WOC intention form deadline

Hi All,

The WOC 2010 intention form deadline (December 31st) is fast approaching.

If you have still to return the form - even if you do not intend to take part in WOC or the selection races - please do so by the deadline.

Thanks and Happy New Year to all.

Ivan

WOC 2010 selection policy

WOC 2010 selection policy documents and athlete intention forms are now available here: http://irisheliteorienteering.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/woc-selection-policy-now-available/


All athletes interested in selection for the WOC 2010 team should complete and return an athlete intention form to the convenor of selectors, Ivan Millar by December 31st 2009.

Any athlete who cannot attend the selection races will be judged on their performances at 3 major events during spring 2010 (Irish champs, JK festival)
These events must be nominated to the convenor of selectors on an athlete intention form before December 31st 2009.

Ivan Millar
Director HPO

Ireland third in Senior Home International after great relay performances

Above: Men's relay course on Crossmurin

The Senior Home International was held in conjunction with the Northern Ireland orienteering championships this weekend in Co. Fermanagh. The individual courses on Saturday were tough in both the forest and the open areas of the Burren. Scotland dominated M21 while England were unstoppable in W21. In a close contest, Wales were two points ahead of Ireland overnight. Patrick Higgins (10th) and Darren Burke (12th) led the Irish challenge in M21, while the Irish M20's impressed with Ruairi Short 5th, Kevin O'Boyle 8th and Niall Ewen 9th. In the M20 class, a mere 3 minutes separated third and eighth place, so any loss of time was costly. This was also the case in the W21 class, where 4th to 13th place were seperated by 6 minutes. Niamh O'Boyle (7th) was the top Irish finisher. In W20E, our sole representative Katarina Stefkova had a solid performance finishing in 9th place.

An evening of running analysis with Irish senior squad manager Ivan Miller and Irish team coach Kim Andre followed, and must have had a good effect on the Irish team as they brought their best performances to the relay on Crossmurin on Sunday. The team of Patrick Higgins, Darren Burke and Ruairi Short had a superb result to finish 3rd (of the scoring teams) behind the two Scottish teams and ahead of both English teams. The team of Kevin O'Boyle, Seamus O'Boyle and Gerard Butler followed this with a 6th place finish both Welsh teams. With a good points score from the men's relay, the fate of the battle with Wales lay in the women's relay. Niamh O'Boyle brought the team home in 3rd, just ahead of Wales, but they managed to get ahead of Katarina Stefkova on the second leg with a good run by W20 individual champion Anwen Darlington. Ciara Largey had a tough task, but rose to the challenge magnificantly to pass the Welsh team on the last leg to ensure overall third place and victory over Wales! Scotland retained their overall SHI team title, followed by England with Ireland 3rd and Wales 4th.

Overall points:
ENG SCO IRE WAL
M20 5 7 3 1
M21 6 8 2 4
W20 3 7 1 5
W21 8 6 4 2
Individual Total 22 28 10 12

Men 9 15 9 3
Women 15 11 4 3
Relay Total 24 26 13 6

Overall
1. Scotland 54
2. England 46
3. Ireland 23
4. Wales 18

SHI 2009, Individual Irish results

M20E
1. Alasdair McLeod (Scotland) 58:51
2. Hector Haines (Scotland) 62:38
3. Peter Hodkinson (England) 64:29
5. Ruairi Short (Ireland) 66:02
8. Kevin O'Boyle (Ireland) 67:31
9. Niall Ewen (Ireland) 86:14

W20E
1. Anwen Darlington (Wales) 53:52
2. Hollie Orr (Scotland) 54:20
3. Anne Edwards (England) 56:54
9. Katarina Stefkova (Ireland) 76:26

M21E
1. Scott Fraser (Scotland) 82:39
2. Oleg Chepelin (Scotland) 82:52
3. Doug Tullie (Scotland) 91:19
10. Patrick Higgins (Ireland) 104:40
12. Darren Burke (Ireland) 106:48
17. Gerard Butler (Ireland) 135:39
mp Steven Linton
mp Seamus O'Boyle
dns Colm Hill

W21E
1. Rachel Elder (England) 62:52
2. Pippa Whitehouse (England) 66:30
3. Victoria Stevens (England) 68:02
7. Niamh O'Boyle (Ireland) 71:53
13. Ciara Largey (Ireland) 75:41
15. Rosalind Hussey (Ireland) 80:12
17. Violet Linton (Ireland) 91:40
18. Ruth Lynam (Ireland) 91:45
20. Maeve O'Grady (Ireland) 92:41

Full individual results here: http://www.niorienteering.org.uk/res/2009/NIOC/sat/index.html
Relay results here: http://www.niorienteering.org.uk/res/2009/NIOC/sun/relay/index.html

Below: Niamh's route in W21 on the Burren

WOC 2010 build-up blog

A new Irish elite blog has been launched.

The blog highlights the squads annual build-up to the season highlight - the World champs.

Please make this blog a favourite and visit it as often as possible as it is hoped to be a valuable source of info for all elite athletes preparing for WOC.

You can visit the blog here: http://irisheliteorienteering.wordpress.com/

Irish elite attackpoint group

All members of the Irish elite squad are invited to join the new Irish elite attackpoint group.

Attackpoint is a valuable training diary facility already used by a number of squad members.

It is hoped that all squad members will join up and benefit from this excellent training tool.

The group can be found here: http://www.attackpoint.org/group.jsp/group_157

Irish team for Senior Home International 2009

The Senior Home International is an annual competition held between Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England. This year it is being held in Co. Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. The individual race will take place on the Burren on Saturday 3rd October and the relay will be held on Crossmurin on Sunday 4th October. The competition is being held in conjunction with the Northern Ireland orienteering championships and promises tough and technical orienteering. The Irish team has been selected as follows (alphabetical order):

W20: Katarina Stefko (LVO)

M20: Niall Ewen (CNOC), Kevin O'Boyle (CNOC), Ruairi Short (CNOC)

W21: Rosalind Hussey (FermO), Ciara Largey (FermO), Violet Linton (LVO), Ruth Lynam (CNOC), Niamh O'Boyle (CNOC/DUO), Maeve O'Grady (CNOC/DFO)

M21: Gerard Butler (3Roc), Darren Burke (CorkO), Patrick Higgins (LVO), Colm Hill (CNOC), Steven Linton (NWOC), Seamus O'Boyle (CNOC)

Map extracts from Crossmurin and the Burren

Pre-WOC training in Trondheim

NORWAY

The five of us (Andrew, Darren, myself, Kieren and Neil) arrived last Thursday/Friday and have begun preparations for next years world champs in Trondheim, Norway. Training has being tough; we've been to hell and back already.

But still we've managed to keep a smile on our face.



















It's the marshes that will require some serious amount of strength and speed, and the hills also demanding hill strength.

We've attended the "how to Orienteer in Trondheim" lecture along with all the other big national teams and we have some posed questions to begin exploring, to hopefully provide the answers to next year in August.




















The road will be long and tough going if we're to be able to run and navigate respectably in Trondheim next Summer. From time to time you should hear more about our preparations and training camps for the Trondheim WOC. I (David) have just completed my second training camp here, and I leave tomorrow morning along with Darren to leave Neil, Andrew and Kieren to continue training. Hopefully they'll post something to this blog with more map samples along the way.


























We hope some Irish people might think about running the WOC spectator race called the "WOC tour". It's basically a mutiday festival that is run alongside the WOC leaving enough time to to spectate the races. Trondheim is certainly an Orienteering experience you will never forget!

Squad coach for 2010 WOC build-up

I am pleased to announce to Irish squad members the offer of help with technical training from a young Norwegian orienteer Kim Andre.

Kim would like to work with squad members to improve their running and orienteering technique. He would like all squad members to complete and return a short questionnaire about themselves and a recent photo.

It is planned that Kim will assess individual and team requirements and take part in team training camps in the build up to next years major competitions.

Here is a brief introduction from Kim:

Hello, I was born 5th of July 1983. From Brandbu, 1hr drive north of Oslo. I Started orienteering at 3 years old. My best results are 12th place in junior NM, and 35 th in senior NM. I have been troubled with injuries my whole career, so I have never reached any of my goals. Now I want to help others reach theirs.

I have competed and trained in a lot of sports like football, athletics, cross country running and skiing, ski orienteering, mtb orienteering and cycling.

I am a certified pose method of running coach, and would recommend all runners to watch the page posetech.com to learn more about running technique. My coaching philosophy is to focus on both running technique and orienteering technique. I feel that is where most athletes have the most to gain.

I have a bachelors degree in business administration from the Norwegian school of management. Now I have started on my bachelors degree in sports coaching in Falun, Sweden. My interests include travelling, sports, cars, tv, and computer games.

Feel free to ask if there is something specific you want to know.

Best regards Kim André.

I feel it is important that all Irish squad members take this opportunity to gain from Kim's help.

I will be sending out Kim's questionnaire to all squad members.

WOC 2010 Training camp

Five members of the Irish elite squad are getting a taste of the terrains surrounding Trondheim, Norway. They (Andrew, Darren, David, Kieran and Neil) are taking part in the first official training camp for next years World Champs to be held in Trondheim next August.

The training camp is being well attended by other national teams preparing for the competition including the Swedes, French, Czech and British teams.

Friday saw the Irish boys heading to Selbu OKlubb for a regional champs event, the first race was a sprint - Andrew showed good speed coming 7th, Neil was 14th, Darren 20th and Kieran 25th. Full results available here: http://resultat.selbu.org/20090904/resultat/H21.HTM

Saturday was the long distance race and attracted a very large field of the worlds top orienteers.

1st was David Andersson of the Swedish team just 12 seconds ahead of the legendary Thierry Gueorgiou and 3rd placed Norwegian Holger Hott. Fastest of the Irish was David coming in a very respectable 51st, Andrew continued his good form coming in 62nd, Neil and Darren were 71st and 72nd.

Full results available here:

http://resultat.selbu.org/20090905/resultat/H21.HTM

The team now head to the forests for 3 days of technique training before taking in the Norwegian champs on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Drama and Excitement at WOC Relay

In our final race of the week, the Irish had reason to cheer, with our best relay performances since 2004 for the men and 1995 for the women!

The men were off first with the goal to run well and if possible, beat the reasonably strong peer nation teams USA and Canada. Dave Healy ran a solid race on the shorter first leg, coming in 10 minutes down from the leaders but 7 minutes down on the flying Americans [well done Ross Smith, pictured leaving the

spectator control!]. Happily, we were only a

minute behind the Canadian star Patrick Goeres, and 3 minutes ahead of German speed-demon Lubina.

Nicholas Simonin went out second, was overtaken

by the strong German and New Zealand runners but brought us to within striking distance (4-6 minutes) of the teams ahead, Canada, USA and Portugal.

I (Neil) went out on the final leg with energy in the legs and a good feeling about this race. Already by the fourth control CAN was caught and passed. At the tricky 5th, I saw USA and a couple of other teams. I took a contour through green route to the 6th as the others went up the hill and then down the ridge, equivalent, except I guess my route took less energy. Three controls later I established a small lead on the nearby runners which I extended until the 13th, where a one minute mistake let USA and POR back into the game. A different forking allowed me get away again and I had a small lead going through the spectator control.

By this stage the race had taken a surreal twist. Martin Johansson (SWE), in the lead with NOR, CZE, and FRA, impaled himself with a stick into his leg, going 12cm deep. Nordberg, Smola and Gueorgiou gave up their medal chances by coming to his aid, with Gueorgiou using is O-top as a bandage to lessen the bleeding. As they said, if someone as tough as Johansson is screaming in pain, he must be badly hurt (apparently he told the to continue their race!). This is one of the finest examples of sportsmanship and the three men earned a lot of respect today!

Oblivious to the drama, I carried on through to the short spectator loop. I tried to make all the controls simple with safe attack points and good flow. This worked fine until the third last

where, within 20m of the control, nothing made sense. It was a rough open area with scattered knolls on the map and vegetation hiding the broken terrain. Trying to control the adrenaline, I went from bump to bump when the Portugese junior and top runner (he qualified for the sprint final the day before) Tiago Romao appeared on the scene. I spotted the control just before him. The last two controls were straightforward and I outran Tiago to the finish and 22nd place (would have been 26th without the stick incident).

Eddie (USA) arrived a couple of minutes later, followed by FRA, NOR and CZE who had returned to finish their race after seeing Johansson to safety. The three runners received prolonged and well-deserved applause from the spectating crowd.

In the women's race, Ciara Largey got the girls off to a steady start, leaving Aislinn Austin, back in an Irish jersey after several years of absence, in position to

run strongly to overtake the Croatian and Japanese teams. Ros Hussey, pictured, held the position, finishing ten minutes ahead of the challenging teams Croatia, Japan and Turkey. 21st is a good result and the team is confident they can do even better in the future!!

A World of O report on the relay with (currently broken) links to the maps.

World of O has a great page detailing

past performances at WOC sorted by country:

More photos.

Bring on the Long Final and the BANQUET!!!

Sprint Day!

Today was the Sprint Qual and Sprint Final. It was held in a forested area to the west of Miskolc. As the pre start closed at 0900 it resulted in all runners having an early morning. The men’s race went off first with the start in the assembly area. Shane Lynch was the first starter of the Irish. Shane was happy with his run in heat A. He finished in a time of 18:11.0 in 29^th.

Second out of the Irish was Colm Hill. He wasn’t too happy with his run losing 1:30min after the spectator control. Even without this mistake he was still off the pace finishing in 19:37.0, 26^th.

The run of the day was with Nick Simonin. He raced a strong race in heat C. One costly 30sec mistake saw him miss a place in the final by 4seconds. He crossed the line in 16:22.0, 16^th.

Tomorrow morning is the relay. The Irish Team is David Healy on first leg, Nick Simonin on 2 and Neil Dobbs running anchor. It kicks off at 10.00am irish time!

In the womens race, Ciara was the first of the girls to hit the forest. “Some small mistakes but nothing major. I was probably too cautious in the forest which cost time as well but I enjoyed it. Looking forward to the relay tomorrow.”

With Ciara in, the team waited for Roz to enter the open area with the last few technical controls. As she entered the open ground she was flooring it, racing head to head against two other girls. It was confirmed after when her last 4 splits were all top 10. Although all was not as it seemed according to Roz after her race, "Today I had the legs for the sprint, but not the head. The large scale in the forest kind of messes with your mind. Had 2 controls where I stood about confused for a bit before realising what was happening! Those were 2 pretty costly controls when the pace was so fast. Should have easily saved 6min."

The Irish relay team tomorrow is Ciara Largey, Aislinn Austin with Rosalind Hussey bringing the team home. The girls hit the forest at 13:45 once the guys have made the tracks ;)

Colm out

It's on

Today is a rest day and some of us went out training on the relay model map in preparation for Fridays relay. In the afternoon Rosalind and Ciara went out to the sprint model map to get ready for Thursdays sprint. Tomorrow is the middle final and although we haven't any Irish representation in the race you should find watching it live an exciting experience. Click here for the live page with all the gps tracking and video links.


Some pictures from todays opening ceremony...

WOC long quali

Today the Long distance qualification was held to the west of yesterdays middle distance area. The terrain was very similar, on one big hill with big valleys and spurs to make interesting route choices. It demanded a lot of height control and strong legs to power up the hills.

Nick ran in the A heat, the heat of death which was won by Graham Gristwood who was just ahead of the last 3 world champions! Mats Haldin from Finland was the last to qualify just 3 minutes down!

“I started with some small mistakes. But got into it after the 3^rd control. Ran clean enough until the spectator. Was caught by Khramov with 8 min at the 10^th control but was dropped by him on a major uphill to the 18^th.Made a 1min mistake at the second last but didn’t make a huge difference in terms of qualifying. Made about 5min in mistakes so even with a clean run wouldn’t have been near the tough qualifying time. Good experience for future WOCs.

Colm ran in heat B where Baptiste Rollier won. “Started off probably a bit hard and paid for it by missing the first control – one of them 13 contour error types. Apart from the first blip technically i was fine but physically I just wasn’t at the races. I couldn’t get out of first gear at all. After taking the previous week off I’m very disappointed that I wasn’t up to it physically. Looks like its back to the drawing board for 2010!”

Ruairi was in heat C that was won by the Frenchman Thierry Gueorgiou.

“I struggled to cope with the physicality of the terrain, I started feeling tired on some of the big climbs so I was glad of my energy gel at the spectator control!. Technically I had quite a good race, maybe not the best route choice on the long leg to the first and I missed no. 17 by about 25 seconds. I’ve learned a lot about where I am and know now what I need to do to improve in the future”

Rosalind was in heat A, Minna Kauppi won this by over two mins!

“I took it super careful on the long leg to the first control, but took it cleanly, so will be interesting to see what time Minna got at this control... Had one error late on when I veered off to the right and went through quite a tough bit of green to correct. I’m now stinging! Happy with my race though.”

Ciara ran in heat B, won by Simone Luder who looks like she’s in contention to win more medals this year.”I was a bit scrappy with my navigation, not really getting into the map at all which was unusual as ordinarily I quite like the long. I could feel yesterday’s middle in my legs and was tiring towards the end. No result in the end as I stupidly missed out the third last control, so a disappointing day.

Take a look at the men’s map:

http://media.coveritlive.com/media/image/200908/phpeaKtnhmen_s.jpg

and the women’s:

http://cdn.cloudfiles.mosso.com/c71692/media/image/200908/phpd9B47ywomen_s.jpg

Results:

Women 1

1 M Kauppi FIN 45:47

2 S Soes DEN +2:32

3 E Jureníková CZE +2:35

15 I Kazlauskaite LTU +9:29

26 R Hussey IRL +25:47

Women 2

1 S Niggli SUI 47:22

2 A Fincke FIN +0:26

3 A Hausken NOR +1:57

15 O Sluta UKR +9:59

C Largey IRL MP

Men 1

1 G Gristwood GBR 1:00:05

2 M Merz SUI +0:14

3 D Hubmann SUI +0:31

15 M Haldin FIN +3:22

24 N Simonin IRL +12:15

Men 2

1 B Rollier SUI 58:57

2 F Gonon FRA +1:06

3 MJohansson SWE +1:19

15 Z Lenkei HUN +8:54

35 C Hill IRL +38:07

Men 3

1 T Gueorgiou FRA 58:01

2 T Föhr FIN +1:24

3 Á Kovács HUN +2:23

15 D Tsvetkov RUS +6:31

35 R Short IRL +28:29

Special mention goes to Nick Simonin, who wins the ’Fanny pen’ for being the last Irish starter but missing his start time anyway – good job Nick!

Middle qualification

Yesterday was the middle distance qualification. The terrain was fast and a little hilly in parts with alot of tracks (that were hardly used) and some point features like limestone burning pits.

The team relaxing in the quarantine zone before the start:



Unfortunately no one made it into top 15 in their heats. Ciara ran well apart from one significant mistake, otherwise good. I (David) had 53seconds of misses in the circle but no mistakes, evidently i've more physical training to be done to earn a spot in the final. Neil gave a full detailed review of his race in his training log. For the horses mouth, click - here.


Today is the long qualification race held in the same place but on the other side of the finish area.
We will post to the blog this very evening about the long quali race and not the next morning like this post. Keep checking in over the week for any posts we have on the races or even rest day antics.

Two days left!

With only two days to go to the Middle Model, the Irish WOC team is getting excited! The first contingent has already arrived in Miskolc, Hungary and went out to the not-so-local forests to get a good feel for the terrain.

Team newbie and Irish JWOC star Nicholas Simonin was all butterflies and giggles, while Ros Hussey could hardly contain herself.

Manager Kyle had his hands full. Whether he'll have any hair left by the end of WOC week remains to be seen.

Old hand Neil remained safely behind the camera...

25 days to the start of WOC 2009

25 Day to go to the start of this years World orienteering champs in Hungary.

The Irish elite team are training hard and trying to stay injury-free in the run-up to the competition.

We are thankfull to Kyle Heron who has joined the team as WOC team manager. Kyle will be doing his best to help and support the Irish team during the week.

Race selections have been made for the team members and are as follows:

Neil Dobbs - Middle and Relay (3rd leg), David Healy - Middle and Relay (1st leg), Colm Hill -Sprint and Classic, Shane Lynch - Sprint and Middle, Ruairi Short - Classic ,Nicolas Simonin -Sprint, Classic and Relay (2nd leg).

Ciara Largey and Rosalind Hussey - Sprint, Middle and Classic.

Following Niamh's injury Ciara and Rosalind are the only runners on the womens team. There is a place on the womens team open for a willing and able orienteer - It would be great to be able to put out a Mens and Womens relay team. If there is a runner out there that you know who may be interested, please let them know that there is a place available to join Ciara and Rosalind on the team.

In the meantime keep an eye out here for updates on the teams progress at the champs.

Congratulations to the Irish junior squad members who performed superbly at this years JWOC in Italy.

There were some fantastic results from Niall, Kevin, Ruairi and Nicolas.

Nick was 49th in the Classic and placed a superb 44th in the middle A final. Ruairi ran well to gain 3rd place in the middle C final. Kevin showed his sprinting strength coming an impressive 71st in the sprint final. Niall had some strong runs in his first JWOC.

The relay team finished off a great competition with a storming run finishing just 2 seconds behind big rivals team GB.

Well done also to Ruth who's hard work with the juniors is really paying off!

We now look forward to Nick and Ruairi joining the senior squad as they compete against the big boys and girls at next months WOC in Hungary

Good luck at JWOC!

On behalf of the senior O squad I would like to wish the very best of our celtic luck to the junior team at this years Junior World Orienteering Champs (JWOC) in Italy. Two of the boys there are already scheduled to run for the senior team at this years senior WOC, Ruairi Short and Nicholas Simonin. And the other two juniors, Niall Ewen and Kevin O'Boyle, are two promising talents for the future. We'll all be watching very closely to the boys at JWOC and know that they are in great hands with Ruth Lynam on the sidelines.

!!!COME ON IRELAND!!!

WORLD CUP round 3 and 4 in Norway.

World cup round 3/4 is in Oslo, Norway. Round 3 is a middle distance, and round 4 is a chasing start long distance based on the times from round 3.

Irish starters in todays middle distance:
Ciara Largey - 12:47 (Irish time)
Marcus Pinker - 12:48 (Irish time)
Neil Dobbs - 13:28 (Irish time)

GPS / online results / arena speaker / web tv - http://app.o-festivalen.com/dp6/en/live
Start list - http://app.o-festivalen.com/dp6/en/start-lists-world-cup-friday
A second locatin for web tv (same footage) - http://www.nrksport.no/

Ciara is off in 35mins from now,
Enjoy!

WOC team manager

This year sees a bumper crop of elite Irish orienteers taking on the best at WOC2009 in Hungary.The team of 7 men and 3 women need someone to support them at this great event.Expressions of interest are welcomed from anyone who would like to help the teamwith this very important role.For more info on the duties of the WOC team manager please contact me asap at:IVANMANDYMILLAR@aol.com

Ivan Millar (Director HPO)

We're Finnished now..

The sun has now set on this Nordics competition leaving us with some memorable races and orienteering stories. But as the Finnish sun never sets this time of year we would like to take what we learnt and utilize it to train and aim for bigger and better things; to never let these experiences and the lessons learnt set and fade into a distant memory.

In two years time we have a chance to rerace against this incredibly tough line up of Nordic runners and top continental runners. Do we not have the terrain and mountains at home to be as fast and strong as them? Do we not have some good maps on our island that are as challenging as other world class maps? To answer these questions depends on which way you want to look at your own living situation, as all Irish orienteers find it difficult to get to good maps to train on. For any real success in O there needs to be committment and even sacrifice. Luckily for some of the Irish they've moved to Sweden for studies or work and have better access to maps and terrain for training. However, those in Ireland do have the maps and the terrain. We have great mountains and world class maps, and if we take training camps to train specifically for certain terrains who knows what success we could get on a good race day in the future.


Training ourselves individually through the winter and spring is a tough task but hopefully the squad is progressing towards a more closely knit community of Irish elites. And a very positive aspect of the team this week was that every person understood the maps and terrain properly, which shows great strength and potential for the future of the Irish senior squad.


Finally, the Nordics has being a very technologically focused event, with GPS tracking and tv controls, which shows great hope for the future of spectating orienteering from a finish shute in a remote field or at home in a chair. For Irish orienteering there is an annual break in the fixtures list. Whereas on the international scene it is the height of the racing season. Keep watching the senior blog as the next outing for the senior team is in the world cup round 2/3 in Oslo, Norway on June 26th/27th.

WC Sprint Qualification

Today the competitions concluded with everyone taking part in the World Cup sprint qualifications in the town of Salo. There were 3 heats with the top 11 in each to qualify for the final later today.

The men set off first (again) leaving the women alone to entertain themselves in quarantine (again). The men had about a 3.2 km course with a rough winning time of under 14 min.

Dave had the fastest Irish time with 16.37min. Ruairi was in the same heat with a time of 18.14min. Dave said he was "shaky on making optimum route choices, but safisfied with an ok performance". Ruairi felt his race went fairly ok with no mistakes. Colm had a fast run, slowed by quite a large mistake to #2 (again...he mutters). Otherwise he pushed hard and ran well with a time of 16.44min. Neil was least happy with his performance. It took a push to get a comment from him, including descriptive words that I will not pass onto the blog. In general he felt slow, with a few 10s mistakes. His finishing time was 16.58min.

Later in the day the women took on the speedy courses. Simone Niggli destroyed the field with a winning time of 13.05min. Can she perform as well in the final later today? Niamh had a time of 16.23min. She had no mistakes but felt too slow for the course. She's looking forward to watching the final but wishes she was competing!

I (Rosalind) also felt slow. It tough to push the legs so fast after such a tough weekend. I, along with most Irish teammembers (except smug Colm), feel that we took the poor routechoice up and over the forested hill rather than around the road. I believe most time loss was here for a few of us.

Anyhoo, none of us managed to qualify for the final. Boo.

Check out a full set of results here: http://www.noc2009.fi/ar/sprinttikars.html

We're all off to watch the finalists in action....

Technical, technical, technical

If we found the long long, the middle was intense. We were expecting fast, tricky orienteering on the open bare rock hilltops with good visibility. Instead we had fast, tricky orienteering through patches of green, varying visibility and complex contour detail.

The boys were out first today. Ruairi was the first of us out and first back, with Dave close on his heels. Despite the lack of sunshine the shamrock came out of hiding...

Ruairi had another solid run in his Senior international debut. He caught two minutes on a Swede by the second control, and was still ahead three controls later. Dave was better but still a little dissatisfied with his performance.

In his first World Cup race, Colm got a bit dazzled by the cameras and took an original route to the second control.

On the way to the second quarantine zone, we had to get off the bus a kilometre early and walk, because the Swedish team bus was blocking the dirt road, with half the bus in the ditch. It put us in good spirits :)

I was out last of our guys and came in very happy (for once!) with my run. Perfection isn't possible (for mortals) in this terrain, but I only made a couple of very minor mistakes and was pushing hard all the way to the end. My finish position belies the strength of the field... and my lack of speed.

As we were eating lunch, Ros and Niamh were still in quarantine drawing pictures. After using up all the crayons in the primary school, they eventually made it to the competition and headed out into the beautiful terrain.

Ros was "navigating quite well when I was on my own" and was a little frustrated with herself for not doing better. She looked strong at the spectator control and running in to the finish:

Niamh ran very well and was happier than after the long distance. While many packs formed in the women's race (the seven with Simone N-L wasn't the biggest!), Niamh ran most of the race on her own. A little more experience in this terrain (it's her first time in Finland), and she will be a force to be reckoned with.

Tomorrow is the sprint. Quarantine is 9am, so breakfast will be early!