The difference in orienteering terrains is as big as the geographical distance

I'm talking about Brazil and France. As you all know these countries are far away from each other and differ a lot in their orienteering terrain. OK, get it step by step:

16. - 26. July: Rio and it's surroundings were the arena of the 5th Military World Games. Around 7.000 athletes from 120 different countries competed in 26 sports. With the slogan "Friendship through sport" the games have also been called "The Peace Games". All athletes lived in three different "villages", like the ones at the Olympic Games. We orienteerers had our two individual races a bit outside of Rio. It was only ~ 80k in distance, but it took us around 3 hours by bus.

First race - first upset! Kerschi won the silver medal in middle distance!! Damn, that's awesome, first orienteering medal in men's category ever for Austrian Army! I had a terrible race and finished far behing on 56th place.

Next day should be even more fantastic. In longdistance there was only one God today: Gernot Kerschbaumer! My crazy teammate did an amazing race and claimed the top step of the podium. Due to an outstanding performance he really deserved the gold medal. For me this race was better with 29th position.

In the team competition we missed the third spot by pathetic 24 seconds... Maybe it's Kerschi's fault making a 2min-mistake in the last loop ;) Anyway, 4th place is the best one we had in recent years and shows a good and increasing team performance.

Well, last part is the relay. I was running first leg in second team. I did my best run in this week and changed over to Markus in 5th spot. Unfortunately, he and also first-team-runner Wolfi did a lot of mistakes and lost valuable seconds.
Place 7 for Team 1 and place 13 for Team 2. Still quite ok.

Now some scene change: Bienvenue en France! Last week we our last training camp with the world champs team. It was used to get fine tuning and a last positive impression for WOC. The trainings were held a bit flexible, so everybody could focus and prepare for the relevant distances. This included amongst others different map scales, a sprint for the sprinters and the possibility for additional trainings.
Most of the trainings felt good, although I have problems here and there - and sometimes those "problems" turned out to be quite big.
Nevertheless I enjoyed our trainingdays in the hard french forests and I'm looking forward to the World Championships!! :)