Jukola Orienteering Relay

My parents came over today. My father wanted to go and see Jukola Relay. The annual event is one of the largest orienteering events in the world. This year, the two races, men's Jukola Night Relay and women's Venla's day relay have 20,000 participants combined. With 30,000 spectators and about 2,000 organizers the event has record participation. It is held in Hollola to the west of Lahti.

Orienteering is a sport where the task is to find control points in a terrain using a map and a compass. Orienteering maps are very detailed and typically have a scale of 1:10,000.

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An orienteering map

The triangle is the start, the control points are inside the numbered circles and the double circle is the finish. The contestants are supposed to visit the control points in the designated order. The fastest wins.

Venla's relay started at two pm and the teams had five runners. The Jukola relay begins at 11 pm and the teams have seven runners. The winning team is expected to finish at around 7 am. The nominal lengths of the courses are about 10 km on average. The actual running distances are longer. A straight line is rarely the best route choice.

Orienteering is quite popular in Finland, Sweden and Norway. In addition to those three, Russia and Switzerland are at a high level, too. Orienteering is a global sport and the World Championships have been held all over the world. Every time an important event like this is held it is done in an area of which there is no pre-existing map. It takes about two years to create a map from scratch. All small features like every boulder larger than one meter in diameter are marked on the map.

Jukola Relay and Venla's relay is a combination of a mass event and an elite competitive sport event. Not only orienteering clubs can send team to participate. Any group of people can form a team. The Finnish Defense Forces' "number one" team included six generals and one colonel. (Must have been good for the colonel's career.)

I was at one of the info desks at the World Champioships in Tampere in 2001. My father was involved, too, in a much bigger role. He has participated in Jukola many times. In 1968, he was part of the Koovee Tampere team that was placed second. Koovee Tampere is the favourite this year. I used to participate in casual orienteering races over weekends when I was younger.

Here's a live broadcast of the event:

https://areena.yle.fi/tv/suorat/yle-tv1

I left my car here. I hope I can find it after the field becomes filled with them. (I did.)

The parking area was about 1.6 km from the competition center.

This how a lot of the spectators and contestants spend the night if they are not awake and watching the events.

The start of the Venlas' relay. About 1600 runners. It's easy to notice the vast difference between the elite and the masses.

Most spectators watch the events on this jumbotron or their own mobile devices. With GPS tracking, it's easy to keep track of the race in real time.

The change-over zone is behind that fence.

The flags of the participating countries.

This is where any remaining data is erased from the EMIT cards (electronic cards that are timestamped at the control points) before the race.

Shit! A minor tornado formed and sent a few dozen maps flying high in the air. The organizers asked the spectators to help collect them. The fastest runners were approaching the change-over zone in a less than five minutes. Follow the link to see a video.

There are 50,000 people present during the weekend. Food, drink and sanitation have to be organized to meet the need.

Some kids had a lemonade stand along the way from the competition center and the parking area.

This is what I saw when I came back. This is one of the fields full of cars. I did find my easily this time.