WOC 2008: Sprint and Middle in focus
February 27, 2008 ... by Jan Sidla
Green is grass, football that's a game. Every orienteerer in the Czech Republic knows the onset of our football anthem.
Do we also have an o-hymn? Quite honestly, I am not aware of any. It it existed though, it would for sure overflow with green as well.
And with yellow. Forget about brown. Green and yellow - these are the colours our map makers and course planners love to brandish.
Runners are taught to rely on green and become 'vegetative' o-runners.
In the picture you can see an example of a mistake even a member of our national team is prone to produce.
Chasing start. Control number one. The corner of the dark green is not distinct.
More distinct is another corner, some 100m to the south-east. Why not to hit it and continue to the control number ten instead.
Then a major mistake to the number two.
Don't you believe it? Well, the weekend was hard. Let me start from the beginning.
On Saturday we joined the team of Brozkova sisters in Brno.
The area of the morning sprint course bore some similarities with the town center of Olomouc, namely tramway cars,
big old buildings, big churches, big roads, same type of pavement in walking zones, same amount of people shopping around.
We learned to ignore crowds, beware of tramway cars, work out which route-choice matters (control number 1) and which does not (number 6).
In the afternoon a simulation of the grassy city parks of Olomouc waited for us near the Brno dam.
The lesson was dedicated to mastering the tactic used when the course is brutish.
The night downhill sprint is always an enjoyable training session even when it is a third action of the day.
This particular one was prepared in Kohoutovice and people liked it. Except of Jan Prochazka, I guess, since he got injured in his face.
All three courses were planned by Jan Skricka, who designed the long course for the final round of the World Cup 2002.
On Sunday we drove to the mountains of Jeseniky to check out the snow conditions over there.
The 'qualification' middle I planned on the map Mrtvy muz (Dead Man) up to 800 meters above the see level.
The snow is gone but stones remain, I can tell you.
Some mistakes were made in the flatter part between controls 6 and 8 due to the fact that the map is a bit out of date (2001).
Control number 12 proved to be very tricky, since the cliffs looked not that explicit in reality and the control itself
happened to be a distinctive beech tree in a beech forest.
The route-choice to the control number 13 had just one solution.
When approaching control number 14 the control descriptions had to be read carefully.
Michal Smola won (37min, 5.9km) and built himself an almost 4 minute lead for the 'final' chasing start middle.
It was set in another part of the same forest on the map Kamenec.
Apart from the mistake I mentioned in the beginning the route-choice to the control number 12 might be interesting.
The best is to get down to the road, follow it to the first bend and traverse after that.
Jan Prochazka made a great performance by wining the best time (39min, 5.5km) and finishing close behind Michal Smola.
Zdenek Rajnosek came third. We were very lucky with weather again.
It needs to be mentioned that even in July weather can be nasty here and maybe even nastier around the corner up to the north.
And around the corner of maps Mrtvy muz and Kamenec the WOC 2008 middle final will be held.
Many thanks to KSU.
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