August 4th to 9th: World Orienteering Championships (sprint), World Trail Orienteering Championships

After arriving Riga, I reached at the main part of my journey: orienteering competitions. This year’s World Orienteering Championships and World Trail Orienteering Championships were held together.

I am an official representative in TempO only, so I participated in the public events for the rest of the competitions. August 4th was the sprint World Championships, the preliminary was held in the park, and the final was held in the old town of Riga.

In the afternoon finals, there were live broadcast and GPS tracking, but the Hong Kong team did not have a finalist.

The Occupation Museum is under reconstruction.

A photo of our Hong Kong team, including FootO team and TrailO team (photo taken from OAHK)

As the TrailO competitions were held in Daugavpils, we drove there.

On August 5th, in the model event, we made the final practice before the competition. After the model event, we paid, turned on the TV and computer to watch the sprint relay live broadcast and GPS tracking.

August 6th was the TempO World Championships, held at Daugavpils Fortress. The Hong Kong team had 4 official representatives and I am one of them. The competition is divided into preliminary and finals. The preliminary was divided into 2 groups, and the first 18 competitors in each group entered the finals. In the preliminary, there were 6 stations, 4 questions per station. My score was 460.5 seconds and I could not reach the finals. The Hong Kong team eventually had 2 participants to enter the finals.

August 7th is the first day of the PreO competition, the event centre is in Daugavpils 16th Secondary School. I was not an official team member, so I participated in the public event (the same course as the World Championships). My score on the day was 26/28, which was better than all official Hong Kong representatives, but this was only a practice competition and had no effect on the world rankings (only the official World Championships would be counted).

After that, I returned to Riga and went to Laurenči near Sigulda on August 8 to participate in a middle race of Latvia O-Week. The train from Riga to Sigulda is quite outdated, using a diesel train. However, the ticket purchase could be done using a webpage or an application and displayed to the train controller, without any gates.

At the arena I met with the chairman of the Orienteering Association, and members of the Scout Orienteering Club.

Then I returned to Daugavpils again.

Daugavpils Railway Station is a railway station that was rebuilt in occupation era 1951. In the picture above, there are traces of suspected dismantling of Russian station name. Trains run to Riga, Vilnius and Minsk.

August 9th was the second day of PreO competition. I participated in the public competition and got 32/33. It was also better than all official Hong Kong representatives. The total score of the two days was 58/61, which was equivalent to about 20th place in the World Championships. I returned to Riga again after the competition.