JWOC 2016 starts today in Scuol, Switzerland with the Opening Ceremony to be held at 16:00 in Scuol, which is also the location for the Sprint Distance event to be held on Sunday morning. The Australian team has settled into their JWOC accommodation in a small village Ftan, overloooking the very picturesque Engadine Valley and only about 15 minutes from Scuol. The accommodation is very close to the middle qualification area (Wednesdays event). The team has been spending the last five days preparing for the events by visiting some of the training maps and having talks about the mental and technical challenges of each of the disciplines. The team has responded very positively to the coaching from Julian Dent and Ralph Street and are relaxed and focused ready for the Sprint Distance event tomorrow.

Yesterday the team travelled to the model area for the Long Distance event which will be held at an altitude of over 2000m at Pass dal Fuorn. The team did a map walk checking out the main features of the map and got a birds eye view of the arena for the long from the higher section of the model map. This area will provide a true Long Distance experience for the athletes- steep terrain with some areas of low visibility and rocky ground. The expected winning km rates are 8min/km for the men and 9min/km for the women.

The program for the week is very intensive and certainly provides these young athletes with both a physical challenge and a mental challenge during the five days of competition, especially given that on the Long Distance event there is a lot of travelling involved in getting to the event.

All team members are well and relaxing today before the start of the competition tomorrow. They have been posting on their blog and many photos can be found on the facebook page and on instagram- see these link

https://www.instagram.com/ausjwoc/

http://ausjuniororienteering.blogspot.ch/

https://www.facebook.com/AusJWOC2014

There will be live production of the events and this can be found from the JWOC 2016 website

http://www.jwoc2016.ch

It is planned to provide daily reports for the events on this website.

Nick Dent