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.


********
















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.

Nordic tour - round 2 report

The second stage of the Nordic Orienteering Tour is in progress. The idea of a 'knock-out sprint' is a novel one for orienteering and is aimed at creating head-to-head racing to make for spectator friendly viewing. It takes the format of a 'traditional' sprint qualification race, with one-minute start intervals, where the best 30 athletes go through to a quarter-final. The quarter-finals have 6 athletes starting together in a non-forked, non-butterfly course with the top 2 from each of 5 quarter-finals progressing to the semi-final. 6 athletes from the semi-final go through to the final, both of which are also head-to-head races.

The sprint qualifications were held this morning in Stockholm University. The terrain was a mixture of forest and building complexes, offering fast running and route choices. The standard of qualification was very high and none of the Irish team managed to get into the quarter finals. In the men's race, Nick was the best of the Irish in 58th position, 1 min and 3 sec away from qualifying. In general, the Irish boys had clean races and were happy with their performances. Niamh has been ill since the Venla relay on Saturday and made a last minute decision to run, after a breakfast of paracetamol! She had a steady race and finished in 44th position, 45 seconds down on the qualifying time.

The quarterfinals are in progress at the moment, also at Stockholm University. Unfortunately, there is no GPS tracking, but there will be a live TV broadcast from the semi-finals and finals, to be held in Gamla Stan (the Old Town of Stockholm) this evening (semi-final starts at 5:30pm Irish time, final at 6:30pm Irish time). See the Nordic Tour 'Live' website: (qualification results are here too). The next Irish involvement in the Nordic tour will be in stage 3 in Norway on Saturday.

Thanks to Niamh for the report and hope your feeling better soon

Niamh's Jukola update.

After the first stage of the Nordic Tour, the Irish team took in the Venla and Jukola relays. Running for different teams, between the 5 of us (Nick didn't run) we spent approximately 10 hours in the terrain. It was tough going. After our time in Finland, orienteering and watching Baywatch and Australia's Next Top Model (guess whose choice? clue: one of the boys), we are now en route to Stockholm for the second part of the Nordic Tour. The sprint qualification is on Tuesday morning and with the top 30 advancing to the next round in the men's and women's races, all efforts will be concentrated on making the finals. Qualification starts at 9am Irish time on Tuesday morning, perfect viewing if you've just gotten in to work :-) We'll keep you updated!

Stage 1, Finland
TV program replay
GPS tracking replay

Stage 2, Sweden
Time schedule