Some amazing athletes and volunteer efforts at the Junior European Championships
This month the Junior European Championship (JEC) took place in Stirling and the Trossachs. Many of you will have seen the many British Orienteering Federation posts but for those of you who didn’t there were some Scottish junior performances and of course our amazing volunteer efforts which deserve to be highlighted. Not only had the volunteers lead by the lead organiser, Jason Inman of Forth Valley Orienteers (FVO) taken on the challenge of hosting JEC with races for spectators but they had also adding the Veteran Home Internationals (VHIs) to the mix.
JEC involves juniors within the M/W18 and M/W 20 age categories (so they are aged between 17 and 20 that year) and sees the best juniors from Europe gather for the last international event of 2025. This year saw over 200 junior athletes from 15 countries travel for the JEC event which is a classic trilogy: Sprint, Long Distance, and Relay.
The volunteers not only had the weekend events to organise but had organised training sessions for travelling teams lined up in Edinburgh, Stirling and Aberfoyle meaning what may from the outside have seemed like a weekend was really a week’s efforts from some amazing volunteers who brought all their strengths and positivity to the events. Yet again our fabulous Scottish Orienteering volunteers pulled off another showcase event where all the participants enjoyed a great weekend of racing and the volunteers were like swans hardly showing the immense amount of effort going on behind the scenes thanks to Storm Amy. The participants might have noticed the wind and rain with fallen trees blocking roads thanks to Storm Amy but unbeknown to them the calm and amazingly well organised volunteers dealt with a relay arena which was flooded and underwater the day as well as having the access road blocked by fallen trees.
The Sprint: Stirling University
The first event on Friday was the sprint race around Stirling University and Storm Amy provided a monsoonal effect to the afternoon meaning that some of the volunteers decided that it was useless trying to keep their feet dry and took to wearing flipflops instead.
Some great results from the Great Britain team saw Finn Selmer Duguid of Tayside Orienteers (TAY) get 4th place in the M18 event but the stand out performance of the day came from Emily Atkinson of East Lothian Orienteers (ELO) who won the W18 event by an amazing margin of 27 seconds.
The Long and Relay – Loch Ard Forest and Fairy Knowe/ Doon Hill
Saturday saw an improvement in the monsoonal weather with a change taking place so there was actual sunshine on the Sunday at the relays. Loch Ard was, as expected, both physically and technically demanding and provided a true challenge of all the long distance orienteering skills. This predominantly spruce forest provided varied runnability for those competing.
Some great performances from our GB juniors with James Hammond of FVO on the podium in 4th place in the M20 event.
They relays took place despite some of the benches in the assembly area having been moved by the overnight Friday floods quite some distance. Fairy Knowe and Doon Hill provided an area of mixed, hilly woodland criss-crossed with forestry tracks and smaller paths. With the sun coming out to prove that Scotland can have many seasons in one weekend the GB juniors competed well to have 4th place for the boys and the girls finishing 6th nation . You can read all about their performances and reflections in the British Orienteering JEC news article.
The VHIs are covered in another article to be found in the news section of the website – VHI 2025 article.