Finland Days 1 - 3

Monday, 12 August 2024

By virtue of flying west to east and losing 3 hours to the time zone change, our first day in Finland was pretty short – we arrived at 4pm local time, picked up the car, drove 2 hours to Turku then had dinner with some Australians before finding our apartment in the Port Arthur suburb of central Turku.   Turku seemed pretty nice – it was the original capital of Finland and is a port town with a big archipelago nearby. Our apartment was in the older part of town of converted workers cottages:

 

 

The World Champs had been going for a few days already with the sprint qualification and sprint final having been run and won – because we wanted to fit in Iceland and the Faroes we had chosen to just come for the forest events – a qualification then a middle distance final followed by a rest day, and then the long distance final on the last day.

 

The first day of orienteering for us was the forest qualification race – To make the A Final I had to finish in about the top 40 of my heat (of 2 heats),  while Jon who had to be in the top 30 in his heat as there were more competitors and 3 heats. 

I had a steady run with some moments of good fortune when I stumbled over controls on my way to relocating so I finished 26th in my heat but a long way back timewise. The terrain was really lovely – really detailed with lots of open moss-covered bits of bare rock – definitely more challenging than O-ringen had been as there were way less tracks and hardly any easy legs.  Jon only just missed out on making it to the A final – despite being a lot closer to the winner in time than I was.

The next day was the middle distance final – It was really tricky but I had a good run and finished 30th which I’m really happy with - especially as there’s also the threat of relegation – if you finish in the bottom 10 of the A final, you get relegated down to the B final for the long distance race (while the top 10 in B move up) – so with 80 competitors I was well clear.  Jon wasn’t far off being promoted but ultimately stayed in B for the long final.

60 Walks Index
Australian Orienteering Champs - Armidale Friday, 25 October 2024
Southbank Apartment Friday, 25 October 2024
Mixed Bag Thursday, 24 October 2024
St Helens Orienteering Event Thursday, 24 October 2024
Brain Scrolls Thursday, 24 October 2024