Out of this World
Five local orienteers were in action at the World Masters Championship in Poland, with two amongst the medals, as they helped GB to its best-ever placing in the championship.
The annual Masters Championship brings together athletes in age classes from over 35 to over 95, and features an array of stars of yesteryear, as well as club athletes from around the world, and unlike the Junior and Senior World Championships, there are no national quotas on how many athletes a nation can enter, so there are generally a large number of Scandinavians, for whom orienteering is their national sport, present.
The opening Sprint race saw four FVO athletes make it to the final, and there was a breakout performance from Rachel Kirkland, who clamed the silver medal in W55. Unlike many of her competitors, Rachel has no past international experience, and a time of 15.02 had her top of the podium until the final athlete dislodged her into 2nd. There were 18th place finishes for Roger Goddard in M50 (16.37) and Mark Wood in M55 (16.36), while Dawn Goddard was 29th (19.35) in W55.
Sarah Rollins would have been expected to jon them in the final, but missed out an easy control in W50 and was relegated to the B final, where she took out her frustration on the course by posting a remarkable winning margin of two and a half minutes.
A joint qualification race for both forest stages had Sarah, Rachel and Roger into the Middle A final, and Sarah exacted her revenge with the W50 silver in 28.25, with an error-free round that always chased the race lead. Rachel had her best finish in a World Masters forest race, as she was 35th (42.56) but a seven minute mistake from Roger had him back in 59th (40.27).
The championship finished with the Long race, and Sarah went one better than the day before as she topped the class in 61.51 to take the gold medal. Her title charge looked to have come unstuck early as she lost six minutes on a leg, but all the leaders made the same mistake and she went on to have half the quickest leg times in the field.
Although there was no official medal table, Great Britain athletes had 20 medals across the three races, and more golds than traditional powerhouses Norway and Czechia. The 2027 championshipi will be another stern test, as it moves to Japan and a May date.