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 |