World of O News
Switzerland won a clear victory in the European Orienteering Championships (EOC) 2021 Sprint Relay on homeground in Neuchatel today, nearly a minute ahead of Sweden with Norway in third place. This was exactly the same podium as in the last EOC in 2018 – also organized in Switzerland.
Simona Aebersold, Joey Hadorn, Matthias Kyburz and Elena Roos ran on the Swiss gold medal team. Hadorn opened up a gap to Sweden’s Gustav Bergman on the second leg – a gap which Sweden never managed to close. The gold and silver medals of Switzerland and Sweden looked certain already after two legs, while Norway’s fans had to sit tight until the second part of the last leg when it got clear that anchor Andrine Benjaminesen had higher speed than Czech Republic’s Tereza Janosikova.
The orienteering was not very tricky in the flat seaside part of Neuchatel, and running speed seemed to be the most important differentiator between the teams. The organizers did introduce some “labyrinthic elements” using artificial barriers to introduce some additional orienteering challenges – and this actually got several runners to lose some seconds in front of the camera.
The championships continues with Knock-Out Sprint Qualification on Friday at 15:00 CET – find all information about the EOC-races here. Here is a direct link to the start list of Friday’s races.
Maps and GPS-tracking
Maps from EOC Sprint Relay:
GPS-tracking:
Results
See results below – full results in Eventor.
