Discussion: Venla and Jukola

It's been a long time since we've had a big Scandinavian relay. Venla and Jukola are on in the north of Finland today. Follow them live: https://jukola.live/

Anyone know if any North Americans are running this year? (Honorary north American Swisscheese is anchoring for VeVe.)

Anton not running this year, but is the English language announcer :) or should we say "DJ"

Christian Michelsen is running last leg for his Swedish club, Vaxjö OK.

I ran the 4th leg for Helsingin Suunnistajat team-10. Awesome as always!

I can't quite believe how quiet this thread was. Great to see HS1 do so well :)

Because we’re all sad we couldn’t be there.

Especially as a CSU team was entered for the original version last year.

I can't quite believe how quiet this thread was.

Especially considering how much blatant following took place!

not quite recovered yet, way too long distance for me (both drive and course).

Plenty of blatant following, stats say it was second most followed TV program last week.

Nice digs. But can someone shine a light on this: wasnt it in the land of the midnight sun? Or does that only last for a few days round midsummer?

When I ran Jukola in 2018, sown south near Helsinki, the announcer was talking about "this daaaark Finnish night". It was the darkest part of the "night", and standing in the field waiting for my first leg runner to come in, it wasn't dark enough that you'd want a light for any purpose (reading a map under the tree canopy was a different story.

At Rovaniemi last weekend, the sun was below the horizon for about 7.5 hours, but it only got 11 degrees below the horizon. Rovaniemi has 24-hour daylight from June 7 to July 6.

Rovaniemi is right on the arctic circle, which I guess means there is only 1 day a year of actual midnight sun.

today sunrise is about 5.30am and sunset 9pm

What robplow said would seem to make sense (one 24-hour day for a town on the arctic circle), but timeanddate.com agrees with J-J: 24 hours of daylight from June 7 through July 6, inclusive. Maybe it has to do with the angular diameter of the sun’s disk?

Jukola courses were planned for daylight relay. When it got postponed it was not possible to plan everything over again so they had to use the original courses. Darkness may have made some route choices more obvious, and some controls in green more tricky than originally thought. But I haven't yet watch it all, so I dont know did it make any difference. But for example legs 3 and 7 were forked together (daylight and darkness), usually it is not planned like that to make forkings more equal. Also second half ot legs 1 and 2 were forked together. Usually that is bad practice, because 2nd leg runners will meet big mass of slow 1st leg hikers standing at controls and blocking paths and passages, so better fork 2nd with 3rd leg instead of 1st at second half of the course to avoid collisions. I think they thought it is not a problem now because of open forest and daylight, but it ended up as night so it must have been not that optimal design for the 2nd leg (I think this is quite unique Jukola problem). But there was only half of the usual participation so maybe it was not a problem. It was rather small relay now with only about 1000 teams. It may be difficult to defend bib number next year when we are hopefully back to normal figures.

From Wikipedia:

The Arctic Circle is the southernmost latitude in the Northern Hemisphere at which the center of the sun can remain continuously above or below the horizon for twenty-four hours; as a result, at least once each year at any location within the Arctic Circle the center of the sun is visible at local midnight, and at least once the center is not visible at local noon.
Directly on the Arctic Circle these events occur, in principle, exactly once per year: at the June and December solstices, respectively. However, because of atmospheric refraction and mirages, and also because the sun appears as a disk and not a point, part of the midnight sun may be seen on the night of the northern summer solstice up to about 50 minutes (′) (90 km (56 mi)) south of the Arctic Circle

Jagge why do they only have two forkings on the first control of the first leg?

With so many teams and 7 legs why not have more forkings in the first few controls - at least four?

Usually there is three forkings, now there was just two. So what they were after? With 1000+ teams there would be tracks to each forking right after the first leg. First controls of the first leg also need to be pretty far to spread runners enough to avoid fight at controls (sure having more forkings would help here). For the next legs such long distance to the first control is not always so great/optimal, especially if there is already beaten track all the way. In addition, if you have more than two first controls third leg on competitors may know in advance options where the first control will be (if a club has several teams they will know all the options after the first leg and may figure out the best route). By having only two options they could give fresh first control to third leg runners. With lots of options many legs would need to run that long way on beaten tracks to the (already known) first control planned mostly crowdy first leg in mind. In 2009 it was the opposite, there was common first control far away, and second leg's first controls were fresh short legs.

Not saying having more than 3 would be a bad idea. There is just plenty of different factors and aspects.

Thanks Jagge - good points I had not thought of - not having ever set courses for relays with more than 100 teams.

Also there is live TV broadcast and no "quarentine" (isn't that pretty poor word these days for such isolation?). With only two forkings they could show second leg GPS tracking on TV and big screens, (and also replay of first leg's first forking). With more forkings they would need to wait until the last leg using that forking is out.

There is reports organizers makes after each event, there is everything explained from forkings to beer tents and from sauna firefood consumption to bouncing castle supervision. These reports are one tool to transfer knowledge and experiences to next organizers. Latest is 2019 report, one can take alook and possibly find interesting stuff
https://jukola.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/201...

Quarantine was always a poor choice of word for what happens at O events . I think "sequestration" is a more technically correct term - but it is hard word to say.

Next time I am planning to have a bouncy castle at an event I will be sure to check out the Jukola reports.

Quarantine is definitely that wrong word. It suggests that the isolated people have something that they shouldn't give to others. Sequestration is appropriate, meaning that they are being kept from obtaining unauthorized information.

Who had great races and how did Christian Michelsen run?

Well I think sequestration is better because it doesn't have the association with disease and historically it meant as JJ says being isolated from information. But then again 'sequestration' does have some weird (and sometimes unpleasant) political and legal associations in American English.


Quarantine is not definitively wrong however. Certainly it tends to be associated, especially historically, with isolation due to disease, but if you look it up in Mirriam Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quarant...) it lists 4 meanings. 1-3 reflect the history of its association with disease (interestingly its very original meaning was simply a period of 40 days) but number 4 simply says: "a state of enforced isolation" which is a perfectly reasonable description of what happens to some runners before O events.

Before the pandemic it was common enough to use the word in such a neutral way and nobody thought it was being used incorrectly in the orienteering context (because it wasn't being used incorrectly according to meaning 4 in MW). Of course now if you say 'quarantine' everyone immediately thinks of covid, so perhaps using another word might be better for the public image.

I did exceptionally great run, my time was 40 minutes greater than fastest times. (merriam-webster meaning 9)

The root of "quarantine" refers to the fact that originally it meant keeping everybody on the arriving ship for 40 days if there was a suspicion of disease on board (after which point I guess everybody would be dead, and no longer a problem).

My rogaine team is called "Almost Tested Positive". That tends to be misunderstood these days as well.

Jagge, I find the picture labelled "Kerättyjä roskia kilpailumaastosta tapahtuman jälkeen." in the 2019 report (page 73) very interesting. Judging by my previous participation, always on leg 2, so quite early in the event, I would have expected to be able to collect that amount of rubbish on a 500 metre section after around 50% of my course. Specifically the volume of gel-sachets collected can never ever be all that there was out there.
(This practice of discarding gel-packs is in fact probably my largest gripe against us apparently "environmentally aware" orienteers and not limited to Jukola. Collecting radio controls after TioMila multiple years made my heart cry just as much)

@Nev-monster - Christian Michelsen's team, Vaxjo OK, came in 53rd overall and he had a pretty good run, 47th in the final leg.

I think that is just sample what kind of rubbish there was, not claiming that's all there was to collect (or only that much was collected, I hope).

Oh, OK, thanks. Yes, let's hope much more was collected,
and let's dream athletes drop that stuff at the drinks points in future.

If your packet is in your pocket, then once it is used , just put it back in your pocket..maybe a bit gooey, but it'll wash out, and you'll not litter the forest.

Roll it up starting from the open end first to minimize the gooeyness. And then into the pocket it goes.