Photo: John Kewley (left) competing in the World Trail Orienteering Relay.  Credit:  Joaquim Margarido.

The first ever official World Trail Orienteering Championship Relay was held in the spectacular setting of the Tolvmanstegen windfarm on a sunny as well as a very windy day.

In the World Trail Orienteering Championships Relay, there are teams of three. This year there were 21 PreO control stations, with the first and second Leg runners having a free choice in visiting seven different stations, each followed by a TempO station of five problems. The last Leg runner then visited the seven remaining stations, after which there was a TempO station in view of the spectators which teams visited in the reverse order of their positions at that point.

The team time is calculated by adding together 60-second penalties for each wrong control in the PreO section, 30 seconds for each wrong TempO control, plus the total time the team took in answering at the TempO stations. The winner is the team with the lowest total time.

The Selectors had decided that the team representing Great Britain in the TrailO Relay Open class (in running order) was John Kewley, Tom Dobra and Nick Barrable.  The mass start was at 10.10 am. 

Photo: Nick Barrable competing in the World Trail Orienteering Relay.  Credit:  Joaquim Margarido.

In the Open class, there were first-time medallists with Slovakia taking gold with no mistakes at all in either format, and Portugal, with one mistake in the TempO, the silver. Finland finished in bronze position. The Great British team finished in a solid 8th place, having two wrong PreO and two wrong choices in the TempO section.

The World Trail Orienteering Championships Para Relay, in which GB were unable to field a team this year, was won by Sweden, followed by  Ukraine and Finland.
 

Results

Open class

1. Slovakia (Marian Miklus, Dusan Furucz, Ján Furucz) 102 seconds
2. Portugal (Edgar Domingues, Jorge Baltazar, João Pedro Valente) 193 sec
3. Finland (Martti Inkinen, Pinja Mäkinen, Antti Rusanen) 213 sec
4. Sweden (Marit Wiksell, Jens Andersson, Martin Fredholm) 221.5 sec
5. Norway (Sigurd Dæhli, Lars Jakob Waaler, Martin Jullum) 245 sec
6. Croatia (Zdenko Horjan, Tomislav Varnica, Ivo Tisljar) 280 sec

Paralympic class

1. Sweden (Inga Gunnarsson, Ola Jansson, Michael Johansson) 334.5 seconds
2. Ukraine (Iryna Kulikova, Yehor Surkov, Vladislav Vovk) 402 sec
3. Finland (Kari Pinola, Tuomo Markelin, Pekka Seppa) 423 sec
4. Russia (Dmitry Dokuchaev, Eduard Oginskii, Pavel Shmatov) 443.5 sec
5. Czech Republic (Pavel Dudik, Bohuslav Hulka, Jana Kostová) 503.5 sec
6. Latvia (Guntis Jakubovskis, Valdis Strods, Andrejs Sulcs) 554.5 sec

Full results are available here.

Item posted by Jennie Taylor, Marketing Manager on behalf of Richard Keighley, Chair of TrailO Development Steering Group, British Orienteering.