Ski Orienteering World Cup 2015-2016's opening round: Sprint victories for Ulrik Nordberg and Tatyana Oborina

The Ski Orienteering World Cup season 2015-2016 started in Ylläs, Northern Finland, in the best way. A perfect weather, demanding courses and, in the end, Ulrik Nordberg and Tatyana Oborina tightly winning the Sprint races.

Ylläs, in Lapland, Northern Finland, is hosting by this days the Ski Orienteering World Cup 2015-2016's opening round. 88 athletes from 14 nations joined the competition which hold, this morning, its first stage. The Women were the first in action, facing at the start a really steep course to the upper part. The Russian Tatiana Oboryna started earlier and, from the very first moment, she showed very confident, very fast, taking really good route choices and reaching here a good advantage that she managed to keep all the way till the end. She finished the 3.9 km of her course in the time of 13:22, seven seconds ahead of other Russian, Mariya Kechkina. Great specialist in the downhill sections and pointed for many as the favorite to the victory “on home ground”, the Finnish Milka Reponen did a great race, but she could never recover the time lost in the first part of the course, finishing with eight seconds more than Oborina.

As for the Men, when we see the three top athletes separated by two single seconds, what can we say? The Portuguese Orienteering Blog asked to the Swedish Ulrik Nordberg, today's winner, and we believe that his words say everything: “The race started with two controls in a steep section, so it was hard to stay up on my skies, in the hard 90 degrees small track turns. I can't complain, I took some decent route choices but it was after - in some short hard controls - that I made some really good route choices, kept the flow going and didn't make any mistakes till the finish line. I was lucky to have the seconds on my side this time”, Ulrik said. At the age of 22, Ulrik Nordberg took his first triumph in a World Cup stage, finishing with the time of 15:02 for a course of 5,1 km. The Bulgarian Stanimir Belomazhev, current IOF World Ranking leader, spend one more second, while the Russian Eduard Khrennikove was third, two seconds after Nordberg.

Results

Men

1. Ulrik Nordberg (Sweden) 15:02 (+ 00:00)

2. Stanimir Belomazhev (Bulgaria) 15:03 (+ 00:01)

3. Eduard Khrennikov (Russia) 15:04 (+ 00:02)

4. Erik Rost (Sweden) 15:17 (+ 00:15)

5. Lars Moholdt (Norway) 15:20 (+ 00:18)

6. Vladimir Barchukov (Russia) 15:26 (+ 00:24)

Women

1. Tatyana Oborina (Russia) 13:22 (+ 00:00)

2. Mariya Kechkina (Russia) 13:29 (+ 00:07)

3. Milka Reponen (Finlândia) 13:30 (+ 00:08)

4. Iuliia Tarasenko (Russia) 13:32 (+ 00:10)

5. Polina Frolova (Russia) 13:33 (+ 00:11)

6. Tove Alexandersson (Sweden) 13:40 (+ 00:18)

Further information and complete results at http://ensilumenrastit.fi/2015/. You can also see some nice reports through the IOF Live Center Broadcast, at http://livecenter.orienteering.org/.

[Photo: Ski Orienteering World Cup 2015-2016's opening round Ylläs . Finland / ensilumenrastit.fi/]

Joaquim Margarido