Second Masterplan Adventure-funded GB Squad Camp: York

The second of the Masterplan Adventure-funded British Orienteering squad sprint camps took place in York over the weekend of the 16/17th of August. 

Selections for the European sprint orienteering championships in Belgium had just been made, and the main focus of this camp was to prepare athletes for these races. After carefully analysing information given by the organisers of the EOC about the terrains in Belgium, we decided that the most relevant terrain in the UK for these Belgian towns was in York and surrounding towns. The focus was flat and extremely fast market towns with a focus on routechoice selection. 

The first session of the weekend was in York university, only a short jog away from our accommodation for the weekend. Courses were tricky, involving big routechoices combined with complex execution.

On Saturday evening we travelled to Malton. Athletes enjoyed a brand new map, based on the old EBOR map, drawn by Joe Hudd and surveyed by Frank Townley. The area was a brilliant wee market town, intensely demanding for sprint O with numerous small, irregularly situated alleys. Athletes practiced the Belgium relevant skills of “finding the right alley” and routechoice evaluation in and around symmetrical shapes.

Athletes were up bright and early Sunday morning to beat the tourists in York city centre. This was the most Belgium relevant area of the weekend with very large irregular shapes and small alleyways. Watching the broadcast of the EOC sprint relay 2 weeks later in which GB came 5th, the visual parallels to York were huge. We had planned 3*2k ‘sprintervals’ with the last one being a mass start. The challenges were picking the correct routechoices over long, difficult to evaluate legs.

All of the first 3 maps (York uni, York centre and Malton) were kindly provided by EBOR, many thanks have to go to them.

Finally, before travelling up/down the M1, we went to Wetherby for a lighter session to finish off the weekend. This area was similar to Malton as a small market town with smaller shapes than York, arguably making it more demanding with athletes constantly needing to be making decisions. The Wetherby map was provided to us by CLARO, big thanks to them.

Overall, the camp was highly successful. Many athletes commented on how useful and enjoyable it was. As with the previous month’s Glasgow camp, this weekend was completely funded by Masterplan Adventure as part of their commitment to supporting elite orienteering in Britain. Perhaps your club would be keen to do something similar and support our best young athletes to achieve their potential?