After the top teams had finished their course, the course setters for Jukola 2021, Kimmo Määttä and Jyrki Itkonen, were really happy with the way the competition progressed. The difference between their estimation and the winning time of the relay was finally 19 seconds.
Corona virus pandemic caused problems even for the course setters, when the courses planned to be run with midnight sun were finally run during the darkest time of the year. When about 50 teams had finished, this change didn’t seem to have caused any particular problems for the top teams. Darkness favored strong night orienteers. It’s only the green areas that brought up some challenges.
– The relay turned out to be really interesting, but that was to be expected. Beforehand, you could think that orienteering here was pretty easy, but there seemed to be some problems for many teams. If you are used to always having something to read on the map, the green areas may prove to be somewhat challenging. The relay was won by the team that orienteered the best, Kimmo Määttä concluded.
– There were no big surprises among the top teams. They have national team runners to finish the relay, and they ended up at the top
According to Jyrki Itkonen, the terrain around Mäntyvaara and Vennivaara has been an excellent setting for the relay.
– This is a versatile and ever-changing terrain, excellent for an orienteering relay like Jukola. It was somewhat surprising that there were big mistakes made by some runners.