A great but chilly Club Championships - the results!

The sun shone once again for a Luxembourg Orienteering Club event – although this time it was a cool minus 3C during the race.

Our 2023 Club Championships took place just across the border in Belgium, in the Bois de Beynert north of Arlon. This year it was a joint event, held together with our Belgian neighbour club, SudOLux. And what a beautiful forest it was, too – mostly mature beech trees, with a carpet of crisp, frozen fallen leaves, all lit up by a weak, wintry sun.

Well – who won? There was no surprise - the top honour stays for yet another year in the Kotecky home! Hats off to Ondra, fastest by two minutes after adjustments. That said, the competition is getting closer than in some previous years – Ondra’s victory came only because the ranking system compensates for age, and Ondra as an H45 is reckoned to run only 86% as fast as an H21 elite runner. Who in this case was our silver medallist, Cedric - he actually competed the 4.8km course 90 seconds faster than Ondra. And bronze? An excellent run from H60 André, who was just a little bit faster than Miša, even after her slightly more generous running speed factor is applied.

Another of the Club’s 2023 joiners, Simon T-H, could have had the silver medal, had he not missed out a control late on the course. And Simon – as well as Julien and Jevgenijs – had opted to run the longer of the two courses on offer – here the adjusting factor simply compensated for length and climb, not for the increasing tiredness (as befell Simon) that comes with the extra distance and hills to be run.

Our junior champion is Barbora Kuželová – despite only being in the D14- class, she orienteered well and completed the same technically quite testing course as all the seniors, in a very respectable time.

The full Club Championship results, showing all the adjusting factors, are attached. Also, the overall results for the whole event are, as usual, available via the link to the Helga web results service https://helga-o.com/webres/index.php?lauf=4993. The formal awards ceremony will be at the Club’s next “happening”, which is our Annual General Meeting, taking place in Sandweiler on the evening of Tuesday 16 January.

And last, but certainly not least, our thanks to Jean-Noel Debehogne for planning the courses and doing much of the pre-race organisation, and to SudOLux for hosting us on their home territory.

And, especially, big thanks to five of our own Club members, who stayed until the last runners got back and then went out into the forest again in the freezing dusk to collect all the controls in – this was a big part of our Club’s contribution to the organisation of the event. Our Club couldn’t operate without this sort of volunteering support, and given how cold it was by the end of the afternoon, we owe them each more than the usual amount of gratitude. Guys, we hope you’ve warmed up again by the time you read this!

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