Next summer, the Jukola relay in Mikkeli will bring orienteers from all over the world to Mikkeli at an accelerating pace. The most recent visitor in early August was the Catalan team from Spain, who came to get a feel for the South Savoie terrain not only for Jukola, but also for the World Championships in Kuopio next summer.
– We have invested particularly in the provision of training maps, which is reflected in an increase in the number of orienteering tourists in the Mikkeli region. There will be many international visitors, of which this team from Catalonia is a good example. Next we will be visited by a group of twenty young orienteers from France, says Mika Ahola from the Mikkeli-Jukola organisation.
– The record for the sale of training maps is reportedly from the 2018 Lahti-Hollola Jukola, when around 9 000 maps were sold. Our goal is to sell more than 10 000 maps, which, even conservatively calculated, will bring in around EUR 1 million in tourism revenue for the Mikkeli region.
A night walk and the smell of the forest brought back Jukola vibes
The Catalan team is coached by Pau Llorens Caellas, who has spent the last few years with Navi in the major orienteering events at Jukola and Tiomila. Caellas was instrumental in the team’s choice of Mikkeli as their campsite.
-“We have our own team in Catalonia and we coach our athletes towards international excellence. It is important to find the best possible training conditions that serve not only the development as an orienteer, but also the preparation for the upcoming competitions. Next year’s Jukola in Mikkeli and the World Championships in Kuopio are important goals for us. Finland is also one of the mother countries of orienteering, where the culture and level of knowledge of the sport is high. We always learn a lot of new things when we visit Finland,” said Caellas, explaining his choice of campsite.
Caellas was happy with the camp and the team managed to complete the training sessions as planned.
– We got some hard power training and did a couple of night orienteering sessions, which gave us a Jukola feel. When orienteering in Finland, we always have special feelings because it brings back the smell of the Finnish forest and the Jukola experience. Definitely the best training camp in recent years,” Caellas praised.
We knew in advance that the terrain here would be physically and skill-wise demanding. In Central Europe we are used to the altitude differences, but there is not so much undergrowth, such as blueberry bushes, which makes the terrain difficult to run on. However, the terrain has surprised us positively by not having many loose stones to make running difficult. The quality of the maps has been excellent and this has crowned a successful training camp.
Our aim is to develop the orienteers and we are trying to get as many of our team as possible into the Spanish national team,” concludes Caellas.