Ten veterans from Irish clubs travelled to Denmark to the World Masters Orienteering Championships in July. The event centre was Arhus, Denmark's second city, in Jutland (that's the bit that juts up into the Baltic from the mainland of Europe). The entry limit was 4000 runners but this wasn't quite reached. All classes from M/W35 to M/W85 and even M90 were included, with two qualification races to decide whether you went into the A, B, C, D or even E final.

Denmark is supposed to be flat, but the organisers chose the Silkeborg area, the hilliest in the country, for the events. Silkeborg was also where the 1974 World Championships was held (Mona Norgaard from Denmark won the Women's World title that year: she was still there 25 years later and I bought my T-shirt from her). In fact, the highest point in Denmark, Himmelbjerget ("Sky Mountain" - the event programme said "Who says Danes don't have a sense of humour?") was on the first qualification race map.

The weather was very warm and sunny: lovely summer orienteering conditions. The terrain was undulating, runnable forest, mixed deciduous and coniferous, very like the JK last Easter - typical south of England terrain, so nothing extraordinary, but very pleasant to run in. Lots of hills, plenty of route choice, a fair path network. In many ways it was a competition of route choice rather than intricate navigation.

The finish area on days 1 and 2 was the same, the maps overlapping a bit at the end, with what I felt was a run-in asking for trouble: a steep, gut-busting uphill run. Perhaps they had a defibrillator on the finish line. (Commentator Clive Allen made the rather unfortunate remark, in the light of previous WMOC's where one or two competitors are wont to expire en route, that "so-and-so finished in 40 minutes dead. At least I hope she wasn't!").

All the maps were printed at 1:10,000 scale with 5 m contours and were on Polyart synthetic paper, which worked very well: waterproof, tear-resistant and fairly blood proof. SportIdent electronic timing was in use, giving instant split times at the finish. This simplified the results processing immeasurably: the last time I went to the World Vets in Spain in 1996 it was 10.30 the night before the final that I finally got my start time (less than 12 hours to go, and a long drive and run to the start in the meantime). With SportIdent it was all much more efficient. The number of parallel heats in each class varied, depending on the number of entries. In the biggest class, M50, there were 406 runners, six parallel heats and the best 13 in each heat went into the A final, then B, C, D and E finals. Only Teresa Finlay (FermO W45)and Julie Cleary (3ROC W35) made the A finals.

Overall, it was a very pleasant experience: Denmark is not normally a prime holiday destination, at least from Ireland, and the combination of family camping holiday with some orienteering worked well. It would have worked better, however, if the organisers had realised that just because you're over 35 doesn't mean that you don't have small children: no allowance was made for requests for separated start times for parents, perhaps something which future WMOC's will address.

The beauty of the competition is that you don't have to be selected to run against the world's best, all you need is the entry fee. The next WMOC is in New Zealand in January. If that's too far, how about Nida in Lithuania in July 2001? 50 km of forested sand dunes on the Baltic sounds like a good trip ...