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Brozkova and Østerbø sprint champions at WUOC

Øystein Kvaal Østerbø and Dana Brozkova won the gold medals in todays city-sprint in the old city of Koscice in the World University Orienteering Championships. Østerbø had a large margin for a sprint race - 12 seconds - whereas Brozkova won by only 2 seconds after having missed a control by nearly half a minute.

Charming city center
The old city center of Koscice was a very nice arena for the sprint race of the WUOC. One of the controls was placed in the middle of the famous music water fountain where a small bridge had been built for the runners. Thus the runners could cool down a little bit - which was surely a pleasure in the warm weather here in Koscice. See at the bottom of this article for the map with the men elite course.

Østerbø on top
After a quite poor performance in the sprint in WOC in Denmark two weeks ago (20. place) and a 8th place in the sprint at EOC in Estonia this spring, Øystein Kvaal Østerbø was keen to show that he still is to be counted among the very best orienteering sprinters in the world. Already at the classic distance on wednesday, Østerbø showed that he is in good shape with a bronze medal - and after the race, he also said that he felt good about his chances in todays sprint. His margin to yesterdays winner in the middle distance, Simonas Kreptas, was 12 seconds in the end - which is quite a lot in a sprint race. "I opened quite slowly, and got up my maximum speed towards the end of the course," Østerbø said after the race.

The young Swiss Fabian Hertner had a strong opening, but lost time towards the end of the course, and ended up in third place. "Fabian always starts with high speed, and gets tired towards the end", his team mate Matthias Merz commented after the race. Fourth place in the mens class today was a british surprise - Murray Strain managed to take the fourth place, in front of Hungarys Adam Kovacs and the Finn Tuomas Tervo.

Below you see pictures of the six best men runners from todays race.

Brozkova again
In the womens class, Czech runner Dana Brozkova managed to get her second gold medal in this years WUOC. She did not run the middle distance yesterday, and did seemingly use her rest day well. Her speed was higher than that of the other runners, but a mistake of about 25 seconds nearly cost her the gold medal. In the end, Brozkova was only 2 seconds ahead of Swiss runner Seline Stadler - with the very happy italian surprise Michela Guizzardi 25 seconds behind at the third place. The three other runners on the podium were Czech Zuzana Macuchova number four, Bulgarian Nataliya Dimitrova at the 5th place, and Nadija Volynska from the Ukraine at the 6th place.

Below you see pictures of the six best women runners from todays race.

Map with men elite course
Although the course favourized the fast runners, many of the top runners did errors which cost them a place on the podium - so concentration had to be on top, as always in a sprint race. There were no big route choice problems in these courses, but you could loose a few second here and a few seconds there if you did not choose the optimal routes. Below you see the map with the men elite course. Sorry for the bad quality, but the map should be readable enough to see the challenges met by the runners.

Map with women elite course

Results
Full results are to be found at the official WUOC page.

'World of O' is a website devoted to giving you the latest news from orienteering sites all over the World.
Orienteering is a sport where you run in the forest and find your way between control points using a map.
(C) 2006 Jan Kocbach