An international trio of England’s Tom Louth, Zhan Xi Ying, and Karlis Baltacis of Latvia won the Friendship Team event as the ISF World School Championship Orienteering finished in Edinburgh, Scotland today.
The novel score style event brings together mixed international teams of roughly the same calibre, with runners going their separate ways but meeting up at three controls and finally to cross the finish line in the city’s historic Holyrood Park together. Last month, the same venue was used for the World Cross-country Championships but today, orienteering’s kids showed what cross-country running really means.
They were given an hour to work out who should visit which controls so as to balance off the team effort. Xi Ying gave China its first success as her squad crossed the line in 31m55s. Lauren Eyre (Scotland) John Persson (sweden) and Toms Riekstins of Latvia won silver, 24 seconds down on the winners with a time of 32m19s. And Slovenia’s Bojan Kavcic, Agnese Baronina of Latvia, with England’s Peter Hodkinson were thrid in 32:21. Peter had been first to reach the final control but then had to wait for his team mates before chasing the team ahead home.
Bill Melville
More details and photographs on the World Schools website
Posted by Paul Frost on 26th Apr 08 Filed under: News