The extremely mild winter in large parts of Europe has made it impossible to organise the Ski Orienteering World Cup, the Junior World Ski Orienteering Championships and the European Youth Ski Orienteering Championships in Latvia. The events were scheduled to be held in Madona, Latvia from February 2 – 8, 2020. Consideration was first given to moving the competitions to a later date, but the long term weather forecast shows little promise of improvement and focus has shifted to finding an alternative organiser for the events.
The IOF confirms that the events will be held in Umeå/Vindeln, Sweden from February 21 -26, 2020. The first 2 competitions, Sprint and Long Distance, will be held concurrently with the Swedish Championships competitions already planned for the same days, on the weekend of February 22 and 23. Middle Distance and Relays will be organised as separate competitions on Tuesday February 25 and Wednesday February 26 respectively.
A preliminary bulletin for the events is published here and will be updated with new information as it evolves. The IOF is in the process of updating the events in IOF Eventor so that teams can modify entries as needed, and where all event information will be uploaded.
The organiser has also started putting up basic information on the homepage http://umeaok.se/wcup2020/
The IOF would like to express its thanks and sympathy to the organisers in Latvia who have had to make the very difficult decision to cancel the event, and its thanks to the organisers in Sweden who have enthusiastically taken on the challenge of organising the events at very short notice.