The athletes at the World Masters Orienteering Championships in Finland were met with challenging courses at the middle distance final on Wednesday.
The more than 3,700 participants were just like at Tuesday’s forest qualification in the forests at Sauvo east of the host city Turku.
Today’s terrain was full of details with very few paths to follow and featured the characteristic open rock areas and many small, technical legs on the middle distance courses.
The degree of difficulty was reflected in the results lists, where there were relatively large time differences between the participants.
The athletes from Sweden took the most gold medals today – 11, while the Finns grabbed 10. Switzerland got 2, while the USA and Norway won one each.
After the middle distance, seven runners can brag about two gold medals from the championships in Finland, having also won the sprint on Sunday.
This applies to Merja Rantanen, FIN (W40), Simone Niggli, SUI (W45), Yvonne Gunnell, FIN (W50), Manu Mutka, FIN (M50), Heikki Rusko, FIN (M80), Sten Bergstrand, SWE (M90) and Sole Nieminen, FIN (W95)
Find results, GPS tracking and photos from the middle distance final here.
Friday is the long distance, which is the last competition at the championships in Finland.
Photo from today’s race by WMOC Press