World Orienteering Champs

A week ago today the Wadd Squad watched an absolutely awesome GOLDEN run by Holger Hott Johansen from Norway in the WOC middle distance race. Holger visited Hamilton in early January and gave an awesome presentation on his goal of being an individual World Champion and how he trained to reach that goal. It was great to be at the race to watch him achieve that goal.

Another awesome performance at this year's World Orienteering Championships was that of Hanny Allston from Australia. Still a junior, she won Gold in the sprint race. An incredible achievement.

WOC was a big dissapointment for Mike but he was prepared for this mentally as he had been injured for the 10 weeks prior to the races. He didn't achieve his goal of making the finals in both the sprint and middle distance. He had to place in the top 15 in his heat to do that and due to his bad knee and some uncharacteristic poor navigation he was well back of that spot in both races. The knee pain also caused him to pull himself off the Canadian relay team. It was an easy decision to make as Patrick Goeres was the replacement and he the young guy ran well moving the Canadian team up a few spots. Emma and Mike did however manage to place in the top 15 in a fantasy orienteering league that was developed for fun at WOC. Emma's Lonnloven (maple leafs in Swedish) placed 15th out of over 500 other participants. Details are here.

Stay tuned for some ideas of Mike's on how Canada can improve internationally in orienteering...