SLOW members compete in JWOC and World Masters

Last week saw a number of SLOW members competing in world championships events for both juniors and veterans. A summary of the results is set out below.

Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) – Göteborg, Sweden

As reported in our earlier news article, Ralph Street was selected to compete for Great Britain at the annual Junior World Orienteering Championships, held in Göteborg, Sweden between 30 June and 6 July. He competed in a number of different races during the week, starting with the sprint race on Monday in which he finished a solid 114th place out of 172 runners in 16:26, just 3 minutes behind the winner.

In the middle distance qualifier Ralph finished 35th so missed out on the top 20 place required for a place in the A final. However he then went on to have an excellent run in the B final, finishing an impressive 6th position (just 2 minutes behind the winner). In the long race on Saturday, he achieved 100th position (out of 169), so a good improvement from the Sprint.

Finally, in the relay Ralph was running for Great Britain’s 2nd team, but had a storming run on the 2nd leg to finish 15th out of 57 on that leg (3 minutes ahead of the 1st team runner), helping the GB 2nd team to finish in an impressive 13th position overall, two places ahead of the 1st team!

Ralph wasn’t the only SLOW runner at JWOC – Ausra Miksyte was also competing for Lithuania. She finished an excellent 73rd out of 127 in the Sprint, and 30th out of 60 in the B final on the middle distance. She did not compete in the Long race, but rounded off the week running 2nd leg in the Lithuania 2nd relay team, who finished 21st overall (and like the GB team, beat their 1st team counterparts by a few places!).

Full results and maps can be found on the JWOC 2008 website.

World Masters Orienteering Championships (WMOC) – Leiria, Portugal

At the same time, a number of SLOW’s more elder statesmen and women were competing in the veteran’s equivalent of JWOC, the World Masters championships, held in forested sand dunes on the Portugese coast between 28 June and 5 July.

SLOW had 5 runners competing, with the best results of the week coming from the Leakeys in the Sprint race – Diane finishing in 14th place on W50, and Alan one place higher in 13th on M55. Diane also managed an impressive 19th place finish in the Long A final, with Alan finishing in 54th.

Andy Robinson finished 59th in the M50 Sprint (which was won by Guildford Orienteers’ James Crawford) and 62nd in the Long A final. Chris Robinson managed an excellent 31st on the W50 sprint and 57th in the Long A final. Anne May achieved 49th position in Long A final on W55.

Special congratulations also go to Elizabeth Brown (mother of SLOW’s Sarah Brown), who – while her grandson was competing in JWOC – completed a clean sweep of Gold medals in the W90 class, and was the oldest female competitor at the event!

Great Britain finished with their best ever performance in WMOC, finishing fourth in the combined medals table with 13 medals won. Sweden won 46, Finland won 25 and Norway won 16.

Finally a special mention to SLOW’s David May who was the IOF Senior Event Advisor for the event – no mean feat when living a thousand miles away! You can read a bit more about David’s involvement at the event here.

Full results and information can be found on the WMOC 2008 website.