The forests of Fontainebleau recently hosted the first Mountain Bike Orienteering World Championships, as riders from some 28 countries descended on this trail-infested location for five days of highly competitive racing.

Mountain Bike Orienteering (MTB-O) differs from Trailquest and Polaris, in that it is a true navigational race with the fastest rider being the winner. The control points have to be visited in a fixed order, with the event planners ensuring that riders selecting the optimum routes through the local trails can gain time between check points.

The racing proved to be extremely tight, with positions throughout the field determined by mere seconds in many cases. The real moment of excitement, though, came in the Women’s Relay, with a wheel-to-wheel sprint for second place. In a photo finish, France just edged out the Czech Republic by a tyre’s width.

Fontainebleau Forest is an internationally respected conservation area, which led to many of the smaller paths being placed out of bounds. As a result, both riding and navigation was technically easier than in previous World Cup rounds, but this led to unexpectedly fast times from the leading riders. Speed was also important for another reason, as any loss of momentum was heavily penalised during the many sandy stretches.

There was at least some singletrack – some of which was very fast – and there were also sections consisting of large sandstone slabs that called for some good trials techniques if you were to stay on the pedals.

Despite the relative ease of navigation, many riders were foxed by the infamous Fontainebleau “crossroads”, which regularly presented between six and ten choices of direction – selecting the right way was no mean feat at 25mph.

What really impressed though, were the smiles and waves from local walkers and strolling families who obviously found it perfectly normal to have bikers passing them at speed.

Some 15 British bike-orienteers travelled over to the event: a Championship squad of six men and four women, plus a couple of Masters (40+), two Seniors and a Junior, who were competing in the supporting races. The supporting races ran the following day, but also used the WOC courses, so it was possible to compare split times.

John Houlihan bounced home in ninth position out of 120 riders in the Sprint, and took 11th spot in the Classic, beating some well-fancied opposition in the process.

Junior Chris Browell made the podium in the supporting races with a very creditable overall sixth position for the three race series.

Gary Tompsett, who missed the first few days due to visa (too much Duty Free? –ed) problems, outperformed some very fit guys to take third place in the third Senior race.

Results

Women’s Classic:
Paivi Tommola (Finland)

Men’s Classic:
Jussi Makila (Finland)

Women’s Sprint:
Laure Coupat (France)

Men’s Sprint:
Mika Tervala (Finland)

Women’s Relay:
Finland

Men’s Relay:
France