Clean sweep of trophies for EUOC at BUCS
The University of Bristol hosted this year's British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) Orienteering Championships in the Forest of Dean over the weekend 20th/21st February, with over 200 athletes representing 29 Universities in the individual and relay competitions.
Sasha Chepelin (EUOC) won the Mens’ A race in 58:52 for the 10.5km course with 415m climb, and Charlotte Watson (EUOC) won the Women’s A race in 54:05 for the 7.4km course with a climb of 265m. EUOC Legends won the Men’s Relay (Stansfield/Barr/Chepelin) and EUOC Legendesses won the Women’s Relay (Reynolds/Zoe Harding/Watson). This, of course, led to the club winning the overall trophy, with Sheffield 2nd and Oxford 3rd. Other Scottish universities in the championships were Heriot-Watt (9th), Strathclyde (13th), Glasgow (17th) and Aberdeen (21st). Full results are on the Bristol Orienteering Club website.
This is not the first time that EUOC has made a clean sweep of trophies at the BUCS Championships, but Head of Performance Orienteering at Edinburgh University, Mark Nixon, said, “It’s been a fantastic weekend with strong performances across the board. Our girls dealt with the pressure of being favourites excellently and dominated the results as expected. Our young guys excelled to get the golds ahead of a very strong Sheffield team. I wouldn’t have predicted us taking home all four golds. It’s an awesome set of results.”
With ScotJOS winning the 2015 Junior Home International, and SEDS winning the 2015 Senior Home International and very strong performances at the World Championships last August from alumni of ScotJOS, EUOC and SEDS, it is clear that at the Junior and Senior performance levels of the sport, orienteering is extremely strong in Scotland.
The individual races to complete the 2015 Scottish Universities Orienteering Championships will take place at SOL1 at Elibank on 6th March.
Support for EUOC athletes through the sportscotland Winning Students scheme is gratefully acknowledged.