Česká Lípa is the location for World Cup Round 2
Close to where the 2021 World Champs races were, and like then with both sprint and forest races on the programme, Česká Lípa in Czechia hosts World Cup Round 2. It's the third of the four big international competitions in the year. World Cup Round 1 (Norway) and the World Champs (Switzerland) have passed and the European Champs in Sprint (Italy) are ahead in early October.
GB has a team of 14 athletes. Britain has six places for the sprint, middle and long races, and can enter three sprint relay teams. It is expected that most of the athletes will run all the races: Sprint, Sprint Relay, Middle Distance and Long Distance.
IOF Eventor - World Cup Round 2
There are accompanying spectator races under the label Kwak Czech O-Tour.
Photo: Resy, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
GB Team
British Orienteering selection announcement for World Cup Round 2
The 14 Great Britain athletes are:
- Cecilie Andersen
- Rachel Brown
- Laura King
- Grace Molloy
- Chloe Potter
- Jo Shepherd
- Charlotte Ward
- Freddie Carcas
- Jonathan Crickmore
- Joshua Dudley
- Nathan Lawson
- Peter Molloy
- Chris Smithard
- Ralph Street
Notes:
- Megan Carter-Davies (who has a personal place for the sprint) is taking an international break.
- Will Gardner, who was part of the nine runner team for the recent World Championships, was a non-travelling reserve (as was Kirstin Maxwell.)
Programme
As usual all the racing can be read about and followed on the internet at Orienteering Live, with Web TV available for a fee.
Web-TV times (UK-times) from Bulletin-4
- Wednesday 2nd August 15:00 - 17:30
- Thursday 3rd August 16:00 - 17:30
- Saturday 5th August 10:00 - 14:30
- Sunday 6th August 10:00 - 14:30
And the World of O preview for World Cup Round 2 is well worth having to hand.
Sprint Focus
The selection announcement notes the competition is an opportunity to field a sprint focused team looking forward to the European Champs and next year's home World Champs.
It's also seen as a chance for some younger athletes to gain experience of high level competition: Rachel Brown is still a junior and Peter Molloy is a first year senior..
The athletes in the medal winning team from last year's World Games Sprint Relay are all in the party. As you will know Britain is quite strong in sprint. Even without Megan and Kris Jones the team has six athletes with top-50 World Rankings in Sprint, and Wednesday and Thursday should see TV-time for the new GB sprint kit.
The GB athletes are less likely to feature strongly in the forest races in the spectacular sandstone terrain by the arena at Korce - Kokořínsko, just west of Doksy where the World Champs event centre was. .
Both Grace and Freddie have been at University in America. They have therefore not done so much orienteering lately except that Grace ran the middle distance (28th) and forest relay (team 8th) at the recent World Champs. Whilst in America, on the track at 5000m, Grace ran just over 16 and a half minutes in April and Freddie ran sub-14 minutes in May.