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All Six GB Athletes Record Their Best Ever WOC Long Race Results

Three top 20 places highlighted a good day for the Great Britain team in the forest with all six runners delivering their best ever World Orienteering Championships Long race results.

Today's Long distance race took the competition to the south of Estonia and into the hills. Runners were greeted with tough terrain consisting of large areas of green woodland and marsh, which significantly affected running speed.

Visibility in the forest was often low, providing an extremely tough challenge both technically and physically.  The women and the men had similar course structure, with a long starting leg before some fine navigation between the marshes and hills. Many chose much longer road and path routes to avoid the need for micro navigation in the complex terrain, though those that had the skill, confidence and energy to keep straight found they could make up a lot of time.

A gaffled loop then split the athletes up as they came out into a more runnable part of the area; following this, both courses had some more long legs around the lakes near the spectator area before an arena passage and a short, sharp last loop tested who had the stamina and determination to keep moving after what had been a very testing course.

Hollie Orr 16th
Ralph Street 18th
Jess Tullie 17th

Tove Alexandersson (Sweden) and Olav Lundanes (Norway) are the World Champions in the Long distance. In the women’s class silver went to Maja Alm (Denmark) and bronze to Natalia Gemperle (Russia). In the men’s class silver went to Leonid Novikov (Russia) with William Lind (Sweden) in third.

For Great Britain, Hollie Orr and Jess Tullie finished 16th and 17th respectively, with Charlotte Watson 25th. Ralph Street also made the top 20 in 18th place, with Alan Cherry 25th and Jonny Crickmore 32nd. For all six runners, this was their best WOC Long race result ever.

Tomorrow is another rest day before the action moves to Vitipalu on Thursday for the Middle distance race.

Full results can be found here.
Photos by Simon Errington

Alan Cherry 25th
Charlotte Watson 25th
Jonny Crickmore 32nd
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