Edinburgh Southern Orienteering Club

WOC 2012Lausanne, Switzerland, 14 - 21 July

ESOC elites Helen Bridle and Claire Ward were in the GB team at the World Orienteering Championships.

The 2012 World Orienteering Championships was based in Lausanne, on Lake Geneva. Helen competed in the Long Distance event. Claire competed in all 4 disciplines: Sprint, Middle Distance, Long Distance and Relay.

Sprint
The first event of the Championships was on Saturday 14 July, with a qualification race at the University of Lausanne, followed by the final in the centre of Lausanne. In the qualifier, there were 3 parallel heats, with 15 from each going through to the final. Claire finished 7th in her heat to comfortably qualify for the final. In the final, Claire performed even better to finish 7th overall, a magnificent result and the third best ever GB women’s result in the WOC Sprint, behind Heather Monro’s 3rd and ESOC’s Helen Bridle who finished 6th in 2006.

Long Distance
The Long Distance qualification race was on Sunday 15 July at Ballens, to the W of Lausanne. Again there were 3 parallel heats, with 15 from each heat qualifying for the final. Both Helen and Claire qualified for the Long final; Helen was 14th in her heat and Claire continued her great form, finishing 4th in her heat. The final was on Thursday 19 July at Lausanne-Chalet à Gobet, NE of Lausanne. Claire finished 25th - she had been in 20th place at the spectator control just before the final loop but made a mistake, like many others, towards the end. Helen had a solid run but lost time between the first two radio controls, finishing in 35th place, 1 second ahead of team-mate Sarah Rollins.

Middle Distance
The Middle Distance qualification race was on Monday 16 July at St-George, W of Lausanne. With 3 parallel heats (as for the Sprint and Long), Claire qualified for the final with a solid race, finishing 6th= in her heat. The final was on Tuesday 17 July at St-Cergue/Col de la Givrine, SW of Lausanne. Claire finished 22nd=, after a mistake between the 1st and 2nd radio controls. She was in good company, as even Simone Niggli-Luder (the favourite to win) was caught out in the very mixed terrain.

Relay
The final event of WOC 2012 was the relay, on Saturday 21 July at Lausanne-Chalet à Gobet, the same venue as the Long Final. Claire was running 2nd leg, taking over from Sarah Rollins. She had an excellent run, coming 7th on her leg, just 2:20 behind Helena Jansson (SUI) who was fastest on 2nd leg. The GB team came 10th overall.

Further details and results are on the WOC 2012 website.
There are also interesting reports and photos on the British Orienteering website:
Sprint
Long Qualifier
Middle Qualifier
Middle Distance Final
Long Distance Final
Relay

Crawford Lindsay
Club Captain

First posted 13 July

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