WTOC 2013

[kedge]

No podium placings for the GB team in the PreO at WTOC this year, although their results were better on Day 2 than Day 1 yesterday, which seems to have been a tough day for many competitors.
(http://www.woc2013.fi/ssl/woc.nsf/sp?Open&cid=content11CE01)

Ian Ditchfield (23rd) was again our leading performer in the Open class, with John Kewley 29th & Christine Roberts 42nd.

In the Paralympic class, John Crosby finished 17th overall. Jana Kostava (Czech) was the Paralympic winner.

The World Champion in the Open Class was Jari Turto of Finland, who was our IOF advisor at WTOC 2012 in Scotland last year. He's a terrific bloke and I would imagine that the GB squad out in Finland will be delighted for him. Finns also finished in 3rd and 4th positions in the Open.

Curiously, despite this success and due to the vagaries of selection, in the Team competition, the Finns were pipped for first place by a single point by the Swedish team.

Lets hope for better luck for GB in the TempO competition tomorrow.

[IanD]

JK (Kewley) was first starter in the TempO qualifier today, and had to sweat it out until the penultimate finisher to find that he had qualified with one position and six seconds to spare. Team-mate Ditchfield was the final qualifier two seconds behind.
Third team member Christine Roberts missed out on the final.

TempO final starts in an hour or so. No chance of a British medal since cumulative scores count, but hoping to move up a bit.

[maprun]

Ian and John, I hope it goes well this afternoon. How does TempO differ from Trail O?

[kedge]

TempO is made up entirely of timed controls.This year in the qualifier there were 8 stations with 3 timed controls at each one, 24 in all. The time a competitor takes to arrive at an answer from being given the map is noted: these times are aggregated, plus 30 seconds penalty time for each wrong control.

The best 24 competitors then got another 5 stations each with 3 controls. Their times were then added to their time for the Qalifier. Lowest time wins. Its very demanding. Unlike the PreO discipline, it tends to be the younger competitors who prosper. I don't know the winner, but the other 5 on the podium would all be well below 30.

The winner, Pinja Makinen of Finland, took only 354 seconds including only 30 seconds of penalties: 38 out of 39 controls correct, taking less than 10 seconds/control: astonishing. And this guy didn't even make the Finn's PreO team!

Of the GB team, JK finished in 22nd position and IanD in 24th.

[JK]

The winner, Pinja Makinen of Finland, took only 354 seconds including only 30 seconds of penalties: 38 out of 39 controls correct, taking less than 10 seconds/control: astonishing. And this guy didn't even make the Finn's PreO team!

@kedge: A couple of clarifications

• As a mother, Pinja is perhaps not best described as a "guy". I heard she has won almost 30 national Foot-O titles in Foot-O and as was in the Finnish squad for a while. Her performance was very impressive. Some of the clusters in the final were very complicated - looking down on a mass of rocky spurs and boulder field so with only a 30s penalty it didn't pay to spend too long on them.
• Vitaly of UKR in 6th is probably 40, and possibly more - the other 5 will be < 30 though

http://orienteering.org/wp-content/uplo ... 50x370.jpg

[kedge]

Thanks for the clarification JK, and my apologies to Pinja, who's debut on the international TrailO stage is little short of astonishing.

I note that at long last, all the WTOC maps & solution sheets appeared on the Maps page of the WOC 2013 website sometime on Saturday. Better late than never.

[IanD]

To some of the general public, orienteering has the image of a sport for bearded old men. I sometimes think TrailO has a similar image amongst (foot) orienteers. A look at the TempO medal presentations ought to dispel any such image.

TempO Podium.jpg (35 KiB) Viewed 2983 times

The beauty of TempO is that everyone takes part on an equal basis, irrespective of age, gender, or mobility. Those who are sharpest of eye and quickest of thought rise to the top.

The Fins put on a terrific World TrailO Champs in both PreO and TempO: excellent terrain & courses, mostly good weather, just slightly marred by over-zealous officiating. The course for the TempO final was the hardest TrailO I have seen anywhere. For any other competition, I would have said too hard, but as someone posted on another thread, the purpose of the World Champs is to produce the World Champion, and it clearly wasn't too hard for her.

[JK]

@kedge: she was always going to be one of the favourites if not *the* favourite. She kept Jari out of the team so she had to be good.

She has been close to the top in many TempO this past year and is good at PreO too. She also had consistent performances in the online TempO.

Of course now both her and Jari won, they'll both likely be joining Lauri and Antti for next year. I guess the pressure was on Jari since if he didn't win the PreO this might have been his last WOC!