Beautiful orienteering in Albania

Beautiful orienteering in Albania

For the second year in a row, Austrian orienteer Inge Bosnia organised a popular three day international orienteering competition in Albania, with the assistance of Arlind Subashi. Pierre Almén was one of the competitors, and he has provided us with a report from the event. Great orienteering, good food and beautiful scenery made for very happy competitors!

The last day of this 3 day event was a sprint in the city of Tirana. It took place in the University area with many narrow, small and sometimes dead-end alleys combined with a couple of small parks at the end of the race. The event manager Inge Bosina with her assistant Arlind Subashi and four of the participants are here waiting for the start.

To get to the first stage of this 3 day event, we took a 15 minutes scenic tour with a cable car up to the Dajti mountain. From there we had a fantastic view over Tirana and surroundings. This first stage was a middle distance with interesting and fast-run terrain including some old military installations. The event center was in the hotel and pictured above is Lennart Karlsson from Sweden getting his result after this stage. He is happy because he won the M55 class this day! Pictured below: One legend within Orienteering, Peo Bengtsson from Sweden, is discussing his route choices for this first stage with the event manager Arlind. Peo drove down from Dubrovnik the same day to attend this special Orienteering event.

A bus picked us up at the event hotel in Tirana and took us to the second stage, a bit more than one hours drive to Kepi Rodonit / Cap Rodon at the coast. This panhandle was a very beautiful part of Albania. This was the long distance stage with some green areas and some very scenic areas with steeps towards the Adriatic Sea. There were some very breathtaking views and you had to be careful and concentrate on the running. On top of that, the finish was at the beach and we had the opportunity to jump into the sea after the race to cool us down this beautiful sunny day. Before we went back, we had a very well tasting lunch at a local and genuine restaurant.

Organizer Inge checks the goal punch of Silke Hochwieser.

Markus Moerth and Gert Binder are in a deep discussion with Silke Hochwieser and organiser Inge Bosina about their route choices during the day’s race.