The highlight of the year in the international orienteering calendar begins on Friday morning in Edinburgh, Scotland, when the 40th World Orienteering Championships get underway.
It is a sprint-only World Championships which awaits the athletes with three medal races: Sprint, Sprint Relay and Knock-Out Sprint in that order.
As many as 45 nations are participating and more than 250 athletes will start in the Scottish capital.
Edinburgh offers a very varied terrain for the sprint races, which includes both residential areas, parkland and orienteering in the city center with significant variation in elevation and narrow passageways.
Attracts large audience
The competitions have the potential to reach a larger audience than ever before, because in addition to an exciting experience in the arenas, there are extraordinary good opportunities to follow along on TV.
The national television stations in Sweden (SVT), Norway (NRK), Finland (YLE), Czechia (CzTV) and Austria (ORF) have acquired the TV rights.
In addition, IOF’s partnership with the European Broadcasting Union means that the competitions can be watched for free on the streaming platform Eurovision Sport in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany and Austria (KO Sprint on ORF) with English, French and German commentary.
The rest of the world are able to follow all races on IOF TV, where there is also commentary in the three languages mentioned above.
Second sprint-only WOC
The format with three sprint races for the World Orienteering Championships debuted two years ago in Denmark, where the Knock-Out Sprint was also on the program for the first time.
Here, Sweden (Strand, Bejmer, Bergman, Alexandersson) won the opening Sprint Relay, where several teams made a decisive mistake in the second leg and lost a lot of time. This year’s hosts from Great Britain (Ward, Street, Jones, Davies) took silver ahead of Norway (Dyrkorn, Liland, Fosser, Benjaminsen) in bronze.
In the first Knock-Out Sprint final at a WOC, the gold medals went to Matthias Kyburz (SUI) and Tove Alexandersson (SWE). In the men’s class Sweden’s WOC debutants August Mollén and Jonatan Gustafsson impressed by taking silver and bronze respectively. Megan Carter Davies won her second silver medal ahead of Eef Van Dongen (NED), whose bronze medal was the best ever WOC result for the Netherlands.
Megan Carter Davies completed her medal hat-trick in the final individual sprint, where she became world champion ahead of Simona Aebersold (SUI) and compatriot Alice Leake. Here, Kasper Fosser (NOR) won the men’s competition ahead of Gustav Bergman (SWE) and Yannick Michiels (BEL), who finally won a medal after a series of fourth places.
Relive all the action from WOC 2022 in Denmark on IOF’s Youtube-channel
It is the fourth time that the United Kingdom are hosting the World Orienteering Championships. The last time was in 2015 in Inverness and before that was in 1999 and 1976.
WOC 2024 program:
All times: BST (UTC +1)
Friday, July 12
Sprint
09:00 Qualification first start, M
09:46 Qualification first start, W
14:00 Opening ceremony
15:12.30 Finals first start, M
15:30 – 18:00 TV Broadcast
16:29 Finals first start, W
Sunday, July 14
Sprint Relay
12:30 – 14:00 TV Broadcast
12:45 Relay start
Tuesday, July 16
Knock-Out Sprint
09:00 Qualification first start, W
09.41 Qualification first start, M
10:05 Heat selection, W
10:45 Heat selection, M
14:20 – 18.10 TV Broadcast
14:25 QF first start, W
15:01 QF first start, M
16:12 SF first start, W
16:53 SF first start M
17:31.30 Final start, W
17:52 Final start, M
18:30 Closing ceremony
All photos: William Hollowell