10Mila 2016: All You Need To Know!

One of the main highlights of the spring season is coming up on Saturday & Sunday morning: 10Mila in Falun, Sweden. With increased focus on high quality webTV broadcast this year, spectators both at home and on the arena in Sweden can expect highly entertaining competitions. 

The start for the men’s relay is at 20:30 CET with the winners expected in the finish at 7:00 – that’s half an hour more than last year. The women start at 14:15 CET with estimated time for winners to finish at around 18:30 CET. 

WebTV production

This year’s webTV broadcast is extended with a 10Mila studio production Friday evening (at no cost; free to watch for everyone) where there will be interviews and pre-talk about the race. Here the course setters and map drawers will visit along with selected athletes.

The main broadcast is also extended compared to previous years. There will be 2 different webTV-broadcasts this year. One Swedish with Per Forsberg/Fredrik Löwegren and one English/Finnish with Antti Örn along with guests. Further, the forest speaker is replaced by a reporter with camera – and thus we will see a lot more from the forest than we are used to. On the GPS-side there will be an interesting new way to visualize the groups which will be used live for the first time at 10Mila – and there are also plans to make more analysis than earlier [Disclaimer: The author of this article will be part of the webTV-production working with the GPS-tracking].

Live services

There are a number of Live services available to follow 10mila 2016. If you have 150 SEK to spend (down from 195 SEK last year), a combination of webTV and  live results is probably the best way to follow the event.

• Online results and speaker sound (free) + live webTV  will be offered
• Update: Link to free webTV 10Mila studio Friday evening
• Android, iOS (iPhone, iPad) and, Windows 8 apps for following live result

     

• Live GPS tracking will  only be available via Web TV (and not in GPSSeuranta) during the event – full tracking is usually made public after the event. Tracking is planned for all legs in both men’s and women’s relay

Useful links:

• PM (preliminary)
• 10Mila webpage
• Online results and speaker sound (free) + live webTV  will be offered

Will the three dark middle distance legs decide the relay?

This year several night-legs with middle distance character have been introduced. For the men three middle distance type legs with estimated winning time between 31 and 34 minutes are introduced just after the long night  (“Långa natten”; 16.6 km with 100 minutes estimated winning time). These shorter legs might very well be the place in the relay were some teams loose the leader group. The long night is back at leg number 4 (after a brief visit as 3rd leg last year).

These shorter legs might very well be the place in the relay were some teams loose the leader group

Only one leg is unforked in the men’s class – the long night leg (4th). For those planning to see the show of the best night orienteers in the world, be prepared at 16 minutes after midnight.

Looking at the terrain, this year offers a lot more hills then we are used to from Sweden. With Lugnet ski stadium in Falun as arena, the hilly area which is used for skiing at winter time will now be used for orienteering.

Decisive middle for the women as well?

In the women’s class all legs are forked this year – a big difference from last year were the very long 4th leg (10.5 km) was unforked. Instead the 4th leg is short with middle distance characteristics for the women this year – with estimated winning time of 31 minutes. The last leg is again a long leg – with 9.7 km.