EOC 2018, Ticino – Switzerland

“I just finished my studies in robotics engineering and EOC was the start of my life as a professional orienteer. The championships were held on my homeground in Ticino, and therefore I had high expectations, as I’m very used to this kind of terrain. Sprint qualification went good, and even if I’m not a specialist I came very close to the final. In the middle qualification I had again a good race, and this time I easily got a place for the final. There I had the only race which did not go so well, I stressed through the whole race and got several small mistakes, landing on the 39th place, ex aequo with my team mate Mattia. On the relay the first 2 runners were pretty tired from the long week, and as we were already far away from the top teams we decided that I would spare some energy for the long distance of the next day. That is my favourite distance, and I was able to perform pretty well. Towards the end I did a wrong route choice that cost me more than 2′, which in the tight resultlist was about 10 positions! On the last part of the course I was really tired, and I’m happy that I was able to conclude without any other errors.

If last year I was 35th at the world champs, this time I was only 42nd, but instead of being 30′ behind the winner, it was only 15′, so this was a big step forward! Now I’m going to enjoy having much more time to focus on training and races, and hope that this allows me to perform another big step forward.”

– Sebastian Inderst