LuxSUL 3 – Sunshine in Ettelbruck!
Once again LuxOC has been blessed with perfect weather for a LuxSUL run. For this one we ventured rather further away from the capital than usual for our evening. The run was deliberately based near the railway station, so that coming by train would be a good option. And it turned out that quite a few of the 24 club members who made the journey north did indeed “let the train take the strain”!
Our thanks for an excellent evening of quality urban orienteering go to Cedric Guthier, a top German H21E competitor who has recently moved to Luxembourg after completing his PhD studies in Germany, and has joined LuxOC. Cedric planned some very testing courses with lots of small route choices – the “butterfly” circuit in the heart of the town was a challenge for some on the longer “Deer” course. And fortunately, nobody got trapped in the Etzella football stadium – who spotted that one of the gates was mapped as being only “one way” traffic through a turnstile?
Cedric is also an expert mapper, and he put in many hours of much-appreciated work to make the map we used. Unlike most of the LuxSUL series, the Ettelbruck map was both fully surveyed on the ground and carefully drawn to IOF specifications. Hopefully, the Club will be able to re-use the map again soon.
The results for the evening are, as usual, on the Helga web results page – see https://helga-o.com/webres/index.php?lauf=4670 . There were some notable performances – not least from Marie Anna Kotecká, who at only 13 years old was less than four minutes behind her father on the longer “Deer” course. Watch out, Ondra! At the other end of the age range, André Pierlot put in a very useful time for an H60. And while Cedric showed us all how quickly the “Deer” Course could be run – yes, under 24 minutes – LuxSUL co-ordinator David has had to take the harsh decision of declaring Cedric “non-competitive” for LuxSUL purposes for this particular run, given that he had both planned the course and put out half the controls an hour before! On the shorter “Rabbit” course, Inga was ten minutes clear, running below 9 minutes/km.
Detailed cumulative results to date are attached. After three out of the planned seven runs, it’s still early days for spotting our overall winners. Julien Gaffuri still has a useful ten-minute lead in the “Deer” class, despite missing LuxSUL 3. Indeed, no-one has taken part in all three runs! And on the “Rabbit”, Inga’s emphatic win last night puts her well clear in the cumulative table.
Just to recap, the rules for deciding the cumulative LuxSUL results are (relatively) straightforward. Ranking is based simply on times behind the winner of each race, with only the best four results from the seven LuxSULs being aggregated. This means that taking part in more than four runs allows one or more “times behind the winner” to drop out of an aggregate total – so expect some big changes in positions later in the season!
More information on LuxSUL 4 very soon – there will be a separate news item coming up on this website. It will however be as originally announced, on Wednesday 7 June, meeting in Heisdorf and running over to Steinsel.