World Cup Long Tasmania: Maps and Results

Jan Kocbach January 10, 2015 Orienteering News Comments Off on World Cup Long Tasmania: Maps and Results

[Updated with split time analysis] Matthias Kyburz (Switzerland) and Tove Alexandersson (Sweden) were strongest in today’s long distance World Cup race in Tasmania. With 13.2 km for the men and 9.4 km for the women in very hilly terrain – described as “cool” by the athletes. This was a very tough race – again dominated by Swedish and Swiss athletes.

Matthias Kyburz also won the World Cup sprint race one week ago – and showed with the victory in today’s long distance that he still masters tough forest orienteering. Thursday’s winner from the World Cup middle distance – Daniel Hubmann (also Switzerland) – took second place, 1:17 behind Kyburz. Gustav Bergman (Sweden) finished third at +1:52. These three were in their own league today – Olav Lundanes in fourth was more than 4 minutes behind.

In the women’s class Tove Alexandersson took the third World Cup win in a row – this time nearly 4 minutes ahead of Swiss Sara Lüscher witn Swedish Emma Johansson in third. The big name on the long distance last year – Svetlana Mironovo – finished 7th, more than 9 minutes behind Alexandersson. Mari Fasting – second in the middle distance – ran the second best time but was disqualified after forgetting to punch the refreshment control. With her third victory Alexandersson showed that she is on a completely different level than the other athletes. As a ski-orienteer with competition season both summer and winter Alexandersson is used to being in shape at this time of year – still her domination in the Tasmania World Cup races have been extraordinary.

The next World Cup race is June 3rd(!) in Halden. The shape of the athletes might have changed a bit in the next 5 months, but Alexandersson has nevertheless got a solid lead.

Terrain photo World Cup Long distance. Photo from Lilian Forsgren @ Instagram

Analysis Men

With no GPS-tracking available for this race, a full analysis will have to wait until the athletes publish their route choices. For now it is possible to do a split time analysis to understand where the race was decided. As expected the long leg to the third control (see separate article here) was very decisive. Today’s winner Matthias Kyburz was 51 seconds faster than Fredrik Johansson in 2nd – with Daniel Hubmann and Gustav Bergman both losing more than a minute. Only 9 runners lost less than 3 minutes to Kyburz on this leg.

Even though this long leg takes a lot of attention, the fight for victory in this 3rd World Cup race of the season was decided just as much on the short, tricky legs as on this long one. Comparing Kyburz and Hubmann, Hubmann loses more than a minute to control 9 and half a minute to control 12.

Looking at the splits graph for the top 6, it looks quite evident that Matthias Kyburz had very high speed with many flat sections indicating that he has the best split time of all athletes at this section. Kuburz did some mistakes though – notably on the short leg to control 18 and on the route choice leg to 21. Daniel Hubmann in second lost more to the best split time than the two minutes he is behind Kyburz in the part of the course with middle distance characteristics between control 7 and 12 (see map for this part of the course below), but Kyburz definitely did a better race overall and deserved the victory.

Swedish Fredrik Johansson was in second place until the 15th control and was on his way to a very good race, but lost time towards the end of the race – especially on the long leg to control 21 – and in the end had to settle for 5th spot. Gustav Bergman had a bad start – losing nearly two minutes on the first two control – but a steady race on the rest of the course brought him up to third in the end. Reigning World Champion middle distance, Olav Lundanes has a curve going steady downwards – and either didn’t have a top day in this terrain, or did small mistakes all the way through the race.

Analysis Women

The women had two long legs – the 2.2 km long leg to the 3rd control being the longest. This leg was not as complex as the men’s, and the time differences among the top runners were not very big. Down to Svetlana Mironovo in 14th there was less than 2 minutes on this leg. Tove Alexandersson did not run well on this leg – losing 20 seconds to Helena Karlsson’s best time. A left variant seems to be the best on this leg (see quick analysis here), but again we will have to wait for the athletes to make any firm conclusions.

The leg to the 16th control was the other long leg. Again the leg is not very complex – and again Tove Alexandersson loses time. Mari Fasting (disqualified) run a very strong performance here, winning the leg with more than 40 seconds – with 1:35 to Sabine Hauswirth in 3rd. The leg seems simple – the obvious choice is to use the track to the left – but there are micro routechoices with respect to how you solve the areas with poor runnability. According to Fasting’s coach Kenneth Buch, Fasting did not do anything out of the ordinary on this leg: “Left out of the control, then along the yellow to the path, the path and then along the green at the hill side, trough the green straight.”

Looking at the splits graph, you can see that the race for victory is quite tight between Tove Alexandersson, Emma Johansson and Ida Bobach until the 9th control. At this point in the course Alexandersson catches Sara Lüscher with 3 minutes – and turns on the turbo. This takes Alexandersson to a 4 minute win. Lüscher manages to nearly run with Alexandersson in all of the technical part of the course until control 15; this strong middle part of the race is enough to take Lüscher into second position overall.