Fun weekend at Camp Lagland – Jáchym crowned Club champion; LuxOC1 finishes 10th in BCR
Club activities resumed after the summer break with two races in the bushes of Camp Lagland, a military base south-west of Arlon, last weekend. On Saturday, Jáchym Kotecký, an H-10, won the 2021 club champs just ahead of his sister Marjánka (D-12) and younger brother Jonas, for whom a category is yet to be invented. The adults all ran the „Noir court“ course (3.5 K) of a „régionale“ organized by CO Liège in a forest entirely overgrown with prehistoric looking fern; the kids’ course („Vert“ – 2.9 K) was a bit more welcoming, with parts leading through a lovely heath in full bloom. There were many knolls, larger depressions and pits in the forest (alas, not all of them on the map, or at least not in the right place), and finding them sometimes resembled a blind man´s holiday – try looking for a tiny pit in a fern bush. Ondra dominated the men´s category and Míša won among the women, but at the end of the day it was the kids who got took the laurels, all thanks to David´s elaborate handicap system where, if you´re small and fast, you have a big chance of winning.
On Sunday, two LuxOC teams contested the Belgian Relay Championship in a different part of the forest at Camp Lagland. Twelve years ago, the precursor of Luxembourg Orienteering participated in the BCR in this very area for the first time (see fresh-faced Ondra, Míša, Orsi, Gabi and Ondra’s dad in the picture; Marjánka had just been born). Today, LuxOC is well-known on the Belgian orienteering scene and participation in the BCR has become a tradition. The weather was gorgeous, the CC as welcoming as can be (thanks CO Liege!) and the forest very technical and demanding. Lose concertation for a second, and you lose the race. LuxOC1 – Míša, Sasha, Marjánka, David, Jáchym and Ondra, broke into the Top 10 after very strong performances of the kids on the 3K legs, while LuxOC2 – Jonas, Jevgenijs, Maggie, Jan, Elisabet and Balazs - finished 17th among 37 relays. After 6 legs and 29K, the two teams were separated by just 30 minutes.
It felt great to be out again with the club; hopefully the sanitary situation will remain stable throughout the school year so we can tackle the upcoming exciting challenges: Luxembourg Forest and City Weekend on 23-24 October, our foreseen participation in the Interland next April and, finally, Jukola in June.
Jan
Attached are the final results from the Club Championships at Lagland on Saturday 11 September. The handicap system uses the relative speeds of runners compared to H21s - for example an H65 is 0.64 times as fast. The source for the data for the relative speeds is in an appendix to the published rules for the sport in Britain - it is not just a set of figures made up by the handicapper, David!
