Gazette

	Lithuania's fourth leg runner sets off.

Another electronic punching tale of woe to gladden the hearts of the sceptics. EMIT was the preferred system at the World Championships, partly because of the backup system; as the electronic card is placed in contact with the plate at the control, a pin makes a mark on a piece of card inserted into the back at one of several hundred positions. So to the relays, where the Lithuanian women's team were doing pretty well, up with the main pack led by Finland in the third leg. As Simon Errington pointed out in the last Pacemaker, there were plenty of TV controls. So it was that Jolanta Razaitiene came out of one of the TV controls with two other runners, sprinted down the track on the short leg to the next control on the edge of a field and, in full view of the crowd watching on TV, failed to go anywhere near the control. On finishing she was duly disqualified, as her electronic card showed that she had missed No 159. But a routine check of the back-up paper card revealed a pin mark that indicated she HAD visited the control, despite the evidence of everyone's eyes. The matter was eventually resolved when it was disclosed that another control on her course had the pin in exactly the same position-not, perhaps the sort of thing one expects to slip through the net at a World Championships. Lithuania's loss was Britain's gain, as the women's team found themselves promoted to fifth place.

Following an accident in which a horse sank into a marsh in an area used for orienteering near Rude Skov in Denmark, a local orienteer tried to determine which of the marshes on the area was the culprit. On the map, the marsh is small, but clearly marked as uncrossable, with a pond in one corner. In the forest, however, the surface is covered with grass and leaves and does not look at all threatening - it actually looks alarmingly like many of the marshes in Epping! The article concludes on an optimistic note, pointing out that the horse-rider in this case escaped unscathed and that any orienteer who fell into this marsh would be able to crawl out, muddy but alive.

Kevin Harding, with brother Quentin won the Veteran's class on the Elite course at the Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon earlier this year. Perhaps the most notable feature of the event, apart from Kevin's victory, was the specially chartered steam train used to convey competitors on the longer courses to the start on the first day.

Not keen, perhaps, to endure six days of M21E in Scotland, Duncan Archer dropped to M21L - still a tougher proposition than most of us would care for - won four of the events and topped the class overall. Of course a less charitable interpretation of these facts is that Duncan fancied a bit of pot-hunting.