Updates from JWOC in Tampere, Finland

Published: July 13, 2017

This week the Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) are taking place in Tampere, Finland. It’s for M/W 18s and 20s and attending is the peak of a junior orienteer’s career. More information about this year’s competition can be found here: www.jwoc2017.fi/

This year, once again, there are a number of Scottish athletes representing the Great Britain team:

  • Alexander (Sasha) Chepelin (GRAMP/EUOC)
  • Alex Carcas (INT/EUOC)
  • Ali Masson (EUOC)
  • Matt Fellbaum (EUOC)
  • Grace Molloy (FVO)
  • Jenny Ricketts (MAROC/EUOC)
  • Klara Novotna (EUOC) is also there representing the Czech Republic.

So far the athletes have ran a Middle Qualification race, Middle Final and a Sprint and there have been some fantastic results.

In the Middle Jenny, Grace, Sasha and Alex comfortably made it through the heats to their respective A Finals. Standout result came from Sasha who was 7th, missing a podium place by only 1 second. Alex came in 30th in his first JWOC as well as gaining a fastest split on one of the legs. Grace finished in 19th place also making her JWOC debut and Jenny in 24th, well up from her 43rd in 2016. Matt recovered well from his disappointment in the qualification coming 6th in the B final. The courses in the final were trickier than in qualification and there were lots of errors across the board including for our athletes. To get these results and still feel like there is room for improvement really shows the calibre of our young Scots! These are great performances, well done to everyone.

In the Sprint race there were further good results for Scottish athletes. Sasha had an excellent run to finish on the podium in 5th! Alex had another great run to come 24th with Ali just 1s behind in 25th. Klara was 47th in the women’s race, a great result considering she had to have surgery last month! These are tremendous achievements when it is appreciated that the field was 170 or so of the best junior orienteers in the world. Jenny has been recovering from illness over the last couple of months and decided to sit out the sprint to give her more rest for the remaining forest races. Grace and Matt also missed the sprint, again with thoughts of the other races to come in mind.

Today is a rest day with the action continuing with the Long race tomorrow (14th) and Relay on Saturday (15th). Links to GPS, live results and Arena video/commentary will be here: www.jwoc2017.fi/result-service
Good luck to all in the remaining races!

Image credits: Dave Yee