Some early details are now available about plans to hold a weekend of TrailO on the 20th and 21st of September. Organiser Peter Roberts has confirmed that there will be two events using two very different areas and terrain.
On the Saturday, the venue will be Humber Bridge Country Park on the north side of the River Humber. This park is based in an old chalk quarry and is bordered with high cliffs with complex vegetation. On the Sunday, the action will move to Baysgarth Park on the south side of the Humber. This is a more typical parkland with distinctive trees and many manmade features. Both areas and courses are wheelchair accessible.
The current plan is for there to be a Pre-O course at each area of about 80 minutes plus a timed A-Z section. Both days, on the way to the starts, there will be sample kites to practice techniques, and to coach beginners. New maps are being prepared of each area, probably 1:3000.
Some additional details are available. - see: Humber Weekend - Provisional Details.
The 2025 TrailO World Ranking Event (WRE) season has started with the Hungarian TrailO Weekend. Based in the town of Kecskemet there were 3 events: a WRE TempO and a PreO Sprint on Saturday and a WRE PreO on Sunday.
In contrast to the rugged and rocky terrain often found in TrailO, these events used largely flat areas: the Saturday events used a landscaped golf course and the Sunday was in an arboretum with complex vegetation. Despite this unusual terrain, the courses were challenging and the planning made full use of each areas’ potential. Five former members of the GBR team competed in the events. An opportunity to get some early experience prior to the selection of the team members to represent GBR at this year’s World TrailO Championships being held in Hungary and Slovakia in August.
Top performer in the TempO was Ben Kyd (MDOC) who finished in 9th place. Perhaps due to it being the first time competitors had seen the map, the first station was particularly challenging with the 2nd and 3rd tasks getting only 26% and 28% correct responses. The second GBR member was John Kewley (MDOC).
With 19 correct answers out of the 20 controls, Ben also led the GBR competitors in the PreO Sprint. Although he had the fastest time in the Sprint (using less than 9 minutes of the 29 minutes permitted), unfortunately that one error left him in 8th place. Our second GBR member was Tom Dobra in 25th place – he also had 19 correct but took 24 minutes to complete the course.
In much colder conditions, Sunday’s WRE PreO had 36 controls to consider in 135 minutes followed by three time controls, each with 3 tasks. Following the voiding of two controls, 9 competitors achieved the full score of 34. Both Tom Dobra (TVOC) and Ben Kyd achieved scores of 33 but it was Tom with no errors at the time controls who finished in 17th place to Ben’s 21st. John Kewley (with 32 correct) was just behind in 25th place.
The next opportunity to experience TrailO and enhance competition skills is when the JK Orienteering Festival takes place over the Easter weekend. TrailO features on both Good Friday and Easter Saturday.
Tom Dobra at the Hungarian PreO event [Image from Trailo.cz Facebook]
Two items of interest to Trail Orienteers can be found in the minutes of the IOF Council meeting which took place recently on the 21st March.
Of particular interest to British TrailO people was the announcement that Ben Kyd has been appointed as a member of the IOF Trail Orienteering Commission (TOC) for 2025-2026. As stated on the IOF website, the Commission ‘is the interface between the International Orienteering Federation (IOF) Council and the Trail Orienteering community regarding the development and implementation of the Trail Orienteering sport (TrailO) worldwide.’ The current Chairperson of TOC is Anne Straube (GER) who is well known to many GBR competitors as she is based here in the UK. Congratulations to Ben on his appointment.
The second item was the appointment of USA as the organiser of the World Trail Orienteering Championships (WTOC) 2027 with the preliminary dates 9-14 November 2027.
All the minutes of the IOF Council can be found on the IOF website at: IOF Council.
Ben Kyd at the World Championships (WTOC) in 2023.
If you are planning to attend a World Ranking Event (WRE) next year or if you are selected to compete at the World TrailO Championships (WTOC) in 2025 then those events will operated under the IOF TrailO rules. The IOF has recently published an updated version of their 'Competition Rules for IOF TrailO Events' which will apply to IOF events (such as WTOC and WREs) staged in 2025.
The final page of the new Rules (page 39) gives a list of 'Significant Changes' to the previous version (January 2024) and it would perhaps be best to read that list first. The Rules can be downloaded from the IOF website from their 'Competition Rules for Trail Orienteering' page: https://orienteering.sport/trailo/competition-rules/
Although these are the Rules for IOF events, it is current practice for British TrailO events to operate with the IOF Rules as the default rules unless circumstances mean that this is not appropriate or not possible.
The final issue for 2024 of the British TrailO Newsletter has just been published and can now be downloaded from the Newsletter page of this website. To get your copy, go to Newsletters
The issue contains complete updates of the various competitions since the September Newsletter with detailed reports from the Nordic Weekend in Sweden in September and the Autumn TrailO Weekend here in the UK in October. Also included in an item on an international event in September 1995 staged at Burnham Beeches, venue for the BritishTrailO Championships (PreO) this year. There are also the usual updates on league tables and ranking lists and other event reports and items of TrailO news.
On Saturday the British TrailO Championships (PreO) were held in Burnham Beeches, Slough. The course used a track along the bottom of a dry valley with complex contours enabling Tom Dobra (TVOC) (Planner) to set some very challenging controls. The course was split into two sections with the two Timed Controls between the them. Unfortunately, not long after the first competitor started, it began to rain and, at one point, this could be truthfully be described as a 'heavy downpour' - this made seeing the kites quite difficult.
Despite the problems, both Ben Kyd (MDOC) and John Kewley (MDOC) were able to correctly locate 22 of the 25 controls with Ben winning with a quicker time at the Timed Controls. In the P Class, Richard Keighley (WIM) took top place with Colin Duckworth (TVOC) second. In the Junior Class, James Curtis (SO) took top spot from Max Straube Roth (OD)
Luckily on Sunday, for the British TrailO Championships (TempO), held at the University of Reading Whiteknights campus, the weather was better. The TempO course, planned by Charles Bromley Gardner (BAOC), consisted of 8 stations with 5 tasks per station. Once again, Ben Kyd demonstrated his ability at quick terrain interpretation with only 2 errors over the 40 tasks - a feat matched (but in a slower time) only by Robertas Stankevič, one of two Lithuanians who had joined us for the weekend. James Curtis again gained top spot in the Junior class.
The results for the two Championship events were used to determine the overall 2024 British Champions. This was, of course, Ben Kyd in the Open Class with John Kewley second and Peter Dobra (SAX) third. In the P Class, Colin Duckworth's win in the TempO gave him the edge over Richard Keighley (2nd) and Peter Roberts (EBOR) (3rd). In the Juniors, James Curtis took first place.
The weekend also included a PreO Sprint event with a 20 control course planned by David Jukes (BKO). Here John Kewley was able to win through with his time being quicker than two others who also had 19 correct.
To access the maps and full results, see this site's BTOC page.
Top 3 in the Open Class Championships - 1st Ben Kyd (MDOC) (Centre), 2nd John Kewley (MDOC) (left) and 3rd Peter Dobra (SAX) (right)
Top 3 in the P Class Championships - 1st Colin Duckworth (TVOC) (Centre), 2nd Richard Keighley (WIM) (left) and 3rd Peter Roberts (EBOR) (right)
