In June 2024, I travelled to Szczecin in Poland with the Irish Junior Squad to the European Youth Orienteering Championships. My selection came after many selection races throughout spring culminating in the Irish Champs. The Irish team consisted of:
M18: Gerry Browne, Oscar Rowe, Eoin O'Donnell, James Hottinger
W18: Eve Buckley
M16: Liam Casey(me, SEVO), Aidan McKenna, Eanna Grennan (also SEVO), Liam O'Donnell
W16: Sadhbh Hassett, Fionnuala Rowe, Niamh Browne and Ellie Simpson
We flew out to Berlin on a Wednesday with great intentions of training that evening but sadly the flight and drive to Szczecin took it out of us and dinner was the only thing on our minds when we arrived.
The next morning though, it was all go. Breakfast was eaten quickly and we were on the road to our first acclimatisation training in the Polish terrain. This training was held in the same forest as the race that weekend, only just south of the embargoed area. The training was called ‘in and out’, although that only describes the shape of the course. Heavy vegetation was a big feature of this map, something we had thought would be absent from the competition races. I found this training tough as I got lost on many occasions but managed to find myself fairly quickly.
After a pit stop at the hotel for lunch it was time for more training, this time sprintervals. A town not far from Szczecin was the location for this training. We set off a minute apart and did each interval before stopping and jogging/walking to the next start. After a while myself, Gerry and Eve formed a group and began discussing our routes between intervals. My accuracy on routechoice was alright with only a couple of suboptimal choices.
That evening dinner and football beckoned before heading to bed after an action packed day.
Friday was the day before the race so the idea was to keep hard running and training to a minimum. Morning training brought us to another forest on the outskirts of the embargo, this time with slightly less green vegetation features. I skipped control 2-5 and 9-12 as the part we all thought would be the best was 13-18. I was more accurate in this forest but the run wasn't without its mistakes.
Friday afternoon was taken up with the model event for the long and relay. I used this small map to really try and navigate accurately as it was the same mapper as the long and relay races.
That evening was taken up with some last minute map analysis courtesy of Toni and we were off to bed after some stretching.
And so the big day had arrived. I had a long wait in quarantine after it closed (3 hours) before I could even think about starting to warm up and taking the minibus to the start area. The race itself was not my finest work with a 15-16 minute mistake on no.2 and another 10 minute one on no.6. By the end my determination was wearing out but I finished as well as I could to take home a rather disappointing 89th place.
From there we went home and turned our attention to the sprint the following day through route analysis. Dinner was eaten and off we went to the opening and prize giving ceremonies and friendship party. We first paraded down the quays of Szczecin beneath our flags before a pep talk from the president of the IOF. We sat through the prize giving with no-one to cheer for and then the friendship party kicked off.
After a late night we capitalised upon a late morning as the sprint race was in the afternoon. I had less of a wait in quarantine today and so when it was 15 minutes before my start I went to the start area. The start of my course was fast and I felt like I couldn’t keep going after 3 minutes, but a morale boost through the arena was enough for me. The rest of my course was pretty much perfect with almost all my routechoice being spot on. I raced home to 14th place at the time to later be pushed down to 27th place. Aidan flew home with a 14th place to take what is probably Ireland's highest ever result at EYOC. That evening was taken up with rest, packing and dinner.
The last day was the turn of the relay. It was the same forest as the long and Aidan came back to hand over to me in a respectable 18th place, a position we held to the finish of the race even with my mistake at 5 which cost me 7-8 minutes. After our races was the coaches race where the coaches ran on some spare maps from our races. It is customary then to soak your coaches with water as they run through the spectator control so we did just that.
It was then quickly into a car and off to the airport to catch a short flight home. It just so happened to be Ireland’s most successful EYOC ever, 22nd out of 33 teams overall.
All the results, splits and livelox are on the EYOC website here: https://eyoc2024.pl/live.html
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