Route to Christmas: Day 6 2022

New day – new country in the 2022 edition of Route to Christmas. Today we travel to Denmark and the World Orienteering Championships Sprint. The chosen leg is the second leg in both the men’s and women’s course – a leg that proved to be very decisive.

The tip comes from Johan Aagard (thanks a lot!), who writes:

In my opinion there are especially two legs that are very interesting, because they probably were decisive for the total result of the WOC Sprint. Both legs were used in both mens and womens finals which shows that the courses were planned around these legs. Leg 1-2 is very interesting in the beginning of the course, so the runners will probably not have been able to read forward and plan that much. Especially because the first leg is short and detailed. Leg 1-2 is characterized by a lot of fences which makes the navigation and route choices even harder. It is quite important to have a good start on a sprint course so everyone will have the feeling that they might not choose the fastest route.

Aagard suggested both the leg to the second control (chosen here) and the leg to control 19 for the men and 16 for the women (also a very interesting leg, not included here today, though). 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 how the runners have solved this leg below. We start with the men – green is faster, red is slower:

A very decisive leg with several distinct routechoices. Several of the top men took the wrong choice here, including Michiels and Key. Clearly going left is fastest, with Michels and Key along with many other outside the Top-6 going right.  Aagard writes:

Kasper Fosser (NOR) (Later winning) is taking one of the middle routechoices and has (one of) the fastest leg times of 1:30 and is in front. As an example of struggling with the need for precision is Tim Robertson (NZL) who was acually 2nd in his qualifying heat. He makes a mistake in the beginning of the leg, ending up in a closed alley which costs him half a minute. 

Here are selected men’s choices and split times:

Here are all the women:

Carter Davies was 8 seconds faster than the other Top-6 finishers here, but two of them (Leake and Benjaminsen) also run the fastest routechoice. Alexandersson runs in a wrong alley and in addition does a double-miss in taking the wrong routechoice (to the right) losing 25 seconds to Carter Davies. Simona Aebersold does a mistake early on the leg but then afterwards takes the fastest routechoice – but still loses significant time (17 seconds).

Aagard writes:

Megan Carter Davies (GBR), winner, is taking the same routechoice as Kaser Fosser and has as well the fastest leg time. One of the biggest favorites Tove Alexanderson did a mistake just after control number 1, and ran into a closed ally (another one than Tim Robertson) and she lost as well approximately half a minute which was about the 29 seconds she was after the winner in the end.

Here are the routes and split times of the top women:

Density map

See below for a density map of some of the ones who have drawn their routes so far (available during the day when some readers have drawn their route).

Additional information

You find the complete map in omaps.worldofo.com at this location.

Route to Christmas series

The Route to Christmas series is a pre-Christmas tradition at World of O – giving the readers the opportunity to do one Route Choice Challenge each day from December 1st until December 24th. If you have got any good legs in GPSSeuranta, 3DRerun or Livelox from 2022-competitions, or old forgotten ones which are still interesting, please email me the link at Jan@Kocbach.net, and I’ll consider including it in Route to Christmas if it looks good. Route to Christmas will not be interesting if YOU don’t contribute.

Not all legs are taken for the interesting routechoice alternatives – some are also taken because the map is interesting – or because it is not straightforward to see what to do on a certain leg. Any comments are welcome – especially if you ran the event chosen for todays leg!