...This example seems to suggest that the risk taker may lose something in the short term, but in the long term the risk taker is the winner. Is there a way to work this out better?
It spurs a few thoughts:
1. Millinger might have taken some risks later in the course, where he probably lost the race against Troeng. Check out his track around controls 12 and 14:
2. As a strategy, I think risk taking can be, well, risky. I think the "full speed, no mistakes" way of thinking is probably more likely to work more often.
3. The sort of information you can get from GPS tracks gives us a tool to start to work out a lot of things we've never really been able to study before. By looking at different speeds at different parts of a leg - not just split times - we can figure out a lot about how someone is orienteering. With a bit of work, we should be able to discern different styles of orienteering.
Based on your point #1; if you're a risk taker you need to know when and how to take the risk. This is a skill, like reading a map or picking a route. Millinger doesn't know so he lost and Troeng knows how and when to take a risk.
