WOC 2014!

G'day everyone, and welcome to the Australian WOC team blog for another year.

Our athletes and coaches are in preparation and soon will be making their way to Italy. For some, this is just a short flight or train trip from their homes in Europe. For others, the travel time is a bit more taxing: flying to Milan from Australia is about 20 hours of flying plus layovers!

So what's been going on this June? Julian, Vanessa and Lachlan made the trip to the '3 Days of Trenches', an event at the start of June in similar terrain to WOC, held near Asiago. These races were selection trials for many European teams, so the competition was world class. 

There was still quite a bit of snow around! something not seen often while orienteering back home...

At a training map near the town of Lavarone. The beautiful European beech forest was nicer to look at than to run through! 

Along with world class competition, Northern Italy is well known for it's world class food and scenery! This makes racing in Italy all the more fun:

decisions decisions...

Fantastic roads (read: crazy) are a theme of the Alps. Many of them in this area were built during WWI as supply routes.

The view from the above road in the opposite direction (where we had come from)...

...And what the road went up. Unreal!