Hope you have all been watching or following the World Orienteering Champs in Denmark. You can pay a small fee of 12 euros to watch live coverage on the IOF website. So far, the GB team won silver medal in the Sprint relays, and then Megan Carter Davies won another silver medal in the Sprint knockout event. They are still available online to watch. When you consider that the last medal GB won was in 2013, this is pretty amazing, and testament to the quality of GB elite orienteering and the programmes that support them. Whilst I don’t get much chance to rub shoulders with Kevin De Bruyne or Joe Root (my other sporting heroes), we do get to see, chat and even run against the best GB orienteers, and it’s great to share in their successes and be inspired to push ourselves even harder the next time we run. So, from WSX, massive congratulations to the GB team and good luck in the WOC sprints tomorrow.

On to club matters, you will have seen that we are now making a weekend of Purbeck orienteering in October with sand dunes @ Studland on Saturday and seaside town @ Swanage on Sunday. Can’t wait, the courses are largely planned and Liz is assembling helper team.

Before that, we have the next summer series event at Boscombe on 9th July, followed by our relay on 24th July. Please come along if you can.

Looking further ahead, our international traveller Gavin has persuaded us (and WIM) to stage a European City Tour weekend in Bournemouth in June 2023. You may be wondering what the European City Tour is, so Gavin has kindly provided a summary of this, along with UKOL, UKUL etc.:

Chasing Liverpool FC [JM: Man City are better :)]

Most of you will be aware of the BOF ranking list. How many of you know of the various Orienteering Leagues?

At the beginning of each year I try and set myself Orienteering goals for the following 12 months. As there was a lot in the sporting press at the time about the quadruple Liverpool were going for I thought I’d look at doing the same:

Premier League: 

Obviously equates to the UK Orienteering League 

https://www.ukorienteeringleague.org.uk

The primary objectives of the UK Orienteering League are as follows:

• Encourage greater participation at a national level and thus increase the quality of competition.
• Provide competition in a variety of terrain types, across the United Kingdom.
• Promote new and alternative event formats.
• Provide an excellent sporting experience.

This year the UK Orienteering League will consist of 24 events from January to December spread across the country. They offer a range of competition formats and terrain types. The competition is based around the standard age-based class structure. Where events use a different class structure, e.g. urban events, classes are disaggregated for the purpose of the UK Orienteering League scoring. I’m not doing as well as Lyra but in the M65’s I’m lying 2/157.

UEFA Champions League:

Euro City Race League https://cityracetour.org  The European City Race Tour is a league of Orienteering Events in major European Cities that brings the orienteers into the cities, in front of enthusiastic spectators, with an excellent media coverage and offers a touristic approach to Orienteering city races. Events are open to all, from Under 10s to Over 70s, whether you are one of the world´s best orienteers, experienced athlete or it’s your first time in Orienteering. The League takes all participants into some wonderful places of European Cities, with challenging courses for all classes and spectacular controls in some of the most beautiful tourist paradises of Europe. Participants can combine the Middle-Long distance course in urban environment together with an amazing tourist experience, good accommodation, traditional food and enthusiastic spectators!

FA Cup:

UK Urban League. https://www.oxfordfusion.com/ukul/ and has the following scoring system: 

Your age class determines your urban league category.

• Young Juniors (12-)
• Junior (16-)
• Senior
• Vet (40+)
• Supervet (55+)
• Ultravet (65+)
• Hypervet (75+)

At each race the organisers designate which categories should run which courses. The scores index page defines the number of races to count. Points are awarded for each category as follows: 100, 96, 93, 91, 90, 89, … . People tying share the points for the relevant places, e.g. a tie for first and second gives 98 points and a tie for second, third and fourth gives 93.33 each. At any given race, a competitor may score in only one category. In a competition with parallel heats and a set of graded finals, points will be awarded from the top of the A final downwards. Anybody not finishing both races will score zero.

Carabao Cup:

Southern England Urban Orienteering League 

https://www.oxfordfusion.com/ukul/index.cfm?&Org=5 Same scoring system as UK Urban League and some races count for both Leagues.

Liverpool managed two out of the four. What are my chances of matching that or even doing better?  Currently in UKOL in M65 I’m lying 2/157. Pete Haines who’s leading is a formidable competitor and I have trouble beating him unless its fast and technical. I do have all the 6 races to come in my calendar so lets see. Euro City League I’m lying 16th of 51 in Mens Ultra Vets, but have only run one race in Antwerp. With Coventry and Birmingham (assuming no DQ) I’ll have one more race to find. Stockholm is booked. UKUL 3/134 and plenty of races to come. SEUOL 5/157 again plenty of races to improve.