David Currie

The standings in the WOC O-manager competition have finally been updated with the results of the relay. Odds On ended up in 109th place and Christine’s Stars were 177th. I take some small consolation from having just beaten Jon’s Jokers although I suspect that, as a GB selector, he may have made the mistake of picking too many Brits for his team!

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!