JUNIOR WORLD ORIENTEERING CHAMPIONSHIPS
Reminiscing JWOC 2008
time wandering through the forest by our cottage. On one such wander I came across a great lake in the middle of the forest, with little sign of civilisation other than a hut on the far shore. It seemed like a scene out of a fairy tale, and radiated tranquillity. It was a soothing place in the lead up to the excitement of JWOC.
Geoff Stacey (Parawanga, ACT)
Training Camp: The first week was a training camp, and our accommodation turned out to be a little cottage (an orienteering clubhouse) hidden just within a great expanse of forest. This was perfect for our purposes, because any time we wanted to we could grab a map of the area (available with a scale of 1:5 000, 1:10 000 or 1:15 000) and go training in the surrounding forest. Inside, we had a table tennis table and a huge supply of cards for relaxation. Our first training session consisted of completing a small course in groups of two or three, taking it slowly and studying the way the terrain was mapped. The forest had a lot of undergrowth and was in general very soft, not to mention green! Occasionally I made the mistake of wandering into a patch of stinging nettles, but quickly learned which type of leaves to watch out for. There were boulders and bare rocks much like in Australia, except that most of them were covered in moss. The mapping of the rock could be difficult to become accustomed to; the general rules were that bare rock covered in moss wasn’t bare rock and that cliffs weren’t mapped unless they were difficult to pass. As a result, yellow often turned out to be bare rock, and contours that were close together often turned out to be cliffs. The mapping of contours was more detailed than in Australia, and sometimes even the smallest gully nestled between two boulders could be shown on the map. Another unfamiliar feature on the Swedish maps were the marshes. Some of these were just wetter patches of ground with longer grass, but the larger marshes could be quite muddy and were usually covered in moss and grass, with quite a spongy surface. Visibility was good in these areas but running could be quite draining physically. The areas generally had lots of small, steep hills (whereas Australian terrain tends to have a single primary hill). The land was formed by glaciers, which caused the hills to be generally more linear than those in Australia. Courses often had long legs going across the grain of the land, making them very physical. Route choice was usually either up and down over several steep slopes, or around through thick gullies or spongy marshes. Due to the vegetation, it was very difficult to see what your feet were going to land on, and the ground was often lumpy or tussocky underneath. On one occasion my foot fell straight into a gap between two unseen pieces of rock. The only thing that stopped my fall was my knee slamming into them and being wedged in between. I was most fortunate that my leg went in at the right angle to avoid breaking anything. Throughout the rest of the training camp, we managed to have a session for each of the four disciplines, and I also spent a bit of 16 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER MARCH 2009
There was a great change to our lifestyle once JWOC started. The accommodation for the teams was in an army barracks, for which there was a Sprint map to practice on. There was a great view of the city from the top of a nearby hill. Deer and hares could be seen around the place, as well as various birds. Most of the food provided was pretty bland, but jam went with pretty much everything and gave it some flavour. Mike Hubbert
On Monday 23rd of June I arrived at Gothenburg airport, Sweden, ready for the experience of a lifetime – JWOC, the Junior World Orienteering Championships.
JWOC:
Sprint race: The JWOC Sprint was our first event. I was feeling a little anxious on the bus ride because I didn’t really know what to expect, but once I arrived at the start arena it suddenly felt like any other national event, only scaled up a little. We had a nice area to warm up in, with a small practice map to get a feel for the terrain. We had a silent start, which basically meant we had to follow hand motions rather than verbal instructions, and when it was time I pushed through the start gate and began my course. The early part wove around lots of small buildings and gardens, which wasn’t very different to the Sprint races in Australia and I was travelling really well. The second half of the course began to cross strips of bushland, which were a little thick in places and had cliffs riddled throughout. This bush was really technical and, although it wasn’t too hard to see where I wanted to end up, I had to make a lot of quick decisions about the fastest way to get there without jumping down any impassable cliffs (which is a disqualification in a Sprint). There was also the added pressure of the media, which was distributed throughout the course. Around a third of the way through the course, I caught someone who’d made an error, and we headed around the next few controls together, until we took different route choices on a long leg. I got a little disoriented here, but without hesitation changed my route choice to make use of a catching feature which saved me from making an error. I came up to the second last leg, which went through the bush, but in my haste I didn’t notice a track underneath a contour line. It was a little harder without it and I hit the cliff about 10 meters from the control, but the bush was thick there and it took me a while to see the control and reach it. From there my bearing to the finish control was a little off, but I corrected this and suddenly I was sprinting down the streamered finish chute towards the finish of my first JWOC race. My time was quite reasonable; until my small errors on the last two controls I had been roughly equal with Lachlan Dow who got the fastest time for the Aussie boys. At the finish, I eagerly awaited the arrival of the rest of my team. Most of the team had very respectable times, although we had a couple of mishaps such as Leon Keely breaking his compass in the middle of a fantastic run.
Middle Distance: On the Tuesday we headed out to the model event for the Middle Distance. Unfortunately, as it turned out I didn’t spend much time in the more relevant parts of the map, which were the open rocky hills. The next day we ran the Middle Distance Qualifications, for which there were three different courses (heats) that we were randomly assigned to, and the top 20 from each heat would run the A final, with the next 20 running the B final and the rest running the C final. Competitors were started three at a time with 2-minute intervals. My race got off to a good start, but my navigation slowly declined as the physically tough terrain took its toll. Much of the team
