A Dane had the winning trick
Posted on | July 4, 2013 | Category: Arena
Miri Thrane Ødum on her way to a gold medal. Photo: Erik Borg
Just a few days after Miri Thrane Ødum became 18 years old she ran a really well-planned race in the Middle distance final in the Junior World Championships – and won gold.
The Middle distance was a really tricky one. Almost every leg between the controls needed very careful map reading with a huge number of boulders, some contours and some variation in vegetation almost the only things to navigate by. There were a lot of mistakes; the huge number of boulders made it easy to lose track of which boulder was which, but Miri Thrane Ødum did know. She had taken the time to make an extra stop or two in the forest.
“It was so demanding between the controls that I didn’t manage to focus so much on what to do on the next leg before I found the flags. So at every control I took some extra time to decide what was the best to do on the coming leg”, she said.
– How long did you stop?
“About a couple of seconds”.
With 24 controls on the 3.0 km long course that means about half a minute in extra planning. Very good use of time, because Miri managed to run very well and made only some very small mistakes. So she finished as the new World Champion among juniors on the Middle distance. “It’s a bit crazy!” the 18-year-old says. The Dane knew for sure that she was doing well, but didn’t expect anything like that.
Miri lives in Birkelund, about 20 km from Copenhagen, and is born into orienteering. Her older brother Rasmus Thrane Ødum was second on the Long distance in JWOC one year ago. Their parents are also very good orienteers. Mother Charlotte Thrane has been fourth at WOC and father Rasmus Ødum has been in teams winning both Tiomila and Jukola. Jukola is also among the young daughter’s prizes so far. She was in the team of Pan Århus that secured the first Danish victory at the world’s biggest relay a short while ago.
This last individual race in forest terrain in JWOC was organised about one hour’s drive north-east of Hradec Králové, very close to both the highest mountain Svezka, 1602 metres above sea level, and the border with Poland.
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