World Cup Final 2018: All You Need To Know!

The overall orienteering World Cup will be decided a sprint-dominated long weekend in Czech Republic from Thursday October 4th until Sunday October 7th. The World Cup final weekend consists of a Knock-out sprint event on Thursday, a Sprint Relay on Friday, a Middle distance on Saturday and a regular Sprint race on Sunday. 

The races will be broadcast live on webTV (using a new service provider) – and GPS-tracking will also be available. Just like the two last years(!), Matthias Kyburz and Tove Alexandersson are leaders in the overall World Cup before this last round. In the Team World Cup (Relay and Sprint Relay) Switzerland is in the lead ahead of Norway.

The two first races will be organized in the Czech capital Prague, while the two last races take us to the north of Czech Republic – to Turnov and Mladá Boleslav.  While three of the races are Sprint races, the Middle distance on Saturday in Turnov looks like it will be something completely different, with a very technically demanding terrain giving some interesting orienteering challenges (see old map below).

Special interest is also found for the Knock-out Sprint – the new sprint format for which the final form is being tested in this World Cup round. The forking in quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals will be based on the self-choice model (and possibly also other forking) – it will be very interesting to see how well this works in a start field containing the best sprint orienteers in the world.

Knock-Out Sprint format:
Qualification: 3 parallel heats with interval start 1 minute, first 12 runners are qualified to quarter-finals.
Quarter-finals: 6 quarter-finals with 6 runners each. The 3 leading runners in each quarter-final qualify for the semi-finals.
Semi-finals: 3 semi-finals with 6 runners each. The 2 leading runners in each semi-final qualify for the final.
Final: 6 runners in the final race.

Links & Live services

• World Cup final webpage (start lists and all relevant info will be available from here)
• World Cup final LIVE page
  • There will be LIVE webTV-broadcast for EUR 6 for the Knock-out Sprint here
  • LIVE webTV-broadcast links for other races should be available from the World Cup final LIVE page
  • Payment per race is 6 EUR, it is not possible to buy a package for all races
  • IOF has made a document describing the details on following the live TV, including the usual disclaimers
• Current World Cup standing individual
• Current World Cup standing Team
• Bulletin 4 – all latest information about the races

See below for the live TV broadcast overview.

Program

• Thursday October 4th: Knock-out Sprint
  • Qualification from 09:30 CET
  • Quarterfinals from 11:45
  • Semi-finals from 15:30
  • Finals from 16:47
• Friday October 5th: Sprint Relay
  • Start 15:30. Finish around 16:30
• Saturday October 6th:Middle
  • First start 11:30
  • Last start around 14:40
• Sunday October 7th: Sprint
  • Start women from 10:15 (to 10:54)
  • Start men from 11:20 (to 11:59)

Overall World Cup standing before World Cup final

Men: Matthias Kyburz, Daniel Hubmann or Olav Lundanes

Just like we have seen several times before, the battle for the overall World Cup will be between  last year’s winner Swiss Matthias Kyburz and his team mate Daniel Hubmann. Norwegian Olav Lundanes is not far behind, but with a Sprint dominated World Cup final this may be too tough for the Norwegian Long and Middle distance specialist (even if Lundanes recently won the Finnish Championships Sprint).

Women: Alexandersson or Gemperle

In the women’s class the overall World Cup winner from the last four seasons Tove Alexandersson (Sweden) is the big favourite to take the fifth in a row. Natalia Gemperle, Russia – but living in Switzerland, has a more than 260 points gap up to Alexandersson, a gap which is probably too big to catch.