Final preparations for the World Championships centred on a 5-day camp held in the week prior to the event. Training consisted of short snappy exercises which were intended to sharpen terrain running skills, speed-up orienteering thinking and improve focus in the midst of distracting runners. Each day's programme consisted of a short warm-up exercise followed by an intense period of orienteering. Training was completed in the morning, which left the rest of the day free for R&R.

The pre-WOC training period also doubled as Irish squad preparation for WOC 2001, which will be held in Finland. Many new faces were present. Also in attendance were five students (including myself) who are preparing for the IOA Level 3 coaching award. In all 19 Irish participated (15 men and 4 women). Training was spiced-up by head-to-head competition with the Canadian team most of whom joined us for the week. One of the Canadians (Pam James) later finished 20th in the Short Distance final.

We were all thrilled when Marcus and Toni qualified for the Short Distance finals and competed to their best in those races. All Irish team members aim to get the best out of themselves on the day and it was great that two of us did it in a WOC final. (It is no accident that I use the term "us" since placing an Irish athlete in a WOC final is a tribute to parents, teachers, mapmakers, organisers, supporters and many others - as well as a credit to the hard work of the orienteer him or herself.) All those who did not qualify for finals were disappointed. Some team members who didn't progress beyond the qualifiers ran close enough to the limit of their current abilities, and they should take some satisfaction from that fact. The experience might even be a spur for better preparation for the next WOC. One team member had been ill prior to the event and this affected his performance.

Others, though, were deeply disappointed because they knew they could and should have qualified. I know for a fact that they trained hard and made personal sacrifices to prepare for and compete in this WOC. In the qualifiers they made uncharacteristic errors. The error pattern in a number of cases (but not all) was as follows: a steady start followed by a small error (30 - 120 secs) followed by a large error (5 - 10 minutes). This behaviour was not confined to ourselves: some orienteers from other teams seemed to follow a similar error pattern. Speaking to some of the Irish team members afterwards, it became apparent that when even a small error was made, some believed that they had already damaged their chances of qualifying. This knocked their (previously fluent) orienteering rhythm and led either to a major error or to a series of small errors. An exception to this pattern was Toni's qualifying performance. She lost two minutes over the first two controls and then ran well. Split-times analysis shows that many more of us were easily capable of getting through.

The outcome goal agreed for both men's and women's relay team was to finish in the range 17th - 23rd positions. This outcome range was based on Irish individual finishing positions in the Short Distance qualifier. Individual team members found a lot that was good in their own relay performances.

In some cases not competing to our capabilities in a WOC is something that we have identified and can now concentrate on. Today our international representatives are generally better map-readers and are faster and fitter than our WOC team-members were in the past. Many have recently achieved some big results in important UK races. We can translate this ability into strong WOC performances by building up a portfolio of results (both individual and team) in major competitions over the next few years. This needs to be done in races where competitors at future WOCs will be taking part. In this way we can get the measure of the opposition and properly assess our strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis the Australians, the Canadians, the Japanese, the Latvians, the tail-end of the British team, etc. who knock us out of the finals. We will then be confident that we can qualify for WOC finals even with some errors. This belief will win us more places in the finals. World Cup races seem to offer the best opportunity for this element of WOC preparation. (And some of us might even get the odd good result against a Scandinavian or two.)

Another element of preparation specific to WOC is conducting sufficient training in relevant terrain. It is reputed that World Classic distance champion Bjornar Valstad has had over 50 training sessions in Scottish forests this year alone! The Irish squad has limited resources, so more than most orienteering nations we've got to decide what we want to do and really concentrate our resources on that goal.

In the past some people argued that perhaps we shouldn't be sending teams to WOC. I disagree fundamentally with that viewpoint. I'm still a great believer in the importance of competing at WOC, the premier orienteering race in the calendar - but I mean precisely that. We should be in a position to compete at WOC and not simply turn-up as orienteering tourists. The regeneration of Irish orienteering needs a continuity of good results and the establishment of some more heroes (in addition to the ones we already have.)

So let's find these heroes. I intend to organise a squad training camp in Finland next summer (09-22 July 2000) to include the Finnish 5-day competition. The camp is open to anyone who has an aspiration to compete for Ireland in the future, and to anyone who wants to train with the squad. So start training (and saving)!

I'd like to thank the IOA executive and IOA Coaching Officer Frank Ryan for grant-aiding the pre-WOC training effort. I also want to thank Ronan (Team Manager) and Julie Cleary for the work they put into WOC administration, Gerry Brady and Alasdair Thin for their assistance during pre-WOC training, and of course the team for their preparation and efforts.