Sardinia becomes the world crossroads of orienteering with the Sardinia 5+5, the event that for two weeks brings the best specialists of the sport into the island’s forests and villages, together with a line-up of legends who have written its history. An edition that unites today’s rising stars with timeless champions, offering a technical and competitive level without precedent.
Leading the athletes in action is the Swedish national team, long among the strongest in the world, featuring Karolin Ohlsson, already World Champion in the relay (2019) and mixed relay (2018), silver medalist in the 2024 World KO-sprint and multiple European medalist; August Mollen, who burst onto the scene with silver at the 2022 World KO-sprint and was consecrated with gold at the 2025 European Championships in the same discipline, alongside a recent World Cup victory; Oskar Andrén, a high-caliber sprinter steadily climbing the World Cup rankings; and Vilma von Krusenstjerna, a promising athlete of the women’s national team, fifth at the 2021 European KO-sprint and a multiple World and Junior finalist. Joining this quartet is another Swedish star, Max Peter Bejmer, World Champion in the 2022 mixed relay in Vejle and European silver medalist in the same year, also boasting individual Top 10 results (5th in the 2021 World Sprint, 8th in the 2025 World Middle).
The event would not be complete without Swiss superstar Daniel Hubmann, a living legend of orienteering. Hubmann’s record includes 9 World Championship gold medals, plus 12 silvers and 9 bronzes (a total of 30 WOC medals), along with 5 European titles. In the World Cup, he has won the overall classification six times, with an astonishing 33 victories in individual races, 30 second places and 15 third places between 2004 and 2024. Hubmann is universally considered as one of the most complete orienteers of all time, capable of excelling across all disciplines and terrains.
Alongside today’s stars, the Sardinia 5+5 also welcomes athletes who have marked entire eras of the sport. Among them: Holger Hott (Norway), World Champion in the relay (2005) and middle distance (2006), and winner of the 2004 overall World Cup; Vroni König-Salmi (Switzerland), an athlete who shaped at least two decades of orienteering, a sprint pioneer and triple World Champion, collecting World and European podiums from the late 1990s through the first decade of the new century; Janne Salmi (Finland), twice World Champion and four-time silver medalist, a longtime pillar of the Finnish national team; Carl Henrik Bjørseth (Norway), double World silver medalist (1999, 2001); Tomáš Dlabaja (Czech Republic), World Champion in the relay (2012), a talented sprinter and key figure of the 2007–2008 national team; Käthi Widler and Urs Widler (formerly Urs Flühmann before marrying his national teammate), who brought Swiss colors to the top, with achievements spanning from Junior World titles to Urs’s two relay World Championship golds in the 1990s; Angela Wild (Switzerland), European relay bronze medalist in 2005 and a consistent World Cup finalist in the mid-2010s; Hanne Birke (Denmark), World relay bronze medalist in 1983 and a pioneer of women’s orienteering in Denmark; and Sandy Hott (Canada), 9th place in the World Middle 2005.
With such a line-up, the Sardinia 5+5 is not just a competition: it is a meeting of generations, styles and cultures of orienteering. With dozens of World and European medals on the start line, the island has become the very center of the orienteering universe—so much so that, as the organizers like to joke, Sardinia might risk sinking under the weight of all the precious metal gathered by its illustrious guests.