# Intro Course setter for this night sprint was Jørn Ove Woldsdal with Jan Kocbach (writing this analysis) quite deeply involved in the course setting as a controller. With most of the Norwegian orienteering elite present, a lot of work was put into making good and interesting courses. Only the men's course is analyzed here (due to time limitations), but there are quite many interesting things to learn in the women's class as well by studying the GPS tracking. # 1 The thought behind this first leg was to lure some runners into taking the left variant - which is shorter (10% meters) and and closer to the line, but which has a major uphill. As you only have some seconds from the time start to decide, you need to make a quick decision. Luckily the rightmost variant (A on the map) was also faster. Based on the top runners, A is probably 3-5 seconds faster. # 2 This is more tricky than it looks. It was thought mostly as a left/right choice (where right is a lot longer and slower - only a few took the rightmost option), but in the end many lost on the left variant by not taking the optimal route here. A lot of runners lost time on this leg. # 3 The main thing about this leg was to read the control description before leaving control 2. If you did not, you probably went right or middle (B or C). Here going left (A) is clearly the fastest and shortest - right is more than 50% longer. Quite a few did a mistake here - many of the Top 20 runners lost more than 20 seconds - some even more than 30 - on a leg where the fastest route is run in 1:26.

Note that the women had the 3rd control on the other side of the fence (not directly, but further to the right), and they had a different ideal solution - both for this leg and the next. # 4 After solving 2-3, most were prepared for 3-4 which had many of the same elements. Also, the leg was shorter and easier to understand. A few runners did a wrong choice (going left). # 5 This was the longest leg in the course, with very distinct alternatives. The thought was that the left variant (running far down the steps and then up along the road) should be the fastest, but that many runners would be afraid for the stairs (all children lessons in sprint tell you how bad it is to run downhill in stair). So luckily left seems to be a bit faster (5 of the 6 fastest times are run left - only Kinneberg who has had higher speed all the way is in the top 6 on the right). Even if Eskil Kinneberg did not agree right after the race. The difference is only a few seconds though (as I agreed with Eskil after the race), and probably you loose more due to not performing the leg well than due to the running difference. The right variants are a bit more complicated - left is just running all you can. # 6 Short transport leg to get a goot basis for the rest of the course. # 7 Short transport leg to get a goot basis for the rest of the course. # 8 In this part of the map, the main difference for the routes is length and some minor height differences. The thought here was that right is shorter but with some more uphill, and thus easier to choose. While left should be a tiny bit faster. In the end it looks like the two alternatives are very similar, but at least we got the runners busy again after a little bit of rest. # 9 Short leg, made just to lure Håkon Westergård into a 20 second mistake (not really, but it shows that even some of the best can make mistakes on easy controls when they focus on other parts of the course).

Still there are two options - left or right, so you have to do a choice. Right is probably marginally faster. # 10 Both alternatives are equal in length, but right has more uphill. Thus left is marginally faster. Transport, but with something to think about for the runners. # 11 This one is interesting because you have to go one level up when getting close to the control, and to make the right choice you have to see this before you approach control 10. The time lost by going right seems very large based on the GPS/split comparison - probably it is more due to which runners did the choice than to the real difference between the alternatives. 3-4 seconds difference would be more realistic. # 12 Playing more with the two levels ; right (B) is shorter, and you avoid the 180 degree turn. The difference seems to be 3-4 seconds - actually a bit more than expected (probably due to the 180 degree).