2024 World Cup final round provides experience for next year
By Peter Molloy (Forth Valley Orienteers)
An impressive total of 10 Scottish or Scotland-based athletes have just returned from competing for GB in Kuopio, Finland, where the final round of this year’s Orienteering World Cup was held. This set of races was doubly significant for the team as Kuopio is the host of the 2025 World Orienteering Championships, thus allowing runners to get a feel for the terrain and planning challenges they will be up against in July of next year.
Having spent a few days familiarising themselves with the characteristics of forest in this region of Finland, which can offer both varying runnability and visibility whilst still always (nearly always) leaving you with a smile on your face, the first race was the long distance. The 20 degrees drop in temperature from the European Championships was greatly appreciated, and GB capitalised on this with some strong performances.
Ralph Street (17th) and Megan Carter-Davies (22nd) produced the strongest results of the day, however they were followed closely by Scots Josh Dudley (MarOC) in 37th and Grace Molloy (FVO) in 35th. A special mention should also go to Matthew Gooch and Eilidh Campbell (both EUOC and MarOC) for making their senior international debuts in this race and achieving 68th and 94th respectively. There isn’t much more of a brutal start than racing the Scandinavians in Scandinavia, so they should look forward to building on these results in future.
Following a rainy rest day the athletes were back out into the forest on Saturday for the middle distance; a discipline which is perhaps the hardest to achieve a strong result since the margin for error is so vanishingly small. Josh Dudley was the top performer for the Scottish men, finishing in 48th despite only being 5:50 down on the winner. Saturday was also the chance for Euan Tryner (EUOC) to make his senior international debut and despite catching a cold in the lead up to the race he turned in a solid performance to come 70th. Grace Molloy, with no help whatsoever from the Norwegian runner starting two minutes behind her, improved on Thursday’s result to sneak into the top 30, whilst Jo Sheperd (INVOC) ran well to finish 52nd. Rachel Brown (EUOC) finished in 67th whilst Niamh Hunter (also EUOC) finished in 85th.
Sunday’s relay promised and duly delivered fast and exciting head-to-head racing. The men were off first and all produced solid performances: GBR1, anchored by Josh Dudley, finished as 8th nation, with GBR3 featuring Peter Molloy (FVO) and Matthew Gooch finishing only 3 minutes behind them. In the women’s race GBR1, featuring Jo Shepherd and Grace Molloy, likewise finished as 8th nation, with Fiona Bunn recovering from previous ankle soreness to run a strong anchor leg for GBR2.