The 2024 World Orienteering Champs are in Edinburgh

In July 2024 (very probably 12th-16th) the World Championship Orienteering Races in Individual Sprint, Sprint Relay, and Knockout Sprint will be decided. They're in Edinburgh. Although that is a long way away for many people it is not so far for prospective competitors, so it may be fun to look at possible stepping stones for GB athletes. They will surely have done this already.

Let's name the recent World Cup Races in Czechia as the first stone. There there were both forest and sprint races; the sprints being the first at this level since last year's World Champs, whilst the forest races were the last ones at that level until after Edinburgh.

One of this year's trophies, from the World Championships Bulletin-4

On Wednesday 12th July the racing in the 2023 World Champs (WOC) begins. The Champs are at Flims-Laax in the mountain canton of Graubünden in Switzerland. The competition will be top-notch and the scenery will be stunning.

Capri, the World Champs 2023 Mascot, on stage at the World Champs 2022

World Champs 2024 Selection (Test) Races, 3rd, 4th, 6th June.

Flims Laax, best known as a ski resort, hosts the Orienteering World Champs in July. The Champs are being held in conjunction with the Swiss-O Week.

Switzerland has a well-earned reputation for organising orienteering. This encompasses major international competitions of the sort we report, but also mass participation festivals. This year the 6-day Swiss-O week starts the same day as the WOC Relay on July 16th and runs to the 22nd. It has already hit the day 3 capacity of 4000 runners: the capacity of the Mountain Railway!

Cold Ash Mapclip, from Routegadget

The British Long Champs are next Saturday 25th March, in rolling mixed woodland of Southern England at Cold Ash in Berkshire, as used for the JK2019 Long Race.

There's a good entry and the men's race in particular looks very competitive. A few though are saving their powder for two weeks later in the rockier terrain of the Lake District, when it's GB selection races.

Courses at the British are much the same length as in 2019: W21E has 12.2km, 285m climb, compared to 12.1km + 340m, M21E has 17.8km + 480m compared to 17.8km + 500m. This could be the last British with such a short winning time on the women's, and such a long winning time on the men's.

photo:Jane Courtier, from the British Champs website

While we're waiting, let's mention the IOF World Federation League Table and pose a few questions (for your personal amusement, no prizes.) This decides how many runners a country can enter in an individual World Cup Race. There are separate tables for men and women, combining forest and sprint.

If you've kept interest this far you can probably say what are the top four countries in the tables. But how about a guess for their order (it has changed in the last year)? And how about who's fifth, and where GB stands in each table?

from the Idre Fjäll Event Bulletin-3

After a really good World Champs in Czechia in July 2021, what's next for the internationals programme, COVID permitting?

World Champs Summary from a British point-of-view.

There are two more World Cup rounds scheduled in 2021:

• World Cup Round 2 is in Idre Fjäll, Sweden, 12-15 August, 3 x forest races.
• World Cup Round 3 is in Cansiglio, Italy, 30 Sept - 3rd Oct, 2 x forest races and a sprint relay.

And on 23-24 October, Billund, Denmark, hosts individual and knockout sprints as part of WOC2022 buildup.

The domestic sprint weekend is 21st-22nd August (same as the re-scheduled Arctic Circle Jukola)

• British Sprint Champs (22nd August)
• British Sprint Relay Champs (21st August)

photo from Competition Bulletin 3

The Nokian Tyres World Orienteering Championships 2021 take place from Saturday 3rd to Friday 9th July. The host town is Doksy, a summer vacation resort in the Liberec region of the Czech Republic / Czechia. The Sprint Relay is in Doksy. The individual sprint is in/around an internationally known eighteenth century fortress. The forest races are in two types of distinctive terrain: the middle on steep bouldery slopes with plenty of thick vegetation, the long and relay in the sandstone where the best route can often be a long way from the straight line.

The previous championships, in 2019, were in Norway and were in the forest disciplines. The last time the sprint disciplines were contested in a World Championship was in Latvia in 2018.

The first entry in the competition programme is that there is no O-training on Thursday July 1st - because it's the main COVID testing for entry to the "WOC Bubble". These are the times we live in, and our first thought is gratitude to the Czech organisers, for running the World Champs, a huge task of itself, but even more this year in the significant shadow of a storm of COVID regulations. Thanks to them too for adding Sprint and Sprint Relay races to the original forest championships.

All finals will be televised. In Britain the broadcasts will as usual be a paid-for service on the internet (6 Euro per broadcast or 20 Euro for all five.) IOF Web TV Broadcast Schedule.

As Lockdown began there were eight GB athletes in the top 50s of the Sprint World Rankings

The pandemic has made clear there are important things bigger than any sport. Health, wellbeing, work, travel, weddings, family visits. Gosh, it even stopped professional football and reduced how much it was in the news.

Those for whom orienteering is a big recreational interest felt quite a sense of loss, as planned outings and trips were cancelled, and events didn't happen.

And so midsummer 2020 passes with no Jukola. There were no events in the spring. The 2020 international orienteering programme has been lost to the pandemic.

The cancellation of the international programme was particularly hard on the top international sprint-focused orienteers, as they had "waited" through 2019, a year with no World or European Champs in the sprint disciplines. And with the pandemic, with another cancellation for 2021, none were scheduled for 2020 or 2021 either.

Several GB squad athletes were in this position. They are mainly focused on the format and they were on track to be at the top of their game this year.

The recent news about next year's international programme, namely that (fingers crossed) there will be major international sprint orienteering at European and World level, is therefore very good.

Picture: Last year's GB World Cup Team

COVID-19 As you can imagine this was written before the introduction of the extensive social distancing measures introduced as a response to the spread of the virus causing COVID-19. Many of the events described will be cancelled.

In 2020 it is the first Sprint Orienteering World Championships, with Sprint Relay, Individual Sprint and the new Knockout Sprint. Denmark host, from 6th - 11th July, with the racing in Kolding, Fredericia and Vejle.

The European Championships are hosted by Estonia centred on Rakvere, and are the week of 6th - 23rd August. They include Middle, Long and Forest Relay.

The World Champs are not included in this year's World Cup, the European Champs are (as Round 2). There are two other rounds: Switzerland 20th - 24th May is Round 1, and Italy 1st - 6th October is the World Cup Final.

The Junior World Champs are in Turkey from 28th June - 5th July.

All are accompanied by open races, providing an opportunity for spectating orienteers to take a full-on experience of running and following the international racing.

After a World Champs the tables that decide how many runners a country gets in the forest races next year are calculated.

This year the tables determined the number of runners for a country in the middle and long races. Next year it only applies to the long, as there are qualification races in the middle and so every country can have three runners. There are also individual places for regional (e.g. European) champions.

For Team GB it is the several rounds of the World Cup that defines the competitions. The rounds are hosted in different countries, and the programme is different each year. This year there are four rounds in all. The first round is the European Championships (EOC). The second round is the annual World Championships (WOC).

The European Championships are every two years. 2018 is a year for them - they are in Switzerland, in May.

This is the last year that the World Championships includes all disciplines. From 2019 forest and sprint will alternate. This year WOC is in Latvia in August.

The combination of an all disciplines World Championships and a European Championships makes 2018 the best year to further develop the interest of supporters and spectators in international orienteering.

The International Orienteering Federation (IOF) maintains World Ranking tables.

There are tables for men and women, separate ones for forest and sprint orienteering. (And also for Trail, Ski and Mountain Bike Orienteering.)

The short answer is, for forest orienteering, top ten but not top five.