Discussion: 1st leg at WOC Sprint Final

What an interesting leg first up. I don't know if it's a really good leg - seems to me that it provides enough clear running sections to enable planning of the rest of the course. Although it could be that you had to dodge enough people, dogs, parked cars etc that you wouldn't be able to look at the map that much.

It's also interesting that the first 5 legs are the same on the Mens and Womens courses. Minna Kauppi would have been 33rd on the Mens course on that first leg (39 secs down), ahead of guys like Jamie Stevenson, Matthias Merz, and Mikhail Mamleev. After 5 controls, she would have been in 35th, still only 43 secs down.

I don't know if it's a really good leg

Neither do I - but I do know that at least one of the better runners lost ~30 sec on that leg by going on the left route-choice instead of to the right, which I suppose almost all other runners did. Since there were a few more of the favourites that were too far behind already at that point I think this may have happened to more runners.

I walked the first 5 legs while the men were running. there were many people lined up at the start triangle and near the first turn, but beyond that there were a normal amount of pedestrians and very few pooches. runners could look at their maps without the fear of running into someone or something so planning ahead could have been what they were doing. most of the ones I saw though were busy running as fast as they could and looking at the terrain for the next turn.

Apparently Thierry Gueorgiou did run into a pedestrian and fall, losing a few second there. It could have changed the 4th-5th order but I think that's all. (the rain must have disturbed more runners)

Not a very good 1st leg ;-( With the long run-out to the start, most runners were able to see the obvious rightern route choice. A short run-out + a short 1st leg before the long would probably stress more runners to choose alternative routes.

matthias merz missed the entrance of the fence and lost ~30 seconds there. was he going too fast (because the 1st leg was too easy)? a leg can't hardly be too easy in sprint. it's always a question of speed vs control.