Samantha Saeger and Ross Smith win Classic Champs!

Samantha Saeger and Ross Smith dominated the Classic Champs this weekend, both winning decisively on Saturday and Sunday. Final two-day results are here, top three men and women:

Women:

Samantha Saeger

Alison Crocker

Pavlina Brautigam

Men:

Ross Smith

Sergei Zhyk

William Hawkins

Congratulations to all the medalists!

Classic Champs Day 1: Sam and Ross in the lead

This weekend is the US Classic Champs at Moreau Lake State Park, New York. The terrain is glacial and fantastic and the weather has held up, despite early predictions of rain.

The Classic Champs is a two-day combined time event, so the winner will not be determined until tomorrow. Leading the women after the first day is Samantha Saeger, who ran the 6.8km in about 62 minutes, with Ali Crocker just 2.5 minutes back. The men's course was dominated by Ross Smith, who ran the 9.6km course in just under 69 minutes. Sergei Zhyk was just over 3 minutes behind.

WOC Sprint Qualifiers

WOC 2010 got off to a great start for the US women, with Samantha Saeger and Alison Crocker taking places in this afternoon's sprint final after great races in the morning's qualifier. Samantha was 14th in her heat and had to push hard in the end to qualify - she had the fastest time in her heat from the pre-warning to the finish and made the final with just 4 seconds to spare! Alison made the final in her first WOC race ever, coming 13th in her heat. Sandra Zurcher also had a solid race and finished just three places outside the final.

The maps from the sprint qualifying races are available here.

Interview with Keith after the Long

Wicked tough long at JWOC...

The US Juniors all survived a very tough Long distance race yesterday at Svinkløv. The terrain was more or less what we expected - very thick, with lots of trails and lots of small contour details. Throw in some brutal climbs and you get a tough course! Top US runners for the day were Greg Ahlswede and Alison Campbell:

Women:

1. Ida Bobach (Denmark) 1:01:55

91. Alison Campbell (USA) 1:38:21

97. Holly Kuestner (USA) 1:42:39

102. Hannah Burgess (USA) 1:46:40

Men:

1. Pavel Kubat (Czech Republic) 1:18:48

92. Greg Ahlswede (USA) 1:46:56

109. Andrew Childs (USA) 1:54:59

114. Nate Lyons (USA) 1:57:02

115. John Williams (USA) 1:57:02

128. Keith Andersen (USA) 2:04:03

132. Carl Underwood (USA) 2:08:11

Full results here, and a map of the men's course (with top-3 routes) below:

Bjorn in the USA

For the first time since 1982, the Bjorn Kjellstrom Cup is heading south to the US from the North American Championships. The Cup is a trophy that is awarded to the more successful nation at the bi-annual North American Champs, this year held in Cranbook, British Columbia. After three days of hotly contested battles, the USA came out on top by a score of 327-301.

The scoring is calculated by using the three best placings from each country in each of the three races, middle, long, and sprint. First place gets 25 points, second 22, then 19-16-13-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. The scorers for team USA were Samantha Saeger, Sandra Zurcher, Ali Crocker, Angelica Riley, Kat Orekhova, Jonas Kjall, Eric Bone, Ross Smith, and Boris Granovskiy.

Conquering the land of the Vikings

The JWOC team has been working hard to learn how to orienteer in the unique terrain of North Jutland. The middle and long take place near the coast and have many areas of intricate dune contours.

This map is from Vester Torup, about 60km from Aalborg and relevant to both the middle and long. The team trained here on Tuesday and Thursday, and the course you see here is a practice middle run by the women on Thursday - the men ran a few extra controls to the north. The terrain is quite physical, and often it is quite slow to run off the trails, though even the trails can be slow if sandy!

Here's Andrew on the way to the first control, showing us how it's done. This is what much of the open terrain looks like. The wooded terrain varies from moderately thick forest to very thick forest and to extremely thick forest with cuttings all over the ground.

Everyone has learned a lot running in the training areas and all are starting to get really excited for the sprint on Monday. Greg really wants you to know how excited he his:

Stay tuned for more updates from Aalborg!

JWOC team training in Aalborg!

Okay USA orienteering fans, here's your first update from Aalborg, site of the 2010 Junior World Orienteering Championships. It'll be quick because we're all tired from a long day of training today at Vester Torup.

The entire team of 6 men and 3 women has been here in Aalborg since Sunday evening, moving into our accommodations in the Aalborg barracks on Monday. It's a bit tight with all 12 of us (runners + 3 coaches) in one room, but it's a great bonding experience. We had our first training on Monday afternoon on a map of terrain that is adjacent to the barracks and quite convenient, though not the most relevant for JWOC this year. On Tuesday we headed out to a relay relevant area, and of course today on a middle/long area. The terrain is interesting and unlike what most of us have experience with back home, which makes for a great training experience and hopefully some interesting racing!

That's it for today, short update. Tomorrow is a rest day for the training week and the opening ceremony is on Sunday afternoon, but stay tuned for more updates before then!

Team for WOC 2010!

The Team Trials were held this past weekend at Harriman State Park in New York, and as a result the following were named to represent the USA at the World Championships in Trondheim, Norway, in August:

Women
Samantha Saeger, New England OC
Alison Crocker, Cambridge Sports Union
Erin Nielsen, Up North Orienteers
Pavlina Brautigam, Western Connecticut OC
Sandra Zürcher, Up North Orienteers

Cristina Luis, Tucson OC, 1st alternate
Kat Orekhova, Cambridge Sports Union, 2nd alternate

Men
Ross Smith, Cambridge Sports Union
Eric Bone, Cascade OC
Boris Granovskiy, Cambridge Sports Union (declined)
Ken Walker, Cambridge Sports Union (declined)
Eddie Bergeron, Susquahanna Valley Orienteering
Wyatt Riley, Delaware Valley OA (declined)
Nikolay Nachev, Cascade OC
Matt Scott, Delaware Valley OA

Jordan Laughlin, US Military Academy OC, 1st alternate
Clem McGrath, Delaware Valley OA, 2nd alternate

Cristina Luis will serve as Team Leader.

This will be the first World Championships for Alison, Nikolay, and Matt.

Many thanks are due to the small but highly skilled group of organizers of the Trials, especially event director Vadim Masalkov, course setters Greg Balter and Sergei Zhyk, and e-punch guru Sandy Fillebrown. The event was sponsored by the Delaware Valley Orienteering Association and Amino Vital.

US Team to WUOC Announced!

From Linda Kohn:

I am very proud to announce the selection of the World University Orienteering Championships Team to go to Borlänge, Sweden in July:

Men
Leif Anderson, RMOC
Nick Lewis-Walls, USMAOC (declined)
John Hensley-Williams, GAOC
Brendan Shields, CSU
Keith Andersen, USMAOC
Jordan Laughlin, USMAOC
Kevin Culberg (alt.) USMAOC

Women
Hannah Burgess, USMAOC
Holly Kuestner, BOK
Tori Borish, COC
Alison Campbell, DVOA
Lori Huberman (1st alt.) BOK
Siobhan Fleming (2nd alt.) NEOC

I hope that you will support the WUOC team as they prepare for the Championships. We have a start in raising the $7000 needed to pay entry/room/board expenses (athletes pay their own airfare) thanks to the generousity of BOK who donated the procedes from the Sycamore Scramble to the team. We still have a ways to go!

Moral support is as important as financial so please be encouraging to our athletes as they continue to prepare to represent the US at WUOC.