A speedy rise to world class

Transcription

1 International Orienteering Federation On-line Newsletter Issue 2 July 2010 A speedy rise to world class Erik Skovgaard Knudsen started mountain bike orienteering (MTBO) in Now the Dane is the World Cup leader, but he still lacks a World Championship gold. Why it is going so well? Serious training, coupled with the fact that I am very motivated to become better, says Erik. PHOTO: METTE RIECK When Erik started MTBO in 2007, some of his good friends had already been doing very well at international level for some years. He soon began to realise that this was the sport for him. He had done orienteering since he was a young boy, and for some years he had taken part in adventure races. He knows how to navigate and is a better cyclist than runner, and has achieved impressive results. It s very motivating with good results. It makes me eager to work all the time to get better, he says. It s a kind of holiday The 28-year-old MTBO athlete is partner with Rikke Kornvig, who is tenth overall in the World Cup after the first group of races. She is also working hard to get to the top. Erik Skovgaard Knudsen has progressed very rapidly in MTBO. He started only three years ago, but he had a good background. In this issue In this issue: Erik Skovgaard Knudsen a speedy rise to world class; Šárka Svobodná new Czech star; Now we can breathe again says the World Cup and European Championship organiser; Lena Eliasson: I don t know if I can reach my old level ; Fabian Hertner: It s just phenomenal ; The Nordic Orienteering Tour creating a more interesting sport; IOF Council team at the Jukola relay; World Ranking, Top 10. O-zine is an on-line newsletter published by the IOF. You can receive an notification whenever a new issue of O-zine is released. To register, just fill in the form at and press the Subscribe button. BARBRO RÖNNBERG EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

2 It s an obvious plus that we are going for the same goals. When we go to competitions it is a bit of a holiday for us, he says. They live in Aarhus in the middle of Denmark. Around home it isn t so easy to train with a bike in the forest, but in Silkeborg, about half an hour s drive away, there are very good training opportunities. Erik and Rikke are training hard there together with other good athletes. I also try to compete as much as possible. There are competitions almost every other weekend in Denmark, he says. New World Cup - a step forward Erik is pleased about the new World Cup this season. He thinks it s bringing the sport a step forward. It has been so exciting with so many good athletes taking part, he says. Last year he was a full-time sportsman, but now he is working full-time; he feels there can be some conflicts over getting enough time for practice, but in fact he is better than ever. He has started the World Cup impressively, being among the four best in all of the five races held so far. From 2008 to 2009 Erik took a huge step forward in standard, but he didn t fulfil his dream at the World Championships in Israel. This year the highlight of the season is in Portugal in July. The Danish team members are preparing better than last year. They are going to Portugal one week in advance of the Championships. The dream is to be on top of the podium, Erik says. Šárka Svobodná new Czech star Šárka Svobodná didn t expect to be among the world s best at the start of the World Cup, but she found she could concentrate on the races despite a hectic daily life. The 21-year-old athlete from the Czech Republic found her rhythm in Bulgaria, especially in the middle distance race. She let the orienteering be in charge of her running. Her body had the energy to run faster, but she took things carefully, resulting in her best performance in orienteering until now. It was really nice, she says. Šárka was in fact a bit uncertain if she would qualify at the start of the World Cup and European Championships. But her results in Bulgaria were 16th, 11th and 15th in the individual races, and she was seventh overall in the World Cup after the first three races. I managed to be very concentrated in my orienteering, she says. Busy days organiser of the final race in the Czech Republic s school championships, and also to take part in the Czech Championships in orienteering. Well, orienteering is certainly the sport for me. I want to do more. At least it s like that now, she laughs. Level three in the squad The national squad in Czech is organised in three different levels. Šárka is in the third. The lowest level, she says. But she also trains together with the double World Champion Dana Brozkova when the whole squad gets together. I can t say I have learnt so much directly from her, but it s good to be at common camps and compete against her. I can check my performance against her and if I manage to do well on just one leg compared with her that is also an inspiration. It s also good to see that it s possible for a runner from the Czech Republic to reach such a level, she says. Immediately after she had completed the race programme in Bulgaria, she went home to take her last exam in this academic year, to undertake her role as Šárka Svobodná is a young and coming runner from Czech Republic. New thinking When Šárka was 18, she took silver in the sprint at the Junior World Championships in Australia. Now she is at the start of her second year as a senior. Until now she has been thinking that nobody expects very much of her. It is clearly now time for some fresh thoughts. Šárka has shown that she can fight among the very best. 2

3 Now we can breathe again TEXT AND PHOTOS: ERIK BORG The World Cup got off to a great start in Bulgaria. Combined with the European Championships, it was the biggest orienteering event ever organised in Bulgaria. Now it is all over and we can breathe again. We feel great satisfaction after a job well done, says Konstantin Koynov, Secretary General in the Bulgarian Orienteering Federation. Bulgaria has hosted a lot of big events in ski orienteering, but for foot orienteering it was their first World Cup and European Championship. There were seven races in seven days, plus eight public events. Inspiration for the young What kind of influence has this big event had on orienteering in Bulgaria? I hope that this event will have a positive impact on the development of our sport. The majority of Bulgarian orienteers took part in the public competitions, and quite a few also ran parts of the elite courses. I hope that young Bulgarian athletes in particular were inspired by the presence of the elite, and got more encouragement to go out training and aim for big goals, Konstantin Koynov says. Event Director Natalia Velichkova and the national controller Lachezar Iliev were two other important members of the organising team. Natalia is impressed that the 100 people involved in the organisation were so enthusiastic. I could have wished that we had had more spectators on site, but many orienteers also followed the races on-line. The demanding courses, the spectacular arenas and the presence of many European and World champions made a good advertisement for our favourite sport in Bulgaria, she says. There are about 40 clubs with a total of athletes in Bulgaria. The youngest are mostly children of orienteers, but other children are taking part in the sport too. The challenge is to keep them, train them and hold their motivation for getting to a high level. Going for the Junior World Championships Bulgaria has never organised a World Orienteering Championships. That will have to wait. The Federation s next big challenge might be the Junior World Championships. Bulgaria, together with the Czech Republic and Serbia, is a candidate for that championship in Dancho Borisov was one of the organisers. With 100 others he did his best to make sure all runners and supporters coming to the European Championships went away with good memories One more gold for a happy Simone Niggli-Luder! By now, she has won 7 gold medals at European Championships and 15 golds at World Championships. Valentin Novikov won the middle distance race at the World Cup and European Orienteering Championships in Primorsko, Bulgaria. Matthias Merz took silver and Daniel Hubmann got bronze. 3

4 Lena Eliasson: I don t know if I can reach my old level Lena Eliasson was running really well at the start of the season in Then everything came to a sudden full stop when she suffered a brain haemorrhage. This year at the European Championships in Bulgaria she was back at her best, and felt her strongest emotions ever as a sportswoman. Lena was both crying and laughing after the middle distance race. The 28-year-old Swede was back again among the world s best. A couple of days earlier she ran the second leg for the winning Swedish relay team. It was so unexpected, the bronze on the middle distance. I knew that I could be among the five best with a good race and would have been very satisfied with that, but a medal was so incredible, Lena says. She took the same colour medal at the World Championships in Ukraine in At that time she had been training for a long time towards getting a medal, and now she believes that the 2007 medal is of greater significance because she managed to reach the goal she had had. The sudden stop At the beginning of 2008 Lena was doing extremely well. She had stepped up to being among the very best in the world, but suddenly everything stopped when she suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. No reason for it has been found, she says. When she had recovered, she decided to try to test her potential again. I want to see how far I can go. I can do normal work all my life, she says. She started orienteering when she was 9 10 years old. As a child she took part in nine different sports, but eventually settled on orienteering. Now she is combining her sporting career with studying. Her partner is David Andersson, one of the very best orienteers in the world. They help each other a lot towards achieving new heights. A new way of thinking In 2009 Lena had high ambitions, but the result was a lot of indifferent performances. Her body was not back to the form it had been earlier. I was simply not ready again, neither physically nor mentally, Lena says. She found her body was also short of iron. In the autumn she increased her iron level, and as a result she felt better. She also developed a new way of thinking. She decided she just had to accept her level, and aimed to run good races without mistakes and get her good feeling from 2008 back. I am still not running as fast as I did before I was sick, and I am also not sure I will ever reach that level. My goal is to run perfect races, she says. And perfect races can result in really good placings! The Swede Lena Eliasson is back on top international form. Lena Eliasson showed a lot of emotion on winning the bronze medal at middle distance in the European Championships 4

5 Fabian Hertner: It s just phenomenal Fabian Hertner is working on running error-free races on middle and long distance, aiming to become champion in those formats. From the European Orienteering Championships he brought home gold on both sprint and relay. First Fabian won gold in the sprint. Then he ran a very good leg in the relay and won a second gold medal. Finally he took the bronze medal in the last final, the long distance, in Primorsko in the south-east of Bulgaria. I m very happy about what happened. Winning three out of four possible medals is just phenomenal for me! My goal was to get a medal and a diploma from the sprint and the middle and a top ten from long distance. So there s a small downer with the middle, but the bronze medal from the long more than compensates for that, he says. The 25-year-old Swiss star won gold on middle distance in the Junior World Orienteering Championships in his home country in Among the seniors he has taken things step by step. Last year the sprint at the World Championships was his best race and he won the silver The Swiss orienteer Fabian Hertner has become one of the best in the world. medal behind Andrey Khramov. In the World Cup he was sixth overall. Now he is second overall, after his team-mate Daniel Hubmann. No injuries for two years Since he finished his studies in electrical engineering at the end of 2008 he has been orienteering full-time. For the last two years he has also trained without getting injured. In both 2007 and 2008 he was injured for a long time. The other main reason for my progress is the technical and mental part. I still remember the last World Cup race in When I finished, the speaker said Here is Fabian Hertner, who always has the best time at the radio control but then makes big mistakes. He was right. That led me to think about my orienteering technique, to get away from the poorer performance towards the end of the race. I have been working a lot on this and it seems that I have found a way to avoid big mistakes, he says. No Swiss secrets Switzerland took five of the eight golds and more than half of the medals that were up for competition at the European C h a m p i o n - ships. Fabian t h i n k s t h e main reasons for such good results are a lot of talented runners and the information flow inside the team. There are no secrets. We analyse our training and competitions together and everybody gives his opinion. We learn a lot from each other. Fabian Hertner (left) took a big step up at the European Orienteering Championship in Bulgaria with two gold medals and a bronze. His team-mates Simone Niggli and Daniel Hubmann also did very well as usual! What has the success of Daniel and Simone meant for you? It s really great to have such runners in the team. I haven t changed anything in my training by watching them, I go my own way nevertheless, but it helps when you see in training and smaller competitions how strong you are compared to the world s top. They also demonstrate what s possible, he says. The big goals What s your goal for the World Championships in Trondheim? I want to repeat last year s sprint medal and get a place in the relay team, but the goal also depends on which distances I run. A big goal for Fabian is to fight for gold medals on middle and long as well as in sprint. I will continue my work on the technical and mental aspects so that I can run clean races all the time. At the moment I m able to avoid the big mistakes, but there are still the 30-second mistakes which I have to get rid of. There is one more step to go, Fabian says. 5

6 The Nordic Orienteering Tour creating a more interesting sport Henrik Skoglund (left) was Tour Manager for NORT. Björn Persson, Sports Director of IOF, likes this way of making the sport more visible and interesting. A big ambition for the Nordic Orienteering Tour is to make the sport more visible and more interesting for people who don t know much about orienteering. The three competitions in the Nordic Orienteering Tour (NORT) were organized in Finland, Sweden and Norway. The Swedish race was in fact in Gamla Stan (the old town) in the very middle of Stockholm, and NORT s goal here was to reach an audience where most of those watching were not orienteers. We want to make orienteering into a more interesting sport for the public at large, says Henrik Skoglund, the Tour Manager. formats suitable for TV are very central to NORT s aims. The format in Stockholm was entirely new: a knock-out sprint with qualification, quarter finals, semi finals and a final. In the final, all the finalists started at the same time and had the same controls in the same order. Then it is easy to understand what orienteering is about. It s a very good idea, and it s exciting to test out different formats of the sport, says Björn Persson, IOF s Sports Director. TV coverage It wasn t easy to sell ads this year because it wasn t possible to demonstrate what would be shown, but next time there will be a much better basis for selling to sponsors, says Henrik Skoglund. A lot of the athletes have said that they like this way of trying out new ideas. The best ones also got good prize money. In all there were prizes worth Euro. The future Next year NORT will have a similar programme with one race in each of Finland, Sweden and Norway, all in the second half of June. There was a lot of TV coverage from the races in both Norway and Finland, with up to one-hour long programmes. The New formats organisers, the orienteering federations In future years NORT could perhaps be of Finland, Norway and Sweden, paid the towards the end of the orienteering season TV coverage in itself and development of costs of making the TV programmes. with five or six races, says Skoglund. 6

7 Foot Orienteering 1) Daniel Hubmann (SUI) 5871 points 2) Andrey Khramov (RUS) 5733, 3) Thierry Gueorgiou (FRA) 5732, 4) Matthias Merz (SUI) 5594, 5) Emil Wingstedt (SWE) 5592, 6) Fabian Hertner (SUI) 5591, 7) Mikhail Mamleev (ITA) 5582, 8) Valentin Novikov (RUS) 5581, 9) Matthias Müller (SUI) 5580, 10) Olav Lundanes (NOR) ) Simone Niggli-Luder 5947 points 2) Helena Jansson (SWE) 5849, 3) Dana Brožková (CZE) 5810, 4) Minna Kauppi (FIN) 5790, 5) Marianne Andersen (NOR) 5783, 6) Anne Margrethe Hausken (NOR) 5552, 7) Lea Müller (SUI) 5542, 8) Merja Rantanen (FIN) 5537, 9) Linnea Gustafsson (SWE) 5532, 10) Signe Søes (DEN) Federation League (for leading 20 athletes) World ranking, Top 10 (As of 29 June) 1) SWE points, 2) SUI 98388, 3) FIN 98188, 4) NOR 95894, 5) CZE 83919, 6) GBR 83043, 7) DEN 78943, 8) GER 71690, 9) ITA 67562, 10) FRA ) SWE points 2) NOR 93545, 3) SUI 86194, 4) FIN 84915, 5) CZE 83149, 6) AUS 64533, 7) GBR 64139, 8) RUS 53837, 9) DEN 43358, 10) GER MTB Orienteering 1) Lasse Brun Pedersen (DEN) 7509 points 2) Jiři Hradil (CZE) 7381, 3) Ruslan Gritsan (RUS) 7340, 4) Adrian Jackson (AUS) 7284, 5) Erik Skovgaard Knutsen (DEN) 7274, 6) Anton Foliforov (RUS) 7270, 7) Beat Schaffner (SUI) 7268, 8) Torbjørn Gasbjerg (DEN) 7182, 9) Matthieu Barthélémy (FRA) 7173, 10) Samuli Saarela (FIN) ) Michaela Gigon (AUT) 7392 points 2) Christine Schaffner (SUI) 7331, 3) Hana Bajtošová (SVK) 7286, 4) Marika Hara (FIN) 7266, 5) Ingrid Stengård (FIN) 7159, 6) Sonja Zinkl (AUT) 7043, 7) Anna Kaminska (POL) 6977, 8) Nadia Mikryukova (RUS) 6966, 9) Martina Tichovská (CZE) 6941, 10) Anna Füzy (HUN) Ski Orienteering 1) Eduard Khrennikov (RUS) 1323 points 2) Andrei Lamov 1322, 3) Andrey Grigoriev (RUS) 1306, 4) Staffan Tunis (FIN) 1301, 5) Kiril Veselov (RUS) 1299, 6) Lars Hol Moholdt (NOR) 1297, 7) Peter Arnesson (SWE) 1290, 8) Olli-Markus Taivainen (FiN) 1284, 9) Erik Rost (SWE) 1273, 10) Teemu Köngäs (FIN) ) Natalya Tomilova (RUS) 1321 points, 2) Marte Reenaas (NOR) 1284, 3) Liisa Anttila (FIN) 1261, 4) Olga Novikova (KAZ) 1260, 5) Josefine Engström (SWE) and Anastasia Kravchenko (RUS) 1242, 7) Helene Söderlund (SWE) 1241, 8) Alyona Trapeznikova (RUS) 1223, 9) Olga Trifanova (RUS) 1196, 10) Kajsa Richardsson (SWE) The IOF Council team finished 789th among the 1535 teams that participated in the 2010 Jukola relay. The running order was Leho Haldna (right), Timo Ritakallio, Antti Myllärinen, Astrid Waaler Kaas, Brian Porteous, Björn Persson and Laszlo Zentai. 7