JWOC

After several highly competitive selection races 12 juniors were chosen to represent Great Britain in the Junior World Orienteering Championships which took place in Switzerland between the 10th and 15th of July. 
3 of ShUOC's athlete's were selected to race. 
Dane Blomquist was chosen to race in the sprint and middle distance races, whilst Joe Woodley was to race in the long distance race and also the middle distance race.  Alice Rigby also raced in the women's long and middle distance. 

Dane was 41st over all in the men's sprint , competing in some slightly warm conditions. He was only 1 minute 26 seconds down on the winner and was the first Brit overall. The men's map is pictured below. 

On the Monday it was the turn of both Alice and Joe to race. Alice was 88th out of 145 competitor's and was 2nd Brit overall. The course was physically tough with quite a bit of climb, 6.6km for the women with 310 metres of climb whilst Joe has 8.8km with 450 metres of climb. 

For the middle distance race the athletes first had to run a qualifying race following the rest day on the Tuesday. There were 3 different courses for both the men and women's races. Dane was running M20-H2 whilst Joe ran M20-H3 and Alice ran the W20-H3. Dane had a great run and qualified for the A final! 

To round of the tough week all the athletes competed in the relays. Alice brought the 2nd ladies team home to finish in 16th overall! Dane ran the 2nd leg for the men's first team who finished 12th overall and Joe also ran 2nd leg for the men's second team who also finished 16th overall! 

After such a hard week came the highlight of the week... the banquet! After months of sobriety the athletes could finally let their hair down and this produced a few interesting stories! 

Great Britain finished 12th out of 39 competing countries. There were some brilliant results from ShUOC's members and the rest of the team. Meg Carter-Davies definitely deserves a mention for coming 4th in the Middle Distance A final and 7th in the sprint race. This is an amazing achievement on its own but these results were following surgery only 6 months prior.

Well done team GB! 
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