Jukola/Venla

[SJ]

have a team manager making sure everyone is in the right place at the right time, monitoring progress, communicating etc.

Ravinen took team managers for each team (3 in Jukola and 1 in Venla) and they were great from my experience in the races - up most of the day and night waking people up to give them the requested time to prepare, checking progress in case an early leg lost time and a later runner could benefit from more sleep or vice versa, advising on "best time" so that we would be in the changeover box ready by earliest possible time the runner before could make it back and collecting and distributing EMIT bricks and backup cards.

They didn't run in Ravinen teams, most deciding it was too tiring and complicated to organise everyone and concentrate on a race, although one guy ran first leg for another club so he could still get a run and act as manager.

[Tatty]

I know whn Mharky ran for Stora tuna they did the same thing - a non-running team manager for each team. hope his finninsh club do the ame as they had 16, yes, 16, teams in the Jukola

[graeme]

From the sound of this you fail to appreciate that at World / Tio / Jukola keeping your team in the race (i.e within 2 minutes on 1st leg) requires an outstanding performance - even if it need not stand out.

That would be 33 people, most of whom aren't even internationals, so I guess it depends what you mean by "outstanding". I don't suppose 33rd would be an outstanding run by JDs standards (though it would be for you and I). He's surely among the top 4 athletes on the leg.

Pressure. Can you handle it ?

Exactly my point. A good performance under pressure is harder than an outstanding one without. Not sure if you're being personal here: I've run a lot of relays as the obvious weakest link in the team, including all 3 UKRLs this year, and I reckon my record is as good as anyone (once you allow for how crap I usually am ).

As the weak link on the Scotland team you produced a pretty good Jukola performance too

[harry]

most of whom aren't even internationals

Hmm not sure being "an international" really counts for so much here. There are quite a large number of pretty useful Finns and Swedes who aren't internationals so that the big relays become their main focus (+National Champs in the Autumn). Being an international just means that Jukola isn't your biggest goal for the year!

Check out an interesting part of JD's track here:
http://news.worldofo.com/wp-content/upl ... leg1_1.jpg

JD's incredible relay-CV was my point in the first place. I never used the word "outstanding" to describe his performance (see track above) but would still nominate it as best British performance of the year so far, ahead of GG's eliteserien sprint earlier this year and BJ's 4th place at Finnish Champs.

My personal perspective on Mikkeli-Jukola is here:
http://helvino.blogspot.com/2009/06/win ... o-fly.html

[mharky]

Graeme, you don't really know what you are talking about.

Being an international means nothing. British internationals were 74th, 79th & 96th. Zdenek Rajnocek is not an international, but he was 3rd back. There are maybe hundreds of good Scandinavians who aren't internationals. Kalle Dalin is ranked 100th in Sweden, Dmitri Tvsetkov is ranked 100th in Finland. Do you know what those two have in common?

Had you ever heard of Zdenek Rajnocek before the weekend? But he beat JD back.

On paper JD is one of the best relay runners on the 1st leg. There some other good guys there too. Nikolov, Ekimov, Krepsta...

But the first leg of Jukola isn't run on paper. It's a different game, and there are probably 50 people who could come back 1st, and 200 people who think they can.

When you are running for one of the favourites there is a lot of pressure. Pressure that wasn't on SNO's 3rd team. When you lose time there is even more pressure. But JD ran a great 1st leg and was the 1st man out of the forest.

[Kitch]

Not sure if you're being personal here:

not being personal.
just highlighting that the real key is, as you say, the ability to perform under pressure.

very few people can have any idea of the intensity.

I have experienced this level of pressure just once

[AnotherPatrick]

Using the results terminals; you put your brikke in an emit unit conected to a computer and it brings up the progress of your team at each of the radio controls & finish.

Actually, that was what cost us the 4 minutes between Duncan and myself, his final radio control didn't go through on the computer. It was just lucky I was paranoid and was checking the changeover every couple of minutes.

Out of interest, does anyone know if they did anything for prewarning before electronic punching. I can't see a bloke with a walkie talkie at a radio control getting the chest number of every runner coming though!

[mharky]

That happened to us to, Ant never came up on the last radio control. We didn't lose any time for it though...

[graeme]

I have experienced this level of pressure just once

Come on then - you know you want to tell us. Presumably something you actually had a chance/expectation of winning?

I'd really just like to say some more nice things about JD, and I was going to say it couldn't happen to a nicer bloke, but now I'm scared you'll take this as me slagging off the rest of the elites.


Mark, you're really not bothering to pay attention are you? Despite what Kitch says top-33 does not automatically count as outstanding in my book: did you hear Thierry getting interviewed? he was 5th, a minute down on leg seven, would be a brave man who congratulated him on an "outstanding" run!

I'm sure some folk will be excited by your new found interest in rankings though
Dalin and Tvsetkov are ranked higher than you are in their own countries, but I guess you're alluding to the fact that they're both European Champions (which says more about the European championship than about them).

[EddieH]

Graeme I can only assume that you wrote the last bit so small so that us oldies cannot read it Come on what does it say?

[Mrs H]

Here's a tip Eddie - if you want to be able to read it just press the quote button

[mappingmum]

or cut and paste it into notepad or any text editor where it will appear at your default font size for that application.

[mharky]

what are you saying about the european championships

[SYO Member]

If you're using IE7, to read Graeme's small text if you're not logged in and can't press the quote button, just do Ctrl+ a few times to zoom in (Ctrl- to zoom out) or use the Change Zoom Level button at the bottom right of the screen, which defaults to 100%.

[gg]

european champs is arguably tougher to win than woc

major champs with 6 from each country rather than 3 like at woc

only second to nordics in my book for toughness to win

respect to dalin and tsvetkov!