Fuel the GB Team to WOC

Written by Ralph Street Last weekend saw Britain’s best orienteers gather in south eastern Estonia to fight for World Championship places. The sprint was first on Friday evening. It proved to be more challenging than expected through a good mix of very simple fast legs, with short difficult legs containing decisive routechoice or traps. In the men’s pre race favourite Kris Jones (Forth Valley) secured top place of the Brits in 14:29, Ralph Street (South London) was second in 14:52, and Peter Hodkinson (Nottinghamshire) completed the top three with 15:21. The women’s race was extremely close with Megan Carter-Davies (Mid Wales) just pipping Tessa Strain (Edinburgh University) by seven seconds, 16:16 to 16:23. Jo Shepherd (Inverness) was third in 16:51 The middle race was physical with many steep climbs, and also many routechoice legs. There were only 19 controls over the 6 kilometre men’s course, a far lower density than that usually encountered in Britain. Ralph Street was the fast...

MEET THE TEAM DONATE We are the British Athletes selected to run the World Orienteering Championships in Estonia at the beginning of July, as a team and as individuals we are athletes aspiring to the top, building on our 3 podium places from last year and continual upward trend in results. However recent funding cuts mean things are about to get very tough.  Last year an athlete competing at an international level as part of the GB team personally committed around £2500 in pursuit of delivering top performances at international competitions, this year this will at least double.  This does not include any training costs, training camps, races to improve world ranking or selection races, this was purely to compete at International Championships.  Most of us have positioned ourselves in jobs which allow us to train and more importantly compete with those athletes at the top, maintaining this athlete-life balance whilst covering a competition bill of £5000 will ...