Championship Rogaines - WRC Qualifiers

11th European Rogaining Championships were held last week-end in South-East corner of Estonia with the event center in Orava village.
612 participants in 289 teams from 15 countries marks the new record number of participants at ERCs.

The terrain was typical for that part of Estonia - pine and spruce dominated forest, relatively flat with some areas of esker formations and higher slopes of Piusa river valley, some large peat bogs and numerous smaller marshes, relatively well developed track and forest ride network.
Good weather conditions and only 4 hours of darkness contributed to the high speed of top teams.

The course-setter had placed 98 controls on the terrain with several controls in picturesque locations.
The high number of controls contributed to a high number of different route plans chosen by the top teams.
While the navigational task was relatively easy (with some more demanding controls), finding of the optimal route plan was a challenge.

One team was able to collect all 98 controls in 23 hours and 8 minutes covering a beeline distance of over 142 km and an actual distance of nearly 170 km. The new European rogaining champions are Timmo Tammemäe and Rait Pallo from Estonia with the maximum score of 358 points. Was the course too short? Well, perhaps not. Simply Timmo and Rait were too good. They are the silver medalists from WRC2013. Rait had earlier won also bronze medals at ERC2010, ERC2011 and WRC2010. Brothers Silver and Rain Eensaar (EST), the World Rogaining Champions from 2012 and 2013 did also a good race covering about 128 km beeline and 160 km actual distance, but had to omit 3 controls and scored 348 points which was worth only silver medals this time. Oleg Kalinin from Russia, a bronze medal winner from WRC2008, WRC2012, WRC2013 and ERC2012, added another bronze medal in his medal collection, pairing up this time with Andrey Shvedov, who is the WRC2012 and WRC2013 winner in XO category. They scored 329 points. The best mixed team was Nadezhda Ermakova and Artem Rostovtsev from Russia with 308 points, and the best women's team Anna Burlinova and Natalia Zimina from Russia scoring 303 points.

The event was organised by an adventure club X-Team.
Full results: http://www.erc2014.com/erc2014-tulemused/
The map and GPS tracks of selected 30 teams: http://sportrec.navirec.com/ui/#19nsspp

12th European Rogaining Championships will be held in June 2015 in the Czech Republic. [Editors note 12ERC 2015 poster is now available]

Report by
Lauri Leppik

Editor - Video of the event has been published along with event photographs.