The World Masters Orienteering Championships 2008 are taking place in Portugal at the moment.

Sprint Championship Results.

New format this year introduces the sprint discipline to WMOC. If you thought that the JK sprint was big – this one was huge! 3000 competitors! The sprint championship is arranged in the similar way to the long race: a qualifying race (the long race has 2 qualifiers); and a series of finals. The fastest finishers from the qualifiers compete for the overall title in the A final for each respective class. The remaining qualifiers feed into B, C, or D finals according to their relative results. For many orienteers, just making it to the A final is a major achievement in the competition!

Results of the Sprint finals for the SO contingent were as follows:

Position

25 M45 A Final Neil Crickmore

13 M50 B Final Vince Joyce

50 M55 A Final Andy Parkinson
54 M55 A Final John Franklin

mp M60 D Final Jim Parker

51 M65 A Final Les Hooper

56 M70 A Final Roger Maher
15 M70 B Final Pat Maher

19 W50 A Final Chris Jepson

34 W60 B Final Bridget Hooper

16 W65 B Final Sue Parker

Winner! W90 Elizabeth Brown

(A non-scientific selection of) other Local orienteers did well too:

M50 A finalists:
James Crawford (GO) Winner; Keith Tonkin (GO) 8th; Ian Ditchfield (MV) 28th.
M50 B Finalists:
Simon Greenwood (SAX) 11th; Philip Craven (DFOK) 52nd.
M45 B Finalist: Mark Collins (DFOK) 59th

After a little pause to catch breath, sun, and general sight seeing, the Long distance races commence on Wednesday. Entry into the A final for the long distance championship will be determined by the cumulative time over the two qualifying events (Wednesday and Thursday). The Long distance finals will be held on Saturday.

Full details of WMOC 2008 can be found at the
WM0C 2008 website.

Long Distance Qualifier No 1

Wednesday 2 July was the day of the first qualifying race for the long distance championship. Selections for the finals (Saturday) are dependent upon the cumulative competition time over the two qualifiers. The minimum requirement for progression to the final is to start one qualifying race. Final results are only counted in the final tally, however, if the qualifiers are successfully completed (if I understand the rules!).

The good news is that all the Southdowners listed above have successfully completed their courses - according to the preliminary results (and therefore have earned a run in one of the finals). Running times at the top of the lists for each course show that it was potentially very fast terrain - the fastest runners achieving running speeds of better than 6 min/km!

It is difficult, at this stage, to predict which of the SO runners have gained places in the A finals but Elizabeth Brown is definitely well on her way towards a second gold medal - Bravo Elizabeth! Roger Maher also appears to be in very good contact with the leaders of the race in his (M70) class. I suspect that the technical forested sand dunes of the long courses are more to his liking than the man-made terrain of the urban sprint!

A maximum of 80 people can take part in each class in the A final, but with up to 400 competitors in some classes, just getting there is a major feat! A rough guess (based on todays results) would be that approx half of the Southdowners are likely to make the A finals - not at all bad!!

Mark Collins (DFOK), Keith Tonkin (GO); and Ian Ditchfield (MV) - all local members of SO, and regulars at our events have also successfully completed the first qualifying day. Keith and Ian appear to be on their way to the A final.

The second qualifying race is tomorrow morning (Thursday 3 June).

Long Distance Qualifier No 2

Thursday 3 July was the day of the second qualifying race for the long distance championship. This was a crucial race for progression to the final, as any slip could send participants into a less competitive final race or a miss punch could ruin their chances of a final result. All SO managed to successfully complete their courses on terrain which was similar to (and just as fast as) the previous day. There were a couple of near misses on the A finals (only seconds in it with competitive fields as large as this!), but otherwise results were pretty good.

Start times for the finals have not been posted yet, and these are therefore a preliminary indication of who will be running in each final (based on the position in the qualifying heat, the number of heats in that class, and the requirement to have up to 80 people in each final race).

A Finalists (directly competing for the overall world championship titles):

M45 Neil Crickmore
M55 Andy Parkinson
M70 Roger Maher
W90 Elizabeth Brown

B Finalists:
M50 Vince Joyce
M55 John Franklin
M65 Les Hooper
M70 Pat Maher
W50 Chris Jepson
W60 Bridget Hooper
W65 Sue Parker

D Finalist
M60 Jim Parker

The results of our nearby orienteering friends:

A Finalists:
M50 Keith Tonkin (GO); Ian Ditchfield (MV)

B Finalists:
M45 Mark Collins (DFOK)
M50 Simon Greenwood (SAX)

Our athletes now have a day off from competitive running to recover and enjoy some of the more holiday like aspects of their trip to Portugal.
The Long distance finals will be held on Saturday (when many of the rest of the club will be running round Hove Park and Blatchington Mill School!).

Full Results of WMOC 2008 can be found Here

Long Distance Championship Results.

The main event of the week took place on Saturday. Four Southdowners were in contention for the prime titles in their classes, with another eight in the runners up finals.

Results of the Long Distance finals for the SO contingent were as follows:

Position

42 M45 A Final Neil Crickmore

51 M50 B Final Vince Joyce

61 M55 A Final Andy Parkinson
30 M55 B Final John Franklin

31 M60 D Final Jim Parker

61 M65 B Final Les Hooper

32 M70 A Final Roger Maher
mp M70 B Final Pat Maher

14 W50 B Final Chris Jepson

mp W60 B Final Bridget Hooper

47 W65 B Final Sue Parker

Winner (2nd gold of the champs)! W90 Elizabeth Brown

Some other results of local interest....

M50 A finalists:
Keith Tonkin (GO) 54th; Ian Ditchfield (MV) 32nd.
M50 B Finalist:
Simon Greenwood (SAX) 34th.
M50 C Finalist:
Philip Craven (DFOK) 75th.
M45 B Finalist: Mark Collins (DFOK) 77th

Well Done to all the Athletes!