Had a chat with Eddy Hellebuyck on Sunday morning. He was on the Belgian O Team about 10 years ago and is now living in Albuquerque. Apparently there isn't much in the way of orienteering there. At any rate, he's still pretty quick on the roads ... ran 2:12 for the win at Twin Cities Marathon!
Eddy is a US citizen now, right? Too bad there isn't a comparison between master's road racing and O in terms of prize $.
Maybe when he slows down to only 2:15 he'll consider O again. They're trying to get some O in Albquerque/Los Alamos. Our local mapper created a new map for them just outside of Los Alamos - has some impressive climb.
Eddy would probably still be the second-best US marathoner even with 2:15 and at age 45.
Right now, Eddy's 5th on the US list (of Oly qualifiers). There's Khannouchi (big gap), Browne (medium gap), Culpepper (small gap), then things get tight. 2:15 would knock him down to about 15th spot ... so maybe that would be incentive to do more orienteering :-).