Niggli-Luder and Allston Are the ONES

Two women have dominated the “Best of Orienteering 2006” Poll staged by the two major sources for international orienteering news – the website World of O and the magazine Orienteering Today. Simone Niggli-Luder from Switzerland and the Australian Hanny Allston completely dominated in the Poll in which voted over 1500 readers of the World of O website and the Orienteering Today magazine. Both Niggli and Allston are gold medalists from the last year’s World Championships in Denmark.

 

“Achievement of the Year 2006” for Niggli

With the gold medals in Long and Middle distances in Denmark in 2006, the Swiss runner Simone Niggli-Luder completed a collection of incredible 12 gold medals from World Championships in Orienteering between 2001 and 2006. This fantastic achievement was recognized as the “Orienteering achievement of the year 2006″.

 

When Orienteering Today asked Niggli in an interview about which of the 12 medals she treasures most, the 29-year-old Swiss replied: “I think the four gold medals I won in Switzerland were very special, but also the last gold is always special. For me this is the gold I won in Denmark in Middle distance. It was a very good race for me and again I won after tough fight against Marianne, and again this was followed by this huge crowd of people, which made the atmosphere even more special.”

 

It was a close call in the “Achievement” category though – with Australian junior Hanny Allston being only 25 votes behind Niggli-Luder. Allston was actually the only one managing to beat Niggli-Luder in an individual World Championships distance this year – and nearly managed to do the same in the poll for the achievement of the year 2006.

 

Allston is the “Junior of the Year 2006”

Allston was the only orienteer nominated in both the categories of the poll – “The Achievement of the Year” as well as “Junior of the Year”. And finishing in second place behind Niggli in the former, there was no doubt about her clear victory among the juniors. At the Junior World Championships in Lithuania Allston first collected silver in Sprint and then, one day later, she clearly dominated the Long distance, which made her the first non-European Junior World Champion in the history of Orienteering.

 

Golden Jersey Awarded

Both Allston and Niggli-Luder will be awarded with a special “Golden” jersey from the production of Vavrys company (www.vavrys.cz) based in the Czech Republic, who have become the main sponsor of the Poll.

 

 

Best of Orienteering 2006 – Top 6 results:

 

Achievement of the year 2006                                       Junior of the year 2006

1          Simone Niggli (434 votes)                                   Hanny Allston (727 votes)

2          Hanny Allston (409 votes)                                   Tatiana Kozlova (172 votes)

3          Jani Lakanen (185 votes)                                     Søren Bobach (112 votes)

4          Thierry Gueorgiou (153 votes)                              Olav Lundanes (82 votes)

5          Holger Hott Johansen (95 votes)                         Signe Klinting (66 votes)

6          Valentin Novikov (86 votes)                                 Ingunn Hultgreen Weltzien (61 votes)

 

 

For more information contact Jan Kocbach at jan@kocbach.net or Jan Skřička at jan@sportoftoday.com