Jimmy Birklin won the first ever "Sprint" world championship (Vroni Konig-Salmi won the women's sprint). The sprint race was on a 1:5000 map and was designed to have a winning time of about 12 minutes.

Jimmy's routes and comments are online at:

http://www.jimmybirklin.com/popupp_kartaVM.html

One strange feature of this year's sprint race is that the competitors had a chance to train on an old map of the actual terrain. The training was the day before the world champs race. The reason the organizers allowed this sort of training was that the area had been used frequently by a number of orienteers on the Finnish team (before it was selected as a world champs area). So, to make the event fair for all -- everyone could train in the area the day before.

At the bottom of Jimmy's description, you'll see the map that he used for training the day before the champs. The blue course on the old map is a course Jimmy designed. The purple course is another course he designed after he'd gotten a set of all the descriptions that would be used for the men's and women's sprint course.

I don't have time to translate his comments now (I'll try to take a look at it tomorrow and translate some of the comments).

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), September 03, 2001

Answers

I translated Birklin's comments and posted them to my blog at:

http://www.geocities.com/okansas.geo/2001_09_01_archive.html#5479007

If you don't want to go to my blog...here are the comments:

Start to 1: There is only one way to win the World Champs – fast and correct. That was my motto. The way to the first control was up to the shooting range and then a bit on the large trail (that was actually a small trail, as on the old map). Since I was looking for a large trail, I ran a bit too far and had to go around the small buildings. A small miss that put me in 16th place, seven seconds after.

1 to 2 : This was a leg I expected and during the open training [the day before the competition area was open for training on an old map] I ran a similar leg. A few seconds looking at the map and then I just rushed toward the control.

2 to 3: Because I’d built up some lactic acid on the way to the second control, I thought that going over the hill on the straight line (which was fastest) would wear me out for the rest of the course. So, I decided to go around a bit to the left. At the third control I was no better than seventh and was 15 seconds after Jörgen Olsson.

3 to 4: Straight – there isn’t much else you can do.

4 to 5: There are two routes; to the left with a bit tougher approach to the control and one to the right with a trail the entire way to the control. I took the right and it turned out to be very good.

5 to 6: After the training the day before, I knew that the earth bank just after the 5th control was not good. So, I ran straight south a few meters before I swung up on the shooting range. This was another good route choice that paid off.

6 to 7: I wnet straight and didn’t bother going on the road around. On this leg I heard [from the meet announcer] that I was a second after the leader – that made me feel stronger.

7 to 8: There wasn’t much choice on this leg. The only difficulty was keeping track of the trails at the end of the leg. It wasn’t very difficult because I’d run on the trail in the same direction the day before. This was the first time I took the lead and was even with Jörgen Olsson.

8 to 9: I went to the left – simple and no risk of a boom.

9 to 10: A leg to set up the next leg.

10 to 11: At the tenth control I was in the lead by three seconds. My route choice – a little to the left of the line and over the big bridge – turned out to be an important and decisive choice. On this leg I increased my lead by five seconds over the Finns Juha Peltola and Pasi Ikonen and by ten seconds over Jörgen Olsson. When I passed the bridge, I heard that I was in the lead.

11 to 12: I almost boomed – and lost the win – by running on the trail to the left without having any reason.

12 to Finish: Now I had to give it my all.

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), September 04, 2001.