I first met Ralph at JWOC in Denmark in 2010 thanks to close relationships between the New Zealand and Great Britain orienteering teams. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing him progress, along with the wider Great British squad, to challenge the top nations at WOC and run for top clubs at races like Jukola and 10Mila (Tiomila). Ralph has spent much of his elite career living in Sweden and Norway and loves getting into the technical side of this complex sport.
In this podcast Ralph shares his journey towards mastering orienteering, including:
- His background in England
- How he handled EYOC and JWOC
- Various breakthroughs in his approach to orienteering
- What to do (and NOT to do) on first leg at Jukola
In the aforementioned Jukola of 2014, this video captures Ralph putting the hammer down in the early stages of this epic race. You can read about my experience at Jukola a few years later here.
I really enjoyed this chat and I think it will pave the way for more intense and highly specific podcasts on orienteering in the future. Funnily, we went deep on navigation theory for an hour and a half after we stopped recording. It would have been good to capture that as a concept piece.
