The sprint final was held in the narrow alleyways of Verona (where Shakespeare is thought to have got his inspiration for Romeo & Juliet), with the arena beside the spectacular Roman amphitheater.

I particularly enjoyed the cheering from a group of NZ tourists eating at a restaurant in the main square, who were very excited to finally see a NZ runner after watching all of the Europeans come past before me. There were big cheers of “go Kiwi” both times I went past them!!

The course was not as tricky as we had thought it would be, so there were not too many decisive route choices. It was more about picking the right alleyways amongst the tourists and running fast. I was very pleased with my race and placed 31st, 1min30sec behind the winner Sara Hagstrom.
Laura

From Tim: 
It was a really fun European champs, and cool to see Laura running so well!

I’ve still struggling with the same injury from March. I did an MRI a few weeks ago and it showed a crack in my meniscus in my knee. I’m on a waiting list for surgery but it’s unclear if I’ll get an operation before I fly out to New Zealand.

I haven’t been able to do any running training at all for a month now, so I was not expecting EOC to be a success, but rather to support Laura and Emma in their races

The individual courses were quite disappointing with little to no route choice. Despite this not being Laura’s favourite style of sprint she was able to back up her great result in Czech Republic with another solid race.

We both had very good qualifications yesterday (finally some trickier orienteering) but were not physically strong enough in the quarter final. Laura was very unlucky with her QF, drawing several of the favourites for the medals.

Checkout World of O analysis:
http://news.worldofo.com/2023/10/05/eoc-sprint-2023-maps-and-results/