This year the Borovets resort hosted the national championships in night orienteering and ultralong distance. SKO Trapezitsa-1954 athletes won a total of 8 medals at these championships, and on the rest day part of the team also took part in the Malyovitsa Cup.
NC Night
For the 4th year in a row, our athletes come home with 5 medals, relying on their skills and a head torch to find their way through unfamiliar terrain at night.
🥇M16 Rosen Hristov won his second title of the season, having become national champion in the sprint distance earlier in the year.
🥈M21E Apostol Atanasov once again stepped onto the podium at the night championship, finishing just 19 seconds behind the winner.
🥉W16 Vihra Ruseva finished third and won her 5th national championship medal of the year.
🥉W18 Yoana Atanasova also took third place, just 57 seconds behind silver, after making a mistake at the penultimate control.
🥉W20 Yana Petrova proved once again that she is among the best athletes in the dark, and for the 4th year in a row she made it onto the podium at a night championship.
Other club athletes also performed strongly – Marta Ruseva started her W18 course superbly and had the fastest time up to halfway, but 2 big mistakes left her in 4th place, just 27 seconds off the medals. In M20, Velislav Dolchinkov made a huge mistake at the very start of the course, but after some strong running he finished with the 4th-best time in his class, just over 2 minutes from the podium. Elitsa Atanasova finished 5th in the women's elite class, a little over 2 minutes from the podium. In M16, Georgi Mitsov was in the top 3 for a long time, but mistakes in the final part of the course took him out of the fight for medals and he eventually finished 5th.
Thanks to the strong performances of our athletes, the club took 3rd place in the overall standings for the Echo newspaper cup.
NC Ultralong
Saturday was time for the Malyovitsa Cup – a good opportunity to readjust from night to daytime orienteering, which part of the team made the most of. Among the club's best performers were 🥈Georgi Mitsov, who took second place in M16, while Dimitar Kantardzhiev made a mistake early on the course that cost him a place on the podium.
The final race of the week was the NC Ultralong, held on Sunday morning, with course lengths starting from 7.1 km for W18.
🥇W18 Marta Ruseva was the fastest, toughest and sharpest on the day and fully deserved her first title of the year.
🥈M21E Apostol Atanasov stepped onto the podium for the third time this season despite losing a lot of time. Since the end of the sprint season, he has yet to find the greater precision that forest races demand.
🥉W20 Yana Petrova could not repeat her strong run from the night race, but she still made it onto the podium once again, taking third place again.
The most impressive performance came from Vihra Ruseva, who after 140 minutes in the forest finished fourth in W18 – just 38 seconds off a medal. Velislav Dolchinkov once again ran steadily, but a few bigger mistakes kept him out of the medal fight and he eventually finished 5th, 4 minutes behind the podium.
Team relay in Romania
Just a few days after the start of the school year (19–22.09), our team travelled to Romania with 15 members to take part in a 7-leg relay. The event programme also included two World Ranking races.
The first day of the programme featured a sprint, where in the men's elite class 🥇M21E Apostol Atanasov won his second sprint in a row, having also been the fastest in the race held during the South-East European Championships in Panagyurishte at the start of the month. In the women's race, 🥈Elitsa Atanasova was second in her class but third in the World Ranking standings, which also included the athletes in the under-18 classes. In the combined boys' under-18 class, 🥉Rosen Hristov took third place. Sofiya Petrova also ran a strong sprint, finishing 4th in W18 just 8 seconds behind third place.
Saturday brought the most exciting race – the 7-leg relay. Our athletes were split into 2 teams – yellow and purple. Elitsa Atanasova and Kristiyan Petkov gave the purple team the lead over Tsveta Ilieva and Martin Yordanov, but then came the yellow team's response – Zhoana Stoyanova posted the second-fastest time on her leg, and Georgi Mitsov then cut the gap further to the purple team, for whom Mariyana Atanasova ran the 3rd leg and Mariya Dikova the 4th. At the end of the 4th leg, the two teams were separated by a tiny margin, running in 4th and 5th place. On the 5th leg Rosen Hristov put the purple team ahead of Yoana Atanasova, but the yellow team turned things around on the 6th and 7th legs, where Aleksandar Atanasov and Anton Hristov were faster than Veselin Iliev and Apostol Atanasov. In the end, the yellow team finished 4th and the purple team 5th, but the yellow team were disqualified after it turned out they had missed a control.
The middle distance was held on the final day of the programme. In it, 🥇Rosen Hristov posted the second-fastest time in M16 and so took first place in the overall standings. 🥈Georgi Mitsov finished second in the same class after also running well on Sunday. 🥇W18 Yoana Atanasova and 🥇W21E Elitsa Atanasova were our other athletes who won their classes.🥈M21E Apostol Atanasov finished second overall after an unsuccessful attempt to push through tall brambles on his route choice to the penultimate and last controls. 🥈W16 Mariya Dikova also took second place in W16, while Zhoana Stoyanova finished just 39 seconds off the podium.
Move and Win
While the older members of the team were running the courses at Borovets and Malyovitsa, our younger athletes and their parents took part in the Trapezitsa-1902 Tourist Society's campaign Move and Win. Our members organised the relay stage that included orienteering.
