30th edition: Sylvester 5-days

Interested in participating at a great 5-days orienteering competition in the end of december? Then the north of Belgium will be the place to be with the 30th edition of Sylvester 5-days.

The Sylvester 5 days are held every year between Christmas and New Year in the northern part of Belgium. It is an organisation from several Belgian clubs. With the Scandinavians training in the snow, there will probably be no white surface during this event. Some years we have had a little bit snow, but never enough to keep the runners out of the forest!

Ausrine Kutkaite (winner WRE Sylvester 2014) in action at WOC2015 and hopefully also at Sylvester 2017.

Fast terrain and high level:
You can’t expect very the most difficult maps in an area like Flanders, but the high running speed combined with a lot of paths and details will still be a challenge. Some of the maps will have tricky sand areas and detailed countourlines as well (specially stages 2 and 3 in 2017). On day 2 you can expect a demanding stage on the map Kattenbos. Day 3 will take place in Leopoldsburg, on a map (Zwarte Weg) famous for its tranches.

Map extract from Sylvester 2015.

It will be fast definitely, with the elites probably running under 5’00/km some days, so it's definately good speed-training! Ofcourse most of the Belgian top elites will be racing there. The previous years always some strong international runners showed up in the elite classes. In class H21E Philippe Adamski (France), Hannu Airila (Finland), Yannick Michiels (Belgium) and Tristan Bloemen (Belgium) were the last winners of the world ranking event. In women's class Amelie Chataing (France) and 2 times Miek Fabré (Belgium) took the victory in 2011-2013 at the Sylvester 5 days WRE. In 2014 the winner was the Lithuanian Ausrine Kutkaite and in 2015 Anastasia Denisova (Belarus).

Tristan Bloemen - last winner Sylvester WRE. Will he succeed to win again in 2017?

Besides the orienteering there is a lot to see and taste in our country:

A lot of tourists come to Belgium for our beautiful cities, and cities like Antwerp, Brussels (see picture), Gent, Leuven and of course Brughes are less than 2 hours by car or train and definitely worth a visit!


Belgium is ofcourse famous for our great beers and chocolate. I haven’t been to many orienteering events in other countries where people are drinking strong beers like Leffe after their race :).

Belgium is pretty central in Europe and has very good transport possibilities. Ryanair has an airport in Charleroi and the airport in Eindhoven (the Netherlands) is even closer to the races. Trains and buses can bring you close to the competition areas from the airport within 2 hours. The national airport near Brussels (Zaventem), also offers quite cheap flights to Brussels.

The website of the event has some suggestions about accomodation.
Because Belgium is so tiny, most orienteers just drive from home every day, so there won’t be a camping site or sports hall or so where everybody stays.

Entries have to be made before 1st of december. Entry fee is only 40 euro for 5 days of orienteering!! (late entry is more expensive).
Registration is possible on the orienteeringonline website.

Invitation Sylvester 5 days 2017

If you have any questions about this event, add a comment to this post or contact the organizers from the event’s website!