Niamh and Nick come out on Top

Update from Ivan:

The Nick and Niamh fan clubs had plenty to cheer about in Grannasen ski-centre today. Ireland's two Long distance finalists had great runs in front of the thousands of spectators. Niamh came home in a fantastic 34th place in her race. She put all her Trondheim training to the good and ran a clean and strong race. Coming through the arena with a very tough last loop of 1.5km she was in good shape and continued hard right to the end finishing in style to the delight of all her supporters. A large Irish contingency were in Trondheim for the event.

The 9.9km womens race was won by the unstoppable Swiss runner Simone Niggli who captured her 17th World champs gold medal.


Then it was the men's turn. With Nick one of the earlier starters we could follow his progress through the forest with the excellent television and tracking coverage. Nick too had a strong race and performed admirably in what will surely be the first of many World champ finals for him, coming home in 39th position.

The home favorite Olav Lundanes was eventual mens winner, the 23 year olds first gold.

View full results here

David Healy runs in the middle distance final on Saturday and Sunday sees the excitement of the Relays – The Irish relay teams will be announced today – watch this space.

WOC 2010

Things are really beginning to hot up in the Irish camp at WOC. Sunday saw Nick compete in the Sprint finals to finish a fantastic 41st position. Two other team members missed out on qualifying by the narrowest of margins.

Monday was the turn of David Healy to impress as he qualified comfortably in the Middle Distance.

Tuesday saw the stars shine bright again as all Irish runners pulled out their best performances for the Long Distance qualifiers. Once again, Nick stormed around the course to finish in 14th position, seeing him through to his second final this week. Perhaps the performance of the day came from Niamh O'Boyle who fought hard throughtout the course to make up for missing out on the Sprint Final by a mere 9 seconds, and finished in a remarkable 12th position. Niamh had over a minute to spare. Our second Irish lady also provided us with an amazing run. Ciara Largey ran strong and smoothly throughout the course and was disappointed to miss out by just 16 seconds. A bitter blow to be so close in a long distance discipline. However, 17th is a great result at this level.

Andrew Quin finished in 24th position in his heat, with an impressive time, while David finished in 26th. You can catch a re-play of their routes here.

Don't forget to tune on Saturday to see Dave run in the middle distance final and tomorrow to catch Nick and Niamh battle it out amongst the biggest names in the sport in the long distance.

This has to be the most successful WOC tour Ireland has ever had. The relays should be highly entertaining also - they take place on Sunday

Ireland Success at WOC

Nick once again did BOC and Ireland proud as he stormed through the Sprint Qualification at WOC in an impressive 10th position. He became Ireland's first WOC finalist since Andrew Quin in Denmark 2006. This is an incredible achievement for Nick, who is the youngest member of the WOC team. Both Niamh and Shea missed out on qualification by a matter of seconds, a bitter sweet feeling for both. Had they been drawn in different heats, both the O'Boyle's would have sailed into the final. Nick finished in 41st position in the Sprint Final held a couple of hours after the qualification.

Today see's Rosalind Hussey, David Healy, Neil Dobbs and Andrew Quin take part in the Middle Distance qualifications, with the long distance heats to take place tomorrow. The Irish Elite Team have started this year's WOC with such force that the next few days hold lots of excitement and anticipation for one of the best year's for Irish orienteering at this level.

Follow the team live and keep up-to-date with the action on the team's blog. Nick runs again in tomorrow.

Women’s team
Rosalind Hussey: Sprint, Middle and Relay
Susan Lambe: Sprint
Ciara Largey: Long and Relay
Niamh O’Boyle: Sprint, Long and Relay

Men’s team
Neil Dobbs: Middle
David Healy: Middle and Long
Shane Lynch: Sprint
Seamus O’Boyle: Sprint
Andrew Quin: Middle and Long
Nicolas Simonin: Sprint and Long

Nordic Tour Stage Two

Stage 2 Sweden
Stockholm - Gamla Stan, Tuesday 22nd June 2010

Nick came out on top of the Irish again today at the Nordic Tour Stage 2 in Sweden.

1. Matthias Muller 15.32
2. Jerker Lysell 15.33
3. Fabian Hertner 15.41
4. Daniel Hubmann 15.43

58. Nicholas Simonin (BOC) 17.45
64. Gerard Butler (3ROC) 18.38
67. Seamas O'Boyle (CNOC) 19.18
68. David Healy (GEN) 19.33
69. Darren Burke (CorkO) 19.49

Women's Qualification
1. Simone Niggli 14.58
2. Helena Jansson 15.35
3. Marianne Andersen 15.51
4. Lena Eliasson 15.56

44. Niamh O'Boyle (CNOC) 18.02

Unfortunately, non of the Irish team made it as far as the semi-finals but some strong runs were seen.

Update from Nordic Tour

Nicolas reports from Finland on Thursday race.

NORT Stage 1, Tuusula, Finland

"Today's race was in two parts, a middle distance for the first two thirds of the overall distance, followed by a map exchange where we changed to a sprint race for the last third of the course. All the men had early start times so we didn't have to spend too long inside a fenced army compound in quarantine, unlike Niamh, but it was a nice afternoon in Finland. First out was Gerard, followed by Seamus, Dave, Darren and then Nic. The start draw resulted in all the Irish men starting in close proximity to each other.

The actual start was not a pleasant experience as we had to wait on the start line for a minute with mosquitos attacking, with a tv camera pointed at us. There were cameras at a number of controls on the course, with pictures being shown in the finish arena, and a highlights show this evening on Finnish television, with other countries also likely to air the programme.

The middle distance course had one thing in common for most of the Irish lads (and many other nations), people left the 1st control in the wrong direction to 2! Everyone had GPS tracking so if you have time you can view this mistake as it happened and wonder what were they thinking! It was a long leg to 2, followed by two short legs before another long leg where the route choice was left or right of a big hill. After that we ended up in a very wet marsh before starting a butterfly with two loops. After 18 controls we dropped our Middle Map and picked up a Sprint Map, with different scale and different mapping standards to the middle.

The women's course was very similar to the men's course, minus a couple of controls. Niamh was 80% pleased with her race, while David was only 68.2% pleased with his overall race. This change in scale, from 1:10000 to 1:5000, didn't affect any of the Irish to a major degree. But we were surprised to be running across a supermarket car-park in the middle of the course. There was a possible route choice through an underground car-park but don't think we were allowed to do that (one of the women competitors may have done this though).

Overall the Irish team was pleased with how today's experimental format worked. We now have the Sprint Race experiment to look forward to on Tuesday in Stockholm. Over the weekend the team is heading to the Jukola Relay where we will be running for various teams".

Elite Squad head to Scandi

Six members of the Irish elite orienteering squad are heading for Finland on Thursday (17th June) as the first leg of the 2010 Nordic tour kicks off. This is part of the team's preparation for the World Championships in Trondheim, Norway, in August - the selection races will be in Norway in July. The Irish team of Niamh and Seamus O'Boyle, Gerard Butler, Darren Burke, David Healy and BOC's own Nicolas Simonin start the competition tomorrow.

The Nordic tour consists of three World Cup events held in Finland, Sweden and Norway throughout June. The runners fight in the first 2 competitions not only for prize money and glory, they can also get bonus seconds for the last stage which is a chasing start. They also have to run shoulder to shoulder in the knock-out-sprint in old town of Stockholm.

The programme for the event:

Stage 1: 17th June 2010 Tuusula, Finland Middle distance/sprint, combined
Stage 2: 22ndJune 2010 Stockholm, Sweden Sprint, Qualification and finals
Stage 3: 26th June 2010 Raufoss, Norway Middle distance, chasing start

How the stages are run:

Stage 1: The competition will be organised as a mix between middle distance and sprint. One part of the course will be of middle distance character and rules, while one part will be sprint character. There will be a map change with a change of scale and map standard. Bonus seconds will be given to the six best athletes after middle distance section: First 60 bonus seconds, second 45 sec., third 30 sec., fourth 20 sec., fifth 10 sec., sixth 5 sec. The bonus seconds will count for the overall Tour only.

Stage 2: The competition will consist of a sprint qualification of regular length and style. The 30 best athletes will qualify for the finals, which will be run in heats of 6 athletes/heat in quarter finals, semi finals and Final. All the heats will have mass start without forking with the best athletes advancing to the next round.


Stage 3: The competition will be a chasing start based on the overall results after two stages. The competition will have middle distance character and rules, but the courses will be 10-15 minutes longer than a regular middle distance.


You can follow the team's performances on the Nordic Tour website. There will also be live tracking of the events so you can support your team from afar! We also hope to have regular updates from the team members on the Irish blog. Best of luck to Nick and the team on the Tour and for all the team preparing for WOC.

World MTBO Championships

This years world MTBO champs are being held in Montalegre, Portugal from the 9th-18th of July. There are four disciplines decided at the World champs - sprint, middle, long and relay. More information about the event can be found here:http://mtbwoc2010.fpo.pt/

If there are any MTBO competitors out there who would like to be considered for selection to represent Ireland at the World champs in Portugal please get in touch with Ivan Millar: ivanmandymillar at aol.com before the 31st of March.