Discussion: Sam and Ali in WOC Sprint Finals!

Online right now:
http://svtplay.se/v/2499748/orientering/playexklus...

Four North Americans in the Finals:
Louise Oram, 9:17 am EDT (CAN)
Samantha Saeger, 9:26 am (USA)
Alison Crocker, 9:28 am (USA)
Will Critchley, 10:16 am (CAN)

Women's start list
Men's start list

Louise finishes in 15:41 (unofficial); best time so far 14:04 Galina Vinogradova of Russia.

New leader, Anni Maija-Fincke of Finland in 14:01.

Women's Results (unofficial)

Men's Results (when available will be linked from here)

Samantha in, 15:51.9 !

I missed Ali on TV - finished in 15:13!

Looks like Ali finished in 15:13. The GPS tracks are a little funky with all the narrow streets.

A good run from Sam, but Ali holy crap!

Best Kiwi woman's placing ever?

Great by Lizzie Ingham, NZL too. - 14:12

Sarah Rollins of GBR currently in 6th place at 14:21

25-27 for Ali in the end?

New leader, Helena Jansson in 13:22!

Linnea Gustafsson 13:14, with Lena Eliasson yet to finish.

Swedes are top 3

How do you say sweep in Swedish?

27, new best by one!

27 Ali -- 38 Sam -- félicitations !

Swedish expression is "dom sopade banan" HURRAY!!

Unofficial results --

Looks like a Swedish sweep, Gustafsson (13:14), Jansson (13:22), Elisasson (13:28).

Sarah Rollins (GBR) finished in 13th place, 1:07 back; Ali in 27th, 1:59 behind the leader; Louise Oram (CAN) 37th, (2:27 back), and Samantha 38th, only 2:38 behind the leader!

What a great race! Nice going!!

(Someone else will have to report the men's sprint -- I have to go.)

And Will's dot has appeared at the call up line. It appears to be milling around erratically, waiting nervously.

He appears to be taking the left route to #3, as have, I think, everyone else.

The CRI dot is workin' it smoothly through the narrow streets.

And Critchley is striking out on his own with a bold right route choice to #5! I think he's the first competitor to do so, splits are going to be really interesting for this one.

Looks like roughly 6:30 to the first radio control for Will.

And he's just beginning the long leg to #14; so far most competitors have been going right on this one; looks like Critchley will do the same.

Let's just hope his dot doesn't get stranded in the middle of that church like Peeter Pihl.

He's making his way down the final stretch now. Looks like maybe 15:30? 16:00? I'm kind of poor at estimating GPS dot projected times.

I think that's 15:20 or so for Will! Go Canada!

Holy crap! It's the Jerkler!

Gristwood taking the left route to #14

Radio control times are working now, and looks like Will's time is 15:15. He's currently 10 out of 16 finishers.

The Jerkler has rounded up a pack of vagrant dots in the vicinity of the final radio control!

Looks like the Jerkler will be just under 13min.

Just over - 13:01.

Gristwood should be just under 14, I think.

Hmm, the Jerkler is DSQ. Wonder what's up with that?

Whoa! Check out that left route to #18 by Gvozdev! Let's go Israel!

Doubters of the Critchley choice to #5 will be assuaged by the route of Andrey Khramov.

To everyone who can see or hear coverage of WOC: I hate you right now.

I've got radio controls only. Arrrggghhh!

Looks like Merz will be a few seconds faster than Gristwood. Edit: wrong.

Check the GPS.

Wow, Hubmann clocks in somewhere around 13:15.

Matthias Mueller has about 2min to get from #15 to the finish. I don't think he can do it. Nobody else is close to taking Hubmann's lead.

Looks like Jerker missed control #18...

Nice run by Will, final place #38! Go Canada!

Quickly scanning the results I looked to see what country had the best placing for their lowest finisher of their 6 runners (3 men and 3 women). With the Jerkler's DQ Sweden would have won that metric easily but it looks GBR takes the honours. GBR placed their three men in the top 12 and their three women in the top 26.

(and I'm hoping GBR beats SWE again in the rights to host WOC 2015).

Congrats to all sprinters and especially the North Americans.

I'm hoping that too Hammer! The bid is excellent, so fingers crossed. I'll totally have to move home if that happens though :)

Fun fact: Ali was one of only 4 women who qualified for all three disciplines!

(The other 3 were Lizzie Ingham of New Zealand, Helena Jansson of Sweden, and Iliana Shandurkova of Bulgaria)

If I were doing PR for Orienteering USA, I'd definitely highlight this!

@Pink Socks--write something for me! Or maybe Peter will. I'm not great at PR.

Not to mention how outstanding Ali did at Ski-WOC this past March!

>Fun fact: Ali was one of only 4 women who qualified for all three disciplines!

awesome.... and Louise was 16 seconds shy in the long qual (in arguably the toughest heat) from joining those 4 women.

It shouldn't come to anyone's surprise that there are not any men who qualified for all 3 races.

The WOC hat trick. Pretty amazing by Lizzie. I think she's a rookie, right? Just super by Ali. How many times has Iliana done it?

Getting back to the title of this thread, I see lots of comments about how great Sam and Ali did, which is obviously true.

But what hasn't been reported on yet is the fact that neither had a good run in the final. No big mistakes for Sam, but the flow wasn't there and her legs were getting real tired the last half. And Ali had one terrible control, misread the clue for the control at the castle, lost 55 seconds to Sam right there.

Would'ves, should'ves, could'ves don't count for much in life, but it's a sign of how good these two are getting. You can do the math to see where Ali could have placed . The future is very bright for them.

What the hell, I'll do the math, a clean leg there and she's 12th. I've been telling her big things are coming, I just didn't think it would happen this fast.

And Sam, with a year in Europe ahead of her, just think how much better she is going to be.

If you'll build the list of runners, who attempted all 3 quali's, you'll hardly find in this list strong runners, with rare exception. It's too hard to be selected for all disciplines in strong countries. But for PR it's ok, targeted people never knows causes of fact.

Yes, there aren't that many that attempt all 3. Are more runners capable of pulling off the hat trick if they attempted it? Of course. But that still doesn't diminish the achievement of doing it.

My point is that O-USA should be all over this achievement, because it's pretty special and only 4 runners can say that they did it. See if ESPN-W wants to do a follow-up story on Ali. Their first one was about her right around Team Trials, and about how much potential she has. Well, now she's shown it with a WOC hat trick, and I think that's worth following up on.

I watched the sprint live on Swiss on-line TV. Super exciting!
The commentary was in Swiss German (fun for me, unfortunate for
most everyone else).
I noticed several reruns on the schedule between now and Thursday.
Go to the Schweizer Sport Fernsehen website, look for
"Program"
http://www.schweizersportfernsehen.ch/ssf/
Remember to subtract 6 hours for the US East Coast (9 for West Coast)
The schedule is in military time
Look for "OL WM Sprint Finale"
Then tune in "live" at the right time.
Enjoy!
(Better: Call a Swiss friend, to provide some translation - not me, though..)

Congratulations Ali and Sam!!! Way to go!

PR release going tonight highlighting US.

Just to follow up. Yesterday afternoon a release promoting Ali's and Sam's results (+ Ali's running all the races) was sent to approximately 250 US media outlets, with a customized release going to Boston (Ali's and Sam's US hometown).

Excellent! Will we be able to tell how many picked it up?

One easy way to track news items is just to set up a Google alert . I did this on "Orienteering" and found the story picked up by The Outdoor Wire