The woman's relay will be over before I awake tomorrow morning, but the men's should just be starting (13:45 Tampere time). Mike will be running the last leg. It will be fun to follow the reults live. Any predictions for medal winners?

-- Mary (maprunner@juno.com), August 01, 2001

Answers

The easy answers: for the Women the fight will be between Finland, Switzerland, and Sweden. For the Men, it will be Finland and Norway duking it out.

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), August 01, 2001.

Hey Swampfox - any "surprise americaine" this year?

-- Mean Gene (gmw@ku.edu), August 01, 2001.

I can't connect to the WOC results page (too busy) this morning, but from what I can read on alternativet, it looks like the Finns won the women's gold, while the Swedes took the silver. I can't tell who won the bronze.

-- Mary (maprunner@juno.com), August 02, 2001.

Norway took the Womens Bronze, losing (literally) in a photo finish to Sweden. Tat must have hurt both runners, though afterwards I bet the Norwegian was feeling the pain a good deal longer. The Swiss ended up 4th.

The Swedish Men added another 2 years to their Relay Gold drought, and didn't even finish. Their last leg runner, Jimmy Birklin, hurt a muscle early in the course and that was that. He is relay cursed, because it was Jimmy that hopped over a control on the 3rd leg in Norway 4 years ago, at a time Sweden in the lead comfortably, and with Johan Ivarsson running last.

The Finns won and Norway was second on the Mens' side. The Czecks were 3rd.

So here's the answer: the last Relay gold the Swedish men won was in Finland, in 1979, 22 years ago...

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), August 02, 2001.

Norway took the Womens Bronze, losing (literally) in a photo finish to Sweden. That must have hurt both runners, though afterwards I bet the Norwegian was feeling the pain a good deal longer. The Swiss ended up 4th.

The Swedish Men added another 2 years to their Relay Gold drought, and didn't even finish. Their last leg runner, Jimmy Birklin, hurt a muscle early in the course and that was that. He is relay cursed, because it was Jimmy that hopped over a control on the 3rd leg in Norway 4 years ago, at a time Sweden in the lead comfortably, and with Johan Ivarsson running last.

The Finns won and Norway was second on the Mens' side. The Czecks were 3rd.

So here's the answer: the last Relay gold the Swedish men won was in Finland, in 1979, 22 years ago... An entire generation of Swedes has grown up without knowing that it was ever once possible for them to win a WOC Relay.

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), August 02, 2001.

Now that the relays are run it is time for all those armchair orienteers back in the US to put the US team performances once again under the microscope. A while ago Spike calculated the percentage of time behind 3rd place for US relay teams in the WOCs. This year the women finished 43% behind 3rd place and the men finished 39% percent back. For the women, this displacement was pretty typical, if not just a bit better than recent trends. For the men, however, this was the farthest back from 3rd place they have finished since 1978!!!

...an entire generation of US orienteers has grown up never knowing that it was possible for the men's team to be that far back!

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), August 02, 2001.

The fight for the silver medal in the women's race was incredible. Gunilla boomed near the end (the same area I boomed and the same area where, despite my boom, I passed Canada). Hanne Staff and Gunilla were together. Gunilla punched first, but Hanne passed her on the run in. Gunilla fought back. They ran side-by-side (to use a NASCAR phrase) and Gunilla leaned at the end like she was running the 100 meters in the Olypmics. She won by 0.03 seconds.

-- Michael (meglinski@yahoo.com), August 03, 2001.

I wonder what it is about Finland and womens relays? The year I was at Jukola (2 years ago) there was also the most incredible sprint for the win between 2 women. Neck and neck all the way from the last control to the Finish, on a long run in which consisted in large part of sand with some gravel and the occasional cobblestone. And am I remembering right that this year's Venla race was also extremely tight?

What fun to watch!

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), August 05, 2001.