Hungária Kupa

Hungária Kupa 2024 takes place in the Vértes hills around Csákbéreny. A area I already visited for the Hungária Kupa 2000 and the WMOC 2021. Both events I really enjoyed. It also acts as spectator race for the European Orienteering Championship.
The event started with an prologue in semi open former mining area. Lot of controls forced you to focus on your map all time. The day was super hot that means only 5 people finished the longest course. The other five days had 4 middle and one long distance race. We run in the middle qualification, the middle final, long distance area and two maps close to the middle qualification area. So you could have a good feeling for the EOC races. Only the relay forest were skipped as Hungária Kupa had it last event in the morning before the EOC relay. We had some of the hottest days in Hungary during the races, so running in the semi open areas was quite hard. Surprisingly I was able to finish in the top 10 of M40 in the overall result. You can find the results on the Hungária Kupa Homepage.

World Masters

WMOC in Turku were the my second World Masters. First have been in Hungary 2021. So far not the WMOC were the reason I chosen the competition. In 2021 it was just a competition that happend and this year it was because I never was in the Turku area.
The competition didn’t work super good. Already and the pre-WMOC open event at Thursday I had trouble with the fine details and vegetation. The WMOC itself starts with the Sprint-Q at Saturday. I didn’t expect much as I’m not a good sprinter but really underperformed. My running speed was to slow and I made some bad route choices and technical errors at the end. The final the next day went a little better but my speed is still to slow. In both races I had trouble with the traditional EMIT-punching as I’m used to have all races with touch free punching in Germany. My last sprint without touchfree punching was at the Fin5 two years ago but went quite well at that time. At the forest races I still had trouble with the contours and vegetation so I was far away from a A-final. Only at the long final I was happy with my technique. But this was the last race so it was to late. As side event there was a Indoor-O the Friday before WMOC. This was my first Indoor-O. I had a lot of fun but forgot to visit two controls. It was a nice event but I prefer all age events. So I only will went for another WMOC if I like the place were it will be. Japan 2027 could be a event that attract me. You can find results, Livelox and picture at the WMOC homepage.