Rona has some fantastic performances at EYOC
After a bad start in the long race, a big mistake on the first control, Rona pulled through to have an outstanding run in the relay to help the team to 4th place, narrowly missing out on a medal. She finished the competition off with an excellent run to come 12th in the sprint race on Sunday, top British female!
Rona Lindsay, ESOC, was competing in the European Youth Orienteering Championships (EYOC) last week. Her competition started in just the way she had hoped it wouldn’t, with a big mistake on the first control. She lost around 11 minutes on a short 3 minute leg which meant she was chasing an unassailable target, in fact she did very well to pull herself up to 59th with a near-perfect run from control 2 onwards. Thankfully this was to serve a reminder that she can orienteer, and very well at that!
Next came the relay, on the morning of Saturday the 3rd of July, where Rona was running the first leg of the W16 relay alongside Florence Haines and Lucy Butt. She got the team off to the perfect start by coming home alongside the Swiss, Czech, Danish, and Spanish teams as the leading group. Here’s Rona punching the spectator control:
Florence and Lucy maintained the team position within the top 5, eventually finishing 4th. I’m sure they are slightly disappointed to have missed out on a medal (by only a minute and a half), but it is an excellent achievement for them nonetheless.
The competition was to finish with the sprint race on Sunday morning. Expectations were high after the impressive performance the day before and Rona came up with a quality run to finish off her introduction to international competition. She came 12th, only 21 seconds off an elusive top 10 place and top placed British female (Jonathon Crickmore came 11th in the M18 class, an equally impressive run).
Hopefully Rona has learned a lot in her first major international competition, ESOC are certainly very proud of her achievements and hope she is too!
Full results and more pictures can be found on the EYOC website. Rona has uploaded some of her own pictures to the ESOC gallery.
Other entries categorised under: Juniors