NOC Reports

Lots of great reports on the Nordic Championships on both World of O, and Ultimate Orienteering. I always enjoy reading Minna Kauppi's reports for her honesty and the excuse to put up another photo from the Chris Forne collection which has somehow ended up on my harddrive.

Thats sensai Carsten Jorgenson in the background, and actually while I'm at it, I'll show you this...which I found the other day while trying to find image evidence of Carstens super hero marathon (Carsten recently completed a marathon dressed as the Norse god Thor, but was beaten by Batmans side kick Robin...what a kick in the guts for Norse gods.

Carsten and Antonia Wood in the 90's, no not the 80's!

And back to NOC, you wouldn't want to see your mistake exposed like this!!. At least they don't reveal the names of Norway 3 and Finland 2's final leg runners. And maps you want maps, the World of O map page is so awesome!

NOC Map

I borrowed another map from Oystein Kvaal Osterbo and the World of O is full of reports about this race, one of the years big ones, the Nordic Open Championship. It looks like established stars Daniel Hubbman and Minna Kauppi came away with the wins. The New Zealand connections at this race were Todd Oates and Greg Flynn, Todd just beginning an extended orienteering summer, Greg getting in some racing before WOC which he will return to Europe for in August. These two are both big movers in the New Zealand elite scene (Greg ranked 19th, up 7, Todd 21st up 17) finally coming to grips with things after difficult transitions from the junior grades. Its going to be great to watch how they progress in the next few months...go hard youse fellas!!

And if you look at Osterbo's blog, the previous entry is details of a sprint in Trondheim where he raced head to head with Chris Forne (or maybe really Chris's head to his backside:-)). I guess this terrain is quite relevant in regards to next years WOC sprint as well.