WOC 2024 Knock-Out Sprint: Analysis, Maps and Results

Tove Alexandersson (Sweden) and Riccardo Rancan (Switzerland) won the World Orienteering Championships (WOC) Knock-Out Sprint – the last race of the championships. Silver and bronze went to Karolin Ohlsson (Sweden) and Simona Aebersold (Switzerland) in the women’s class, and Jørgen Baklid (Norway) and Jonatan Gustafsson (Sweden) in the men’s class.

While the men’s race was a highly tactical race where all runners seemed to play the waiting game, nobody willing to break out of the pack to try something on their own until the very end, the women’s race was a lot more exciting with the field splitting up several times. See below for a recap and analysis of the race development in the finals. Below the analysis you will find maps, links to GPS-tracking and links to results.

Analysis

Men Final

The men’s final looked like a tactical game where Sweden’s Sprint World Champion Martin Regborn took the lead from the start, and nobody wanted to challenge him with other routechoices, although there were clearly some legs where other routechoices might have been faster (more about that in the women’s analysis where there was a lot more happening). But with all runners within 4-5 seconds, everybody was happy playing the waiting game.  The first runner taking an initiative was Swiss Riccardo Rancan who took another routechoice to the 7th control – running around the house on the right side while all the others ran around on the left side:

According to the post-race interview, his plan here was to gain a few positions ahead of the final controls. This small move actually brought Rancan from the 5th place in the grounp into the lead – a position he never gave away. Rancan had memorized the rest of the course and had a clear plan of where to run – and managed to run the final part of the course perfectly and take the win. The others ran along on the same route, but Martin Regborn, Johan Gustafsson and Joey Hadorn made a small mistake towards the last control (trying to go left too early), and here Norwegian Jørgen Baklid could pass them and run in to a silver medal. Gustafsson won the sprint among the rest and finished in third place.

Women Final

The women also started running together from the start, lead out by Megan Carter Davies – with Tove Alexandersson taking a fall early and therefore having to catch up instead of trying to pull away as she often does. At control 3 Simona Aebersold took over the lead, with Megan Carter Davies down in 4th, but only two seconds behind. The first real initiative to break out from the pack was done by Megan Carter Davies to the fourth control, where she decided to run right while the rest of the field ran left:

This move cost Megan Carter Davies two seconds, and suddenly she was last in the pack. Carter Davies did however seem to have a clear tactic to run her own race; on the long leg to the next control she again took a completely different choice – running to the right while all the others ran behind Aebersold to the left:

The commentators claimed that the course setters had said in the pre-race briefing that Carter Davies’ routechoice – giving a lot more climb – would be 20 seconds slower than going left, so at this point it seemed like  the British home favourite was out of the battle for victory. However, to the commentators big surprise, Carter Davies arrived 7 seconds ahead of Aebersold, with an even bigger gap to the rest of the field.

Continuing towards the 6th and 7th control – all along the same routechoices, it did however seem like Aebersold and Alexandersson had higher speed than Carter Davies, cutting the advantage of the British runner down to 7 seconds.

Then on the routechoice leg to the 8th control the field split in two ; Carter Davies runs left with Tove Alexandersson following, while Aebersold runs right with the rest of the field in tow. Alexandersson takes a route further to the right than Carter Davies, though, taking one corner instead of 6 at the cost of a bit longer distance (as always you need some imagination to understad where the runners ran):

It turned out that Alexandersson’s route was probably slightly faster than Carter Davies’, with Aebersold’s route being approximately equal to Alexanderssons. At the 8th control Alexandersson had a one second gap to Aebersold with Carter Davies at nearly the same time. However, Aebersold made a small mistake out of the 8th control, running 90 degrees wrong for 10-15 meters, which gave Alexandersson a small gap that she never gave away. Alexandersson managed to keep this gap all the way to the finish, with Karolin Ohlsson one step behind ; Carter Davies didn’t seem to have the speed to fight for the medals towards the end. On the finish straight Ohlsson was stronger than Aebersold and took the silver – to the tears of Alexandersson (it actually looked like Ohlsson’s silver tasted better to her than all of own 21 WOC gold medals).

Men Semi-finals: Graphical race development graphs

 

The decisive routechoice leg in the semi-finals was the leg to the 3rd control. In the second semi-final a poor routechoice to the left cost Robertson, Kirmula and Glonek the chance to battle for the final:

 

In addition, Emil Svensk and Jannis Bonek made a mistake towards the 3rd last control while leading the third semi-final, running up a wrong set of stairs (you cannot really see this from the GPS-tracking, but it was clear from the drone footage in the TV-broadcast). This is actually what opened up for Riccardo Rancan to get to the final – it didn’t look good for the Swiss World Champion before this mistake of the two leaders.

Women Semi-finals: Graphical race development graphs

Maps and GPS-tracking

Final

See map below. GPS-tracking links: men / women

Semi-final

See map below. GPS-tracking links: men / women

Quarter-final

See map below. GPS-tracking links: men / women

Qualification

See map for men heat 1 below. GPS-tracking links: men-1 / men-2 / men-3 / women-1 / women-2 / women-3

Results

Men Final

Plac	Name	Organisation	Time	Diff	Km time
1	Riccardo Rancan	SUI	7:35.60		3:36
2	Jorgen Baklid	NOR	7:36.70	+0:01.10	3:37
3	Jonatan Gustafsson	SWE	7:37.50	+0:01.90	3:37
4	Joey Hadorn	SUI	7:37.70	+0:02.10	3:37
5	Martin Regborn	SWE	7:38.79	+0:03.20	3:38
6	Alvaro Casado	ESP	7:44.70	+0:09.10	3:41

Women Final

 

Plac	Name	Organisation	Time	Diff	Km time
1	Tove Alexandersson	SWE	9:05.69		4:19
2	Karolin Ohlsson	SWE	9:10.40	+0:04.70	4:22
3	Simona Aebersold	SUI	9:11.00	+0:05.30	4:22
4	Cecile Calandry	FRA	9:12.79	+0:07.10	4:23
5	Megan Carter Davies	GBR	9:21.00	+0:15.30	4:27
6	Venla Harju	FIN	9:27.79	+0:22.10	4:30

 

Men Top 25

 

Plac	Name	Organisation	Time	Diff	Km time
1	Riccardo Rancan	SUI	finished
2	Jorgen Baklid	NOR	finished
3	Jonatan Gustafsson	SWE	finished
4	Joey Hadorn	SUI	finished
5	Martin Regborn	SWE	finished
6	Alvaro Casado	ESP	finished
7	Ferenc Jonas	HUN	finished
8	Jonas Hubacek	CZE	finished
9	Kasper Harlem Fosser	NOR	finished
10	Loic Capbern	FRA	finished
11	Miika Kirmula	FIN	finished
11	Yannick Michiels	BEL	finished
13	Tim Robertson	NZL	finished
14	Tomas Krivda	CZE	finished
14	Teemu Oksanen	FIN	finished
16	Timo Suter	SUI	finished
16	Emil Svensk	SWE	finished
18	Jannis Bonek	AUT	finished
18	Jonathan Crickmore	GBR	finished
18	Jakub Glonek	CZE	finished
21	Mathias Barros Vallet	FRA	finished
21	Elias Jonsson	NOR	finished
21	Mathias Peter	AUT	finished
21	David Rojas	ESP	finished
25	Mattia Debertolis	ITA	finished
25	Adrien Delenne	FRA	finished
25	Pablo Ferrando	ESP	finished
25	Nathan Lawson	GBR	finished
25	Francesco Mariani	ITA	finished
25	Ralph Street	GBR	finished

Women Top 25

 

Plac	Name	Organisation	Time	Diff	Km time
1	Tove Alexandersson	SWE	finished
2	Karolin Ohlsson	SWE	finished
3	Simona Aebersold	SUI	finished
4	Cecile Calandry	FRA	finished
5	Megan Carter Davies	GBR	finished
6	Venla Harju	FIN	finished
7	Hanna Lundberg	SWE	finished
8	Natalia Gemperle	SUI	finished
9	Victoria Haestad Bjornstad	NOR	finished
10	Maelle Beauvir	FRA	finished
10	Nerea Gonzalez	ESP	finished
12	Evely Kaasiku	EST	finished
13	Tereza Janosikova	CZE	finished
14	Paula Gross	SUI	finished
14	Eef van Dongen	NED	finished
16	Ida Agervig Kristiansson	DEN	finished
17	Isia Basset	FRA	finished
17	Pia Young Vik	NOR	finished
19	Maija Sianoja	FIN	finished
20	Ana Isabel Toledo	ESP	finished
21	Alva Sonesson	SWE	finished
22	Maria Prieto	ESP	finished
23	Lizzie Ingham	NZL	finished
23	Rita Maramarosi	HUN	finished
25	Viktoria Mag	HUN	finished

• Full results