2011 National Squad announcement

The South African Orienteering Federation's Selection Committee has announced the Senior national squad for 2011 as follows (in no particular order):

 

Men:

Nicholas Mulder

Jeremy Green

Alex Pope

Garry Morrison

Cobus Van Zyl

Colin Dutkiewicz

Nico Van Hoepen

Michael Crone

Martin Kleynhans

 

Women:

Tania Wimberley

Margaret Archibald

Cindy Van Zyl

Zoe Brentano

 

All the athletes listed above will be expect to show steady improvement, commitment and fitness throughout the year. Included in this the above athletes will be required to attend any squad trainings held in their respective provinces as well as track fitness assessments on 14 February 2011, 18 April 2011 and 13 June 2011. Team selection announcements for WOC 2011 in France will be made in April, shortly after the Western Cape Championships.

 

Any queries can be directed to Michele Botha : selection_committee "'at'" orienteering.co.za 

More information on the Selection Committee and the selection process can be found here.

Sprint finish - Race Day 4

We had a lovely surprise when we unexpectedly met Liz and Peter Mulder at St. Cergue and again at the Sprint in Geneva. Below we pose in the sprint arena with Simone Niggli-Luder (Women's Sprint and World Cup winner 2010) being interviewed on the big screen in the background.


The World Cup sprint made for a thrilling final spectacle before our flight back to SA. In the men's Elite race the first 18 finished within one minute of each other, there were 5 shared places with second placed Graham Gristwood and Matthias Müller missing Daniel Hubmann's top spot by only 9 seconds. In the women's race Simone had another near-invincible run ahead of Helena Jansson with JWOC 2010 star Ida Bobach in third place.

We had a rainy, slippery, slightly slower run.

The complex area around the Geneva Cathedral on the World Cup sprint all-controls map

This then ends our fantastic tour.

Over to the next orienteers!

Up and down - Race Day 3

We spent the training day in Geneva mostly looking at Geneva (particularly the Old Town sprint area).

The the following day's middle event at St. Cergue just outside Geneva went quite a bit up and down in both the terrain and the races. Cindy was suffering from a cough and runny nose, Tania had an uphill struggle with a control or two and Nico's speed went a bit downhill in the much more runable white forest.

Lots of contours, white and the nasty white bits are actually marked on the St. Cergue Middle map

What to do with the stones from stony ground

(Just for completeness here's what we did on the last few days, written from home)

Chateau de Chatillon

Lausanne's Gothic Cathedral

More stony ground - Mt. Blanc

Tania on top of Aiguille de Midi (3842m) after an arduous cable-car journey.

Cindy and Nico getting in some high altitude training with Mt. Blanc in the background.

The bottom-most part of the Mer de Glace ("Sea of Ice") glacier - France's biggest.

Today may be the final post as we're now off to Swiss-land. Depending on how the data networks receive us we'll try to write a few more posts from Geneva.

Wet - Training Day 5

We had a late start in the hope that the overnight rain would stop for us. It didn’t really. As a result we were unusually late to the training and arrived to a packed car park, with all the national teams out in full force. The area was right in the middle of the WOC 2011 terrain so it seems no teams wanted to miss out on the training opportunity. We all did the shorter of the two courses. The first half proved to be very slow terrain to move over. Rocky (and wet) together with the French’s sporadic felling practices meant there were lots of (wet) branches everywhere.

Tania's course on the training map in the middle of the WOC 2011 embargoed area

To give you some idea Tania was quite pleased with direct, faultless route from 4 to 5 even though the going was slow. Nico also had a clean run there, but felt he was a bit slow. Never the less he was still 3 minutes faster than Tania. Some teams seemed to be able to move faster through the messy forest floor, something worth practicing if you could find similar terrain in SA. Visibility was low, but the now familiar complex contour details seem to be helping ones progress over the course. It is difficult to imagine where in SA we will be able to find such complex contours to practice on.

The second part of the course gave some hope, as by comparison it was possible to run through the forests. Pits continue to be these amazing man eating crevices and are useful navigation tools (if you don’t fall into them). Clearings were again useful (although some felling caused confusion) but the difference between green and white was not so obvious. Despite their name, depressions continue to be a win.

Tania at a control in a depression in the white forest

And that wraps up team SA’s participation in this training camp. Regrettably with just one week it feels like we are have only just scratched the surface of how to master this complex, tough and unforgiving terrain.

A word of thanks to Jean Dermine and his team for organizing the training camp. It was a welcome pleasure not to have to hang out our own training controls and the hot coffee at the end of today’s session was a lovely surprise to help warm up our icy fingers.

No pressure - Training Day 4

Day 4's training was on the map from Sundays long event. The course we did in the morning was of a similar style of the previous days. Several controls in highly complex areas on one hand verses nice route choice longer legs. Again the trick was to find nice paths on the long legs and to have good safe attack points (as close as possible) into the controls. This was all possible, and relocation is becoming easier in the complex contours (regrettably the need is not necessarily becoming less frequent).

Route choice

On the leg 7-8 Tania and Cindy cut to the path south of the red line once they had crossed the tar road. Nico went north. On 8-9 Nico stayed south of the red line, Tania went north and Cindy did a combination of both. The trick is getting the hang of the speed variation. Fast on the long legs (rocks and vegetation permitting) and then to reduce speed in the complex areas in order to avoid mistakes. Accurate navigation is very possible at a slow pace.

Control picking - with a few hand drawn controls

In the afternoon Nico and Tania went in opposite directions to go do some extra control picking. Tania went cruising around the second part of the morning course. Nico played nice fast ping pong in the complex area around the first part of the morning course.

Moeg - Race Day 2

A late night and early start set the scene for our long French public event. The previous 4 days of orienteering was starting to take its toll on the legs which felt really tired. The map was just below day 3 training. Again in places the vegetation was thick, the ground rocky and contours very detailed. This meant you had to find nice paths for the long legs which joined the clustering of technical controls. The long legs were around 1.5km, with some climb and even the paths got very rocky. The climb on the long legs was often squeezed into a short space. All courses had lots of route choices which added to the challenge. As this map shows Nico's 9.8km, 440m climb course took him from one corner of the A3 map to the other.

Typical "stony ground" - it tends to slow you down

Light years ahead

Nico out of the Sprint start block

That evening Nico had a clear advantage being an early starter. He put the light to good use and put in a blistering time on the sprint event. Unfortunately he had a bad brush with a poisonous plant and nearly had to get whisked off to hospital after his race due to an allergic reaction that mad his face look like a pug dog. With the help of powerful headlamps Tania and Cindy had nice races. It was a very special place to do night orienteering around, weaving between the diners, darting through tunnels and making sure you didn’t overshot a control and fall into the canal.

Tania's Course

Middle and O-Show maps

Tania's Course on the middle map

One of the 6 qualification maps (each competitor ran 3)

Unlikely - Race Day 1

When receiving our instructions for the O show the organizers said it was unlikely we would qualify for the quarter finals so he didn’t need to give us that information. He was right! But we had fun in the maze of controls spread out on the lawns of Anncey. The lake and the mountains our beautiful backdrop. The O show took place between our middle distance event and our evening sprint.

A lack of English instructions got us to the mornings middle event way to early (as the sun was rising) with the organizers still putting controls out. In fact he gave us directions to the start area, put his headlamp on and rushed off into the dark forests. The 220 m , 1.5 km walk to the start mean much of the course was downhill. This was the first really fast runable forest we’ve been on since our training began. It felt like any other forest, with no real surprises. Although spikes were still an advantage for contouring along the steep slopes, which frustrated Nico no end. The fear of elephant also tracks failed to materialize as the forest had dried out from the previous days rain and it made for a pleasant morning for all.

Cindy after the Middle Race

Tania and Nico around the O-Show course

And now we sign out for our Sprint-race (some of us in the dark) ...

Perspective - Training Day 3

Seems a little bit of remapping can do wonders. Day 3 was back into the day 1 area, only now it was called something else and more importantly it was remapped. Everything made sense! All the humps & bumps were on, vegetation was sensible and bare rock was now stony ground (still to be avoided). Our maps had a network of some 25 controls. After our now usual map walk to get into the map we dispersed to go control hunting. Depressions proved useful again, but compared to the previous days there were handfuls of things to use. Attackpoints and catch features completely missing on day 2 were waiting for the picking today. The forest remained rough to move through, but at least with a decent map navigation around really bad parts was possible.

The Forests were rather busy with all sorts of O celebrities with all the national teams in full action. Nico was encouraged by the fact that many of them did not hit the controls spot on. The only downside was that it was vey wet underfoot and the lack of studded shoes meant the going was slow and slippery. We were all also rather cold and wet when we returned. But despite that it was our most enjoyable day orienteering.

Relentless - Training Day 2

The rocks, the depressions, the cliffs. The terrain was relentless and unforgiving. Our line course to the start set the scene as Tania stepped on some soft ground and found her leg being gobbled up by a small hidden hole. Not so easy to extract it either. There were no nice obvious route choice races for the first control so we all set off on our own. It was slow going and accuracy was the key to success. A much better map than yesterday with good contours meant all the humps and bumps were shown. Pits and depressions proved useful navigation tools and bare rock was more familiar. Straight line orienteering was difficult if you were trying to dodge bushes, cliffs and sudden holes in the lime stone. We spend the morning doing their set course of 12 controls. There were several other international teams out on the map and it appeared that the consensus was that the terrain was difficult.

In the afternoon Nico and Tania went out to find 6 more controls (see map) whilst Cindy waited in what eventually turned into a rainy day. On average a more positive orienteering day for us. Our discussion with the organizers at the finish was cut short they rush off to welcome and get photographs of Thierry G as he arrived for his session.

WOC 2011 training camp - Training Day 1

29 September 2010- Perfect weather and beautiful French scenery guided us to the start of our first day of training. The map made in 1999 was apparently slightly updated. We parked at the ski resort and took a gentle jog to the north of the map were we planned to do a line course. Nico’s carefully planned line proved a challenge as the “white” forest was full of felled trees. The felling practice seems very sporadic with the odd tree here and there cut down and all the rubbish left in the forest. Bare rock was jagged rock scatterings, so not good to run over either. Pits were really big, at least 5 m and wide-no chance of falling in them, although if you did chances are you would never emerge again. After getting a feel for the map on the line course we ran back along 4 controls. Nico and Tania tried some route choice options for the first control. His path option proved best and allowed him some time to wait for me and to be entertained by a falling Scotsman. A real moaner- no blood in sight, but lots of tears and cursing after he stabbed his shin on something.

For our afternoon season we each planned to each take in between 6 and 14 controls on the official pre planned course. Another route choice race for Nico & Tania got us to the first control about the same time. Thereafter we split up to tackle the forest. The forest floor was very busy, lots of humps and bumps which understandable could not be marked. It did mean that you had to really hit the control spot on. A 5-10m deviation meant the control was hidden over another rise. There was a very technical area of 6 controls which proved challenging (see map).

We all encountered swarms of what initially seemed like bees, but apparently were only blue flies. Nico ventured to the controls on the south of the map-bad move. The “white” was not really forest, just not mapped. Or in his word (@#$%^&!!!!!).

We ended the day with a R35 Cappuccino in a coffee shop along the pretty channels in Annecy-Cindy & Nico in the picture here.

Final day of WOC 2010

Today is the final day of the World Orienteering Championships - 2010 Norway.

It is the relay event, but as mentioned, South Africa won't be participating as it only has 2 men at the champs. Instead, it's time to get out there and join the crowds of spectators. There are no clear favourites, other than maybe Norway who will have a strong home ground advantage as well as the popular support.

You can follow the full action which is about to start on the WOC live feed at http://live.woc2010.com/

It's been nice and peaceful here in the last few days since the last qualification race (no South African made a final - not a big surprise). It's given us time to be tourists, both recreationally as well as sportingly.

Apart from participating in the public 'WOC Tour' races, the SA Team also managed to round up some of its travelling supporters brigade and head out for a bit of sight seeing on one of the rest days. The destination was Røros, a quaint historical mining village about 1 hour away in the Norweigian highlands that is now a World Heritage Site.

Pic: The town of Røros from the nearby slag dump.

Pic: Jenny Bradshaw, Richard Lange, Jeremy and Kirsty Green. Four orienteers with 1 map between them.

Røros is a beautiful town, with plenty of historical building and some interesting mining works. It was formerly a copper mining town, with the mine dumps, smelter and associated workings still dominating the town. The SA team had great fun. Jeremy almost took a memento back home to South Africa (don't know where the air hostesses would have put it on the flight).

Pic: Jeremy - begging his wife for some money...

Great day out. Norway is a beautiful country. Pity is so bloody expensive!

Pic: The copper works in Røros.

Well, that's is from WOC 2010. The South African national squad will be in action later this year, when 3 orienteers travel to a Training camp in France in October as preparation for WOC 2011, which will be in the Alpine east of the country (the Savoie Grand Revard region). We'll try to get some reports from them of their experiences, which will include World Cup races in Geneva, Switzerland as well.

Long Qualifiers (aka long distance bog trotting)

Tuesday evening saw the qualification races for the Long Distance take place. Once again, the weather was superb with clear skies and mild temperatures. The races were held in the late afternoon, with some participants only starting just after 5pm with the sun low on the horizon (adding an extra dimension of complexity as the first 3 controls were facing west on the men's course).

The South African team of Nicholas Mulder and Jeremy Green had good runs with few mistakes. However, the final results still show the two runners well down the rankings.

Long Distance Qualification Results

Jeremy had a fairly stable run after a few short mess-ups around the first few controls. He settled down nicely after this, particularly on the longer legs where he managed to find a good rhythm and keep up a decent pace, navigating with more confidence than in the last few days. He finished in under 2 hours (1:54:34), his intended goal. However, it still left him 34th and last on his heat, which was a disappointment.

Pic: Nicholas at the penultimate control of the Long Qualifier (photo by Jan Kocbach - World of O)

For Nicholas, some long technically easy, but physical route choices meant that he struggled to finish higher up the rankings. A good start saw him rise as high as 24th position, but two wrong route choices at the end of the course saw him loose 3 minutes of mistakes. In the end, it was 28th position in 1:16:55 on his heat.

Pic: Nicholas' route from the Long Distance Qualifier.

For both runners, the constant running in squishy marshes took its toll. The phrase 'bog-trotting' is particularly appropriate, as it is difficult to accelerate to any high speed on the up and level marshes. For the top elite competitors, it was a tough day, with the winning times extremely fast. Reaching the final 15th qualification place in each heat also proved tough, with most heats requiring a sub-65 minute time to do so.

This brings to an end the South African campaign at WOC 2010. With only 2 runners, the team cannot partake in the 3-man relay on Sunday. Instead, Jeremy and Nicholas will do a few runs in the WOC Tour races, where the majority of the spectators at WOC are participating. More posts to come however as the team will be watching the finals as well as making general comments on their WOC performances.

Tough & techincal terrain for Middle Qualifier

Team South Africa came away with mixed results in the Middle Distance qualification race at WOC today.Once again, the race was held in perfect running conditions under a blue sky. The repetitive weather warnings for rain in the last few days have been for nought.

Nicholas Mulder came off best of the South Africans, finishing in 26th place in Heat B in a time of 32:11. In so doing, he improved on his best Middle performance of 27th, which he posted in WOC 2007 Ukraine. Although he avoided any big mistakes on the course, Nicholas was initially unhappy with his run, which was described as 'scrappy' and without confidence. The results placing was thus a bit of a surprise and highlighted the importance of avoiding big mistakes in this low visibility terrain.

Pic: Nicholas' map and route of the Middle Distance Qualification

Jeremy Green's race got off to a nightmare start, when he immediately lost 25 minutes on the first control. In the end, his GPS logger shows that he passed within a short distance of the control on numerous occassions to no avail, logging 2.5km on a leg of just 350m. (Ed: I'll try to get Jeremy to hand over his GPS map data. Emphasis on 'try').  He had a further mistake on the course of approximately 5 minutes, but thereafter settled down in a good pace, finishing well off the field in 1:05:58. However, he did manage to put 2 runners behind him who were disqualified. As mentioned yesterday, this still allowed him to improve on his overall best placing in the middle from 38th to 32nd!


Middle Distance Results and Splits

There were numerous upsets on both the B (Nicholas') and C (Jeremy's) Heats, with some big names not making the 15 place cut for the final. It seems like the early part of the course, which took runners through light green forest took its toll, with big mistakes recorded throughout the field.

Pic: Jeremy Green (photo by Jan Kocbach - World of O')

The Middle Final will take place on Friday. In the meantime however, the focus moves on to tomorrow afternoon's Long Distance qualifier, which will be held on an adjoining map. Jeremy is off at 16h24 and Nicholas at 17h00. The terrain is expected to be slightly faster in running speed, with larger marshes and better visibility. Some light rain is also forecast in the early afternoon (again).

You can follow the proceedings LIVE as it happens at the WOC Live website. The interesting part is that all the men will be wearing tracking devices that will allow everyone too see their location and route on the map LIVE. This should add an extra dimension of pressure for the South African runners (Jeremy has already started thinking that his ankle feels a bit sore).


Footnote: In other news, the first stage of the WOC Tour took place today. Kirsty Green had her first taste of the Norwegian marshes right at the start, with the start control sited right in the centre of one! However, she had it easy compared to one Ladies elite runner (obviously not a Norwegian) who had one of the first start times with her. The elite runner set off at pace through the marsh, running straight onto a circular brown patch that looked like dried mud. Kirsty was kind enough to stop and lend assistance when she promptly went up to her waist in thick muddy marsh. I'm sure she was also kind enough not to smile too much.

SA Runner gets 1st place (in the sprint finish split)

Trondheim has had another wonderful, sunny day during which it hosted the Sprint Qualification and Final races. The team had a mediocre performance today at the Sprint Qualification race, that unsurprisingly didn't see any South Africans qualify.

Pic: The official 2010 team photo in front of our hotel.

Jeremy Green was the first South African runner off, but made mistakes at 1 and 12 saw him fall well down the results board. In the end, he finished 31st (out of 33) in a time of 23:12 (+8:11). Only the top 15 runners qualified for the final. He says that he would have been happy with a sub-20 time without this two big mistakes, placing him around 28th in his heat. The good news is that he kept his spirits up by once again taking the fastest split on the run-in from the last control to the finish on his heat.

Pic: Jeremy Green on his way to the fastest finish split time (Photo by WOC 2010 Organisation)

Nicholas Mulder started a little while later and had a fair race. He was moderately happy, given this is his worst discipline. However, he rued two major route choice mistakes on the course, each costing him 20 seconds when he didn't see the gaps in some impassable fences. He went on to finish in 32nd position (out of 34) in a time of 19:23 (+4:26).

Pic: Nicholas' map of the Sprint Qualification (Heat 1).

Pic: Nicholas Mulder in the run-in at the finish (Photo by WOC 2010 Organisation)

The results put South Africa towards the bottom of the list of countries, something the team is keen to improve on in the forthcoming Middle distance (Monday) and Long distance (Tuesday) qualification races. The team has started keeping score however. Present standings for SA are:

RSA 2 - USA 0 (big smiles here for South Africa!)
RSA 1 - BRA 1
RSA 1 - CHN 1

There are however, numerous scores which read 0 - 2, and which won't be listed here due to possible development of inferiority complexes.

Full results and split times can be seen at the official WOC website here.

In the afternoon, the team spectated at the Sprint Finals. Surprisingly, the final area was technically earlier than the qualification race. Times were thus extremely tight at the top of the leaderboard. The Swiss men dominated, taking 1st and 2nd place (only their first ever Sprint Gold!) with a young Frenchman a surprise 3rd. The overall time difference from 1st place to 7th was only 7 seconds!!! Crazy! In the Ladies, Simone Niggli took yet another gold, this time by the narrowest of margins (0.7 seconds), with only another 5 seconds to 3rd place.

Pic: The river Nidelva where it runs through town, part of the Sprint Final map.

Tomorrow afternoon will be the Middle Distance qualification race. Jeremy starts at 14h30 and Nicholas at 14h56 (CET). Both runners will be aiming to improve on their perfomances of today, with Nicholas hoping to better his historical best position of 27th place (Ukraine 2007). Given that Jeremy's best performance is 38th (Denmark 2006), he will automatically improve just by finishing! The courses are only 3.5km in length (i.e. very slow terrain), with 170m of climb and only 11 controls!

You can follow all the action live at the WOC Live website.

SA Team ready for WOC in Trondheim

Team South Africa is ready for the 2010 WOC in Trondheim. This morning, the team finished their final training run on the Model area for the Middle and Long distance Qualification.

The last week has been tough for the two South Africans, Jeremy Green and Nicholas Mulder. There is very little terrain that can replicate the tough marshy and bushy conditions that exist in the forest around Trondheim. Despite some good training over the last few months, both competitors were left feeling worn out after just a few training sessions during the pre-WOC training week.

Pic: View over the Trondheim Fjord coastline just east of the city.

The predominant note about Trondheim forest is how wet it is underfoot. Every footstep sees you sinking into the loose ground at least a few centimetres, whilst at least 1/2 of any course sees a competitor running on either damp or full marshy ground. Indeed, many route choice options will actually see competitors purposefully running in the marshes as tree density is significantly less in these places. Add in some mountainous terrain, a thick layer of 15 - 30cm high blue berry bushes as ground cover and the stage is all set for some extremely physical terrain. The average speed of the course winners will be some of the slowest in many, many years. As a result, the two team members took a well-needed rest day on Friday before completing a short model event on Saturday morning.

Pic: The map for the Model event for the Middle Qualification

The last week has also allowed the team to see some on the natural beauty of the region. The weather has been incredibly favourable in the last week, with hardly a drop of rain during the day (this has actually made the marshes relatively dry - at least by Trondheim standards). This has resulted in some beautiful sunsets and idyllic scenery. Apparently the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) has been going wild for the last few nights, alas the team has not been lucky enough to see them due to cloud cover, excessive light or the need for sleep!

The WOC Week gets off underway on Sunday morning at 9am with the Sprint Qualification. Jeremy starts at 10h10 (same time in Norway as in S.A.), with Nicholas off at 10h27. It should all be over in about 15 - 20 minutes. If either make the final (unlikely, but this is Jeremy's favourite event), this will take place later at 14h40.

In the meantime, there should also be some good Team SA support, with a small contingent of South Africans in Trondheim at the moment as spectators and to compete in the WOC Tour events. These include Kirsty Green (AR Club), Richard Lange and Jenny Bradshaw (PENOC) as well as Richard Gathercole (formerly PENOC, now resident in Austria).

 Pic: Jeremy and Kirsty Green crossing a bridge in Trondheim city over the Nidelva River

The Norwegian Questionnaire

A while ago the SA National team for WOC was contacted by the Norwegian Orienteering Press. They were on a mission to find out what everyone else was doing in preparation for WOC.

We were asked to answer a list of questions. The Irish team blog shows that they did a great job and duly thought long and hard before putting their fingers to the keyboard and issuing a well considered response.

I have seen too many questionnaires in my time, so as the 'less-capped' South African team member, Jeremy Green was asked to answer it. Being South African, he decided to do away with the political correctness and answer with full honesty. No responses from the Norwegian journalist (Bernt O. Myrvold) as yet...

How do the team prepare for the detailed and hilly Norwegian terrain?
Lots of hill work - Westcliff stairs - 3 minutes of stairs - improve on speed for when I can run - lots of core stability work (pilates).

Are there any specific preparations for running in the soft marshes?
Not yet - but I suppose I should think of something.

Has there been or will there be any training camps in Norwegian terrain before the event?
No

How large team are you planning to send?
2

How far before the WOC does the team plan to arrive in Trondheim?
Tuesday 3rd lunchtime

Do you expect any specific problems with food, culture etc.?
Nope

Do your federation covers the expenses for the runners, or do they have to do it themselves?
Entry clothing and some accommodation only. Flights, food and balance of accommodation covered by ourselves.

Do you have any specific goals for the results?
Not to make any big mistakes and thereby not to come last. (not sure I should say that in an interview)

SA Team for WOC 2010 - Norway

South Africa will send two men to this year's World Orienteering Championship in Trondheim, Norway. The Champs take place from 07 - 15 August on the country's west coast. The terrain is expected to be hilly, wet and generally slow going.

The two competitors are:
Jeremy Green - Adventure Racing Club, Johannesburg
Nicholas Mulder - Rand Orienteering Club, Johannesburg

Both have competed in WOC before, with this being Jeremy's third appearance ('06, '07) and Nicholas' ninth ('99, '01, '03, '04, '06, '07, '08, '09). Both runners will be competing in all three individual races.

Unfortunately, this will only be the second time since South Africa's admission to the IOF (in 1993) that they will not be fielding a relay team at WOC (there were no South African representatives in Japan in WOC 2005). Since 2004, when World Championships changed from an biannual to an annual schedule, the country has struggled to field strong teams due to the increased annual costs and time burden on the runners. On a more positive note, there is a recent revival of interest amongst the elite runners in the country for participating at future WOCs. Together with a strong crop of juniors currently working their way through the ranks (a team of 8 juniors will represent the country in JWOC Denmark next month), the team should look forward to stronger representation at WOC 2011 in France and WOC 2012 in Switzerland.

More info on this years WOC can be found at http://woc2010.com/