

Only the very strongest will have power left for the relay after running 6 days in a row – with a long distance race on day 6

In each qualification race there are 3 heats, and 17 athletes from each heat go to the A-final. There will thus be 51 athletes in the A-final for men and women, respectively.

Tough program

The extremely tough program at EOC (see details below) makes it difficult to run all races – only the very strongest will have power left for the relay after running 6 days in a row – with a long distance race on day 6.

Competition program

• Thursday April 10th, Middle Qual, 11:00 CET
• Friday April 11th, Long Qual, 11:00 CET
• Saturday April 12th, Sprint Qual, 11:00 CET
• Sunday April 13th, Sprint Finals, 17:30 CET (Women) and 18:45 CET (Men)
• Monday April 14th, Middle Final, 11:00 CET (Men) and 11:30 CET (Women)
• Tuesday April 15th, Long Final, 10:00 CET (Men and Women)
• Wednesday April 16h, Relay, 10:00 CET (Men) and 12:00 CET (Women)

Live services & Useful Link

Here are some useful links to follow the events:

• EOC 2014 Live Centre – with live results and livestream from all races.
• GPS-tracking by TracTrac of 42 athletes. There will be GPS-tracking only in the finals according to the EOC2014 Twitter account and according to the Live centre (on the other hand see comment from Sim below). It is not clear from the event website if there will be GPS-tracking from the Qualification – this article will be updated with information (Note: GPS-tracking data will be available in 2DRerun right after the competitions via the TracTrac link through a cooperation between TracTrac and WorldofO.com)
• W0rld Cup standings
• Bulletin 4 (detailed information about the race)
• EOC 2014 Twitter account
• EOC 2014 webpage and EOC 2014 whereabouts
• Competitor list (nominal entries)

Fast terrain

Portugal is known for interesting and technical terrain – tempting many runners to visit the country for orienteering in winter time. The EOC forest terrain is not as technical as the terrain which is often offered in Portugal – instead it will challenge the athletes on high running speed, avoiding vegetation which slows you down, and at keeping the mistakes at an absolute minimum. This is a terrain type which many athletes master well – and thus expect the races to be tight. Old maps from the terrains are available here.

Jani Lakanen likes the view – but not the terrain:

Nice view from the long model terrain.Unfortunately the terrain was not that nice #EOC2014 #piikkejäjalattäynnä pic.twitter.com/WNx7SUhO4E

— Jani Lakanen (@jani_lakanen) April 8, 2014

Mårten Boström also has something to tell about the EOC terrain on Twitter:

Based on #EOC2014 Long Distance Final Model Event the Final race of 23km winning time will be 2 hours pic.twitter.com/I4RIA4LUuY

— Mårten Boström (@martenbostrom) April 8, 2014

Terrain description from Bulletin 4:

Course lengths

Based on the old map and the terrain description in the Bulletin, it looks like these will be very interesting competition. Below the terrain descriptions are included.  You find the old map of part of the competition area here.

Course lengths from Bulletin 4:

World Cup standings (after WC Spain)

• See full World Cup standings list here

Whereabouts

EOC 2014 is organized in Palmela in the South of Portugal – around 40 km south of Lisboa. Below you see where the various competitions are held (from Bulletin 4).