Thierry Gueorgiou, the defending World Cup champion and the current leader of the men's ranking list, snatched the World Cup Semifinal victory at Lapua. The three-time middle distance champion left behind Sweden's Emil Wingstedt by less than 2 seconds and Finland's Mats Haldin by 16. Other successful Finns included Mårten Boström (5th), Tero Föhr (6th) and Jarkko Huovila (7th).

"I made a mistake at the last control point as I strayed to the women's control. Otherwise it would have been a matter of seconds", says the new sprint distance Finnish Champion Haldin.

Winner Thierry Gueorgiou complemented both the Simpsiö terrain as well as Course Planner Juha Nivukoski's courses.

"I had a reserved some of my energy for the weekend's Jukola Relay, and therefore I'm very pleased to have have been able to stretch to victory."

The Frenchman is to represent Kalevan Rasti from Joensuu in the weekend's night-time run. The team is defending its victorys from 2004 and 2005. 

Top 10 of the men's final:
1) Thierry Gueorgiou FRA 14:20.9
2) Mats Haldin FIN 14:36.8
3) Emil Wingstedt SWE 14:38.6
4) François Gonon FRA 14:50.1
5) Mårten Boström FIN 14:59.1
6) Tero Föhr FIN 15:08.2
7) Jarkko Huovila FIN 15:11.9
8) Anders Nordberg NOR 15:13.7
9) Damien Renard FRA 15:14.3
10) Valentin Novikov RUS 15:16.1

All teh results: http://results.jukola2007.net/

The next orienteering World Cup Semifinal run in Finland will take place in Salo in 2009.