World of O News
The orienteering elite of tomorrow have arrived in hot Soria, Spain – and are ready for Friday’s long distance which marks the start of this years European Youth Orienteering Championships (EYOC). Demanding and varied terrain never previously used for orienteering awaits the runners -you can follow the championships live via GPS tracking, live results, speaker sound and LiveBlog.
EYOC is usually the first international competition arena for promising athletes. Several EYOC winners have proceeded to win the Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) later on. Both of the 2008 EYOC winners over the long distance – Matthias Kyburz and Ida Bobach – won JWOC gold medals the following year.
Interesting challenges
More than 300 competitors from 29 countries will participate in this years EYOC. The long distance on Friday will go in pine forested mountain terrain with many rock elements – the forest partly being dense, whereas other parts have very good runnability. The terrain for Saturday’s relay is completely different – half of the terrain being open, the other half covered with an oak tree forest – full of stones and rock details, given interesting challenging for the runners. Finally the sprint on Sunday is set around the city center of Soria and surrounding parks.
Program:
- Friday July 2nd: Long distance. First start 11:00 CET
- Saturday July 3rd: Relay. Start men 11:00 CET. Start women: 11:10 CET
- Sunday July 4th: Sprint. First start 10:00 CET
Temperatures are currently around 30 degrees Celsius – and with the first start as late as 11:00, this might get very tough for the runners. The forecast indicates some rain for the long distance on Friday, so the runners might be lucky.
Tracking is provided by TracTrac – 40 runners will be tracked in both the long distance and in the relay.
EYOC webpage
All information about EYOC 2010 is available on the EYOC webpage:
LiveBlog directly from Soria
In tight cooperation with the EYOC organizers, World of O will administer a LiveBlog from all EYOC competitions. The LiveBlog will be administered directly from the events – giving you all the action and answers to all your questions. If you have any questions regarding EYOC, feel free to ask in the LiveBlog below at any time. Comments will generally only be moderated/answered during the events – but questions which are asked at other times will be answered later on. All Tweets (via Twitter) with the hash-tags #eyoc or #eyoc2010 will go directly into the LiveBlog without moderation.
Disclaimer: Note that the EYOC organizers have supported World of O with travel costs in order to be present at EYOC to cover the event.
