Discussion: JWOC 2021

Follow the races and live results, middle quali is next. Jwoc2020.org.

If it's not in the AP event list, it didn't happen.

I see there are 11 competitors from outside Europe (6 from Japan, 5 from USA), which is at least better than WMTBOC got. Our Aus team is ordinarily bigger than that number.

No Brits?

No. Presumably this is because of restrictions on people returning to the UK from Turkey.

In the absence of anyone actually representing Australia to support, there's Kylian Wymer (running for France) - 42nd in the sprint yesterday.

Ireland managed to make it over.

Was there more climb-related route choice than usual in the sprint? Stair technique important? And, did they let the 21-year-olds take part?

No Dutch as well

Turkey's on the UK Red list so hotel quarantine when you return (why does hotel quarantine ring a bell?)

Also Alix Young's two children Lars and Pia - could be Australian reps as well

Go OWA!

Pia might have a shot at a medal tomorrow if she runs as well as she did today (2nd in the qualifier).

Pia had excellent middle qual. Kylian made the final too.

Took me awhile to find the website.

There are lots of updates on the US JWOC team here!

Kylian had a reasonable middle final. But plenty of runners to come, that's for sure. Cant get live results to work, just showing the qualis for me.

That's what happens with free coverage.

Live results and livestream working OK for me.

Must be cache issue. Got it now thanks.

Pia Young Vik in front at the second radio (about 2/3 distance).

Double for Sweden: Axel Elmblad and Hanna Lundberg. Pia dropped away a bit at the end to come 6th. Kylian was 15th.

Incidentally, it's not every day that you get a sprint course with 5.5% climb.

Maybe that's why the IOF didnt favour NZ's JWOC application - not steep enough:-))

@gruver If only IOF'd just said aye! We have plenty of terrain in wellington green and steep enough to match that middle final ;)

Kilian and especially Pia consistently good in the long.

They'll get better too; they're still Young.

Pia was 1st at the start of the long leg, then lost 5 places

I thought the road/ridgeline route looked pretty obvious, but presumably not everyone felt the same way.

Tough start though. Rain, climb, gnarly bush. Forget Wellington Lizzie, think Kapamahanga!

@Blair, I thought the same, Boys easier to decide, go left and up track, Girls had to go back up the way they came to track. Always hard to run away from the control you are going for

I didn't check splits but from the womens tracking it looked like straight (if executed well) and the right hand route were just as quick. Could be wrong though.

Just looked at the tracking and splits. The 3 women with the fastest splits did 3 different routes, one right, one straight, one left. Young made a mistake and went into the green before she reached the control. Not a route choice error, just navigation error.

I think it generally helps to do some slightly more sophisticated analysis of route choices to avoid coming to dubious conclusions. First: it always helps to work out some numbers - distance and climb.

Women: left (ridge) 3.05km 60m climb, right (edge of map) 3.05km 70m "straight" 2.54km 95m - I put that in quotation marks because it wasn't actually very straight ie while it was shorter then left or right the difference was not as much as you might have guessed at first glance.

Men: left (ridge top) was 2.73km with 80m climb, right (edge of map) 2.95km 70m and "straight" or right 2.5km, 85m.

For the men, fastest times on all three routes were about the same BUT one of the the fastest times on the straight route was by Odum - who came 2nd (just 7 sec from first). The two fastest on the right route were Johansson and Naslund who came 45th and 51st (13 and 14 min behind). The fastest on the left route was Nagy who came 21st - 8 min behind . You might then conclude right and left were faster routes. But then again both Naslund and Johansson made largish mistakes which means their running speed was not as low as the finish times suggest - but in neither case were the mistakes big enough to account for all the time behind behind the winner - they were not running as fast as the winners. Also both made their mistakes earlier than this leg - so both may have a bit lower in motivation (and thus not running as hard as they might) knowing they had already blown their chances of a top result.

Also going right makes the approach to the control easier (less chance of mistakes). So everything else being equal

REALLY enjoyed the coverage of the relays. Wanted to pass on the youtube link to some young friends but after initially indicating a 4hr recording it switches to the 46min award ceremony. Is it just me? The individual event recordings still seem to be available.

Appears to be working correctly now @gruver

Thanks @HC. For those who want to pick the exciting bits out of the 4 hours, skip the first 7min of filler. The girls start is at 12min. The boys start at 1hr27 when the girls are on their third leg. The first girl finishes at 1hr48 so there’s a lot of excitement in that interval. The boys winner finishes at 3hrs10. The lively commentary owes a lot to the style of Per Forsberg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mDbvFCh6iM

@gruver, maybe I'm interpreting your last sentence incorrectly, but Per was nowhere near JWOC, the commentators are others, check the stream at around the 8 minute mark for their names. The livelier of the two ENG-speakers is certainly Bruno from Portugal. I admit I appreciate a lively commentator, but I slightly dislike Brunos style of "repetition sentence building", adding a word to each repetition to finally build a sentence. Nonetheless, it was quite good commentary at JWOC.

I know it wasn't Per, just referring to some signature phrases such as "that's for sure". And quite a good command of what was going on in the competition. Yes Bruno does a lot of repetition. Bruno certainly does a lot of.....