SKI JWOC 2007 Blog

Sportgastein, Henndorf.- The second competition was much of a swedish-russian match for gold. After the postponing of the middle distance from Tuesday to Wednesday due to the bad weather, a marvelous blue sky, sometimes hard wind and a lot of soft and deep snow was waiting for the 200 competitors. It was also the first race for the EYOC-youngsters. Unfortunately a missing control at the girls’ race caused an annullation. A new competition for the W17 will be held on Thursday.

Now to the results. Swedish girl Eva Svensson, the bronze medallist of the sprint race, could not be beaten in the middle distance. With a 1:30 min lead in front of Olga Trifanova from Russia, and teammate Helene Söderlund she is the new junior world champion in W20. The boys saw Taras Kashchuk from Russia as the winner after his silver medal from monday. He is by now the most successful competitor of the world championships in Salzburg. We will see if he keeps this position. Ove Sätra from Norway, who was second and Sweden’s Thomas Carlsson, the third may be two of more than 50 others, who would like to change this during the next to races. New European Youth Champion in middle distance is Mikhail Utkin from Russia, who was only 15 seconds ahead of Yury Yazykov (BLR) and Yuri Kazakov (RUS).

To secure the chance for having all races in spite of the weather, which should be bad on Thursday and much better on Friday, the organizer ASKÖ HENNDORF ORIENTEERING decided to swap the relay and the long distance.

Pl Stnr Name Jg Nation Time

W 20 (44) 4.9 km 0 Hm 15 P

1 36 Svensson Eva 87 Sweden 29:30,7
2 31 Trifanova Olga 87 Russia 31:04,8
3 43 Söderlund Helene 87 Sweden 31:10,1

M 20 (64) 6.3 km 0 Hm 20 P
1 152 Kashchuk Taras 88 Russia 34:12,0
2 155 Sätra Ove 87 Norway 35:42,3
3 133 Carlsson Thomas 87 Sweden 35:44,5

M 17 (38) 5.7 km 0 Hm 16 P
1 186 Utkin Mikhail 90 Russia 34:20,4
2 206 Yazykov Yury 90 Belorussia 34:35,8
3 180 Kazakov Yuri 90 Russia 34:48,8

FURTHER INFORMATIONEN:

http://www.ski-jwoc2007.eu
http://www.oefol.at

Salzburg, Austria.- The first competition of the SKI JWOC-EYOC 2007 Salzburg, was a very competitive Sprint in Sportgastein. The weather was windy, but with bright sunshine at the start and a very cloudy sky at the end of the race. Many slopes and some “fake” controls in the open area with the gentle hills were the big challenge of the day. The orienteering was more “Foot-O” style, and those athletes, who could switch their mind faster in this direction and controlled their speed, were the winners of the day.

At the Womens’ race Hana Hancikova (CZE) did best, winning with a 4 seconds lead in front of two Swedish girls, Helene Söderlund and Eva Svensson. The mens’ race saw Olli-Markus Taivainen (FIN) as the winner, 7 seconds faster then Taras Kashchuk of Russia, and 12 seconds in front of Johan Edin from Sweden.

On Tuesday the middle distance race will take place in the Sportgastein area.

W 20 (59) 2.7 km 9 P

1 47 Hana Hancikova 88 Czech Republic 12:13
2 29 Helene Söderlund 87 Sweden 12:17
3 54 Eva Svensson 87 Sweden 12:30

M 20 (83) 3.0 km 12 P

1 169 Olli-Markus Taivainen 89 Finland 11:49
2 172 Taras Kashchuk 88 Russia 11:56
3 171 Johan Edin 87 Sweden 12:01

Photos at www.ski-jwoc2007.eu | Photos

This is a message for all of you competitors, who are 17 years old or younger: Are you sad because you are too young for a start at the JWOC? Do you long for those medals in gold, silver or bronze? Don’t worry! Take a look at this - a special handmade aluminium medal with blue inlay, where the light shines through. Every piece is unique. See more in the photo section at “ceremonies“.

Well, I bet the others want to be younger now Go for the cool EYOC medal. There’s enough time for JWOC gold, silver and bronze in the coming years…

3 days to go - the ski-JWOC07 Salzburg is ready!

Salzburg, Austria.- 3 days to go, and the OK-team of the SKI JWOC - EYOC 2007 is ready for the race. Around 200 young European and Asian orienteers from 19 nations are looking forward to a speedy sprint, a highly technical middle distance, a powerful long distance and an exciting relay with high tension until the end – the spectators close to the race at the open air arena.

ASKÖ HENNDORF ORIENTEERING, one of Austrias most profiled orienteering event organizers, did whatever was possible in those weeks without snow and with much storm, to make this event come true. The most important question was: Will there be enough of the white gold? During the last week half a metre of snow has fallen on the Postalm (the relay and long-distance area). But unfortunately there is no snow in Faistenau and Abtenau, where Sprint and Middle should have taken place. Therefore the new area for those competitions will be – as announced a few days ago – Sportgastein.

Here’s what course setter Wolfgang Pötsch is saying about this new situation: “Our three map surveyors Martin Lejsek, Roman Horky and Daniel Lebar finished drawing the map yesterday, and JWOC director Mr. Christian Breitschädel and myself have checked out the infrastructure there over the past two days. The area is mostly open, with some gentle hills – a little romantic valley at 1700 m altitude. The mountains surrounding this valley are very impressive and high, it’s a real paradise when there is sunny weather. The new courses have been planned and we will start preparing the tracks with snow cats and scooters on Thursday. There is already a dense system with many broad and fast tracks, so making and finalising the courses should be done in less than a day.”

On the Postalm the organizers have been preparing the tracks for the last two days, but are unfortunately facing some other problems. On one hand there is enough snow, especially in the forest, on the other hand, however, the storm has blown away much of the snow on the higher, open parts of the Postalm. Another problem was caused by hurricane “Kyrill” in January. Some of the planned tracks have had to be cancelled because of storm damage (i.e. trees lying over the track) – many trees have been broken, or completely blown over and this has made the tracks impassable. So the course setting had to be modified, and competitors sould be warned: a short cut through the forest might be a dead end street.

“Problems are there to be solved”, says Christian Breitschädel, “we made everything possible to secure a WM worthy event and I’m glad to say: that worked. So now we are only looking forward to welcome the teams in our beautiful country!”

Photos: (High Resolution on request or for downloading at http://www.ski-jwoc2007.eu/ under the link “photos”)