Charlotte Ward starts (from the IOF Web-TV)

World Cup Sprint race - Tuesday 29th October 2019 - Songtang Village

Update - Results

"Perfect sprint orienteering terrain" said Jonas Merz on the commentary. The races were close. The narrow, and sometimes very narrow, alleys are not something that many of the athletes have experience with. Exceptions might be men's winner Yannick Michiels who has done quite a lot of races in China with Park World Tour, and of course the home team athletes.

It was the most consistent runners who took the wins. Yannick Michiels only had one fastest leg, and Shuangyan Hao only three. Women's runner-up Simona Aebersold was close to the win - she lost more than the winning margin on leg 14-15. And Tove Alexandersson lost more than the winning margin on leg 2-3.

• Men - 1.Yannick Michiels; 2.Maxime Rauturier; 3. Li ZhuoYe.
• Women- 1.Shuangyan Hao; 2.Simona Aebersold; Sara Hagstrom.

Full Results on Eventor

Charlotte Ward and Kirstin Maxwell. credit: Hello 5G.

Sunday 27th October 2019 - Nanhai Movie and TV Town

The Sprint Relay of the China World Cup Round took place at 06:45 UK-time. The venue was:

An extremely scenic location of an open-air film studio complex with numerous replica townscapes and temples, combining the landscape of a city park and suburban park with strong cultural atmosphere. There is both planted and natural vegetation, with some small areas of open forest depending on route choice. Very good runnability.

There were five teams in contention at the start of the last leg, three of them Swedish. Handling the complex navigation well and running strongly it was Elena Roos of Switzerland who took the victory. The Swedish second team, with Sara Hagstrom, were second, and Norway with Andrine Benjaminsen were third.

The Great Britain team of Charlotte Ward, Peter Hodkinson, Ralph Street and Cecilie Andersen, were 13th, eighth nation.

partial screenshot from the web TV broadcast

A really impressive run at Xiqiao Mountain by today's final starter Gustav Bergman won the race and the men's 2019 World Cup. His compatriot Tove Alexandersson won the women's race, making 7 out of 7 wins this year.

As expected, it was very tough going in part: it was hot and humid, it was often steep, it was sometimes forest "jungle", and there was a lot of detail not all of which can be shown on the map. Runners had to choose and identify the best, but sometimes a little indistinct, tracks. Gustav said in a post-race interview losing a little time here and there was inevitable. And winning times were on the long side.

There was good TV coverage of the racing in the English language web broadcast. The now usual fixed and running cameras provided great pictures and GPS tracking helping analysis of the route choice legs.

Previous Map

We use UK-times in this article.

Saturday 26th October 2019 - Xiqiao Mountain

Web-TV broadcast from 7am UK-time. The broadcast will cover the women's race first, with the final starter at 07:40 that should wrap up about 8:20. At that time there are 25 men still to start. The temperature is forecast to be 27degC and it may be somewhat humid.

Xiqiao Mountain is a well-known tourist destination covering a large area. It's a national forest park and national scenic area. There is also a big statue.

Xiqiao Mountain is an extinct volcano with a history of 45000 years. It was a largest manufacturing field of stoneware in South China in ancient times. It is well-recognized as the origin of civilization along the Pearl River.