TrailO European season under way with sprint competition in Slovakia

TrailO European season under way with sprint competition in Slovakia

Norwegian athlete Anders Haugskott, world-ranked number 5, took victory in both of the first two European Cup in TrailO (ECTO) events of the season, a PreO Sprint and a TempO, held last weekend in Slovakia. But it was close – he won the TempO by just 4 seconds.

In the overall results, it was tight at the top after two PreO Sprints (the first not counting for ECTO) and the TempO, with Haugskott scoring 299.25, 1.18 points ahead of IOF World Ranking leader Krystian Petersburski, Poland. Third was the young Czech athlete Ondřej Macek, who finished a further 2.33 points down, and last year’s ECTO overall winner Pinja Mäkinen, Finland was fourth.

Overall top three in Slovakia       Photo: Dusan Furucz

The climax of the 2026 TrailO season will be the European Championships, to be held in Szczecin, Poland in mid-summer. This year for the first time there is a separate Junior class in championships and international competitions, in addition to the Open and Physically Challenged classes. Juniors must be 20 or under at the end of the calendar year. This new class is a fine incentive to build up the numbers of younger competitors, a trend already apparent over recent years.

In Slovakia the leading Junior was Caroline Mullis, Czechia who is 17 this year; she finished in a very impressive 5^th place overall in an elite field of 60. Albert Forst, Czechia and Paul Michel, Germany also achieved very good results. Leading P-class athlete was the very experienced Jana Kostová, also from Czechia.

The number of World Ranking Events in TrailO is growing each year. The list incorporates the ECTO competitions, which this year will be held in Spain, Italy, Norway, Finland and Poland in addition to Slovakia. The long-standing PreO and TempO formats are now joined by the increasingly popular PreO Sprint format; here, competitors have to solve 25 tasks where for each task there is just one flag, correctly placed in the terrain (answer A) or not (Z) in relation to the centre of the circle on the map. A typical course has a route length of only 150 metres, with a maximum allowed time of 30 minutes. The winner is the athlete with the highest correct score in the shortest time.

The two PreO Sprint races here were the first ever held as World Ranking Events.

An exciting season is in prospect, and it is being planned that the climax of the European Championships TempO and Relay competitions will be streamed on IOF LIVE – a first for TrailO.

Leading scorers overall, Slovakia TrailO weekend

1. Anders Haugskott NOR
2. Krystian Petersburski POL
3. Ondřej Macek CZE
4. Pinja Mäkinen FIN
5. Caroline Mullis (Junior) CZE
6. Pavel Ptáček CZE