Tá sé críochnaithe!

The third and final stage to the Nordic O tour was held this Saturday in Raufoss, Norway. And with it wraps up the innovative touring concept designed to make orienteering more interesting to spectators. The final race was a chasing start middle distance after the results of the first two stages of the tour in Finland and Sweden. The head of the mens/womens race was apparently very exciting to watch in the arena and the gps tracking and results can be viewed here and here.

The Irish lads were close together starting off but Nick Simonin kept his position as the first Irish to cross the line even with a shakey first few controls. The terrain threw you around physically and the light green areas made it difficult to keep direction and map contact.

This Nordic tour will be run each year up to 2013 and the hope is that they can continuously improve the excitement by learning lessons on previous tours. The lesson this year is that they need to have more tv points on the courses, much more especially with the Stockholm sprints in the old town.

World of o article on the tour found here.
Bjornar Valstad article on the tour concept can be found here.


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The Irish squad was not allowed to enter the O-festivalen relay because international teams cannot run the race. Check out this link for Sondags result of the stafett (relay) and keep an eye out for "Treodóirí na hEireann". And here is a picture of the moving control from the relay event.