World TrailO Championships 2012

97 competitors from 23 countries travelled to Scotland for the 2012 World Trail Orienteering Championships based in Dundee.

The event opened on a very wet Wednesday at Camperdown Park in with a World Trophy event in TempO. TempO is the ‘sprint’ version of TrailO which will be included in the WTOC next year.

Thursday saw the event moving to Tentsmuir for the first of three days. This was a non-competitive model event.

Friday was Day 1 of the TrailO competition, held at the northern end of Tentsmuir. Victory to Antti Rusanen (Finland), followed by Stig Gerdtman (Sweden) and Richard Ebright (USA) 3rd. 

Day 2 at Tentsmuir East started near the ice house at Tentsmuir and followed a route of 1.9km back to assembly with 23 controls and 2 timed controls.

In the Paralympic class, Seppa and Jansson both achieved 24 points with Seppa ahead on time.  Joint third place went to Ivica Bertol

(Croatia) and Kari Pinola (Finland) on 23 points (both 80 sec for the timed controls).

Combined results for the two days gave victory to Jansson, one point ahead of Seppa with Kucherenko a further point behind.

 In the Open class, three competitors achieved a maximum score of 25 points – Vitaliy Kyrychenko (Ukraine), Christian Gieseler (Germany) and Ian Ditchfield (Great Britain).  Not far behind was GBR’s John Kewley in 10th place.

The combined results showed continuing Swedish dominance with victory for Gerdtman, followed by Kyrychenko and Sergiy Stoian (Ukraine).

Ditchfield achieved a podium place in 5th.

Day 2 also involved a team competition; Finland prevented a Swedish clean sweep of the gold medals by taking victory with their team of Kontkanen, Rusinan and Seppa, finishing on the same points but ahead of Sweden on time. Croatia took the bronze medal, with Lithuania, Czech Republic and Ukraine also on the podium and the Great Britain team of Ditchfield, Kewley and John Crosby just missing out in 7th.

The medals were presented by Sari Salomaa-Niemi (Chair, IOF TrailO Commission). Also in the presentation party were Anna Tizzard (Scottish Disability Sport), Lyn West (British Orienteering) and Roger Scrutton (SOA), supported by members of the Scottish Junior Orienteering Squad.

Full report and photos, http://www.scottish-orienteering.org/wtoc2012

Item posted by Janine White