At WOC's end

We've just had the last 2 days of WOC '07 fly past us. The Relay took place on Saturday whilst the Sprint Final was on Sunday.

Relay

The relay took place in and near the grounds of a cultural heritage park showcasing rural Ukrainian lifestyles. The area was dominated by various windmills.


The South African team had a poor performance, placing only 36th out of 39 starting teams. This is down on the 33rd the team achieved last year. Team Member Nicholas Mulder started off well for the team, but made two successive errors around the 10th control. He was able to recatch Tapei and Ireland, but the team still found themselves some 7 - 10 minutes adrift of their ideal placing.

Team Member Richard Lange took over the baton and improved the teams ranking from 35th after Leg 1 to 33rd after Leg 2. He was however, also unsatisfied with his run, loosing between 3 and 6 minutes en route. Anchor leg runner for South Africa was Team Member Jeremy Green, who also made approximately 10 minutes of mistakes. In the end, the team finished ahead of Hong Kong as well as the disqualified teams of Slovakia and Taipei.


At the front end of the field, Team Finland comfortably won the Women's Relay whilst Team Russia won the Men. The Swiss Team, who performed well in both categories, found themselves a new mascot. He's even got an accreditation pass! His name is Boris.


Sprint Final

The Sprint was held in superb terrain in and around Kiev's Botanical Gardens. There were no big surprises with Simone Niggli (Switzerland) taking the Women's and Thierry Gueorgiou (France) taking the Men's titles. This is now their 12th and 5th WOC golds respectively.

The Ups and Downs of Kiev

We've now spent almost 2 weeks in the Ukraine. We're only now feeling that we're coming to grips with the language, the writing, the people and the culture. We can now sort of read Cyrillic (it's actually easy as it's quite phonetic). We now know where to find the better restaurants, bars, shopping centres. We've can now pick up certain words in the Ukrainian, such as those telling us which subway station we are now at. And finally, we've learnt to look left first before crossing roads.

Kiev has a lot going for it and a lot going against it. Here are some of our more interesting observations:

• The vehicle traffic is so bad it's fascinating. The big roads tend to have 8 lanes, 4 going each direction. However, when traffic backs up, almost all Ukrainians have no problem ramping up the kerb and driving on the pavement, the side road, the grass in-between and even in the lane of the oncoming traffic. Rule #1 as a pedestrian... ALWAYS keep an eye out for traffic when walking down a pavement.

• The public transport system is dirt cheap... and yet highly reliable.

• The city is obsessed with War memorials.

• Ukrainian cereal tastes like cardboard. Ukrainian bread is even worse.

• The people of the city definitely know how to party. It helps that beer is dirt cheap... and very good. It is even served and drunk on street corners!

Thanks to everyone for your support and comments on this blog. Despite early reservations, we've really enjoyed the competitions here at WOC. Here's a photo of the relay team after the finish. Hope you'll follow the team again in 2008 in Olomouc, Czech Republic.


Signing off...

Team Members Nic, Jeremy, Richard. Team Manager Ian and Team Cheerleader Jenny.

We're hot in the Ukraine

The Middle and Long distance finals have come and gone, with the usual suspects taking the gold medals away. A surprise was that Finland managed to take 2 gold medals in the Long Distance women's race after Minna Kaupi and Helli Jukola dead-heated to the second after 80 minutes of running.

The last few days have been sweltering. The Long final was held in temperatures of 35' centigrade. Today (a rest day) was even hotter, with temperatures purportedly climbing to 38'C. The S.A. team wouldn't know... we've been sheltering in various locations... anywhere with an airconditioner. These are quite hard to find however... our rooms definately don't have, but the gym, internet room and a nearby western-style shopping centre do. Today was the National Independence Day celebrations. I'm sure the Hydropark on the island in the middle of the river was packed.

Relay

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the relay event. South Africa will be team number 33 (our position last year) and will be led off by Team Member Nicholas Mulder. He will then hand over to Team Member Richard who will in turn hand over to anchor leg runner, Team Member Jeremy Green.

There is a massive turnout of teams in the Men's competition, although Serbia and Romania won't be on the start line. Some of the teams S.A. will be out to beat include Hong Kong, Taipei, China, Kazakstan and Turkey. Other possible targets are Moldova, Israel and possibly Ireland and Slovenia. The teams main target however is to improve it's rankings from last year's 33rd. This would put at least 7 countries behind them.

The Official Opening Ceremony for the 2007 World Orienteering Championships took place yesterday evening. Team Member Jeremy Green was nominated as the South African representative to take part in the parade of nations.


The ceremony was quite festive, appreciably short and quite entertaining. Interestingly, the ceremony took part in an amphitheatre in front of a monument in central Kiev that is dedicated to "the reunification of Ukraine with Russia". Interesting one.

The spectators were treated to unusually short speeches by various dignitaries, an army marching band that broke out into cabaret (really got the crowd going), some Ballroom Dancing by the national paralympic champions of the Ukraine, and some spectacular folk dancing that redefined some orienteers standards of flexibility and quad muscle strength.


All the teams were presented with a token gift by the organisers. It was only a loaf of local bread, but I'm sure there's a bit of tradition behind this. Jeremy got to it before the rest of the team did...


I suppose every team has a character like this...


Team Austria, together with Team Defector Richard Gathercole was in the audience as well. Below is a snap of him wearing his the opposition colours... He does look a bit humble (and grey haired).


Before the opening ceremony we did manage to get a good walk around some of the older parts of Kiev. The highlights are the monasteries (spectacular) and the catacombs below some of them where ancient monks are laid to rest in glass coffins for all to see.


Here are some of the team members winding their way between various churches on the main hill in Kiev.


Wednesday is the Middle Distance Final. The South African team will be out spectating for this one. The field is quite open this year, so it's going to be interesting to see who emerges as World Champion in this discipline.

Middle Distance Qualifier

Monday 20th - Middle Qualification

Middle distance runners woke this morning to a blanket of mist covering Kiev. It was not to last however. By the time of the first start at 09h30 this morning, the cloud had lifted and the temperature immediately rose. Air humidity was also quite a bit higher from the Long Qualification of Sunday.

The South African WOC Squad put together another bunch of mixed results. In Heat A Team Member Richard Lange got off to a bad start, missing on the first control and having to relocate and attack from an easier attack point. He settled down however and still managed to put in a good result given the low visibility terrain. He finished in 34:28, in 34th position out of 40 starters. The tough terrain, with vague contour detail at an interval of only 2.5m, in the dense green vegetation, saw many competitors disqualified for various reasons, including running over-time. Quite a number of 'definite' qualifiers also made costly errors and will now not appear in the Middle Final.

On heat B, Team Member Jeremy Green ran a fair race, with no major errors but quite a few smaller ones. He finished round about 52 minutes, but learnt immediately that he had mispunched control #8 (a nearby re-entrant instead of a depression).

Team Member Nicholas Mulder ran heat C and finished in 38:01, to claim 27th out of 41 starters. Nic got off to a good start, catching an Israeli participant 2 minutes ahead before the first control, and continued this form until #5. A long leg saw Nic loose time and contact with the Israeli before further small errors over the rest of the course. In the end however, a good result.

Maps

The South African WOC Team has managed to put some of their route choices up.

Here is Team Member Jeremy Green's run on the Sprint Qualifier:


Here is Team Member Nicholas Mulder's route on the Long Qualifier:


Whilst here is Team Member Richard Lange's route choice on today's Middle Qualifier:


Other Stuff

We've taken a few more photos from our high perch on top of Hotel Tourist. First is a statue on the other side of the Dnieper River, built in the early '80s. It's apparently the 3rd highest in the world. We can't go visit it just yet, as the area around it will be used for the Sprint Final this coming Sunday.


The Hotel Tourist is in part of Kiev that is more accurately described as 'suburban'. All of the building are apartment flats. Here is a view of some of the neighbouring ones. Don't let their dilapidated state fool you... housing prices are still sky-high in Kiev due to a housing shortage. Expect to pay US$700 per month for a 2-room apartment in one of these run down establishments. if you are lucky enough to find one to buy, expect to pay well above US$ 100'000. (Yes, prices are advertised in US $). Although not visually aesthetic on the outside, most apartments are well looked after once past the apartment door.


As alluded to in yesterday's post comments, there are a few more South Africans in the WOC area. Richard Gathercole is the Team Manager for the Austrian Team as well as being the South African Team Sandwich Maker. Although not yet spotted, ROC member (now living back in Sweden) Gosta Guteland will also be participating in the WOC Tour public races.

Coming Up

The next few days are going to be a well deserved break for the South Africans. Team Manager Ian Bratt puts on his other cap as SAOF President and attends 101 different IOF meetings. The team will go for a long walk around the main city area of Kiev tomorrow and do some sightseeing before attending the official Opening Ceremony. On Wednesday we'll be spectating at the Middle Final and maybe running a spectator race. Thursday is the Long Final. Friday will be a good rest day before the Relay event on Saturday.

The team wi'll put up some more interesting pictures of Kiev on the blog tomorrow evening.

Sprint and Long Qualifications

Saturday 18th - Sprint Qualification

Saturday was hot and muggy. Temperatures were in the mid to low 30's and the sun shone down mercilessly. The men's sprint qualification race was set for mid-afternoon. Lovely.

Then the organisers threw in problems to add to everyone's woes... After a 30 min metro trip, early starters arrived at the bus station to find no buses available for them. After 40 mins of waiting in the hot car park, a non-airconditioned, non-windowed bus took them a further 20 minutes to the start check-in.

Team Member Nic was first off. He had 20 minutes to get changed and warm-up (well... lets just call it jogging and stretching... you couldn't get any warmer) before his start. Other countries had competitors with even less time. Thankfully, the rest went according to plan and the team was able to settle down and focus on their races.


Team Member Richard posted the best result of the day in the B heat, finishing 32nd (out of 39) in a time of 16:07 for the 2.9km course. Team Member Nic was 33rd in A heat in 16:20 and Team Member Jeremy 36th in C heat in 16:47. All the winning times were about 12 - 13 minutes. Rich felt that he suffered on the last big hill with a few controls to go, Nic was quite happy with his whole run, whilst Jerm said he felt sluggish and tired, his only mistake of the day taking place right in front of all the spectators at the mid-way viewing control. The team was surprised to find that the training areas and model area were not fully indicative of the terrain on the course, with virtually no undergrowth in existence.


Team South Africa Supporters Club Chairperson Jenny was in vocal attendance amongst the spectators. Somehow in all the hoo-haa, she managed to find 2 other S.A. expats in the crowd, living in Kiev on a year's contract.

Photo - Team Members Nic and Richard looking at the results board.


Sunday 19th - Long Qualification

The team woke up very early on Sunday morning to the beautiful sight of cloud cover and much cooler weather that lasted through to the afternoon. Transport to the start was much better (at least for the S.A. contingent), leaving the three competitors with nothing on their minds apart from orienteering.

Team Photo: (clockwise, from the tubby guy...) Team Member Nic, Team Member Richard, Team Manager Ian, and Team Member Jeremy.


Once again the forest was different from the expected. Very little undergrowth and almost no nettles were in evidence, although good tracking was found for the late runners (Jeremy and Nic) in the river valleys. The big surprise was the high percentage of semi-open and open areas on the map.

The course tooks its toll on quite a few competitors. Many seemed to have made very big errors at various points. Team Member Nic ran most of the way from his #6 to #8 before realising his mistake, whilst Team Member Jeremy spent 15 minutes looking for one control. Team Member Richard mentioned something about being b******* (see typical photo below... photo courtesy of Team Princess Jenny).


Team Member Nic produced the best result of the day, finishing 24th out of 36 participants in Heat B (1:15:44). This was still 12 minutes away from qualification however (15th place). Team Member Richard finished 34th, in a time of 1:33:57 in Heat C whilst Team Member Jeremy finished 35th, in a time of 1:36:07 in Heat A.

More results online at:
http://woc2007.org.ua/live/results-online.html

For some great O' news:
http://worldofo.com/news/L_ENG.html

Tomorrow

Monday morning sees the last of the qualifiers, the Middle Distance. Jeremy is off early, Richard in the middle bunch and Nic will start late.

Keep posted for tomorrow's blog highlights including:

• Maps with the SA route choices for the last 2 days.
• Photos.
  
• More photos.
• And even more photos.
  

The SA Orienteers and the Ukrainian Models

WOC has officially started. We registered last night and received our maps for the model terrain areas. We spent most of today (Friday) visiting these areas.

This morning we travelled slightly out of Kiev to the east to visit Brovary, an area similar to the Middle Distance Qualification race that will take place on Monday. The map is 1:10'000 with 2.5m contours. Weeds, brambles and nettles lurked everywhere under the forest, but the most startling part of the map a very green area circled in pink, with an annotation indicating that this would be the standard on the Qualification map!


We travelled immediately from Brovary, back into Kiev to the other side of the Dnieper River. The Feofaniya map is south and west of the city, showing terrain that is similar to the Sprint and Long Distance Qualification races. We didn't do too much out in the forest here, only a few controls covering about 2km just to get used to the map interpretation and terrain.


We've seen two glorious Orthodox churches near each area today. The first, smaller church was in Brovary, pictured below with Team Manager Ian and Team Member Richard caught posing.


The other is a Monastry / Church on the Feofaniya map. The parkland where we orienteered in front appeared to be a botanical garden in development (there was an ongoing battle between the organisers and the security guards whether we were allowed to walk on the grass). Flower beds were shown as out of bounds on the Sprint Specification map, including a few beds of Cosmos flowers.


The Dniper River is big. Real big. Our best estimates are that it is probably about 2km wide, with many islands in midstream. The old town is on the west bank, whilst the 'Hotel Tourist' where we are staying, is on the flatter east bank. The river eventually empties out into the Black Sea approx. 300km south of here, near the Crimean peninsula. The river in Kiev is still about 100m above sea level.


Tomorrow (Saturday), is the Sprint Qualification race, to be run in the mid-afternoon. Nicholas is running early, Richard middle and Jeremy late in the 3 different heats. Top 15 in each heat go through to the final. No one is placing bets on us getting in, but we'll try. It will be interesting to see how much of a role the tracks laid down by earlier orienteers in the forest will have for later runners. WOCs normally try to avoid areas where grass / weeds allow easy tracking, giving later runners an advantage. This would be impossible in Ukraine however, given the terrain.

In the meantime, some of the team members are getting some rest...

Forest Clearing

***News Break***
Team Manager Ian has arrived.... fun's over now. Time to get serious.
***News Break***

We did another training session this morning. The good news is that this area was actually quite nice! Although there were still sections of heavy nettle and bramble growth, the forest was much more runnable. Contours were much more gentle as well. Good, clean, fun orienteering.

Here's a photo of Team Member Richard and Team Mascot Jenny in the area.


Here is the map of Obukhiv, a relay training area. Team Member Nic's course is in light pink. Most of us cut out one loop so that we did about 5km instead of the official 7.3km.


We got lost going to Obukhiv, but we blame the Aussie Japanese Coach.... (*grin*). Directions to the training areas were complicated, and by the time this set had been translated from Ukrainglish to Aussienese and finally to Safrican, there were a few too many mistakes. Correcting misktakes is near impossible due to the lack of any English amongst the general population and the use of Cyrillic for all signs in the Ukraine. After a two metro trains and a mini-bus taxi ride to some far corner of the Kiev, we eventually relented and hopped on board a private taxi. For approx R30pp he took us the rest of the 45km to the 'nearby' city of Obukhiv. They'd changed the start location though, resulting in a final 2km walk across the map.

The way back home was much smoother and quicker. Perfect navigation.

Pic: Team Member Richard, Team Cheerleader Jenny and Team Member Jeremy after their run.
Team China (in background) say


Dogs rule the streets and parks of Kiev. Well, sort of. There are definitely plenty about. Most of them are wild and most of the orienteers are pretty frightened by them. We've all already met a few in the forest, but Team Member Richard and Team Member Jeremy each had to deal today with one that came up to them barking. They stood their ground and avoided any nasty situations. A couple of months ago two British girls were bitten here whilst training for WOC.

On another topic: after yesterday's somber post, we thought you'd appreciate a balanced view of Kiev, so we took a photo out the other side of the hotel...we think this is the prettier side.


And finally. Don't ask me... All I asked was for them to pose for a photo...

Welcome to Kyiv (aka Київ)

Well, we have all made it to Kiev... well almost. Team Manager Ian is due to arrive on Thursday evening... The rest of us are here. Team Member Nicholas, Team Member Richard, Team Member Jeremy, and don't forget Team Physiotherapist/Masseuse/Go'fer Jenny all arrived safely at various times on Monday.

Here is the glorious view from our Hotel Room....


The metro runs until well past 1am, and the flow of cars never stops. We've started to think of it as 'white noise'.

We have had a handful of training events so far... We're using public transport. All the training areas and WOC event venues are in and around the City of Kiev. Most of the areas involve taking firstly the Metro (80 S.A. cents) followed by a jaunt in a 20-seater mini-bus taxi (R1.50 per fare).

Tuesday 14th August, A.M.
'Bykovnia'... a middle distance training area. This was a reasonably nice area... but the proliferation of nettles under the trees was a bit worrying! Over the first 4 controls, the mapping was... interesting. Thankfully it was easier to read when we got into the more contoured terrain on the southern half of the map. The area was mixed deciduous and pine forest over sand dune topography.


Tuesday 14th August, P.M.
'Zaliznychnyi', a sprint distance training area. This was located amongst some of the inner suburbs of Kiev, in between towering communist-era housing blocks. Once again reasonably nice area (apart from the nettle places...), but lots of dumped rubbish out in the forest. The area brought up fond memories of Olievenhoutsbosch.


Thursday 15th August, A.M.
'Vyshgorod', our first classic distance training area... and definitely a big shock. The area was covered by extremely steep gullies, generally between 15 and 30 metres high. The slopes were treacherous, even with O' shoes, the gully floors were flooded with nettles and bush. The marshes were also a bit off-colour. None of us found the orienteering experience pleasant and we are now dreading the Long Distance Qualifications and the Relay.


In our next blog:

• The wild dogs of Kiev
• How to read Cyrillic 101