Swiss O Week Holiday (Orienteering) Snaps!

[Wendles]

Life is too short for organising a separate folder for the orienteering photos this week so if you canbe bothered scrolling through numerous shots of the Matterhorn (many from our balcony!), alpen blumen and Tony eating kuchen, you will eventually come to a few orienteering photos. There are not many as yet as the weather broke just as the competition started so we don't want to hang around on the mountainside after running. A first for us both today, we took 2 cable cars up the mountain, orienteered for 50 minutes or so, took 2 cable cars back down the mountain and were in the shower by 10.10am!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wendles56/sets/72157645747941801/

[Wendles]

Meant to add - If anyone knows the young man in the following link could you please send it on to family as I'm not sure mum knew about Nopesport, THANKYOU. I think they are from Exeter.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wendles56/14712679861/in/set-72157645747941801

[DaveK]

There is a nice video of day 2 action here -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBZPHI9 ... e=youtu.be

Wish you were there? From the SOW website last night -

'The weather forecast for the upcoming days is bad: cloudy, rain showers, cold. Therefore the third day „Trockener Steg“ will be SWITCHED with the fifth day „Gornergrat“.'

The Lakes 5 days weather will be better than this won't it?

[Wendles]

Today's area was AWESOME! Catch the video on the SOW website heavily features the Elite race on snow and rock. An American orienteering friend likened it to as close as you will get to orienteering on the moon. I was rubbish but it didn't matter because to be in the shadow of the Matterhorn, skidding across snow fields and running across bare rock was just the best

I managed to catch some Brits doing their stuff today too. See the link above!

[Wendles]

Yesterday's area!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RzY-SHgW6kM

[EddieH]

The daily films are well worth watching. They give a really good impression of the mixture of terrain and of the competitors.

Can we produce anything like this nexr summer?

The clips can be found on the SOW2014 site and choose headlines.

[BenM]

The day 4 one is simply brilliant, we should get them in for WOC! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVQkt6u_L28

[nooomember]

Swiss o Week, Zermatt, day 1 headcam video.. (other days to follow)

http://youtu.be/40pN8xTjRvM

[Paul Frost]

The day 4 one is simply brilliant, we should get them in for WOC! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVQkt6u_L28

I'm puzzled as to what's going on at 7:25 in. It looks like a mass start, how did that work?

I'm also interested in who the target market for these videos is?
They are very professional, and if not done by a volunteer they would probably cost quite a lot to make. So other than competitors watching them to see if they can spot themselves how would you use them to justify the investment? They are too long to use as a promo video for the next event.

[Simon]

The elite had mass start loop races on day 4, with a rather steep uphill climb to the start triangle that they got to repeat for a map exchange later on.

I do not know who the target market is, but there is also a promotional video for the Swiss O Week 2016 and that is nearly fifteen minutes.

[Paul Frost]

I do not know who the target market is, but there is also a promotional video for the Swiss O Week 2016 and that is nearly fifteen minutes.

That has a much clearer market, it's showing you the actual terrain and location that you will be running in, and by being well in advance of the event it's a brilliant marketing tool (but it is quite long). So you would just put the cost in the marketing budget. There would still be the question of how much it costs and if that provides an acceptable return on investment though.

[EddieH]

Being e mailed a link to the video each devening after the race was amazing. I dont mind betting a fair number of people will have found that such a great extra that they are massively more likely to return. My guess is that it will prove to be a brilliant marketing tool for future SOWs.

Their website for results though is very poor, considering another thread, whilst there is no mention that the Swiss federation site has the missing splits etc.

[Wendles]

Re the videos, they are also selling an event video for CHF19 which I assume will be a further refined version of the daily videos, plus perhaps extra material, and will come out later in the year. I've already ordered mine! Still on Zermatt cold turkey! The photos are excellent too: http://www.alphafoto.com/event.php?eventID=576

[awk]

it's showing you the actual terrain and location that you will be running in

Just back from a week's walking in the Engadine - a complete coincidence as we only discovered SOW16 was going to be there when we arrived in Zermatt, and we'd already booked the accomodation.

We walked through the Day 1 area on one of our earlier walks: looks fabulous, just as runnable as the film says, at least the bits we saw. As we were passing through, I commented to OH that it would make a superb area, and then we read the brochure when we got back to the campsite.....!

The Day 2 area was used for one of the local club's evening events (master maps and written descriptions by the way) which we took part in - great orienteering. Very Scandinavian feel - with the western half much tougher underfoot than the Eastern half, where it appears is where most of the filming was done (surprise, surprise).

We overlooked the Day 3 area on one of our day's walking - looked tough but interesting. The weather conditions weren't quite the same!! (The Engadine is meant to get 300+ days of sunshine a year apparently - we got 1).

Didn't see anything else of the other areas, but the Engadine itself is fabulous as a place to visit - we had a wonderful week, with some of the best walking we've enjoyed for years (the Alpine flowers were stunning, whilst the wildlife was the best we can remember enountering, especially on the three days we walked in the Swiss National Park). Can't say we rated St Moritz itself at all though. Throughout the valley, even beyond St Moritz, food, fuel, hotels and restaurants are, however, above the Swiss average in terms of expense, although quite a few hotels do a deal apparently where you get the mountain cable cars etc for free if you stay more than 2 days.

BTW, St Moritz is at a marginally higher altitude than Zermatt, so be prepared to enjoy the altitude training if you go!