Orienteering Ottawa Jukola Review

This year for the first time ever, Orienteering Ottawa sent a team to Jukola. If that’s a foreign word to you, read our previous article for some insight. It was a great adventure and the team had a lot of fun.

The weekend started off with most of the team arriving Friday evening. Travelling to East Finland is no easy feat, involving numerous modes of transport and several time zones.

The team rented a large military tent to spend the nights near the arena along with 15 000 other people.

With everyone on the team but Emily now united under one canvas roof, our hopes and ambitions for the weekend reached an all time high. Unfortunately, the heavy optimism of our initial reunion was quickly diminished by the cloud of mosquitos rapidly filling the tent. Twice during the night, we desperately attempted to purge the air of the pestilent swarm but our efforts had only a temporary effect. Sound sleep remained elusive that night. It was a worrying start to the weekend.

The following morning some of us went to check out the model map and arena which consisted of two different bridges built specifically for the event, three massive orienteering stores, and several other large shacks and tents.

It may look nice in the picture but the weather didn’t stay like that for long… A wind storm quickly swept in, literally blowing the bugs out of our tent! Finally, those of us starting in the wee hours of the morning were able to catch some rest during the day. Turning jet-lag into a tactical advantage, Eric managed a nine hour snooze, sleeping through most of the day.

Eric and Robbie G also found a peculiar bus stop stationed in the middle of a field, though there wasn’t a bus in sight.

Our first leg runner, Emily Kemp, raced in the Venla relay in the afternoon. Venla is a four-woman relay race that is held a few hours before Jukola. She had the fourth fastest time on the last leg and her team finished 29th out of 1236 teams!

The main event began in the evening of that night approximately 15 minutes after the “sunset”. Since Lappeenranta is so far north, the summer nights don’t get too dark. Although it was dark enough that everyone needed to wear a headlamp. At 11:00pm sharp the machinegun went off and with it so did 1700 orienteers. The start chute was a river of neon orienteering clothing and 2000 lumen headlamps which drained into the forest. Here’s a video of the mass of orienteers passing the start (which was a 10 meter high tower with a huge O flag painted on).

Emily Kemp had a particularly good race finishing 233rd on her leg, only 13:25 behind the ridiculously fast men (winning time of 1:03:03). She handed off to brother Eric who passed several trains (a long line of orienteers running the same course, usually common in large relays) and bumped the team up 82 spots bringing us up to 151st.

“The highlight of my course was looking back and seeing a wave of lights in the forest behind me. I thought to myself “Wow, this must be how Emily feels.” -Eric Kemp, 2016 non-European Jukola champion.

Robbie Anderson had a couple of mistakes but held our position on the long night leg (14 km). He credits his success to seeing how well the two Kemps did, but mostly a can of RedBull that he chugged prior to heading into the forest at 1:45am. Next up was Jeff Teutsch who, with a stunning series of controls mid course brought us up to 129th. Unfortunately, he then made an equally stunning 10 minute error and brought us into the changeover in 155th, 4 places behind where he started.

By this point with all the rain and so many people running through, the entire arena had turned into a giant mud pit. People were slipping and splashing everywhere, reminiscent of the Bay of Fundy orienteering map.

Imported club member Daniel Martinsson had an exceptional race especially considering he had knee surgery not too long before. This was the first big relay for the youngest of the team, Robbie Graham who had a solid performance despite a few mistakes here and there.

“Even running the sixth leg after there has been several hours for the competitors to spread out, you’re always running with someone in the forest. The amount of people out there is insane!” -Robbie Graham, mega Euro relay newbie

Steffan Lloyd brought it all home on the final and longest leg, a whopping 16.5km, putting our team at 209th place. We were the first non-European team but only by a hair with Ross Smith of Cambridge Sports Union finishing just over 3 minutes behind us. A very close race!

Full results can be found here.

All in all, Jukola was an incredible experience and Ottawa hopes to send another team in the near future.

Team Ottawa - Emily, Eric, Robbie, Jeff, Daniel, Robbie, Steffan

NOTES: You can also see their courses on route gadget although they haven't the GPS tracks. Look for 'OTTAWA' to find them. The first 3 were 4-5 scroll pages down.

Click on any images for larger versions (except the image of Eric - couldn't get that!)