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...