Pinker & O'Donovan qualify for Short Distance Finals

Yvette Baker takes Gold for Britain.

Sweden struggle home with Relay Bronze medals.

Norway clean up.

Non-Scandinavians get a look in at last.

Inverness runs out of bananas.

Eileen Loughman runs in world record 13th WOC.

New Zealand get 8 in Classic Finals.

Justin May wins M40 in Highland 99.

The words and the tune (to Mairi's Wedding or Donald Where's yer Troosers) of the World Championships song will be ingrained in the memory of anyone who was there, but there was much more to WOC99 than that.

Aviemore in 1976 was Ireland's first representation at the World Orienteering Championships; Inverness in 1999 was our thirteenth. Closely integrated with the Scottish 6-Day, Highland 99, the World Championships brought together the world's best orienteers and more than 4,000 others to spectate and run in the same areas as the champions. Extraordinary weather for Scotland - sunshine and high temperatures - caused problems for runners in both competitions, with dehydration setting in early unless the water stations were used toi the full. In some cases at the Highland events the water stations weren't where they were marked on the maps, causing (i) dehydration if you missed them, (ii) navigational problems if you found them and (iii) sometimes both. Moral: never use a transient feature like a drinks station or a crossing point as an attack point!

Marcus Pinker and Toni O'Donovan both qualified for the finals of the Short Distance race but, disappointingly, none of the team made it to the finals of the Classic distance races. (Marcus's and Toni's routes are in this issue).

The two competitions complemented one another: the H99 runners ran on the WOC area next day or later the same day, though the controls had to be changed in between since WOC used Emit and H99 used Sportident electronic timing.

Saturday: Docharn & Deishar: excellent area near Aviemore. Few line features, runnable forest, intricate and physical. Hot and sunny but no drinks at the start: a lesson learnt for the rest of the week: bring your own water. Lots of missed start times and panicking runners with a 2.5 km run to the start. LVO helping out with the organisation. A good introduction to Scottish orienteering at its best. And no midges!

Sunday: Craig Leach, just north of Inverness. Runnable forest, a flattish plateau with a detailed top and steep sides. Again, runnable forest though with more tracks than Day 1. Once again sunny and warm - too good to be true? Start times for almost 5000 competitors are spread over four and a half hours.

Monday: a rest day for the H99'ers but the Classic qualification race for the WOC99 teams at Guisachan, near Cannich. Typical rough Scottish forest, white forest on the map but rougher than it looked. The men ran 10.2 km/260m in 62-64 minutes, the women ran 6.6 km/200m in 47-51 minutes. There were 123 men and 106 women, the top 30 from each of four heats went through to the final. One of the most amazing performances was that of the New Zealand team who got 7 runners into the final (4 men and 3 women): for a country with a population of 3 million, and a small number of orienteers, that was a fantastic performance. What are they doing that we're not?

Results: Mens Heat 1

1 Petter Thoresen NOR 62.41

47 Colm O'Halloran IRL 87.15

48 James Logue IRL 87.58

Heat 2

1 Jimmy Birklin SWE 64.32

42 Colm Rothery IRL 84.21

45 Steven Linton IRL 86.27

Women Heat 1

1 Birgitte Husebye NOR 51.17

38 Toni O'Donovan IRL 67.59

44 Una Creagh IRL 73.13

Heat 2

1 Katarina Borg SWE 47.22

38 Nuala Higgins IRL 69.56

50 Eileen Loughman IRL 79.04

The fastest qualifiers also benefited from a late start in the final.

Tuesday: H99 moves to Guisachan. "How did they ever pick such a Godawful rough area for the World Champs?" - felling, fight, hills ... My admiration for the WOC runners increases further. Midges make life unpleasant until you get out in the forest and the sun breaks through. My worst run of the week (so far ...). Hope to be able to discard this one later on (best 4 of 6 runs count in the competition). Misplaced drinks stations caused confusion, lost time and protests today.

Wednesday: Another rest day for H99. Classic distance final. Morale low in the Irish camp: WOC team go training and show up to see the action at Glen Affric later in the day. A brief visit from Prince Andrew - another tree planted. 15.7 km/640 m for the men, 10.3 km.380m for the women. Norway get 5 in the top 8 men, Britain get 2 in the top 8 in the womens race. Bjornar Valstad (winner of the World Cup race in Ireland last year) won the men's race in 97.25; his partner Hanne Staff (who won the WC race here last year too) took silver the Women's race in 78.30 with sisters Kirsi Bostrum and Johanna Asklof first and third. . A great run by Yvette Baker (nee Hague) for 4th, 40 seconds down, and Heather Monro finished 8th in 81.22.

Alain Berger took full advantage of a good qualifying position, starting just 3 minutes ahead of Bjornar Valstad. They met at control 11 and the splititimes show that they visited virtually every following control together. Berger finished one second behind. that's how it works at the top level.

The terrain was, again, typically Scottish, with fairly steep hillsides, plenty of contour detail and long legs featuring in the courses. A bridge over a drain on the run in was mistaken for the finish by several runners who stopped short of the actual finish,, adding seconds onto their times, while two of the women - Laure Coupat from France and natasha Key from Australia - failed to punch at the last control in the finish field and were disqualified - what a sickener!

Results: Men

1 Bjornar Valstad NOR 97.25

2 Carl Henrik Bjorseth NOR 100.20

3 Alain Berger SUI 100.26

Women

1 Kirsi Bostrom FIN 77.56

2 Hanne Staff NOR 78.30

3 Johanna Asklof FIN 78.33

Valstad (32) said afterwards that he had run a perfect race: he was very tired at the finish and if the course had been a kilometer longer he would still be sitting in the forest! He has a problem running in hot weather since he finds he can't keep any drinks down when he's running, so dehydration is an obvious problem. He is a part time teacher which gives him plenty of time for training. He had spent 4-5 weeks training in Scotland before the Championships and typically trains for between 10 and 30 hours a week of physical training.

Carl Henrik Bjorseth, a 31 year old civil engineer, lost 15 seconds at one control and is a newcomer to the Norwegian team. Berger had his best run in Scotland. ten years ago he won the World Junior Championships and finished 5th in the 1996 World Cup and was on the winning Swiss WOC Relay teams in '93 and '95.

Kirsi Bostrum, a part time dentist, started orienteering at 6 years of age. She smiled quietly when asked if it was true that she had demolished a cameraman at one of the controls.

Thursday was a WOC rest day but the rest of us headed back to Plodda, part of the Glen Affric area used for the WOC Classic final. This part was far more runnable than the part used for the qualification race. A smaller number of controls than the other days: my course had 9 controls in 7 km, including one leg of 1.75 km. An outstanding area, though. Again, sunshine.

Friday was going to be busy. First, the WOC short race qualifier at Rogie followed by Day 5 of H99. Marcus Pinker and Toni O'Donovan qualified for the short final the next day, but the others (Colm Rothery, Colm O'Halloran, John Feehan, Julie Cleary, Una Creagh and Ailbhe Creedon) didn't make the cut. The courses were about 4.7 km/120m for men, 3.8 km/80m for women. A disappointing day. We were treated two styles of commentary from deep in the forest: the David Coleman_"I'm here in the forest near a crag. It is completely silent. There's nobody coming. Now back to you in the commentary box" and the David Attenborough whisper "I can hear branches breaking. If you listen carefully you can hear the breathing of an approaching runner. There are branches breaking" then a crash as the runner runs past the concealed observer.

The area itself was bisected by a railway line and had plenty of unmapped rock and vegetation features. Lots of detail and largely white forest. Sunshine. And an amazing car boot sale in the event car park: books for 5p (buy one, get one free), magazines like 20-year old Which? or Practical Engineering f or 1p each ... (I picked up a 1966 Guide to Dublin and a gung-ho Baden Powell type scouting expedition manual for 5p). Unfortunately I sprained my ankle about 1 km from the finish and joined the long line of injured seeking ice and bandages at the first aid tent. "For you, the war is over".

Saturday was another busy day. The Short Final at Cawdor (of Macbeth fame) saw Marcus finishing in a very creditable 40th place and Toni in 48th. The home crowd rose to their feet to greet Yvette Baker's run when she stormed into the finish field to take her first Gold WOC medal

.

Results: Men 4.6 km/ 80 m

1 Jorgen Rostrup NOR 25.48

2 Juha Peltola FIN 26.11

3 Janne Salmi FIN 26.14

40 Marcus Pinker IRL 30.53

Women 3.7 km/ 50 m

1 Yvette Baker GBR 25.55

2 Lucie Bohm AUT 26.57

3 Frauke Schmitt Gran GER 27.48

48 Toni O'Donovan IRL 34.25

On the face of it, it seems encouraging to see non-Scandinavians taking medals in the World Championships, but Yvette lives in Denmark, has done a lot of training in Scandinavia and runs for a Norwegian club; Austria's Lucie Bohm lives in Norway and Germany's Frauke Schmitte Gran is married to a Norwegian and lives in Norway. Afre the race, Bohm said that it is not possible to reach the top if you stay in your own country: you have to race in the best terrain against the best orienteers if you are to succeed.

After WOC there was the last day of Highland 99, peoples' last chance to redeem themselves and discard another run. The biggest star of H99 from an Irish perspective was Justin May who won M40L with two wins, two seconds and a third place, picking up 3974 points out of a possible 4000. Another former Irish team mamber, Vince Joyce, finished 4th in a very competitive M45L class.

An early start in the mist from the evene centre at Inverness for the WOC relays back near Aviemore. This was the first hint of rain all week. The event was in a perfect setting at Loch Vaa: to say it was a natural amphitheatre is a cliche, but it was true. The runners ran out a valley with spectators ranged on the hillsides above. The map was frighteningly intricate moraine terrain with very little height difference, just lots of contours. The organisers had to effectively buy the Strathspey Railway for the day as the line ran right across the competition area and had to be crossed twice. This luxury was reported to have cost the organisers £2000.

The Norwegians put the finishing touches to an outstanding week for them, taking Gold in both the men's and women's relays. The men (Tore Sandvik, Bernt Bjornsgaard, Petter Thoresen and Bjornar Valstad) finished in 3.21.50, more than 3 minutes clear of Finland, with Sweden 3rd. In the women's race, Norway again took gold (Birgitte Husebye, Elisabeth Ingvaldsen, Hanne Sandstad and Hanne Staff) in 2.55.56, with Finland second, only 14 seconds down, and a race for the line between Gunilla Svard (Sweden) and Yvette baker (Britain) saw the Swede in the lead by 6 seconds. Not a great WOC for Sweden, who had to wait for the Relays to pick up their first medals, and "only" bronze, at that.

The Irish teams of John Feehan, James Logue, Marcus Pinker and Colm Rothery and Una Creagh, Toni O'Donovan , Ailbhe Creedon and Julie Cleary finished in 22nd place each, with times of 4.14.42 and 5.09.47, respectively. Course lengths for the men were two legs of 10.2-10.4 km and two of 7.9-8.1 km. The women's course had four legs of 6.2-6.3 km. On the bright side, the men did finish ahead of Hungary, Canada, USA, Spain, Romania, South Africa, Israel and Hong Kong. Maybe orienteering and rugby are the two things we have a chance of beating the Americans at?

The overall verdict? A tremendous effort by Scottish Orienteering and BOF to make it all happen and congratulations to all the athletes who ran their hearts out. Well done, especially, to Marcus and Toni.

It's not easy to qualify for a World Championship Final. Only the top 60 men and women go through. If we assume that all the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland and the Baltic countries and the likes of Britain, Ukraine and the Czech Republic are going to get most or all of their runners through, plus some from Australia and New Zealand, it doesn't leave too much room for the rest of the world. How about re-introducing B and C finals like in the World Masters Championships, to give the other nations at least another run?

What do we need to prepare for WOC 2001 in Finland? Money; enthusiasm; young, fit orienteers ready to take the place of those retiring after this year's Championships; a new Team Manager to take over from Ronan Cleary, a squad with identity and cohesion, time to train in Finland, support from the rest of Irish orienteers, belief in ourselves. Look at New Zealand: if they can get 7 people to qualify in the Classic final and can finish 16th in both relays, we can do it too.

And .. Speaking of Mairi's Wedding, the tune of the WOC99 song, congratulations to 3ROC's Máire Convery who ran the first four days of Highland 99 before taking time out to get married on the Saturday.

WOC shorts: Short stories from and about the World Championships mostly from the n3sport website www.n3sport.com

The shops in Inverness are prepared to serve thousands of tourists during summer time. But the 5-6.000 orienteers present this week have unusual needs: - Bananas! Betty Crowdy, manager of one of shops in Inverness says: - "They are snapping up bananas and all kinds of fruit as soon as supplies come in". Some of the national teams had to drive 15 miles to get bananas on Tuesday.

The Norwegian orienteering club, Bækkelagets SPK, was better than any of the national teams in the classic distance. 3 of the 5 best runners in both classes is running for Bækkelaget. - "We have so many in the world's top runners because Bækkelaget makes them better", coach Bjørn Baklid said to n3sport. - "We assist and guide our runners through the whole year, specially on the medical and physical side. None of our runners have been injured or had problems with too much training when running for Bækkelaget. That is the most critical factor to have continuous development as an orienteer with any interruption", Baklid says. Valstad, Berger, Ivarsson, Staff, Baker and Sandstad run for Bækkelaget. And on the short distance Jørgen Rostrup is among the favourites.....

Bjørnar Valstad has one physical problem: - He is not able to drink during running. - "I tried do drink once during the race, but I threw it all up again immediately", Valstad says.

Silva produced eight special compasses for the Swedish team before this Championships. The compass needle was adjusted for the magnetic fields around Inverness. Silva claim that makes the needle more accurate and stable. The Swedish team had announced high goals for this Championships: - two gold medals, medals on all disciplines and best nation. The special compasses have not helped them so far, and the largest Swedish newspaper Expressen called it a scandal.

The double classic World Champion (1991 and 1995) Katalin Oláh, Hungary, was one of the outsiders in this year's Championships. But the Hungarian hope broke her leg on the classic final and the dream to be the second woman to get three gold medals is not reachable this time.

The weather in the Scottish Highlands has been warmer and more sunny than for several years. That bothered the Norwegian team leaders. Bjørnar Valstad's problems in hot weather are well known and that spoiled his classic distance race in WOC-97. But Wednesday morning started cloudy and just 18 degrees Celsius. Valstad's coach in Bækkelaget started to sing "Let it be", and his praying come through. The weather stayed cloudy with excellent and fair running conditions during the classic race. A 40 year old taxi driver says to n3sport: - "I can't remember such weather in Scotland. This is absolutely not normal". And the weather forecast for the rest of the week says warm and sunny.

5-6.000 orienteers, officials and media representatives were the audience at the classic final. They were all present to follow their favourites via reporting from the forest. The speakers were proud to announce that they had four radio controls. The problem was that all of them broke down after the first hour. So the next four hours become really boring. As one Finnish representative said: - "At the first WOC in 1966 we had radio coverage from all controls. Today there was none."

Jörgen Mårtensson announced yesterday that his orienteering career is definitely over. Mårtensson's still has an injured leg and is not able to start in this World Championships. Mårtensson's first WOCwas in 1978, and he has started in all classic events since then - 11 times in total.

Live transmission from WOC-2001- "We will use a tracking system in 2001 and we will have live broadcasting from the courses", announced Mr Tuomo Juntunen, director of the WOC- competitions in 2001, in Inverness during the WOC-week. "And as the first orienteering organiser I have signed a contract with Eurosport that will broadcast at least one hour from the event to 300 million homes", said a proud director. The plans for the next World Championships were given in more detail in an IOF-organised meeting:- wireless video transmission from controls. This will be possible with the new mobile phone service GSM Packet Radio- a differential GPS-based tracking system with an accuracy better than 10 metres, probably 2-5 metres - units to be carried by the runners will have a weight less than 250 gram. - geographical information system to present runners' positions on a map - electronic punching with online communication - special software that integrates all these information elements and presents it both in 2D and 3D. "The project is very expensive, but I have travelled around the world to find commercial partners with technology and interests to have an involvement in orienteering", says Juntunen. - "My opinion is that we will succeed with this project, so I am confident in announcing this".

Opening Ceremony: The opening ceremony at the Bught Park in Inverness went smoothly except for the planned arrival of the air force aerobatic team who were to put on a display of flying in lines and circles to represent an orienteering course, then drop a parachutist who would land on the field with the IOF flag. Unfortunately, the team didn't make it (did they get lost?) and a quick-thinking official offered the Silva flag instead. Well, there's nothing like a bit of free publicity, is there?. (Some unkind people suggested that Silva arranged the whole thing!)

Postscript:

Toni O'Donovan adds a thank you note to the blond-haired boys and everyone else who came along to the WOC races. She says "I only know what it is like at Junior World Championships and World University O-Championships but I really felt that the big difference was having so many Irish people around cheering at spectator controls and at the finish. Justin May and Martin Flynn even ran alongside me for part of the finish at the short final: I think that they had to slow down a bit so I could keep up."

(Incidentally, the blond-haired bit wasn't just because of the amount of sunshine: apparently on a wet evening at the Bordeaux 5-Day in July a bottle of hair bleach was produced and, with nothing else to do, the party all bleached their hair. So if you didn't recognise Justin May, John Casey, Marcus Pinker, Martin Flynn or Una Creagh over the summer, maybe that was why - Ed.)