In the Shadow of the Winter Palace
by Alex Kerr, Canada
Just over 1400 competitors journeyed to the 1995 Veteran's World Cup
( VWC-95 ) in Lembolovo, Russia, a town located about 60 km north of
St.Petersburg. ( Last year the VWC in Scotland attracted close to 3000. )
Rather surprisingly, the Scandinavian contingent, particularly the Swedes,
were only half of last year, and virtually no competitors from the
previous Soviet satellites such as Czechoslovakia showed up. Canada was
represented by three competitors, Pat and Dick de St.Croix and myself ;
four were from the USA : Karen Birt, Sharon Crawford, Russ Bruce, and Mike
Shifman.
About 600 orienteers stayed in the Hotel Karelia, a crumbling relic
of the Communist era. The hotel was surrounded by Soviet-style apartment
blocks, about 10 km north east of the centre of St.Petersburg. So, may be
the staff were a little humourless at times, the meal portions a little
small and lacking in greens, the plumbing unpredictable, and giardia in
the tap water... On the other hand, they provided limitless hot water,
served meals for 600 on time, and gave us a much closer view of Russian
life than if we had insulated in a westernized hotel in the city centre.
Everyone travelled to the event centre by bus. The rides took
anywhere from seventy minutes to two hours - depending on how well the bus
driver knew the route, and this was just a short walk from the Lembolovo
train station. The facilities at the meet centre were quite modest, just a
collection of tents, but everything was provided, even a telephone to the
outside world.
A coniferous forest covered the area ; very runnable for the most
part, with no rock features ; the water features were mainly marshes. The
terrain had lots of small hills, depressions of varying size and a lot of
brown ( contour ) features. A striking feature was the remains of
fortifications from World War II which comprised the defensive perimeter
during the siege of Leningrad ( called St.Petersburg before and after the
Communist era ) run through the forest. A fairly heavy path network was
there to confuse the unwary.
The format was the same as in previous World Cups : a model or
training event followed by two days of qualifying heats, a rest day, and
then the final with the top 80 from the qualifying heats moving on to the
A-Final. We used three maps of excellent quality, surveyed by Russians,
drawn and printed in Finland. They overlapped slightly to allow the same
finish at the Event Centre for all three races. All the controls were in
the right place ; I thought the courses were well thought-out and fair ;
and the only complaint that could be made is that they were a bit on the
short side in some cases. In H60, for example, the qualifying heats were
3.8 - 4.2 km in length with winning times of 32 minutes, and the final of
5.5 km was won 38 minutes.
The English-speaking contingent showed up well in the qualifying
heats with Sharon Crawford leading in D45, Bill Gauld of Scotland was
second in his heat in H60, Elizabeth Brown of England was first in D75,
and Alice Bedwell of England was second in D35. But, I am afraid, there
was no gold or glory after the finals. There were two English medallists,
Anne Grenfell in D65 and Elizabeth Brown in D75.
I did not see the final results as we had to catch our
transportation back to the hotel, but in my class, H60, Arvo Mikkonen of
Finland repeated his success in Hungary in H55 in 1990, and Per Slungaard
of Sweden, who was the H50 champion in Hungary, won H55 this time.*
Several of the Scandinavian competitors seemed to jog around the
qualifying courses, and then turned it on in the finals. The average speed
in the H60 qualifying heats was 7.6 min/km and in the final this dropped
to 7.0 min/km !
Besides the orienteering, we had St.Petersburg to explore. We could
have spent all the time at the Hermitage and still only scratched the
surface. If you spent 30 seconds looking at each item in their collection,
8 hours a day, it would take you over 8 years to see it all ! The Winter
Palace itself is magnificient : state rooms smothered in gilt and marble ;
the same for St.Isaac's Cathedral with 100 kg of gold leaf on his dome ;
then there is the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Smolny Monastery, the
Alexander Nevsky Monastery where Tchaikovsky and Dostoyevsky are buried,
Peterhof - and on and on. Walking around the city, I don't think that any
of us felt thretened in any way, although there were some thick-necked
gentlemen with cell phones lounging around black Volvos near the big
hotels, and we were not sure if they were bodyguards or mafia.
The Russian that we met were very friendly and helpful even if they
were trying to flog ( sell ) you T-shirts, army fats, Moscow Penguin
sweaters, etc., at the same time. I had a great week, and I would
certainly go back.
( "Orienteering North America", 1995, No.6 - July )
* - It is not so. See results here.
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