The final race of the 2026 Orienteering World Cup season did not matter for the overall title. Simona Aebersold had already secured it.
One leg in the Petroškos forest
The season closed in the green, detailed terrain of Petroškos. Course planner Eugenijus Mikšys had warned the forest would punish anyone who lost focus. In the Middle distance race, Aebersold was fastest to the first control and led through controls 2, 3 and 5, swapping the lead only briefly with Sweden's Tove Alexandersson.
One leg undid both of them. Approaching the sixth control, Aebersold lost 1 minute 54 seconds to the best split and dropped to 19th place. Alexandersson fared worse, bleeding over four and a half minutes and falling from fifth to 50th. Hanna Lundberg won the race; Aebersold recovered to finish sixth.
Three titles built on consistency
The misstep was a rare glitch in a season defined by relentless reliability. Across the four-round World Cup, Aebersold recorded three wins, three second places and one third before that single sixth-place finish. Her final tally of 716 points left Norway's Pia Young Vik runner-up for the second straight year, while Sweden's Sanna Fast finished third, a further 119 points adrift.
"That tells me I can run consistently over several years, that the training is good," Aebersold told Swiss Orienteering.
The result extends a championship year that already included double gold at July's World Championships in Genova, where she won the individual sprint and anchored Switzerland to a sprint relay title defence. The overall crown had been decided mathematically two days earlier, after the Long distance race. By the time she lined up for the Middle, Aebersold was already champion for the third year running.
