David Currie

The rest of the World Orienteering Champs has flown by. Britain put in a bid to be the world’s sprint specialist on Wednesday with 5 placings in the top 20 (Matt Speake was one of those disqualfied for crossing an uncrossable fence). Special mention has to go to Helen Bridle who, having been chased round by the eventual winner, Aussie Hanny Allston, finished in fourth place, and to Graham Gristwood who showed what superb form he is on at the moment by coming ninth. I still can’t believe this is the same Graham that I once shadowed around a course at Burnham Beeches and had to keep stopping because he’d forgotten to bring his inhaler!
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Controversy reigns in the long distance qualifiers as Oli Johnson is the only Brit not to qualifier having been disqualified for missing a control. Sadly, although Oli’s card shows that he visited a control, it does not show which one and, as the rules currently stand, it is not possible to check the control units to determine whether it was in fact the right one.

Over in the virtual world, the technology was also letting everyone down with the second round cancelled due to database corruption. This is heart breaking as Jani Lakanen did me proud as did Vroni Konig-Salmi. Alison O’Neil was also a good buy coming an impressive 7th in her heat. Even worse news though is that they appear to have recalculated the results from the first round pushing me down in to a poor 216th place. I’m sure I’ll get over it faster than Oli will his misfortune.

The results for the middle distance qualification show that all the Brits made it through safely to the final.

In the important competition of the day, my team scraped in to the top 100 (there are now nearly 500 entered). Christine’s team faired less well as, having left before the start list went up, she failed to see the page of team declarations and hence had selected some runners who then didn’t compete. Niggli-Luder was also a bad buy for her as, in a qualifier, you don’t need to be top dog to win maximum points.

Best tactic so far seems to be to max out on four good runners to bring in the winnings and then scrape the barrel for your last three selections. We’ve also been careful to select most of our long distance qualification runners from those who didn’t compete today on the basis that their price hasn’t increased yet. Unfortunately, having discussed tactics, we’ve ended up with very similar teams but at least I have a head start!

Christine is working from home today yet when I left the house she seemed to be distracted by the WOC 2006 O-Manager game. This is your chance to manage a team for the World Orienteering Champs that start in Denmark tomorrow. Your budget is quite limited (you could, for example, spend nearly a third of it on Simone Niggli-Luder for a guaranteed win or four but still have six more people to pick) and, given that you can change your team between rounds, knowing who is running in each discipline must be key. I can think of at least one reader of this blog who is surely up for the challenge…

OK – I couldn’t resist either. You can follow the fortunes of my team Odds On over the next week.

Many thanks to Steve Pullen for organising an excellent SOC social this evening. The treasure hunt involved answering questions based on visual clues in the vicinity of Winchester Cathedral. Despite turning up late, somehow Christine and myself managed to win although having just one question sheet between the two of us nearly saw us in the divorce courts. What I found most interesting was that, in 90 minutes, we must have covered only a couple of kilometres. Just imagine how much detail of our surroundings we must be missing at a normal walking pace!

We had to rush away from our hotel this morning – fortunately without a hangover but with less sleep than one might have liked. The occasion to drag us from our bed? The annual Furrow Hoppers relay organised by Wimborne and, this year, being held at Blandford Army Camp.

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