World of O News
Still a long time until Christmas, but ‘Route to Christmas’ makes a quick visit in the middle of the summer today. The interesting World Cup sprint course in Imatra yesterday is the occasion – leg number 8 in the men’s course is the chosen leg.
The leg is as usually first provided without routes – you may take a look at it and think about how you would attack this leg (if the image is too small, you may click on it to get it larger):
Location
You find other maps from the area in omaps.worldofo.com here. See also latest additions in 3DRerun from this area in order to learn more about this terrain type.
Webroute
Next you can draw your own route using the ‘Webroute’ below. Think through how you would attack this leg, and draw the route you would have made. Some comments about why you would choose a certain route are always nice for the other readers.
Then you can take a look at the lengths for the most popular alternatives. In addition to these alternatives, combination of these were also run (e.g. William Lind started with A, then went over to C and even took a separate variant towards the end of the leg. Note that there is a small error in the drawing of D at the start of the leg – it should of course not go through a house.
Fastest on the leg was Peter Hodkinson, but Hodkinson is disqualified, and his GPS-route on this leg does not look legal. Second fastest (and fastest legal split time?) is Jonas Leandersson running variant A with the fastest time. Jonas Vytautas Gvildys is third (also A, but B around the first house) and Daniel Hubmann is fourth (also A, but B around the first house and also a small difference later on the leg). Next on the leg is Gustav Bergman (variant B – losing 11 seconds). Torgeir Nørbech runs C 24 seconds slower than Leandersson. Kiril Nikolov runs D 27 seconds slower.
Note! As XML-files with split times (or split times in WinSplits) were not yet available late Wednesday evening, the planned (full) analysis of this leg and other parts of the race was cancelled as it is too time-consuming to do the analysis without proper base material. But already tomorrow there is a new race – and in the weekend Jukola & Venla is on the program!
Additional information
You find the complete map in omaps.worldofo.com at this location.
D looks a bit illegal too in the beginning
Sorry, I did the drawing a bit quick there :)
I think the fastest is D but continuing the way in the north all around. but unfortunately Nikolov didn’t do that one..
I believe I’d have done that – D then all the way round. It’d give chance for a brain rest from the intensity of previous legs and the chance to plan ahead a bit. It is longer, but less changes of direction and less chance of errors or hesitation. Of course I am not Elite!
Wasen’t there a forbidden area just above the crossing where D goes left? So it might have not been possible to run all the way round.