Nopesport

The Trossachs: a formidable World Ranking Event challenge

On Sunday the Scottish orienteering double header moved to the Trossachs for a World Ranking Event where it was again Scott Fraser victorious, this time alongside Siri Ulvestad of NTNUI in Norway who won Women's Elite, both by impressive margins.

Once again, for an early season race the Trossachs proved to be a tough and technical challenge but perhaps not quite as formidable as it has been in the past. Described by controller Jon Musgrave as "undoubtedly one of the UKs toughest orienteering areas", competitors found brilliantly planned courses, which made great use of the area which was the fastest it has been for many years following the long hard winter.

The quality of the planning was particularly impressive given the Forestry Commission belatedly declaring an area out of bounds. Jon Musgrave said in his post event comments: "The courses had to be almost entirely replanned after the Forestry Commission decided that a section of the map would be out of bounds. This replanning took place in the three weeks before the event - after all control sites had been chosen, refined and taped."

In the Women's elite class Siri Ulverstad showed her class and consistency with a performance that saw her lead for the whole course, opening up a 5:14 lead to win the physical 6.9km course in a time of 73:46.

The terrain certainly suited the Norwegian internationalist who is Trondheim based. WIth a Gold medal in the classic at JWOC in Australia in 2007 and a bronze the following year in Sweden, the 21 year old will be looking towards competing at a home World Championships this year after having to withdraw from last year's competition due to injury.

The next seven places were tightly packed around the 79 minute mark, with just fifteen seconds separating Pippa Archer, Grace Crane and Rachael Elder in places 2-4 respectively. Helen Palmer would also have been in the mix but along with Pippa Archer and many others lost around 5 minutes to a tricky slope leg 7-8 which proved all too easy to miss even when holding a good line. Middle distance winner Sarah Rollins sat the race out following recent illness.

In the men's race Scott Fraser managed to open up a sizeable advantage after being only 1 second clear of Matt Speake at the map change. A 30 second leg win to 11, along with a couple more 15 second leg wins on the longer legs to 22 and 28 opened up 3 minutes over Jon Duncan as he and others failed to match Scott's pace over the closing stages of an unrelenting race. Doug Tullie capped a great weekend taking 3rd place, with a time of 92:57, not far ahead of Matt Speake, Oli Johnson and Matt Crane making up the top 6.

Scott said of his performance: "I felt good from the start and was happy with my run but lost some time on a few controls due to rushing decisions and not planning each leg. I finished feeling like i had some more to give physically and didn't expect to do so well on the results list!". Scott probably wasn't the only to finish with some in reserve, and he also thought that perhaps the Trossachs had been given too much respect and wasn't as tough as expected. Whether others also expected it to be tougher, and weren't pushing quite as hard as they might otherwise have done for fear of blowing up or spoiling chances at the JK this coming weekend, times were still quicker than previously recorded on the area.

The juniors were chasing Future Champions Cup places and selection to JWOC in this race, and once again it was tight at the top. For the men Peter Hodkinson once more taking a narrow victory over Alasdair McLeod, just 12 seconds separating the pair, 72:35 winning the 7.3km course. Completing the trio of M20s was Matt Halliday in 3rd almost 2 minutes back but well clear of the chasing pack of M18s.

For the junior women, W18 Charlotte Watson took victory with a time of 66:13 for the 4.9km course, 48 seconds ahead of the W20s Rebecca Harding and Hazel Wright who were just 9 seconds apart.

Trossachs Men's Elite Course Part 1 - click to enlarge

 Trossachs Men's Elite Course Part 2 - click to enlarge

Men's Elite: 10.600km 735m

Women's Elite: 6.900km 470m