Jukola/Venla

[Scott]

The rules say "two clubs wishing to form an alliance". However, it doesn't seem to explicitly forbid alliances involving more than two, so you could always try applying and see what happens.

The alliances apply at events included in the UK Relay League - normally the JK Relays, British Relays, Scottish Relays and Harvester. However, they only apply in the Men's and Women's Premier/Open classes - not in any of the Age-Class, Short or Handicap classes, so if your club doesn't normally manage to get competitive teams out for the Premier classes at the JK and British it might be worth considering an alliance for those as well.

Locations in 2011
Harvester - Sheffield
British - Yorkshire/Humberside
JK - Northern Ireland

[distracted]

Agree entirely with Becks - we often worry too much about the menial things.

Why is Jukola so popular in comparison to the Harvester? The obvious answer - there's a hell of a lot more orienteers in Finland than over here. For the elites, it's one to win, and a real achievement to do so. Yes, the best guys will join the best clubs - look at Halden, Kristiansand, Kalevan Rasti, IFK Goteborg etc - but there are plenty of top clubs. The results this year show it, with two impressive (for Britain) UK teams this year only just getting into the top 50.

For many of the rest, it's just about taking part, taking in the atmosphere, marvelling at the size of the events and the brilliance of the top teams, and just being able to say that you completed the course! You form your own battles because the majority of teams know they don't stand a chance of winning - this could be breaking into the top 100, 200 or 500, or against other teams like South Yorkshire vs Scotland this year. The event presentation is like nothing you'll see in the UK. And they're not the only reasons for Jukola being the biggest participation sporting event in Finland.

On this year's events - wow! Not even the evening/early night rain could dampen the spirits too much. Watching the view of the start from the helicopter, seeing if your team could get through the early intermediate controls before the leaders got to the next and then waiting to find out what it was like out there. Trying to grab a bit of sleep before it was your turn to take on the forest - the forest certainly came out on top in many of the battles with it. The courses were tough, most definitely "navigationally demanding" for your average orienteer (and many of the elites too) and to get round without making any major mistakes could be deemed a success! I was lucky to have a short course in the daytime - anyone who got round a course in the dark at this year's Jukola, and especially those who were doing sub 8 mins/km while doing so, deserve the utmost respect.

So for those who weren't there, you really missed out. Nothing else gets close.

[frog]

We've not had a team for an open relay for as long as I've been in the club. It's usually more "who wants to be in a relay team" and then "which category do these folk fit in", usually some sort of mixed handicap combo.
Making the harvester completely open like the Jukola would be an interesting experiment. Promoting the combining clubs rule (and maybe clarifying if more than 2 clubs could combine) would be next best option. It seems a shame though that if you are a member of a club that finished in the top 10 (looking at Scott's rules here) that has more than enough for 1 team but not enough for 2 teams their excess members can't combine with an adjacent club. Definitely too much red tape.

[Scott]

Making the harvester completely open like the Jukola would be an interesting experiment.

I agree. At the Harvester I can't see the harm in allowing hodgepodge teams to take part - to be honest, at the moment anything that gets the numbers up is probably worth considering.

[Tatty]

Is it possible to see any of the maps? Seems to be some interesting long legs looking at the times.

[IanD]

Is it possible to see any of the maps?

If you've got Broadband, try http://www.gpsseuranta.net/eindex.php?sivu=tt&id=20100619

[Roger]

Roger appears to be having a bit of nightmare on second leg for JOK - currently has the slowest split to the first radio control by quite some way (down 600 places from the changeover). Hopefully not an injury - I wonder if there were changeover problems.

The changeover wasn't the problem.

Found 2 controls. Fell into bog. Light failed: started flashing, then went out. Switched to backup (old-style Petzl Tikka). Ran into tree, scratching eye and whipping out contact lens. Found #3 on third attempt. Found another 10 controls, greatly assisted by other people lighting up both ground and map. Set off on 2km leg 13-14, no sensible path options, despairing of ever making it to the finish. Other contact lens flicked out by a twig. Deeper despair. Could just about pick out ground shape, particularly as it got lighter, and eventually stumbled to penultimate control. Haven't looked, but I suspect that splits on the grass at the end (20-21-finish) are several hundred places better than the remainder.

Ironically, the scratched cornea meant that once the sun came up I couldn't stand the brightness and had to spend most of the rest of the relay skulking in the tent. In about 20 years of orienteering with lenses, which must comprise 800-odd races, I can remember losing all or part of a lens on just three previous occasions. Losing both in one race is possibly unlucky, but it's also a reflection of how bushy the area was.

And at least my humiliation was relatively private (until I looked on here!), unlike that of Domnarvet's last-leg Venla runner Lena Eliasson, who led at the changeover and whose repeated 5-minute blunders were displayed on the GPS tracking for all to see, or that of Jostein Andersen (lead-off runner for no. 1 seeds Kristiansands OK), whose mispunch was announced in shocked tones by the commentator.

[fish]

Someone should put together all the good video clips from this years Jukola/Venla - both the racing and the event in general, and send it round to every club in the UK - on the basis that this is how mass participation/competition across all standards can work.

Watching the start sends shivers down the spine.

[ifor]

You still beat me by 45 minutes Roger and I had no such excuses light still good at the end. Avoiding those hour+ errors is the key!!! Just been trying to mark my map but had to put a big ? over a good bit of it. Time to get a gps loger I can run with maybe.

[greywolf]

...4.00.46 for Eddie H's Deep Black at Culbin...

[Tatty]

Fascinating viewing - scary map

[wiki]

funny video compilation from gps-tracking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhFLXyZHjw8

[JennyJ]

Someone should put together all the good video clips from this years Jukola/Venla - both the racing and the event in general, and send it round to every club in the UK - on the basis that this is how mass participation/competition across all standards can work.

Oli's doing better than that - he's making a film!

[Adrian]

Great to see British teams flying the flag and doing so well. I'm still hoping to go over to the event /en famille/ either next year or the year after. I like this info page: http://www.jukola2011.net/general-information

[seabird]

Harvester - Sheffield

According to Nat Fixtures Sec last week not yet a done deal. (of course things may have moved on since then).

There is a fallback possibility 40 miles further north if it doesn't come off.