Gueorgiou beats Gonon: Orient-show Maps and Results

This weekend (24-25/11) a second edition of Orient show in Villeneuve d'asc kicked off. Once again a well organised and challenging event in the North of France with good weather and a lot of elite runners from about 5 different countries took place. And of course our team of SLOK (Student Leuven Orienteering Kings) was present..

Gueorgiou dominates qualficiation-heats:
On saturday it was qualification-time, 73 men and 26 women were present. This 'last training' was helpfull to get familiar with the detailled terrain, more than 100 controls were set spread over the area. The 64 best men and women of the 4 different courses of +- 800m qualified themselves.
Mens class was dominated by a certain guy from the south of France called Thierry Gueorgiou. He won every single race, so he was sure about the first place in the overall-results.
SLok's qualification results were promising for the 1/4-finals on sunday: Hoekx Jeroen(10th), van der Kleij Thomas(16th), Franssen Desmond(17), De Lat Bruno(19).
In the women's class, there were 3 different winners: Michaela Kotecka, Pippa Whitehouse and Charlotte Bouchet.

Qualfication Results
Qualficiation Overall-ranking Men
Qualfication Overall-ranking Men (second part)
Qualification Overall-ranking Women
Map Qualificiation

Lucky Latty
In those 1/4-finals the runners were divided in 4 groups from which the top-4 could move on the de 1/2-finals to stay with the last 16 of the event. There was a remarkable time difference between the 4 poules (weak versus strong) which resulted for instance that Smola was knocked out of the race and that Bruno De Lat (Latty) gathered a lucky qualification. Also six other belgian runners achieved their ticket: Goubau Johan won his group. Hoekx, Franssen D., van der Kleij T. and Van Gasse L. took the 3rd and De Neyer Q. the 4th spot in their groups.
In the women's competition all famous runners were qualified without any problems.

Results 1/4-finals

Hoekie and Charlotte unlucky
In the 1/2-finals, two new groups of 8 runners compeeted for 2 final tickets. The running speed increased significantly and 4 French internationals (Thierry Gueorgiou, François Gonon, Thibaut Magne, and Charley Boichut) were stronger than the other competitors. Unfortunately, no SLOK-runners were fast enough to qualify. The man in hyper-shape, Jeroen Hoekx was only 2 seconds too slow to reach the final.
In the other class, the French (national team) girls Capucine Vercelotti and Anais Goffre reached the final. The 3th famous girl (Charlotte Bouchet) was 4 seconds too slow and knocked out. The other heat was won by Pippa Whitehouse (GBR) followed by Michaele Kotecka (CZE).

Results 1/2-finals

Close fights
For the final, the spectators got the competition map and could nicely observe the final battles. First, Capucine Vercelotti took the victory in the women's class. She started very strong, closely followed by Anais Goffre. But at the end it was Pippa Whitehouse who finnished very strong and made it a close fight. Pippa became 2nd, 4 seconds slower than Smola's girlfriend (Capucine).
In the men's competition, Thierry Gueorgiou took the best start. But after the separated (gaffling) part, a very fast François Gonon punched together with the World champion. He was breezing in the back of Thierry until last control, sensational till the end. But he couldn't pass Thierry anymore. Thibaut Magne ended 3rd and Charly Boichut took the 4th place.

Map Final
Results Final

Relay: Slok wins!
The final part of Orient-show 2007 was a relay-competition. Every team consisted of 3 runners and every runner had to run +-600m. 30 teams were present at the start during this mini-relay.
Bruno De Lat (Slok2) started very fast and was the leader from the start untill the finish during the first leg. Thomas van der Kleij (Slok3) tried to follow him and finished a few seconds later in 4th position. During the 2nd leg Desmond Franssen (named Tadese during this event, like the world champion cross country) took the lead. Yves Briers (Slok2) followed closely up to the moment when he came into the labyrinth. Here he lost some important time and mispunched 2 controls (in total 1minute sentence). And Desmond nearly made an analogue mistake. He passed the last control without punching it. Luckily, Simon Leroy had seen this and told this information to his French friend. Jeroen Hoekx heard the rumour and yelled his teammate to return and actually punch the last control. Finally Slok3 still changed over in first position but the contestants followed closely.
But Hoekie proved once again his great shape with a perfect run. He crossed the finish in first position, 7 seconds faster than an other Belgian team Pegase1 (Sillien Vincent, Goubeau Julien and Goubeau Johan) and 10 seconds faster than Breizh-team (Lesaffre and his friends).

Results SLOK:
1. SLOK3 (Thomas van der Kleij, Desmond Franssen, Jeroen Hoekx)
12. SLOK2 (Bruno DeLat, Yves Briers, Winston Franssen)
18. SLOK1 (Jeroen van der Kleij, Jef Boeckx, Sofie Defour)

Map Relay
Results Relay


Event website
An other article (O'zone)
All Slok-pictures
Orient-show Maps