The Nokian Tyres World Orienteering Championships will be held in the Czech Republic between the 3rd and the 9th of July 2021. The Championships start with the Sprint Qualification and Final on the 3rd of July in the city of Terezín. The complete program and all venues are presented in the recently published Bulletin 2.
The event centre for the Nokian Tyres World Orienteering Championships 2021 will be the town of Doksy in northern Czech Republic. The week-long Championships will begin with the two Sprint formats (Sprint and Sprint Relay) and then move to forest formats (Middle Distance, Long Distance and Relay).
– The Championships were originally planned to cover forest formats only. But due to the cancellation of the Nokian Tyres World Sprint Orienteering Championships 2020 in Denmark due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2021 organisers have done a great job to offer athletes both sprint and forest formats during the week, says Tom Hollowell, IOF CEO.
The program for the week is tight and covers five finals and two qualification races within the seven day period.
– Fitting the two Sprint formats into the weeks program has meant making some compromises with the overall schedule of the event, continues Tom Hollowell. Due to constraints on accommodations and facilities use, the schedule needs to be compact. But we also wanted to make sure that adding the sprint formats did not change the basic premises of the original forest based championships.
So for example, it is important to maintain the Middle Distance qualification race in the program. To do so, and to provide adequate competition free days for both athletes and organisers, the Middle Distance will be contested with the qualification race and final on the same day.
– We feel we have found a good compromise but also realise that the very tough schedule may mean that some top athletes will need to prioritize which competitions they will enter, says Tom Hollowell.
The WOC 2021 Event Director and Sport Director are giving their views on the program here.
All you need to know about Nokian Tyres World Orienteering Championships 2021 is found here: