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EXHAUSTING EFFORT – Trevor Bray of Whitehorse was the fastest among the five junior Canadian men in the long course at the recent Junior World Orienteering Championships in Borovets, Bulgaria. Photos courtesy of ORIENTEERING CANADA

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INTENSITY – Whitehorse’s Pia Blake runs for Canada at the recent Junior World Orienteering Championship in Borovets, Bulgaria. Photos courtesy of ORIENTEERING CANADA

Bray, Blake satisfied with performances at world championships

Whitehorse’s Trevor Bray is coming off his third Junior World Orienteering Championships feeling pretty good about his performance in Bulgaria late last month.

By Chuck Tobin on August 12, 2014

Whitehorse’s Trevor Bray is coming off his third Junior World Orienteering Championships feeling pretty good about his performance in Bulgaria late last month.

National teammate Pia Blake of Whitehorse was also pleased, and felt much better prepared for this year, her second juniors.

“I was happy with the results,” Bray said in an interview Friday. “Last year, I had a real disappointing worlds.

“This year I was just more focused, had more solid races, nothing like that one amazing race ... but nothing disappointing happened so I said ‘you know what, I am happy with that.’”

Orienteering involves getting from one point to the other as quickly as possible, not in a straight line, but rather over hill and dale, down this street or that one, all the while trying to navigate the course using a compass and map to find control points.

The 19-year-old Bray was the fastest among the five Canadian men in the long course of 10.2-kilometres, finishing in a “exhausting” two hours, two minutes and 13 seconds, for 129th place among an international field of 163 competitors.

Anton Johansson won the race in a time of 1:15:17, 50 minutes and one second faster than Bray.

Bray finished the three-kilometre sprint as the third fastest Canadian with a time of 18 minutes and 53 seconds, four minutes and 12 seconds off the winning pace of 14:41 established by Tim Robertson of New Zealand.

The graduate of F.H. Collins High School was one second behind the second fastest Canadian in the sprint and just over a minute behind the fastest.

None of the Canadians among the men’s field of 162 orienteers qualified for the 60 spots available in the 3.8- kilometre mid-distance course, a race which was won by Miika Kirmula of Finland.

Blake, who was presented with the Rising Star Award by Orienteering Canada earlier this year, was one of two Canadian women competing.

The long course of 7.2 kilometres was also her strongest showing, finishing 89th in a field of 131 with a time of 1:50:50, 42 minutes and 35 seconds behind first-place Gunvor Hov Hoydal of Norway but five minutes ahead of teammate Emma Sherwood.

In the 2.5-kilometre sprint, Blake finished 96th in a time of 16:49, three minutes and 34 seconds behind race winner Sara Hagstrom of Sweden.

Neither Blake nor Sherwood qualified for the field of 60 in the mid-distance.

Overall, however, the 18-year-old Whitehorse woman felt more prepared for her second world championships, and is looking forward to her third in Norway next year and her final year as a junior in Switzerland in 2016.

“Each of the terrains were challenging in their own right, although the terrain which I enjoyed the most was that of the middle distance,” Blake wrote in a recent email from Wales where she is attending school. “The technical difficulty and uniqueness was very satisfying to navigate, if you managed to keep the balance between running pace and map reading! I managed to keep it together for the first 9 controls on the middle qualification but unfortunately lost concentration on the 10th control.”

Bray said orienteering is much more than a foot race.

“It’s like a game between the course setter and the runner, you might say,” he said. “They are trying to trick you and you are trying to get through as quickly as possible without falling into their traps.”

Bray said the sprint race was almost entirely in an urban setting, while the long course was in the forest.

Unlike the heavy bush involved in the orienteering course around Whitehorse, said the second-year Ottawa University student, the forests in the courses at Borovets were clear and open.

“The long course is the one I’m most comfortable in,” he said. “The sprint and middle distance are kind of hit and miss.”

Bray said he was disappointed that he wasn’t selected for the first Canadian team of three men to run the relay race, particularly since he was the fastest in the long course, though it was his coach’s decision.

But he did get to team up with Blake as the second Canadian team, as they didn’t have a third Canadian man for a second team, so she joined in and they raced, “and we had fun.”

Finishing with a time of 2:28:51, Canada 2 was 16 minutes behind Canada 1, and just over an hour behind the winner, Sweden 1.

Bray said he plans to compete again at the North American Championships this October in Ottawa for a spot on Team Canada and a ticket to Norway next year.

He’ll be intensifying his training with the approach of the school under the direction of local coaches Afan Jones and Brent Langbakk.

And with the championships being hosted by Ottawa, Bray won’t have far to travel, though he points out he’s not allowed to run on the courses set out for the North Americans or train on the maps.

Bray said as much as he competes as best he can, he and the other Canadians, and most of the international teams for that matter, have a ways to go to reach the European countries.

Europe, he said, is the hot bed for orienteering, particularly the Scandinavian countries.

Bray pointed out in Sweden there’s one particular high school where students go specifically to surround themselves with orienteering – all 23,000 of them.

“We have some catching up to do,” he said with a smile.

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