PreO Day 1

Our first day of PreO was at the Nature Reserve on the island of Saltö. The terrain was of two primary types - forested rocks and cliffs and beach rocks and cliffs. The style of Trail orienteering is very much "feature picking" as Mika calls it. This means that the problems can be solved almost entirely by understanding the features on the map and the question is generally whether the control is on the correct feature. It is not about minor differences in placement of controls on the same feature. We like this. It is a positive trend in trail orienteering toward difficult map interpretation problems and away from trying to guess at the setter's intended solution method.

Team USA had decent, but not stellar, results. Leading the pack was Sharon with a score of 17 out of 20. Clare was not far behind with 16 and Mika behind her with 15. In the Paralympic class, David is placed 16th out of 38 with a score of 15 and Daniel is somewhat further down, but was impressed by the blueberries.

Control of the Day:

Number 18

This control on a rocky spur next to the shore was voided. The organizers received two complaints and this was the only one they upheld. Nothing was elevated to the level of a protest. This control was part of an "A" cluster - that is, a set of controls where at each spot the problem is simply to determine whether the control is correct - A - or incorrect - Z.

The control was placed on the proper spur in the correct position, but due to some minor mapping errors and variations on the rock that could have been interpreted as being where the contour went through, it could look like the control was too far to the south. The organizers decided that this discrepancy was large enough to be outside of tolerance and voided the control. Unfortunately, everyone on Team USA had gotten the control correct, so this void hurt our standings rather than helping them. I must admit that I did consider that the control looked a little bit too far south, but it was close enough for me to decide it was ok.