ASOM 2025: Preview

This weekend ASOM is back for its 10th anniversary and will take place in Turnhout! With the upcoming European Orienteering Championship organized in Belgium, this event is the perfect preperation to achieve high results in August. This also means that a lot of world class runners will participate. Let's have a look at some of the favourites for the podium of the knock-out sprint on Saturday and the normal sprint on Sunday. 

In the women's class we are happy to welcome almost a quarter of the top 100 sprint orienteers in the world. The highest ranked athletes are Eline Gemperle (19), Ike Nurminen (=20) and Alva Sonesson (=20). These three are naturally in three different heats for the qualification on Friday where only the top 12 of each heat goes through to the quarter finale of the knock-out sprint on Saturday. Being second in your heat means that you can choose first in which of the six quarter finales you want to compete. After this, the winners of each heat can choose and from there on, it goes from the third place all the way down to the twelfth place. Will these top three ladies try to win their heat, or maybe try to end up more in the middle of the pack to be able to have a more interesting heat choice? We will see :). 

In the men's class we have, with 28, even more than a quarter of the top 100 sprint orienteers in the world competing. Even more exciting is that there are not one, not two, but three top 10 runners coming to Turnhout. Jonas Gustafsson (2), Yannick Michiels (3) and Tuomas Heikkilä (7) will try to win  ASOM (again) at its 10th anniversary. 

Some other contenders for the women's class are: Tilda Johansson (38), Josefine Lind (39), and Deborah Stadler (40). For our Belgian runners all eyes are on Danielle Dewickere (176) and Marine Sillien (199). Wile some other runners eying for a medal in the men's class are Timo Suter (13), Tino Polsini (15), and Fransesco Mariani (21). The Belgian runners that can cause some danger in front of the pack next to Michiels are Warre De Cuyper (77), Wouter Hus (83), and Mathias Blaise (102).

Nice courses and exciting races will for sure be present this weekend and let's see if somebody can beat the favourites and cause an upset. We are excited and hopefully you are too!

See you this weekend