Team GB, The World Games 2022: Cecilie Andersen, Ralph Street, Jonathan Crickmore and Charlotte Ward

Early Sunday morning 17th July, on the last day of The World Games, the GB Team won the bronze medals in the Sprint Relay.

The racing was in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. It was the third day of racing. On Friday it had been individual sprint and on Saturday a forest middle race. Both had been in hot and humid conditions. It was not quite as hot for the relay, but still many of the runners poured water over themselves before running.

There was free internet TV. Using that, with the kind permission of the IOF, we have made a five minute summary video of the race from a GB perspective.

After the race the GB team talked about the race.

Team GB, The World Games 2022: Cecilie Andersen, Ralph Street, Jonathan Crickmore and Charlotte Ward

On 15th, 16th and 17th July there are three top-notch international orienteering races as part of the World Games in BIrmingham, Alabama.

The races are a sprint, a middle and a sprint relay. The races are on internet TV (free.) Birmingham is about the same latitude as Tunis and at this time of year it is hot and humid, with a risk of storms later in the day, so races are early local time. First starts: 3pm UK-time.

The Games has places for 80 orienteering athletes, 40 men and 40 women, and these go mostly to teams of 4 from leading countries, and partly to individual champions. Britain selected athletes (from those available) with an emphasis on the two sprint races rather than the forest middle, but the old map for the latter looks as if it will be a great area. All four, Cecilie Andersen, Ralph Street, Jonathan Crockmore and Charlotte Ward, like most British athletes, have higher world rankings in sprint than in forest. (In fact Charlotte, World ranking 21 in sprint, does not have a forest ranking.)

Part of the terrain for this year's JK Middle Race (mapper squad member Ben Mitchell)

Internationally, in 2020 almost none of the races that On The Red Line tend to follow took place, but in 2021 they almost all did.

Domestically, the British NIghts took place in early 2020, and then there weren't big events until the second half of 2021.

The outlook for 2022 is however promising, with full programmes internationally and domestically

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)

The 2018 World Championships took place in Latvia (celebrating 100 years) from 4th - 11th August. The event was based in Riga and Sigulda. The Championships were supported by Nokian Tyres.

This was the last all-disciplines World Championships. Next year it will be the Forest races (Norway), in 2020 the Sprint races (Denmark.)

Britain sent a team of 14 athletes. They achieved one podium place, in the men's relay.

Full results are in IOF Eventor - WOC2018 and results and photographs are also at the Latvia World Champs site. An index of our news reports and a summary of British results follows below.

See also the virtual arena (with links to many GB photos) at Maprunner WOC 2018

Orienteering was included in the 2017 World Games held in Wrocław, Poland, with the orienteering races on 25th, 26th and 27th July. Wrocław is Poland's fourth largest city, the largest city in Western Poland. The World Games features a whole set of non-Olympic sports. In many countries the Games are highly prestigious with much media coverage akin to that of the Olympics. But not in Great Britain, where Parliament has decided Olympic medals are the be-all and end-all. This time some orienteers won or lost significant performance-related funding deals from their governments based on a few seconds.

Official Results - World Games Orienteering 2017

In the final event, the sprint relay, held in heavy rain in the park and zoo by Centennial Hall, Great Britain came 5th. Below is a link to a video of the whole race.