WTOC: “My goal for the Championships is to get an individual medal”
Posted on | August 16, 2016 | Category: Newsletter, WOC news
Tall, robust, and with a long beard reminding one of the good old Vikings, the Norwegian Lars Jakob Waaler is one of the most charismatic figures in the small world of Trail Orienteering. His appointment as IOF Senior Event Adviser for the European Trail Orienteering Championships ETOC 2016 is one of the main topics of this review; we also make known some of the moments that made him the trail orienteer he is today. And we look forward to the near future: the competitions to be played out in Strömstad in Sweden next week.
Lars Jakob Waaler is a 49-year-old teacher living in Trondheim, in the centre of Norway. His family name mixes and merges with the history of Orienteering in Norway, and therefore it was natural to see Lars Jakob, when still very young, entangled in the forest with his parents and brothers for a whole Orienteering summer. At the age of nine Lars had already run his first Orienteering race and despite the appeal of other sports – Athletics, Cross-country and Biathlon – Orienteering has always been ‘his’ sport.
Lars’ TrailO debut was in the O-Festivalen in 2003. His parents had already done some Trail Orienteering, so they suggested that he try it out. Lars had always been a better map-reader than runner, so they thought it would suit him. And they were right: “I did quite well in the first couple of competitions and I found it challenging and fun,” Lars remembers. In 2004 the first WTOC was organised in Våsteras, Sweden, so Lars decided to try to get into the Norwegian team for the event. “I managed to get into the team and have been there ever since,” he says. And from that moment, TrailO took over more and more as his main orienteering discipline.
Hard work
In May we could find Lars in Jeseník, Czech Republic, on ‘the other side of the fence’ fulfilling the role of IOF Senior Event Adviser at the European Trail Orienteering Championships. An experience that he gladly remembers: “It’s good and educational to see the sport from new angles, and hopefully I have learnt something that I can use in my competitions in the future.” But the good memories were mixed with a lot of hard work and with a particularly difficult week: “We were on our feet from early morning until late in the evening, but I think the nature of TrailO requires that you put in such an amount of work,” he asserts.
In fact all kites, the decision points and other details had to be checked and double-checked every day to ensure the success of the competition, and the organising team wasn’t that big: “We were a small team, which meant that we maybe had to work harder. Tomáš Leštínský and Pavel Dudik worked all the time during the week, and we also had a lot of volunteers who put in many hours out on the courses,” he says, adding that it was also great to have John Kewley as assistant SEA: “It’s very good to have someone to discuss things with. An extra pair of eyes on things is very useful. It also gave us the chance to divide some of the jobs, so that we could manage everything,” he comments.
Aiming for a WTOC medal
The next big challenge is the World Trail Orienteering Championships in Strömstad, and Lars’ goal is already set: “My goal for the Championships is to get an individual medal, since that is what is missing in my collection.” Lars is expecting a good and well-organised competition. “I think the courses will be varied and good from what I have seen from Bosse Sandstrom in the past. I know he has put a lot of work into this event to make good competitions for us,” says Lars.
According to his words, it will be possible to see Lars doing Trail Orienteering for many years: “I want to compete in TrailO, hopefully at the highest level, as long as I enjoy it. I have no big plans for how long I will keep on, but TrailO is a discipline that you can continue with until old age,” Lars admits. The last words are about his dream: “In TrailO it would be to get my first individual WTOC medal,” he says. We just have to wait for a short while and see!
Text and photo: Joaquim Margarido
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