The Australian Orienteer – September 2019

SEPTEMB ER 2 0 1 9

Aston Key JWOC Sprint Champion

RRP $8.50 inc GST

2019

Round 1

2

3

4

5

6

Event

Date

Location

1. Relay

30 March

Hill End, NSW

2. Long Distance

31 March

Hill End, NSW

3. Sprint Relay

19 April

Perth, WA

4. Sprint

20 April

Perth, WA

5. Long Distance

21 April

Beverley, WA

6. Middle Distance

22 April

Beverley, WA

7. Sprint

26 April

Narrogin, WA

8. Middle Distance

27 April

Narrogin, WA

9. Middle Distance

18 May

Cowra, NSW

10. Ultra Long Distance

19 May

Cowra, NSW

11. Sprint

28 September

Wagga, NSW

12. Long Distance

29 September

Cootamundra, NSW

13. Relay

30 September

Cootamundra, NSW

14. Long Distance

5 October

Wangaratta, VIC

15. Middle Distance

6 October

Beechworth, VIC

NOL events 1 - 6 will be selection trials for the 2019 JWOC team.

NOL events 1, 2, 5, 6, 8 - 10 will be selection trials for the 2019 WOC team, with particular focus on events 9 & 10.

All race details can be found at www.orienteering.asn.au

ORIENTEERING AUSTRALIA

The President’s Page BLAIR TREWIN

F

or most of us, Orienteering is a participation sport, not a spectator one.

That doesn’t stop us from getting a thrill when something big happens far away, and it doesn’t get much bigger than an Australian winning an international gold medal. I’m sure many of you were getting more and more excited on the day of the Junior World Championships Sprint as first Aston Key posted a time for the clubhouse lead, then potential challenge after potential challenge fell away as they got further into the course.

(I was watching much of it on my phone through dinner, albeit in company who were also interested).

Aston’s result – which was backed up by two other podium results in the forest races – was the product of a lot of talent and a lot of hard work, and we look forward to seeing his potential blossom at senior level into the future. By the time you read this, there will have been a couple more rounds of dot watching with the MTBO World Championships in Denmark and then the World Championships in Norway. Whilst I don’t expect these will have brought any more medals (although I’d be delighted to be proved wrong), everyone there has put years of work into being the best that they can be and we wish them all the best.

Some of the talk around the time of the Junior World Championships was that many were almost as excited about Grace Molloy winning medals for Great Britain as they were about our own results. Grace is the most recent of several international orienteers to have a productive summer coaching here and then go on to bigger and better things after going home. The string of overseas coaching scholars that many States have brought out in recent years has been a success story, and feeds into our

desire to strengthen Orienteering coaching in Australia at both high performance and (especially) grassroots levels. Ultimately, we want every orienteer to have the chance to improve themselves as much as they want to, whether that’s making a mark on the international field or getting into the top half of their age group at an Easter Carnival.

This month also marks a historically significant point in Orienteering in Australia. Whilst you can argue as to whether it was actually the first event, the event which took place in Victoria in late August 1969 was definitely a significant landmark in the beginnings of Orienteering in Australia. It’s now 50 years since that day. Some parts of the sport would still be recognisable, others would not (I doubt that watching a World Championship on the other side of the world on one’s phone would have featured in many 1969 imaginations), but we’ve come a long way in those 50 years. The sport in Australia owes a lot to those who were influential in getting things started, and it is pleasing that many of the key players are still around.

to see the debut of the Hastings club in Port Macquarie in July. It must be one of the most successful debuts yet for a local club; about 200 people turned up for the first event. We’ve already seen a successful club established in Coffs Harbour in recent years and I look forward to this good start being converted into an ongoing future. Whilst they aren’t always that visible to the broader Orienteering community, there are numerous clubs which are working hard to keep Orienteering going in a range of regional centres (I had the pleasure of experiencing the local terrain of another of them, Lincoln Orienteers, over the June long weekend), and they are an important part of the lifeblood of our sport.

Competition between Australia and New Zealand has been part of the local Orienteering scene for nearly all of those 50 years. These days that takes the form of the Oceania Championships. The Regional Championships have been becoming stronger and we look forward to this year’s edition, now only a few weeks away as I write this, being the best yet. There’s definitely an impressive array of terrain on offer, including some outstanding areas which have seen little or no use in the last 20 years.

It’s always exciting to see Orienteering get a start in a new centre, so it was very pleasing SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 3

Winning PartnershiP

The Australian Sports Commission proudly supports Orienteering Australia The Australian Sports Commission is the Australian Government agency that develops, supports and invests in sport at all levels in Australia.

Orienteering Australia has worked closely with the Australian Sports Commission to develop orienteering from community participation to high-level performance.

AUSTRALIAN SPORTS COMMISSION 4 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

Orienteering Australia is one of many national sporting organisations that has formed a winning partnership with the Australian Sports Commission to develop its sport in Australia.

www.ausport.gov.au

w w w. o r i e n t e e r i n g . a s n . a u Orienteering Australia PO Box 3379, North Strathfield, NSW 2137 eo@orienteering.asn.au President Blair Trewin president@orienteering.asn.au Director High Performance Stephen Craig stephen@orienteering.asn.au Director Finance Bruce Bowen finance@orienteering.asn.au Director Technical Jenny Casanova technical@orienteering.asn.au Director Media & Communications vacant

Director International (IOF Council) Mike Dowling international@orienteering.asn.au Director Bill Jones directorbill@orienteering.asn.au Director Prue Dobbin secretary@orienteering.asn.au Executive Officer Paul Prudhoe eo@orienteering.asn.au National MTBO Coordinator Kay Haarsma mtbo@orienteering.asn.au OA Head Coach Jim Russell headcoach@orienteering.asn.au High Performance Administrator Ian Prosser hpadmin@orienteering.asn.au Manager Coach Development vacant National Sporting Schools Coordinator Jim Mackay sportingschools@orienteering.asn.au Coach & Controller Accreditation Jim Mackay accreditation@orienteering.asn.au Badge Applications John Oliver 68 Amaroo Street, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2650

0418 287 694 0413 849 309 02 6288 8501 0427 605 167

0418 287 694 08 8337 0522 0411 125 178 0439 668 151 0407 467 345 0407 467 345

STATE ASSOCIATIONS Orienteering Queensland: PO Box 114 Spring Hill QLD 4004. Secretary: David Firman secretary@oq.asn.au Orienteering NSW: PO Box 3379 North Strathfield NSW 2137. Admin Officer: John Murray, Ph. (02) 8736 1252 admin@onsw.asn.au Orienteering ACT: PO Box 402 Jamison Centre ACT 2614. Secretary: Phil Walker, Ph. (02) 6162 3422 office@act.orienteering.asn.au Orienteering Victoria: PO Box 1010 Templestowe VIC 3106. Secretary: Chelsea Mullavey, secretary@vicorienteering.asn.au Orienteering SA: 1 Windsor Rd, Glenside SA 5065. Sec: Erica Diment 0408 852 313 secretary@sa.orienteering.asn.au Orienteering Western Australia: PO Box 234 Subiaco WA 6094. Secretary: Eleanor Sansom, oawa.secretary@gmail.com Orienteering Tasmania: Secretary: Bernard Walker secretary@tasorienteering.asn.au Top End Orienteers (Northern Territory): PO Box 39152 Winnellie NT 0821. Secretary: Susanne Casanova topendorienteersNT@gmail.com

NEXT ISSUE DEADLINE

Oct 11. Time-sensitive: Oct 18

ISSN 0818-6510 Issue 3/19 (no. 195) SEPTEMBER 2019

CONTENTS NOL PROGRAM......................................... 2

The national magazine of Orienteering Australia Inc. ABN 77 406 995 497 Published four times a year: First day of March, June, September, December. Print Post Approved PP 236080/00011, (100023602 for NSW).

T H E P R E S I D E N T ’ S P A G E.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Editor: Michael Hubbert, P.O. Box 165, Warrandyte, Victoria 3113 mikehubbert@ozemail.com.au Phone (03) 9844 4878 Magazine Design & Assembly: Peter Cusworth, Ph. 0409 797 023 pcusworth53@gmail.com Magazine Treasurer: Bruce Bowen Printer: Ferntree Print, 1154 Burwood Hwy Upper Ferntree Gully.

Contribution deadline: October 11; Time-sensitive – October 18.

Deadline dates for contributions are the latest we can accept copy.

Publication is normally planned for the 1st of March, June, September & December. Copies are dispatched in bulk to State associations in the week prior to that date.

Regular Contributors: Competition – Blair Trewin; MTBO – Kay Haarsma; Official News – Paul Prudhoe.

Contributions welcome, either directly or via State editorial contacts.

Prior consultation is suggested before preparing major contributions.

Guidelines available from the editor or from state contacts.

State Editorial Contacts QLD: Liz Bourne – batmaps.liz@gmail.com NSW: Ian Jessup – marketing@onsw.asn.au ACT: John Scown – scown@light.net.au SA: Erica Diment – ericadiment@adam.com.au – tel: 0408 852 313 VIC, WA and TAS – vacant Subscriptions: State Association members via State Associations. Contact relevant Association Secretary for details. Other subscribers: Write to The Australian Orienteer, PO‑Box 165, Warrandyte, Vic. 3113. Within Australia: $40 pa. Overseas: Asia/Pacific (inc. NZ) $A49, Rest of World $A58 pa.

Delivery is airmail, there is no seamail option. Please send payment in Australian dollars by bank draft or international postal order, or pay direct

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Subscription renewals (direct subscriptions only). The number in the top right-hand corner of the address label indicates the final issue in your current subscription.

Opinions expressed in The Australian Orienteer are not necessarily those of Orienteering Australia.

W M O C , L AT V I A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2

J W O C , D E N M A R K .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 E A S T E R 2 0 2 0 .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 8 50 YEARS OF O....................................... 19 T H E F I R S T E V E N T, 1 9 6 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 0 O C E A N I A J U N I O R I N V I TAT I O N A L TO U R . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 AUS SCHOOLS CHAMPIONSHIPS TEAMS........ 24 “J E F F ” C O M I C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2 SPRINT FEVER HITS MELBOURNE................. 33 MONASH SPRINT ORIENTEERING................. 34 W M T B O C , D E N M A R K .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 6 M T B O N E W S .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 0 I M P R O V E Y O U R O R I E N T E E R I N G – PA R T 1 . . . . . . . 4 1 L E T T E R S .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4 TOP EVENTS........................................... 45 S P O T T H E D I F F E R E N C E .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6

Cover photo: Aston Key JWOC Sprint Champion. Photo: Christine Brown.

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 5

Apply for leave.

Book the tickets.

These amazing maps are not to be missed!

Featuring the Australian Sprint, Middle, Long & Relay Championships, Tasmanian Middle Championships, Schools Championships and the Turbo Chook 3 Days Early Bird Entries 1 Feb -30 Apr 2020! Regular Entries close 22 Aug 2020

www.aoc2020.tasorienteering.asn.au

Sat 26 Sept – Sun 4 Oct 6 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

JWOC 2019

Aston Key JWOC Sprint Champion Photos: Christine Brown

It was a busy week last July at the JWOC podium presentations in Denmark for Aston Key – Gold, Bronze and a podium 5th.

T

he first Final was the Sprint held at Lyseng, a suburb of Århus. The race was held in a complex area of flats and houses, with some height differences. Aston started in the last third of the field and delivered an exceptional performance, getting through the twisty and technical course with almost no mistakes and leading all the way from the first control to the Finish.

His winning time was 13 seconds ahead of Sweden’s Samuel Pihlstrom – a considerable lead in a race of only 12+ minutes duration. Guilhem Elias from France was 3rd, 14 seconds behind Aston. The analysis and graph below (courtesy of WorldofO) show’s Aston’s consistency.

Aston Key won just three of the 24 legs but made nearly no mistakes – leading all the way from the first control to the Finish – and it SPRINT – M20 was his consistency throughout that won the race. Key lost 1 Aston Key six seconds or less to the leg winner on all legs – that was 2 Samuel Pihlstrom the least of all runners in the race. The fight for victory was 3 Guilhem Elias close; Samuel Pihlstrom (who lost 13secs on leg #6 and 4 Axel Granqvist finished 13secs behind in 2nd) was only one control away 5 Georg Groell from beating Aston Key (Pihlstrom caught up 8sec over the 6 Gustav Runefors last three legs to just sneak into 2nd place).

39 Angus Haines 39 Kurtis Shuker 47 Alastair George 52 Duncan Currie 54 Daniel Monckton 56 Joseph Lynch 80 Dante Afnan 86 Max Griffiths 100 Stephen Harding 113 Noah Poland 116 Will Tidswell

The Key family.

Aston Key tastes GOLD.

AUS 12:20 SWE 12:33 FRA 12:34 SWE 12:39 AUT 12:40 SWE 12:41 AUS 13:31 NZL 13:31 AUS 13:36 AUS 13:40 NZL 13:41 NZL 13:42 AUS 14:08 NZL 14:18 NZL 14:39 AUS 15:04 NZL 15:087

SPRINT – W20 1 Eline Gemperle 2 Tilda Ostberg 3 Grace Molloy 4 Alva Sonesson 5 Isa Envall 6 Tereza Janosikova 57 Ella Cuthbert 61 Tara Melhuish 70 Caitlin Young 77 Mikayla Cooper 78 Kaia Joergensen 79 Briana Steven 83 Joanna George 92 Katie CoryWright 94 Georgia Skelton 95 Caroline Pigerre 111 Marisol Hunter 128 Tegan Knightbridge

SUI SWE GBR SWE SWE CZE AUS AUS AUS AUS NZL NZL AUS NZL NZL AUS NZL NZL

12:18 12:21 12:32 12:36 12:37 12:38 14:13 14:19 14:33 14:44 14:47 14:49 14:52 15:10 15:21 15:23 15:44 17:39

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 7

JWOC 2019

Long Distance Final In the Men’s Long Distance event 2018 JWOC Champion Kasper Fosser of Norway won again by over three minutes with Aston Key coming in 5min 30sec back in 3rd place. Fosser was only headed once (at #7 by compatriot Elias Jonsson).

Aston ran steadily but by #21 was still in 6th place. Late mistakes by three runners ahead of him and a mistake-free finish by Aston brought him up to the Bronze medal position.

Long Distance - Aston Key 3rd.

M20 Sprint

1st Aston Key (Australia)

Sprint - placegetters.

8 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

Long Distance - Aston Key finishes 3rd followed by Angus Haines.

JWOC 2019 LONG DISTANCE – M20 1 Kasper Fosser 2 Elias Jonsson 3 Aston Key 4 Reto Egger 5 Fabian Aebersold 6 Einar Melsom 41 Joseph Lynch 69 Angus Haines 84 Will Tidswell 93 Kurtis Shuker 95 Daniel Monckton 96 Stephen Harding 101 Dante Afnan 108 Noah Poland 118 Max Griffiths 135 Duncan Currie

Alastair George

NOR NOR AUS SUI SUI NOR NZL AUS NZL NZL NZL NZL AUS AUS NZL AUS AUS

1:02:19 1:05:28 1:07:49 1:08:00 1:08:33 1:08:39 1:16:56 1:21:50 1:24:39 1:25:39 1:26:20 1:26:31 1:27:21 1:30:21 1:33:22 1:38:59 MP

LONG DISTANCE – W20 1 Ida Haapala 1 Veronika Kalinina 3 Grace Molloy 4 Anine Lome 5 Eliane Deininger 6 Tereza Janosikova 54 Katie CoryWright 69 Briana Steven 80 Caitlin Young 81 Caroline Pigerre 83 Ella Cuthbert 85 Georgia Skelton 87 Tara Melhuish 92 Joanna George 97 Mikayla Cooper 100 Marisol Hunter 105 Kaia Joergensen 109 Tegan Knightbridge

FIN RUS GBR NOR SUI CZE NZL NZL AUS AUS AUS NZL AUS AUS AUS NZL NZL NZL

53:46 53:46 54:17 55:07 55:19 55:59 1:04:44 1:07:28 1:10:33 1:10:55 1:12:04 1:12:14 1:12:28 1:13:03 1:14:52 1:17:47 1:18:39 1:19:27 Long Distance Aston Key (3rd).

Middle Distance Q Dante Afnan.

Long Distance Caroline Pigerre.

Spotted at 2019 JWOC

T

Relay - Caitlin Young.

Long Distance Ella Cuthbert.

his young orienteer caught the attention of some the Aussie spectators when she was spotted wearing a sweater from WOC 85. Knowing that the wearer would not have been born at that time the question had to be asked, where did you get that sweater from? Emely is the daughter of South Australian orienteer Brett Weihart who was a junior orienteer in 1985. He has kept his sweater safely all these intervening years.

Christine Brown SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 9

JWOC 2019

In the Middle Distance, Aston Key won his heat comfortably. In the Final he was holding 2nd or 3rd place up to #11 but then clearly tired over the last six controls to finish a very creditable 5th and another podium placing.

MIDDLE DISTANCE

MIDDLE DISTANCE Men A 1 Kasper Fosser 2 Guilhem Elias 3 Lukas Liland 4 Erik Herne 5 Aston Key 6 Viktor Svensk 49 Joseph Lynch 57 Will Tidswell

NOR FRA NOR SWE AUS SWE NZL NZL

25:03 26:12 26:37 26:42 26:50 27:18 33:58 36:54

Men B 1 Touko Seppa 16 Dante Afnan 23 Max Griffiths 32 Daniel Monckton

FIN AUS NZL NZL

21:54 25:18 26:05 27:32

Men C 1 Stephen Harding 4 Duncan Currie 18 Noah Poland

NZL AUS AUS

25:42 27:14 31:19

Women A 1 Isa Envall 2 Fiona Bunn 3 Tereza Janosikova 4 Elena Pezzati 5 Veronika Kalinina 6 Agnes Kracht 43 Katie CoryWright 55 Tara Melhuish

SWE GBR CZE SUI RUS DEN NZL AUS

Women B 1 I K Felde Olaussen 18 Mikayla Cooper 21 Briana Steven 38 Caroline Pigerre 42 Marisol Hunter 43 Joanna George 46 Tegan Knightbridge 49 Georgia Skelton 54 Emily Sorensen

NOR 27:52 AUS 31:27 NZL 32:20 AUS 35:13 NZL 37:33 AUS 37:47 NZL 39:45 NZL 41:04 IRL 54:05

Women C 1 Kaia Joergensen

Caitlin Young

NZL AUS

29:59 30:53 31:23 31:36 31:39 32:16 37:38 41:00

31:49 MP

M20 Middle Distance Final

In the Relays, the Australian Men (Angus Haines, Alastair George & Aston Key) finished 13th with New Relay - Alastair George.

Zealand 21st and the Australian Women (Ella Cuthbert, Mikayla Cooper & Tara Melhuish) were 21st.

Other Australians who performed very well during the week were Ella Cuthbert, Tara Melhuish, Caitlin Young, Caroline Pigerre, Mikayla Cooper, Joanna George, Angus Haines, Alastair George, Duncan Currie, Dante Afnan and Noah Poland. Congratulations to all.

RELAY – W20 1 Norway 1 2 Sweden 2 3 France 1 4 Switzerland 1 5 Czech Republic 1 6 Great Britain 1 13 Australia 1 1. Angus Haines 2. Alastair George 3. Aston Key 21 New Zealand 2 1. Kurtis Shuker 2. Max Griffiths 3. Stephen Harding

1:30:52 1:33:01 1:34:15 1:36:09 1:36:27 1:36:51 1:43:49 37:01 34:11 32:37 1:50:26 34:43 35:30 40:13

Relay - Mikayla Cooper.

Relay - Angus Haines.

RELAY – W20 1 Great Britain 1 2 Russian Federation 1 3 Sweden 2 4 Finland 1 5 Czech Republic 1 6 Sweden 1 21 Australia 1 1. Ella Cuthbert 2. Mikayla Cooper 3. Tara Melhuish New Zealand 1 Australia 2

10 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

1:34:35 1:34:53 1:35:28 1:35:29 1:37:50 1:37:53 2:00:39 40:00 45:11 35:28 MP MP

JWOC 2019

The Australian & New Zealand JWOC Teams.

Medals won at International Championship by Australians and New Zealanders:

A

ston’s medal was only the second gold medal Australians have won at JWOC. Hanny Allston’s gold medal in the Long Distance event for women at 2006 JWOC was the first time that a JWOC title had been won by a nonEuropean nation. Since then New Zealanders Matt Ogden (2012) and Tim Robertson (2014 & 2015), and now Aston Key (2019), are the only non-Europeans to win gold medals at the Junior World Championships (see table).

Adrian Jackson at WMTBOC in 2010.

AUSTRALIA

NEW ZEALAND

2006 Long Distance

Hanny Allston

JWOC GOLD

2012 Middle Distance

Matt Ogden

2019 Sprint

Aston Key

JWOC GOLD

2014 Sprint

Tim Robertson

JWOC GOLD

2015 Sprint

Tim Robertson

2006 Sprint

Hanny Allston

JWOC SILVER

2017 Sprint

Tommy Hayes

1999 Long Distance

Troy de Haas

JWOC BRONZE

2013 Sprint

Tim Robertson

2005 Middle Distance

Hanny Allston

JWOC BRONZE

2019 Long Distance

Aston Key

JWOC BRONZE

2006 Sprint

Hanny Allston

WOC GOLD WOC SILVER

2018 Sprint

Tim Robertson

2015 Sprint

Angus Robinson

JWMTBOC GOLD

2014 Middle Distance

Tim Robertson

2017 Middle Distance

Lucy Mackie

JWMTBOC SILVER

2014 Sprint

Tim Robertson

2004 Middle Distance

Adrian Jackson

WMTBOC GOLD

2008 Middle Distance

Adrian Jackson

WMTBOC GOLD

2009 Sprint

Adrian Jackson

WMTBOC GOLD

2009 Long Distance

Adrian Jackson

WMTBOC GOLD

2010 Sprint

Adrian Jackson

WMTBOC GOLD

2002 Long Distance

Emily Viner

WMTBOC SILVER

2004 Middle Distance

Belinda Allison

WMTBOC SILVER

2010 Middle Distance

Adrian Jackson

WMTBOC SILVER

2010 Long Distance

Adrian Jackson

WMTBOC SILVER

2004 Long Distance

Adrian Jackson

WMTBOC BRONZE

2004 Womens Relay

M Fien, C Jackson, A Sheldon

WMTBOC BRONZE

2004 Mens Relay

A Randall, T Walter, A Jackson

WMTBOC BRONZE

2005 Long Distance

Adrian Jackson

WMTBOC BRONZE

2001 Middle Distance

Grant Bluett

WORLD GAMES GOLD

2009 Middle Distance

Hanny Allston

WORLD GAMES GOLD

2009 Sprint

Hanny Allston

WORLD GAMES SILVER Tim Robertson at WOC 2017.

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 11

FUTURE 2019 WMOC OF O

World Masters Orienteering Championships Riga, Latvia

2019 WMOC Sprint - Ted van Geldermalsen (VIC) 4th.

There were highlights and lowlights at 2019 WMOC as some 4,500 masters Orienteers gathered to do battle with Latvian terrain. One of the highlights was the informal addition of an Indoor/Outdoor event at Daugava Stadium, a track & field and football sports complex. The lowlight was the Sprint Final held at Vecrīga – more on that later.

Indoor / Outdoor event According to the WMOC information bulletin, “Latvia is the leading Indoor Orienteering country in the world level. About 30 events are organized all around the country, the most popular of them count as many as 400 hundred runners per round. The various areas include both labyrinths of university lobbies and abandoned factories as well as parking lots of shopping malls. An Indoor Orienteering event has been carried out at Daugava Stadium only once - last December when the main spectator area hosted more than a hundred orienteers.

The controls were placed both indoors and outdoors, which added extra thrill to the race as slippery and icy lanes and steps were included.

During WMOC this really challenging area will host an Orienteering event once more – but this time without ice and extreme temperature contrasts. There will be controls on each of the four floors of the spectator area including different facility rooms.

When choosing longer courses, participants may expect a control in the very centre of the football field. There will be artificial labyrinths on the courses. Crossing the ribbons is not allowed and will lead to disqualification.”

12 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

Victorian, Peter Yeates (DROC), commented after the event: “Two things about the map - firstly the yellow section of map, Level 0.5, is the athletic track and is flat and actually further south than the upper levels that are also not directly on top of one another. Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 are viewing terraces and rise from south to north (from bottom up, so stairs in the middle such as those under #11-49 are at another level change on that map. Secondly the internal and external gaps in walls were to indicate a door you could open and which auto closed behind you. Unusable doors were not mapped and were locked.

People were running on the Level 1 central corridor just pushing any door. In fact I missed control #2-39 the first time because when I pushed opened the door it was a shower and toilet and I went “OOOPs” and back out.

Thirdly, no clues on the map. (Don’t know what ISSOM would have for “shower cubicle” anyway). I spent 19 minutes standing still trying to work out how to get to number one. Ted van Geldermalsen only spent 7mins. Liz Hatley finished in just over 3 hours. I still can’t work out how I got to #1.”

Nillumbik Emus Geoff Hudson agreed: “truly a nightmare! The key here was to realise that the sloping decks were on two levels - so you could slide from Level 1 to 2, or 3 to 4, by running up past the seats.

I didn’t realise that you could open some closed doors - you just had

to know which. It took me five or six controls to work out how to read the map and I inadvertently stepped off the map into the carpark and couldn’t get back in because all the doors were locked - fortunately, I found an unlocked elevator that gave me access to an unlocked door on the 4th floor. Phew! Outrageously hard!”

Unsurprisingly the first three placegetters in both Men and Women on Course B were Latvians all in a shade over 20 minutes. Last finishers took about 90 minutes.

Sprint Final The Sprint qualification rounds were completed without incident apart from some rain and suggestions that the courses lacked technical difficulty and thus favoured the fast runners. Then came the Finals.

More rain required slow and careful running on wet cobblestones worn smooth by many years of traffic. There were reports of many competitors going down. But the real drama was still to come. Later in the day it was noticed that many of the class results were shown as “VOIDED”. In the end 40 of the 59 class results were “VOIDED” and the following statement appeared on the website: “Information about Sprint Final voided results In Sprint Final in many classes results were voided. Organizers received complaints and also several protests about a gate being closed (which is open on the map). Gate was closed because owner did not open it on 7.07 morning as agreed before. We reached to the owner over the phone and she organised a person with the keys but none of them worked. Jury went through all courses and voided results for classes where any reasonable route choice might go through those gates.

We apologise to all participants for not being able to solve this issue.”

2019 WMOC Sprint Eric Morris (NSW).

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 13

2019 WMOC

It appears that someone had forgotten to check that the gate was open before the first starters set off.

Blair Trewin commented on Attackpoint:

“Can’t speak for other controllers/EAs, but for me, standard operating procedure for Sprints is to run all controls on the morning of the event. Fortunately I haven’t yet had to deal with something being closed which should be open; we have had the reverse, but that’s an easier problem to solve (we put an official out to stand in the gate concerned).”

Others on Attackpoint commented:

“I went and looked at it the following day. It is not an alley and there is no gate. It’s just a door (closed and presumably locked). On the 2014 version of the map there is no opening shown in the building there, and certainly no opening visible today.”

And, “I was there too (and in fact it was open and unlocked, then someone appeared with a bunch of keys and locked it!). The mapped route is not through the Black Magic café/bar or indeed any other restaurant, the entrance is the white door two doors further right.

In the photo I think the door is partly open but it still looks very private – and when you look through the open door it still looks private, like someone’s hallway rather than a public way through.

Similarly the beer garden of Black Magic is not the mapped way through.

The restaurant/kitchen that caused the trouble in WOC 2018 is neither of these entrances, it is steps in the short distance as you head north between the beer garden and the exit to the street. And there is also yet another gate in that short distance, a metal bar one immediately adjacent to the Black Magic beer garden entrance ..... that gate is actually the mapped way through but that one too was locked …....”

At WOC 2018 the same area was used for the Sprint Final and the same alleyway marked on the map caused problems with several runners ending up downstairs in the kitchen of the Black Magic café/bar. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that the owner didn’t open the gate this time. But whose job was it to check the gate that morning?

2019 WMOC Sprint - locked door to the right of Black Magic.

14 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

Enlarged section showing locked gate location.

Unfortunately, many potential medallists missed their triumphs and the whole controversy places doubts on the relative performances of most. For instance, Victorian Ted van Geldermalsen finished 4th in M65A, just 10sec down on 3rd place – would he have made the medals trio? No-one knows, and the results were “VOIDED”.

Equally, CompassSport magazine editor, Nick Barrable, won M45A but his result was “VOIDED”.

2019 WMOC Sprint - Margi Freemantle (VIC).

Forest events No such dramas occurred in the forest races - two days in the Bumbukalns forest on the banks of the Lielupe inlet, close to the Baltic sea. The terrain was classic sand dunes with established pine forest and little other vegetation apart from a dense mat of moss, lichen and other grasses. The visibility was great but the track network was difficult to use. Wider tracks had a soft sand base and

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 15

2019 WMOC

were very energy sapping. Narrow tracks were vague and after two days racing on the same maps, elephant tracks had dominated the area.

As one Aussie wrote “The Old Medieval Towns in Europe make brilliant venues for Sprints and they don’t get as distressed about a few cars in the area as we do. The Forest venues were superb in open ancient coastal dune forests made for great technical orienteering. A brilliant event blemished only by a locked gate in the Sprint Final.”

16 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

Peter Yeates (VIC) directs the search team.

Paul Hoopmann (SA).

Many in Australia will know Peo Bengtsson (Sweden) but you may not know that he is the most successful master Orienteer of all time – the Long Distance Gold medal in M85 at 2019 WMOC is his 18th medal in total, and 14th Gold.

WMOC 2019 - M85 Peo Bengtsson (SWE).

2019 WMOC Long Distance - CompassSport Editor Nick Barrable.

2019 WMOC Long Distance - M85 - Peo Bengtsson 1st.

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 17

AUS 3-DAYS 2020

EASTER 2020 www.onsw.asn.au/easter2020 IAN JESSUP, ORIENTEERING NSW

1. MAPS

Golf has a saying: “best player yet to win a major”. In Orienteering, we have “best areas/maps yet to host a major carnival”. At Easter 2020 the area known as Gumble, in the NSW central west – just north of Manildra and west of Molong to be precise – will shed that tag.

E

xpect lots of rock. Beautiful rock. So much rock that it trumps all other rock ….... Easter 2020 will not just be the usual 4 days of great orienteering and camaraderie. It’s the first half of a 10-day smorgasbord also featuring: •T wo midweek events (a Sprint in Orange on Wed April 15 and a bush Score course at Macquarie Woods on Thu April 16) hosted by Goldseekers;

Gumble Pinnacles – Sunday & Monday Originally mapped by Eric Andrews in 2001. Updated and extended 2019.

Large area of undulating spur gully with extensive granite detail throughout.

Noahs Ark Ridge – Saturday NEW 2019 map by Terry Bluett. Open runnable forest with more than half the map covered with extensive sandstone and conglomerate rock detail.

Charles Sturt University – Good Friday Atte Lahtinen 2016 map. Revised 2019

by Grace Molloy. Typical university campus and grounds.

•T he NSW Middle and Long Distance Championships on the aptly-named Seldom Seen maps on April 18-19, hosted by Garingal.

Now, let’s go through some of the main points about Easter 2020: 18 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

Saturday – 10 mins SW of Molong Sunday and Monday – 30 mins SW of Molong

4. COMMENTARY AND RESULTS DISPLAY Will be provided by “Living it Live”.

Friday – Sprint. (Note – race counts only toward Elite cumulative times – WRE for Elites).

Sunday – Long Distance for all age classes and a WRE for Elites.

The nearest major accommodation centre is Orange, and the carnival is proudly supported by Orange City Council.

Friday – Orange

The format is a return to 3 days of forest events but different from previous years. All age classes will run a Middle & Long Distance and a reduced Long Distance.

Saturday – Middle Distance for all age classes.

Orange is known as a foodie haven – the annual Orange F.O.O.D Week festival is Australia’s longest running regional food and wine festival and delivers a rich tapestry of six signature and more than 90 satellite events held over 10 days each April. (see www.orHYPERLINK “http://www.orangefoodweek.com. au/”angefoodweek.com.au)

3. LOCATIONS

2. EVENT FORMATS

•A midweek junior camp in Orange (to be confirmed);

Easter also marks 20 years since the 21 Sledge class was born, and the key conspirators are already at work planning how this course will operate.

Model event – will be available, representative of Noahs Ark Ridge, from Thursday to Saturday.

Gumble map extract.

Monday – 60% of Long Distance for all age classes.

SLEDGE CLASS The popular “Men’s 21AS Sledge” class WILL BE BACK. Sledge originated in 2000 for those orienteers who didn’t care about winning trophies or badges, who are now has-beens, or had always been never-wases (that’s a grammatical stir fry for you!). The late Paul Darvodelsky summed up the attitude in 2002 as follows: “We are not fully recognising or selling the greatest asset of Orienteering; that it’s damn good fun. So, what’s going to attract people to our sport? Seeing people having fun. Seeing people taking pleasure in their ability and just as much pleasure in their inability! There’s a new phenomenon in Australian Orienteering which seems to have this attitude and it’s self-mockingly called Sledge.

Sledge is M21AS. Sledge is open to anyone who wants to have fun together in a single class, regardless of age, fitness or ability. Sledge embodies all about Orienteering that most of us like: camaraderie, competition, navigation, being in great places with friends and - thank goodness - not having to train hard and run long courses. Sledge has boxer shorts. Sledge is a class with a sense of humour.

Sledge is hell bent on showing just how much fun an event can be.”

See: https://www.facebook.com/groups/21Sledge/ for what they get up to.

50 Years of O – 1969 to 2019 The Year 1969 saw some momentous happenings – humans first walked on the Moon; the first test flight of Concorde; the last public performance by The Beatles; Rod Laver wins the tennis Grand Slam for the second time (and remains the last male player to achieve that feat); HMAS Melbourne collides disastrously with a destroyer; Monty Python's Flying Circus is shown for the first time and the catch phrase "And now for something completely different," becomes their trade mark; and the first Orienteering event in Victoria is held.

Fifty years is a long time to be active in any sport so, without wanting to blow my own trumpet too much, it’s a good opportunity to place some numbers on the record.

In those fifty years I have: • • • •

Orienteered in 22 countries; Courses completed – 4769; Controls located – 64,023; Melbourne Millennium Club points – 2233.

Over that time, from simply being Bush O, Orienteering in Victoria and Australia has changed remarkably to Long O, Short O, Park & Street O, Maze O, Sprint O, Mass Start O, Ski O, MTBO and just a couple of months ago, Indoor O; paint cans, plastic bucket controls, marker pens, pin punches, flags on stands, street-O plates, electronic punching, and most recently, proximity punching with SI-Air. It’s not quite 50 Shades of O but who knows what innovations are coming next.

Mike Hubbert (Red Kangaroo Orienteers and Bayside Kangaroos)

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 19

1969 – 2019

The first event interview with Ron Frederick Tom Andrews (The Australian Orienteer, June 2019) was the organiser and course-setter for the Orienteering event that started it all.

He writes: “The family of a fellow member of Richmond Harriers Athletics Club, Peter Wills-Cooke, had a small property at Upper Beaconsfield, 45km south-east of Melbourne, so that became part of the terrain for the event. It was later that I learned of much better terrain and maps than this area. Our map base was 1:63,300 (one inch to one mile, 2.5cm to 1600m) that Peter enlarged four times so the scale became about 1:16,000, similar to many maps today.

We set two courses; the longer one was about five miles, covering some 20 properties; we had to contact owners to explain the reason for requesting access. One owner did refuse permission due to dogs; this dictated course revisions. At that time I did not know how to use a compass with a map and had to study the leaflet to learn the SILVA 1-2-3 system.

Media publicity attracted 28 to the event with the start at the Pine Grove Hotel.”

Ron Frederick won that first event.

In an interview with Ian Baker, Ron said: “I was a 21 year-old student reading law and commerce. I enjoyed the Melbourne University 24-hour walks (now called Rogaining); earlier in the year I had been a member of the winning teams in the Melbourne University walk and in the Intervarsity event. The Melbourne University student newspaper Farrago had an article about this new event, I thought it would be good to participate over the shorter distance.

Dunlop Volleys.

20 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

Ron Frederick at the 35th Anniversary event.

Early bucket control with pin punch.

On the day my clothing was t-shirt, footie shorts and Dunlop Volley tennis/gym shoes.

The event control markers in that first event were hand-painted four-gallon petrol drums with a self-inking stamp, which we used to mark our control cards. This meant that it was impossible to ensure competitors always took the controls in correct order; larger event areas were needed; orienteers usually used a digital watch with lap timer to record splits, the time between controls.

Organisers had to manually check finishers’ control cards, leaders at least, to know the correct controls had been visited. It was much later that electronic sticks and controls were introduced. The petrol drums were soon superseded by inverted orange plastic buckets, stackable and easier to transport.

Since the map was drawn to true north, when navigating on the compass we had to allow for magnetic deviation, the angle between true north and magnetic north; to do this you measured the bearing on the map on the baseplate compass and then turned the needle housing to deduct eleven degrees. Forgetting to do this could lead to geographic embarrassment! Turning it the wrong way, even more so!

This was normal when the maps used for Orienteering were usually enlarged photocopies of existing government black & white maps. The first map specially surveyed and drawn in colour was Bostock Reservoir in 1973. Nowadays all Orienteering maps use magnetic north and since cartography has been digitised any changes are simply made; the need for orienteers to copy ‘Map corrections’, extra tracks for example, is eliminated. We used to have five minutes to hand copy our course onto the competition map from a ‘master map’ before setting out.

Many used a red felt pen to highlight roads and tracks and a blue one for creeks. Haste could lead to costly errors: maps with the course printed make life easier.

The Victorian “Orienteer” magazine, Dec 1976, advertised the first nylon orienteering suits, dark blue or green, at $12.95 ($103 at current prices). The first special orienteering shoes were Kompassrosen from Sweden, $19.95 ($159) and Nokia Hector from Finland, $18.75 ($149). In 1976 the average weekly wage was $146.

I was impressed to find that each individual tree in an orchard was marked by an individual dot on the original map. I still have kind thoughts for the organisers as I dropped my control card between the last control and the Finish. They did record my time as I crossed the line but then allowed me to go back to find my card.”

Early SILVA compass.

Some well-known names appear in the Results:

1. Ron Frederick............................. 1:45:52 2. Ian Lovegrove (UK).................... 1:46:14 3. Graham Moon............................ 1:49:40 Regular orienteer for many years in Victoria and ACT. Now living in Poland.

5. David Hogg................................. 2:19:50 A key figure in the development of Orienteering in Australia. Lives in ACT. 7. Annabelle Roth........................... 3:12:40 First woman to finish, ‘The girl with lacerated legs’, Truth newspaper.

8. Mike Hubbert.............................. 3:19:24 Editor of The Australian Orienteer magazine, now a veteran of 4769 events.

We interviewed Ron Frederick in July between a walking holiday to National Parks in the west of the USA. He was about to fly to Europe for some training walks in the Tatra Mountains in Poland before the World Rogaining Champs in the Pyrenees about 155km north of

Barcelona, Spain, on July 27th and 28th 2019, partnered with Don Baker as the team Rumdoodle+ in the Men’s Ultra Veteran class (65+).

Now retired as a solicitor, Ron is longtime president of Melbourne’s Nillumbik Emus OC (EMU = ex Melbourne University). He has three children and six grandchildren.

50 years 1969 – 2019 1969 2019 Australia population 12.26 M 25.1M Average weekly $113 $1,164 (x10.3 increase) earnings 2017 Orienteering events 5 1,413 Participation 99,522 Registered members 4,451

Ian Baker is almost an original orienteer; his first event was in winter 1970; at press date he had 2362 orienteering events to his credit as competitor, course-setter and organiser.

He was, in 1978, a member of the founding editorial committee of The Australian Orienteer.

Next edition, December 2019 – “The 50th Anniversary Event” on Sunday 25th August at Cardinia Reservoir, report and pictures. This is the nearest terrain to that of the original event, now unusable due to urban sprawl and building of Cardinia Reservoir.

Sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Orienteering Australia Annual Report for 2017.

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 21

JUNIOR INVITATIONAL TOUR 28 SEPT - 6 OCT 2019

Asha Steer (Barkanji woman and Vic.torian Nugget, multi JWOC representative) Belinda Lawford (Canberra Cockatoo, multi JWOC & WOC representative) Cathy Hogg (Sports Physio, JWOC rep)

JOIN ORIENTEERS FROM ACROSS AUSTRALIA, NZ AND BEYOND.

Greg Barbour (President ONSW, multi WOC foot, ski and mtbo rep) Marina Iskhakova (Multi JWOC, WOC foot and MTBO rep) Steve Craig (Director High Performance OA, multi WOC rep)

Carnival events via Eventor Junior Invitational Tour via Eventor

28 Sept – 3 Oct

3 - 5 Oct

22 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

Oceania Junior Invitational Tour 2019 Oceania 2019 will be about more than competitions.

A

s part of Australia’s premier Orienteering carnival in 2019, Oceania’s Junior Invitation Tour ( JIT) will provide a multi-day Orienteering experience which combines school holidays with sport and a touch of clever and canny fun. The JIT will provide a special holiday experience in an active outdoors sport-like way.

The JIT organisers are pleased to invite participants from all over Australia and beyond to join in this Tour! The 2019 JIT will start on Saturday 28 September and run throughout the Oceania Carnival.

Oceania 2019 will offer challenges for each and every competitor and the JIT will deliver that added dimension to the Carnival by providing camp style holiday fun outside of the Carnival competition times.

For Australian kids who miss out on selection to their State Team or for those very keen that have not yet worked out how this Orienteering gig works, the JIT provides a wonderful insight into the world of Orienteering.

This is the third year that the Australian Orienteering carnival has dovetailed a camp style development experience for keen kids and their friends and family. In 2017, in Bathurst, around 50 juniors shared accommodation and meals, fun and games at Scots School.

In 2018, generously convened by Aylwin Lim, a similar arrangement was undertaken in Adelaide, offering juniors and their supporting adults loads of interactive learning opportunities.

Many of last year’s participants will be better at adapting their orienteering to different terrains thanks to the talk given by Canberra Cockatoo Andrew Barnett. Many juniors will be going into this year’s Carnival having better prepared their bodies for the rigours of multi-day events thanks to the presentation by sports physio Catherine Hogg.

NSW Bold Horizons and Orienteering ACT are combining this year to bring you a packed program of the very best. This year’s program provides outstanding learning opportunities with talks by experienced and engaging experts.

Additionally, there will be the opportunity for short chat/ analysis of each day’s race as small coaching groups, plus the chance to review and plan for the upcoming day’s events.

A detailed schedule will be available via the Oceania Carnival communications.

Clever, canny, perceptive, observant, sharp, alert, knowing just a few words describing how JIT kids will feel by the end of the tour.

If you haven’t signed yourself and your kids up, do so now!

Contacts: Toni Brown totoni@iinet.net.au Barbara Hill barbara@boldhorizons.com.au

Asha Steer (Barkanji woman, Victorian Nugget, multi JWOC rep):

“Girls run wild – women in Orienteering”

Belinda Lawford (Canberra Cockatoo, multi JWOC, WOC rep):

“Your coach & you – dare to be the best”

Cathy Hogg (Sports Physio, JWOC rep):

“Running technique to minimise injury in adolescent orienteers”

Greg Barbour (President ONSW, multi WOC, foot, ski and WMTBO rep):

“Navigating Big Rock”

Marina Iskhakova (Multi JWOC, WOC foot & WMTBO rep):

“MTBO to improve your foot Orienteering skills”

Steve Craig (Director of High Performance OA, multi WOC rep):

“Direction and structure – you do have time!”

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 23

AUS SCHOOLS CHAMPIONSHIPS

Australian Schools Championships PREVIEW

I

n early October the Australian Schools Championships will be staged near Wagga Wagga as part of the AUS Championships carnival. Teams from all States will compete in Senior and Junior Individual events and Relays commencing with the Sprint Championship. In past years the competition has been intense right up to the last few metres, particularly in the Sprints and Relays. Can we expect the same excitement in 2019? Probably YES.

This year ACT will be wanting to defend their overall titles won in the past three years. Returning JWOC Team members will be looking to push their respective teams to great heights. Which State will rise to the occasion? Who will come away with the trophies and who will simply have the performance of their life? Probably most of you.

Here we show the past winners and preview this year’s State Teams for you to follow during the events.

Winners

2016

2017

2018

State

ACT

ACT

ACT

Senior Girls

Sprint – Tara Melhuish (ACT) Long – Caroline Pigerre (QLD)

Sprint – Tara Melhuish (ACT) Long – Tara Melhuish (ACT)

Sprint – Joanna George (SA) Long – Joanna George (SA)

Senior Boys

Sprint – Angus Haines (SA) Long – Patrick Jaffe (VIC)

Sprint – Aston Key (VIC) Long – Aston Key (VIC)

Sprint – Aston Key (VIC) Long – Aston Key (VIC)

Junior Girls

Sprint – Joanna George (SA) Long – Zoe Melhuish (ACT)

Sprint – Zoe Melhuish (ACT) Long – Joanna George (SA)

Sprint – Niamh Cassar (NSW) Long – Iida Lehtonen (NSW)

Junior Boys

Sprint – Dante Afnan (SA) Long – Tristan Miller (ACT)

Sprint – Alvin Craig (NSW) Long – Alvin Craig (NSW)

Sprint – David Stocks (ACT) Long – Samuel Garbellini (QLD)

Senior Girls Relay

Queensland

ACT

SA

Senior Boys Relay

Victoria

ACT

ACT

Junior Girls Relay

ACT

ACT

ACT

Junior Boys Relay

NSW

Queensland

ACT

Taking Control of ASOC: Mapping out a Future VALERIE BARKER – OA NATIONAL SCHOOLS COORDINATOR

T

he Australian Schools’ Relay Championships is one of the spectator highlights of the Orienteering year; many of us will again enjoy cheering on our State Schools teams in this keenly contested competition during the 2019 Oceania Carnival. The event is a colourful, noisy, and exciting day when we celebrate the hard work, commitment and enjoyment that so many of our juniors display in their participation in the Relays. If you have never been to this event, make sure that you experience it this year, at Wagga Wagga. You will not be disappointed and you will take away a huge amount of admiration for our junior Orienteers - their skills, tenacity and determination, and their pride in their State representation.

2019 is a significant year in the history of the Australian Schools Orienteering Championships (ASOC). The first event was held in 1981 in conjunction with the Victorian Schools Orienteering Championships, open to all orienteers attending school (even including Tertiary and Teachers’ classes in some years) but with no significant interstate competition. In 1989 it was reconstituted as ASOC under the auspices of the Australian School Sports Council (later School Sport Australia) in the format that has continued since, for 20 years.

However, as of 2018, School Sport Australia withdrew its endorsement of Orienteering as one of its national sports.

Orienteering South Australia managed the 2018 ASOC in a transition year, providing a forum in which the Schools community was able to consider a range of options for how ASOC might 24 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

function in a future without SSA support, as both a representative goal for students to achieve and also an important step on a national Orienteering pathway for aspiring juniors. ASOC is now fully endorsed by Orienteering Australia.

We are pleased to assure you that the legacy and integrity of ASOC has not changed: each State & Territory will still field a team of a maximum of 20 students, in the same age classes and across the same events (Individual Sprint and Long Distance, and 3-person Relays). What has changed is that now there are no reserves nominated and a State may name up to 6 students in any one class.

This means the efforts of all team members contribute to points and that coveted ASSOC Shield. In terms of management, OA now appoints a National Schools Coordinator (previously the SSA National Secretary); and, as before, the State Schools Team officials become the National Schools Committee. It is at the annual PostEvent meeting (formerly the SSA AGM) that decisions about the structure, rules and management of ASOC take place, to be ratified in December by Orienteering Australia.

Whose Relay team will you be supporting on Thursday 3rd October?

AUS SCHOOLS CHAMPIONSHIPS

ACT Schools Team

A

nother strong line-up from the ACT this year will provide tough competition for the other States as the ACT Team tries to extend their winning streak. There’s several pairs of family siblings in the Team which demonstrates the close family involvement in Orienteering in the ACT. The ACT Team is looking forward to socialising with and competing against the other Australian States and the New Zealand teams. The experienced schools participants have welcomed new members to the team and together they hope to repeat the success of recent years. The captains, Caitlin Young and Tristan Miller, are committed to making sure everyone has an enjoyable carnival and helping the ACT team members achieve their Orienteering potential.

Senior Girls: Caitlin Young, Ella Cuthbert, Ellen Johnson, Ivy Prosser, Zoe Melhuish Junior Girls: Aoife Rothery, Ingrid Shelton Agar, Justine Hobson, Natalie Miller, Zoe Terrill Senior Boys: Andrew Kerr, Brendan Wilson, David Stocks, Tenzing Johnson, Toby Lang, Tristan Miller Junior Boys: Bodie Terrill, Josh Robards, Owen Radajewski, Patrick Shelton Agar Managers: Jane Barnett & Tom de Jongh Coach: Andrew Cumming-Thom

Caitlin Young

Ella Cuthbert

Ellen Johnson

Ivy Prosser

Zoe Melhuish

Aoife Rothery

Ingrid Shelton Agar

Justine Hobson

Natalie Miller

Zoe Terrill

Andrew Kerr

Brendan Wilson

David Stocks

Tenzing Johnson

Toby Lang

Tristan Miller

Bodie Terrill

Josh Robards

Owen Radajewski

Patrick Shelton Agar

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 25

QLD Schools Team

T

he 2019 Queensland Schools Orienteering Team is everything the newly formed Queensland Junior Development Committee could have hoped for. There are good, experienced orienteers in both the Seniors and Juniors, together with some young and emerging talent, particularly in the Juniors where six members are new to the team. We are especially proud of the depth and competitiveness of the Junior Boys, where several boys were vying for their first trip to a National Schools Orienteering Carnival. As usual, the Queensland team has many siblings, which only goes to show what a wonderful family sport Orienteering is.

Coaches this year are Jack Neumann and Simeon Burrill and Managers are Neil Gannon and Marion Burrill. Our goal for 2019 is to improve on last year’s fourth placing, which is totally achievable with this great team! Go QLD!!

Senior Boys: Jaiden Fidge, Samuel Garbellini, Ryan Gray, Blake Reinbott, Grant Reinbott, Oliver Schubert Senior Girls: Rani Brennan, Laura de Jong, Julia Gannon, Nina Gannon Junior Boys: Dylan Bryant, Paul Garbellini, Lochlann Hogan, Joshua Newnes, Jack Reinbott Junior Girls: Mali Brennan, Sara Garbellini, Mikaela Gray, Ella Rogers, Eve Tague

Jaiden Fidge

Samuel Garbellini

Ryan Gray

Blake Reinbott

Grant Reinbott

Oliver Schubert

Rani Brennan

Laura de Jong

Julia Gannon

Nina Gannon

Dylan Bryant

Paul Garbellini

Lochlann Hogan

Joshua Newnes

Jack Reinbott

Mali Brennan

Sara Garbellini

Mikaela Gray

Ella Rogers

Eve Tague

26 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

NSW Schools Team – The Carbines

S

Senior Girls: Niamh Cassar (WH), Ellen Currie (GO), Tshinta Hopper (BN), Andra Leung (GO)

There are five new faces: Selwyn Sweeney (Western & Hills) and Cameron Will (Illawarra Kareelah) in the senior boys, Cooper Horley (Garingal) in the junior boys, and Erika Enderby (Newcastle) and Martine Valais (WHO) in the junior girls. The strong family element of Orienteering is reflected in there being three sets of siblings in the team.

Junior Girls: Erika Enderby (NC), Mikayla Enderby (NC), Iida Lehtonen (GO), Nea Shingler (BF), Julia Barbour (BF), Martine Valais (WH)

tudents from seven of our clubs are in the 2019 NSW Schools Team (the Carbines) for the Australian Championships in Wagga Wagga in the October holidays.

Congratulations to the following students upon their selection:

Senior Boys: Ewan Shingler (BF), Oscar Woolford (BB), Selwyn Sweeney (WH), Cameron Will (IK)

Junior Boys: Alvin Craig (NC), Oskar Mella (NC), Sam Woolford (BB), Jamie Woolford (BB), Oliver Freeman (BF), Cooper Horley (GO)

Niamh Cassar

Ellen Currie

Tshinta Hopper

Andra Leung

Ewan Shingler

Oscar Woolford

Selwyn Sweeney

Cameron Will

Erika Enderby

Mikayla Enderby

Iida Lehtonen

Nea Shingler

Julia Barbour

Martine Valais

Alvin Craig

Oskar Mella

Sam Woolford

Oliver Freeman

Cooper Horley

Jamie Woolford

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 27

SA Schools Team

C

ongratulations to the 2019 SA Schools Team – returning members of this year’s JWOC Team will boost the chances of some good performances at ASOC. The team consists of a number of experienced and new team members. For the first time in many years, a Port Lincoln orienteer will be representing their State in the Schools competition. This year overseas trials were included in the selection process to assist athletes who were living overseas at the time.

Junior boys: Mitchell Stephens (YA), Mitchell Morcom (TJ), Toby Cazzolato(TJ), Remi Afnan(YA), Oscar Johnston (TJ), Tom Weihart(OH) Junior girls: Sienna White (LO), Lucy Burley (YA), Ana Penck(YA), Jemima Lloyd (TT), Abbie Faulkner (TJ), Zoe Carter (TJ) Senior girls: Abigail George (TT), Joanna George (TT) Senior boys: Leith Soden (OH), Ethan Penck(YA), Dante Afnan (YA), Jack Marschall (TT), Max Grivell (TT) Manager/training coach: Bridget Anderson Coach: Simon Uppill Assistant manager/training coach: Olivia Sprod Assistant coach: Evalin Brautigam (coach-in-residence)

Mitchell Stephens

Mitchell Morcom

Toby Cazzolato

Remi Afnan

Oscar Johnston

Tom Weihart

Sienna White

Lucy Burley

Ana Penck

Jemima Lloyd

Abbie Faulkner

Zoe Carter

Abigail George

Joanna George

Leith Soden

Ethan Penck

Dante Afnan

Jack Marschall

Max Grivell

28 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

TAS Schools Team

T

he 2019 Tasmanian Schools Team will travel to NSW and Victoria over the October School Holidays to compete in the Australian Schools Championships which is a part of the wider Oceania Orienteering Carnival. With experienced Team captains Arabella Phillips and Josh Allen, and Mikayla Cooper returning from JWOC in Denmark, we can expect some good performances by the Team.

Senior Girls: Mikayla Cooper, Arabella Phillips, Eleanor McLean Senior Boys: Josh Allen, Tom Poortenaar, Ben Poortenaar, Bayley Fisher Junior Girls: Zali McComb, Julia Powell-Davies, Sophie Best, Tara Powell Junior Boys: Niko Stoner, Jett McComb, Riley Kerr, Euan Best, Eddie Stoner, Marcus Degenaar, Charlie Cooper Head Coach: Jon McComb Manager: Meisha Austin

Mikayla Cooper

Arabella Phillips

Eleanor McLean

Josh Allen

Tom Poortenaar

Ben Poortenaar

Bayley Fisher

Zali McComb

Julia Powell-Davies

Sophie Best

Tara Powell

Niko Stoner

Jett McComb

Riley Kerr

Euan Best

Eddie Stoner

Marcus Degenaar

Charlie Cooper SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 29

VIC Schools Team

C

ongratulations to the following students who have been selected in the 2019 Orienteering Victoria Schools Team for the Australian Schools Orienteering Championships and Oceania Carnival which take place at Wagga Wagga, NSW, from 28 Sep to 6 Oct.

Junior Boys: Torren Arthur, Lachlan Feuerherdt, James Love, John Steer, Henri du Toit, Callum White.

Junior Girls: Sophie Arthur, Milla Key, Amber Louw, Sophie Taverna Senior Boys: Mason Arthur, William Davey, Jensen Key, Brody McCarthy, Archie Neylon Senior Girls: Sally Barlow, Jemima Bradfield Smith, Serryn Eenjes, Caitlyn Steer Coaches: Clare Brownridge, Peter Hobbs Manager: Bruce Arthur

Torren Arthur

Lachlan Feuerherdt

James Love

John Steer

Henri du Toit

Callum White

Sophie Arthur

Milla Key

Amber Louw

Sophie Taverna

Mason Arthur

William Davey

Jensen Key

Brody McCarthy

Archie Neylon

Sally Barlow

Jemima Bradfield-Smith

Serryn Eenjes

Caitlyn Steer

30 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

WA Schools Team

A

t the end of the very successful Junior Camp the WA Schools Orienteering Team for 2019 was announced in front of the parents by Graham Braid, the Manager and Rachel West, the Coach. Ian Fletcher will be the third official.

The team for 2019 is: Senior Girls: Sarah Richards Senior Boys: Patrick Dufty, Mason Eves, Shaun Richards Junior Girls: Zali Dale, Sasha Eves, Kate Braid, Caitlin Madden Junior Boys: Aldo Bosman, Eckart Bosman, Joseph Coleman, Liam Dufty, Isaac Madden, Riley McFarlane, Liam Phillips Congratulations to all of you!

Sarah Richards

Patrick Dufty

Mason Eves

Shaun Richards

Liam Phillips

Zali Dale

Sasha Eves

Kate Braid

Caitlin Madden

Aldo Bosman

Eckart Bosman

Joseph Coleman

Liam Dufty

Isaac Madden

Riley McFarlaneÂ

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 31

Australian WOC, JWOC and MTBO teams are outfitted by

32 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

SPRINT O

Sprint Fever Hits Melbourne!

DEBBIE DODD

W

ith the first WOC Sprint Championship Carnival to be held next July 2020 in Denmark, the Orienteering world is going Sprint crazy – and Melbourne is no exception. This year and next, we’ll be sprinting in Spring, Summer and Autumn. Melbourne is the place to be for everyone, from aspiring WOC competitors to kids picking up their first map and venturing off on their own.

We kick things off in October with the Melbourne City Race Weekend (Oct 11-13). Modelled on the incredibly popular London City Race, it features three urban races over three days, timed to suit Oceania Carnival travellers who want to prolong their holiday.

Race #1 on Friday evening is the Sunset Sprint, beside the Maribyrnong River at Edgewater. Race #2 on Saturday afternoon will be next door at cool Kensington, freshly mapped for the occasion.

Doubling up as the first two events in our Sprint Into Spring Series, these races will have an urban flavour, with a network of complex streets and pocket parks. Transformed from grimy industrial to trendy inner city residential, both venues are a short hop by train from the CBD. Race #1 distances will be slightly longer than a traditional Sprint. Edgewater will feature the multi level VU Campus and adjacent terraced park, as well as a riverside estate and western slopes up towards historic Jack’s Magazine. Kensington is a maze of streets and lanes, elevated parks, and the former stockyards, now a linear trail.

On Sunday, the action shifts to Docklands, in the western part of the city. Starting from Docklands Park, just a 5 minute stroll from Southern Cross Station, you’ll race around Melbourne’s maritime area on your choice of five courses – enjoy the view! Entries for all three MCRW events are open on Eventor, until early October. We’ve got a great 3-race package for just $37. Find out more at: www.melbourneityrace.com.au

Then, set aside your Saturday afternoons from mid October until the end of November - Sprint Into Spring is back for its 7th season, bigger and better than ever. There will be seven races in all. You’ll need to be versatile to succeed, with our two urban races mixed in with some tight, tricky campuses, and a park Sprint to wrap things up.

All the features you know and love will be back, including the Yellow, Green and Polkadot Jerseys.

The Victorian Sprint Championships will be on Sunday November 17 (a week before the end of Sprint Into Spring), a departure from our normal scheduling, but worth it to secure Kardinia International College in Geelong – a crowd favourite from the first Melbourne Sprint Weekend. We’ve been waiting a while for the chance to return – and don’t expect it to be any easier!

All of that is just for starters ..… over Summer, look out for PopUp Sprints. Where? When? Who knows? Keep an eye on the Orienteering Victoria website and Facebook page to find out.

Rumour has it that at least one of these will be another Indoor Sprint, by popular demand after the huge success of Monash (aka “the highlight of my year so far” in the words of one Victorian WOC team member). These will keep you on your toes, fit and fresh for 2020.

Finally in March (7-9), it’s time for edition #3 of the Melbourne Sprint Weekend, rated as “simply the best Sprint weekend in Australia”. Featuring a World Ranking event, round One of the National League, and the Australian University Sprint Championships, once again there’ll be six incredible races over three action packed days. Entries open on Eventor in October.

Are you ready to Sprint? Head to www.vicorienteering.asn.au/sprint

Want even more? Check out the Lonely Mountain Sprint weekend in Taranaki, NZ, followed by the eagerly awaited return of Sprint The Bay, in January 2020. (see page 32 for details).

And the ACT Sprint Series 2020 will start on Sunday 12th January and run every Sunday morning until April. Pre-enter on Eventor – no entry-on-the-day.

into Oct o ber t o Nov em ber 20 19 9 Rac es in a n d a r ou n d M el bou r n e

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SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 33

INDOOR-OUTDOOR

Monash Sprint Orienteering - Indoors BILL BORRIE (EUREKA ORIENTEERS)

I

t is the bags that give it away. Bags full of gear, all neatly lined up on benches at the assembly area. Just like at a cross country meet or the biggest Orienteering relay event, Jukola (held annually in Finland). Each squad is clustered, the young athletes huddled together with their matching jackets, heads down against the wind, with freshly laced shoes and excited faces. This was an event worth calling the squad together for. Today, we would really see who was the fastest.

And powerful running it would be, too. Leaning into the corners, racing down the corridors, in and quickly out of classrooms, then fast dashes up or down the stairs. No time for hesitation, because seconds count. A quick glimpse at the map, a short glance at the obstacles in front of you and then sprint. Sprint!

The youth are built for this, finely tuned running machines. They wear their muscles on the outside.

But, it is a tightly wound calculation of when to

Monash University Indoor-Outdoor Double Sprint – 1:1000 – M/W1 Long Hard

34 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

carefully read the map. As always, the wrong route choice costs too much time. But, there is no time to think. Everything happens all at once. And the young racers are ready for it, fully engaged, all systems go. A strong focus, a few grimaces as they push harder, and the occasional agony of realizing they’d gone the wrong way.

The team mates are cheering at the spectator control. There’s real encouragement, urging just a bit more effort. And, there’s a gentle joshing and teasing. A signal of friendship and an understanding of just how fast everyone is going. They know the struggles, the worthy

challenges, and it is all on display as folks dash by. Around the lecture theatre one more time, where’s the final control? Punch, turn for the doors, out into the sunshine and ..… done.

Gasp, grab the splits printout, check the times, and gather with the crew. How did everyone do? Where did you get those few extra seconds? You went outside? I went around. Dang, yours was better.

Why didn’t I see it? Next time, I’ll be faster, smarter and stronger ………

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 35

MOUNTAIN BIKE ORIENTEERING

World Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships 2019 ANDREA HARRIS

Viborg in Denmark was the centre for the 2019 World Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships. Highlights of the Championships week were Great Britain’s elite senior Emily Benham Kvåle who swept all four individual Gold medals in the women’s competition, and for New Zealand it was Georgia Skelton’s podium 5th place in the junior Sprint.

J

uly 20th and the three-man Mountain Bike Orienteering (MTBO) Team gathered in Viborg, Denmark for the World MTBO Championships. Ricky Thackray (Captain), Joel Young and Tim Doman, together with myself as Manager. Ricky and Joel had been training across Europe for several weeks. Tim came directly from Australia. For me it was a return to Viborg after competing in the 1974 World foot Orienteering Championships, a mere 45 years before.

Ricky, at his fifth World Championships, Joel at his second and Tim the rookie – all gelled quickly as we immediately got into our six day well-planned training program. Each day consisted of riding one, two or three courses across maps specifically chosen for similarity to the Championship events. Evenings were spent debriefing on the maps, and exercises working on alternative route selections, speed in route selection and map memory. Kay Haarsma had sent me a training program well in advance, complete with maps and courses. At the time it seemed remote but there on the ground we fully appreciated the planning that had gone into the program. This was especially so as we found other teams did not have the maps or the degree of preparation we had been afforded.

We were also fortunate to have previously established a relationship with Natalia, a Russian Coach who has several World Champions in her squad. This collaboration shared the load in course setting and created a sense of collaboration and competition.

Four individual gold medals to Britain’s Emily Benham Kvåle.

In training we found the maps to be complex and the Danish forests to be a delight to ride in. The forests around Viborg are small by Australian standards and intensely used and so management is tight. You are not even allowed to use ribbons to mark controls so the Russians introduced us to shaving cream. When I first got the message they would ‘meet us with shaving cream’ I assumed a typo or language slip, but no - they marked all the control points with a sploge of degradable shaving cream. It worked well as no one had to collect controls. We discussed the MapRun GPS controls we use in Australia but it is clearly not something used by many.

Perhaps we are ahead of the pack here.

After the pre-training and then the training camp the competitors just wanted to compete! For the Sprint the central city of Viborg was closed which was an amazing feat of organisation. The cobbled streets and courtyards came to a standstill before being invaded with bikes flying every which way. Joel and Ricky had good runs which was a good way to start the Championships and Tim, along with many others, sadly mispunched.

The following four events produced mixed results but overall our individual results were relatively good and provided valuable experience. All events showed you can run complex and long events in relatively small areas by use of multiple map changes. This introduced the need for the specific

Joel Young finishing the Long Distance race.

The Australian team, from left: Joel Young, Tim Doman, Ricky Thackray and Manager Andrea Harris.

36 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

Ricky Thackray during the Sprint.

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 37

MOUNTAIN BIKE ORIENTEERING

skill of changing, re-orientating and folding maps on the go.

The full set of final results are covered on the championship website http://wmtboc2019. dk/.

On the last day we spent some time reflecting on the value of the Championships from an Australian perspective. There were many positives including riding on complex and small-scaled maps and interacting with spectators on cleverly constructed spectator legs. One additional question for me was, in addition to the obvious benefits in developing international relations just what are the broad benefits to Orienteering Australia for Australia to be at the Championships? In answering this I go back to that 1974 World foot Orienteering Championships I attended as part of the Australian Team held in this exact same city – and reflect on the benefits this brought us.

Tim Doman – Middle Distance.

Our Australian Team then was made up of three women and six men. There were the obvious findings including: “My god the leaders are fast, the maps are unbelievably complex and there is a highly professional commitment to the efficient organising of events.” Importantly though long-term benefits arose from the knowledge and skills that were transferred back to Australia.

Of those nine team members all made further commitments to Orienteering and some to a very high degree. Most on return undertook coaching training and subsequently coached in schools, individually, scouts etc. At an individual level team members such as Peta Whitford put in decades transferring skills through Orienteering education. Other team members including Alex Tarr, John Oliver, Dave Lotty and the late Tim Dent are all familiar names in mapping, event organising, and or coaching. This demonstrates that, while we try to build towards more top results at the World Championships, results are far from the whole picture.

Ricky Thackray finishing the Mass Start event.

The outcomes from Australia sending its first full team to WOC in1974 have had huge long term benefits and these outcomes more than meet the primary objectives of Orienteering Australia which “are to encourage, promote and coordinate the sport of Orienteering”.

While inclusion in an Australian Team provides added incentive for higher performers to stay in the sport, and top results are a significant goal, attendance at the World Championships clearly also supports the building of the sport back home in Australia.

I have no doubt the current Australian Team will be no different and will use this unique experience and the knowledge and skills gained form this to continue to “encourage, promote and support the coordination of Orienteering across Australia.”

An exciting finish in the Men’s Mass Start with the three medallists (all Czech) sprinting from the last control.

38 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

Emily Benham Kvåle showing her joy as she crosses the line in the Mass Start for her 4th Gold medal.

The following is a compilation of reports from the Team: SPRINT - the team had mixed results but overall an improvement on last year - Joel Young 53rd, Ricky Thackray 56th, but it was not Tim Doman’s day with some very fast controls as expected but a mispunch result. Our NZ training partners had a good result with Georgia Skelton coming 5th in the Junior female category. It was a very complex map of the old city of Viborg used for the Sprint. The organisers closed the whole city for this event which offered up cobblestones, alleyways, stairs, archways, stone walls, etc …....

From there the course setter had plenty of short legs with a few longer legs opening up wider options to tempt the unwary (I was caught out by the nice road option back to the spectator ride through, #22 - #23). We had a double sided A3 map that fitted nicely onto my new A3 map board and saved the hassle of also having to fold the map and with the road ride I was also able to flip my map on the move without the need to stop, allowing me to plan the next leg after the flip.

off the back of an injury that kept me off the bike in the two months prior, just the experience gained from racing here is extremely valuable.

Ricky Thackray – Long Distance

Georgia Skelton (NZ)

Joel Young – Sprint.

MIDDLE DISTANCE - We sat at the Finish watching rider after rider come in exhausted or beaten by this course. Ricky 52nd and Joel 60th had good rides and Tim posted a good time but with a missed control. Here Ricky provides his perspective on the course.

“Today’s WMTBOC Middle Distance course was one of the most navigationally challenging races I’ve done, even for a WMTBOC. There was an extremely dense network of single track throughout the course with the southern part of the map being a mountain bike park before we crossed a paddock into the northern section, also laced with twisty single track, although not sanctioned so not as clear as the earlier section. Riders on the M21 course were thrown straight into the deep end with a long leg to the first control with several route choice options. I opted for the flattest route I could find but it was in no way the fastest, and it took me until midway through the leg to get my head “into” the map printed at 1:7500 (for comparison, some riders took many controls to get “into” it and others never quite got it at all).

The mapper, course setter and organisers are to be commended for this event with a highly detailed and accurate map, brilliant course setting and many hours of work pruning, mowing and generally ensuring tracks were clearly visible for early starters - the usual disadvantage of going early in a MTBO event is that you have to “find” the tracks, which later starters then have no trouble seeing with 100 or so riders having already ridden it! Overall I am very happy with my ride and personally it’s my best WOC Middle Distance ride to date (even though results don’t necessarily reflect that).”

LONG DISTANCE - This 47km MTBO course for the Elite Men was less challenging in navigation than the previous events but very challenging on the legs.

Tim Doman is relatively new to Orienteering having come from a mountain biking background, but has demonstrated that he is highly suited to this mixed discipline. Tim descibes the event:

The Long Distance race itself proved physically demanding, with long and fast stretches between controls interspersed with some technical single track navigation. My route choices were conservative, and I also made a few mistakes, all of which compounded to increase my split times. However, I was still pleased with my result and navigation overall, and I have already learnt a great deal to take into future races back home and hopefully overseas again.”

Results - Ricky 52nd in 2:16:45 (+25:56) ; Tim 65th in 2:22:34 (+31:45) ; Joel 76th in 2:41:42 (+50:53).

MASS START - A fantastic spectacle with the Women and Men, elite and junior categories, all out on in the forest at the same time. Courses looped such that they started, finished and passed through the spectators’ arena three or four times. The pace was amazing. The Men’s results were dominated by the Czechs winning all three medals. Great Britain’s Emily Benham Kvåle continued her domination with another win in the Women’s elite, with the first five

places well spread across Great Britain, Denmark, Russia, Sweden and Finland.

The Junior results for men and women were popular with a win for Denmark in both. New Zealand’s Georgia Skelton came in an impressive 7th in the Junior event.

Tim Robertson in transitioning from foot to MTBO also put in an impressive performance for New Zealand at 23rd in the elite. The Australian Men came in 62nd for Ricky, 70th Joel and a good time, but a mispunch for Tim - along with many others. Interestingly, relative times and consistency by the Australians have improved this year but that has not necessarily been reflected in the placings.

RELAYS - The winners were again spread over several nations. Our training partners Russia took out the Men’s and Women’s Elite, with Denmark having a popular win in the Women’s Junior event and Czech Republic who showed strength across the board, winning the Men’s Junior event. Such are the Russian riches that they even had to leave a World Champion out of their Relay team. The Australians put in a consistent performance with all three having solid clean runs to come in ahead of the US, Japan and Turkey, as well as Norway and Switzerland who mispunched.

The courses were run on a military training field which made for very slow, churned tracks of sand and mud. The young NZ Team handled the conditions well with 8th place in the Men’s Elite.

The organisers throughout the six-day event have provided clear detailed maps in a scale where that detail can readily be read!

The Danes are to be commended on such a varied, challenging and exacting series of events.

Elite Men’s Mass Start.

“After having frustrating races and mispunching both the Sprint and Middle Distance events on the previous days, my main focus for the Long Distance race was just to complete the course. Being my first World Championships, and coming SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 39

MTBO NEWS

MTBO Event Adviser and Organiser Clinic

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he IOF and Orienteering Australia invite Member Federations to identify and enter suitable candidates for this Clinic to be held in conjunction with the Australian MTBO Championships. The Clinic is organised for the education and recruitment of new IOF licensed MTB Orienteering Event Advisers and the education of MTBO organisers.

The clinic will be held at the end of this year’s Australian MTBO Championships at Maryborough, Victoria on the 27-28 October.

If you are interested in organising or advising MTBO events, you should not miss it.

Course content includes: understanding the task of an IOF Event Adviser; deeper understanding of the nature and each format of MTB orienteering (long, mass start, middle, sprint, relay); understanding of the IOF rules and requirements for international competitions.

Links to the Entry form and Invitation document can be found on the IOF website, ausmtbochamps.com, and the MTBO Australia facebook page.

Australians attending the clinic should forward their entry form to kayhaarsma@hotmail.com for national endorsement. The clinic is aimed for any MTBO organisers and you don’t necessarily have to intend to become an IOF event advisor.

MOUNTAIN BIKE ORIENTEERING

australian

MTBO Mapping tips Upper or lower purple – revisited PETER CUSWORTH

I

n the last issue of The Australian Orienteer I discussed the correct way to show control circles and lines on a competition map with the upper and lower purple colour and the aim of not blocking out vital track information. Please refer to page 30 in the June magazine.

Unfortunately, due to default settings used for offset printing the magazine, the sample maps did not print as intended.

We have printed them again here.... correctly this time.

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Control circles and lines printed underneath tracks – lower purple.

Numbers, dots (if used) start and finish – upper purple.

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Control circles and lines printed underneath PLUS circles and lines broken where needed.

BU L ES LETIN OP EN 2 REL ON E EVE ASED NT OR NO W

TRI

Maryborough, VIC

5 -2 7 O ctotSunday o b e r 22 70 Octob 19 F r iday 225 October er Incorporating: • 2019 National MTBO Series, Round 3 • 2020 World Masters MTBO Series, Round 1 • 2019 Australia-New Zealand MTBO Challenge

4 CHAMPIONSHIPS OVER 3 DAYS: SPRINT, MIDDLE, LONG and MASS START plus a training/model event Also an IOF MTBO Event Adviser and Organiser Clinic

w w w. a u s m t b o c h a m p s . c o m 40 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

INCORRECT: Control circles and lines printed on top – all use upper purple. Tracks and junctions are obscured.

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championships 2019

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TRAINING

Improve your orienteering: Part 1 – Identifying your strengths and weaknesses

STEPHEN BIRD Photo: Tony Hill

Introduction

M

ost of us would like to orienteer better. But it’s also common for most orienteers to think that they’ll get better by simply doing more events. To some extent this is true as the experiences will help, but there comes a point when a more systematic approach is needed. In this series of articles I’ve suggested some ways to do this.

It involves a little time, but could be very revealing and help you to improve. It involves three key stages: (i) Analysing your performances to identify what you do well and what you need to work on;

(ii) Spending time training to improve the areas you’ve identified as needing work; and (iii) Putting it in to practice during events.

Some of the content of these articles draws upon ideas from an ‘Orienteering Mental Training Workbook 1’, which I published with a colleague some years ago and I’d therefore like to acknowledge their contribution.

All sports require three fundamental components: Physical fitness; Technical skill; and Mental attributes. Each is made up of many different elements, and by way of illustration I’ve provided a few examples below. There will be countless others within each component, and you will have your own ideas from your personal experiences.

Physical fitness - The ability to run or cycle through the environment as quickly as possible for the duration of the event.

Technical skills - All those elements that we use to decide which route to take, and then navigate successfully.

Mental attributes - Being in the right ‘frame of mind’ throughout the event, regardless of what you encounter. For example, having the confidence to do your own navigation and not to follow others, maintaining concentration throughout an entire event, pushing yourself physically when you can, and orienteering to the best of your ability, even after making a mistake.

Each of these components contribute to your performance, as for example, you won’t win if you can’t navigate, even if you are a great runner. Likewise having the technical navigational skills is essential, but you need to use them throughout the event, without lapses in concentration or being put off by other competitors. So we need to be aware of all three components and invest time appropriately. When trying to improve it’s common for most sports people to focus on the obvious physical training and technical aspects but to rarely spend time on the important but vital mental attributes. Yet it may be the latter that is limiting their performance. To work out which you need to work on, you need to analyse your performances, identify your current strengths and weaknesses, and from this, identify what you’re good at and conversely what causes you to lose time at an event. The most obvious way of doing this is to start by looking at your split times.

Look at the split times from your recent performances.

Almost everyone will look at their split times at the end of a course and make some comparisons with compatriots in the Finish area.

Combining this with what you remember of your course will give you an initial qualitative analysis of what went well and what did not.

For many orienteers, that’s the end of the matter until the next event: but if you really want to improve, you need to delve a little deeper into your performance, use this information to identify what you need to keep doing and what you need to work on, and then spend some time working on it. In this article I present a number of ways of analysing your split times. At first glance these appear to involve a lot of calculations, but once you’ve done it a couple of times, you’ll get the gist of what it’s trying to achieve, which is to identify elements that you do well and elements that need work. You may then decide to forgo the exact calculations as you’ll be able to identify the key issues from a more subjective look at your split times, or conversely, if you like numbers you may get immersed in the analysis and set up a spreadsheet that does all the calculations for you – which can help to provide a way of monitoring your progress.

Analysing your split times To commence a more detailed analysis of your split times, start by drawing your route on your map (use your GPS if you have one, or from memory if you don’t), and look at your split times for each leg.

This will enable you to identify any legs where you appear to have lost time, such as a leg where you took twice as long as you did on a similar leg of similar distance. For a more insightful analysis you’ll need to compare your split times with those of others on your course.

These may be provided by the event organiser or via a site such as Winsplits (http://obasen.orientering.se/winsplits/online/en/default. asp?start=true).

There are many ways to analyse your split times, and it’s not an exact science as there are too many variables, so just keep in mind that the purpose of the analysis is to identify what you are doing well and therefore need to keep doing, and what you need to work on.

Winsplits will highlight (pink background to the cell) any legs in which you were ranked lower than on other legs, thereby indicating that you may have had some issues on those legs. I’ve given an example in row 2 of Table 1 and presented it graphically in Figure 1.

In this example, our orienteer was typically ranked around 4th – 6th fastest on each leg for most of their course, but on legs #1, 2, 9, 13 and 15, they were ranked much lower. So the reasons for this need to be interrogated, noted and worked on. Recalling what happened on those legs will help you to identify some elements that require improvements. If that’s enough for you then move straight to the section in this article on ‘Identifying why you orienteered well and why you lost time’, but if you’re a ‘numbers person’ then keep reading.

SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 41

TRAINING

Table 1 Control Ranking for leg (Winsplits) Time taken by “benchmark orienteer” (s) My time (s) Time behind “benchmark orienteer” (s) Time lost in proportion to leg duration (Time difference/benchmarktime) Baseline difference 40% (benchmark time x1.4) Time lost in addition to baseline 40%

1 15 104 343 239

2 12 81 363 282

3 5 77 100 23

4 4 146 208 62

6 4 59 79 20

7 6 143 254 111

8 2 47 60 13

9 13 181 399 218

10 4 81 111 30

11 5 182 159 57

12 5 111 148 37

13 11 96 342 146

14 4 44 50 6

15 10 101 199 98

F 4 29 42 13

2.30 3.48 0.30 0.42 0.49 0.34 0.78 0.28 1.20 0.37 0.56 0.33 1.52 0.14 0.97 0.45 146 197

113 250

108 -8

204 4

200 13

83 -4

200 54

66 -6

253 146

113 -2

143 16

155 -7

134 108

62 -12

141 58

41 1

longer) as the benchmark orienteer. If your only issue is a slower running speed, you would expect to be the same proportion of time behind your benchmark orienteer for all the controls, regardless of leg length or difficulty, in which case all the bars in the graph will be of similar height. So for example, you may take around 40% longer on every control, which would be indicated in Figure 3 with all the bar heights being around +0.4 on the y axis. However, if there are legs when the difference is much greater, this suggests a leg where you had some issues. In our worked example I’ve indicated these in pink

Figure 1: Ranking for leg (Winsplits) 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

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Figure 1

For a more personalised and focused interrogation of your splits you can quantitatively compare yourself to other orienteers, notably orienteers who you may ‘benchmark’ your performance against.

This could be the fastest person on each leg, or there may be some particular orienteer(s) who you use as a benchmark for your performance. To do this, firstly calculate the difference in time (seconds) taken by you and your benchmark orienteer. If you calculate these (subtract row 3 from row 4 in Table 1 to get row 5) and plot them (Figure 2) you get an immediate visual presentation of where you lost time (seconds) relative to your benchmark orienteer.

time behind in proportion to leg duration

Ranking position for this leg

5 6 143 213 70

Figure 3: Time lost in proportion to leg duration (time difference/fastest time) 4.00 3.50 3.00 2 .50 2 .00 1.50 1.00 0.50 0.00

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tme behind benchmark orienteer (s)

Figure 3

Figure 2: Time (s) behind benchmark orienteer 300 250 200 150 100 50 0

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Figure 2

However, to some extent if your problem is simply running slower, you will obviously lose more time on longer legs than on shorter legs, so a further refinement to the analysis is to relate the amount of time lost to the length of the leg. This can be done by dividing the ‘time difference between you and your benchmark orienteer’ (row 5) by the time the benchmark orienteer took to complete that leg (row 3). This gives you row 6 in Table 1 and the data from row 6 is presented in Figure 3. In this figure, 0 on the y axis represents no time lost to the benchmark orienteer, and 1 represents taking twice as long (100% 42 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

From Figure 3 of our worked example, you can see that there is a minimal baseline difference across all controls, even when our orienteer had a relatively ‘good leg’. This can be seen by looking at the yellow bars which show our orienteer’s ‘good legs’ to be between 0.2 (20%) to 0.5 (50%) longer than their benchmark orienteer. So for this analysis (remember it’s not an exact science) I’ve chosen 0.4 (40% longer) as an arbitrary difference to distinguish between ‘good’ legs and ‘legs where additional time was lost’. With the latter suggesting a navigational or route choice issue. This value will differ between courses and will certainly differ between orienteers. As indicated it’s fairly arbitrary but you’ll have a sense of what yours should be by looking at your graph and recalling your good and ‘not so good’ legs. So pick a value that feels right and then designate the legs as ‘good’ or ‘not so good’, based on whether they are within or exceed the value you’ve chosen. In our example analysis, with the value set at 0.4 (40%) it confirms the legs to controls #1, 2, 9, 13 15, and perhaps #7 as being worthy of further interrogation, as our orienteer took significantly longer than the typical baseline of being around 40% slower than their benchmark orienteer.

Having identified these problematic controls you can start to focus on what happened during these legs, however, those of you who really are addicted to numbers can do one more calculation to identify how many seconds this additional time loss represents. To plot this I’ve

TRAINING

calculated the time our orienteer should have completed each leg in, on the basis that for a good leg they would take only 40% longer than their benchmark orienteer (Table 1, line 7). Then I’ve subtracted this from our orienteer’s leg time to get the difference between 140% of their benchmark and the time they actually took (line 8, Table 1). A negative score indicates a leg time faster than ‘typical for this course’ (i.e. less than 140% of the benchmark orienteer’s time), whereas large positive values, indicates significant additional amounts of time lost on this leg over and above 140% of the benchmark orienteer’s time, and hence an issue with this control. I’ve plotted these in figure 4.

This final calculation has the additional bonus of enabling you to estimate the time you should have taken for your course, if you’d had a perfect run. To do this just deduct the additional time lost (time lost in excess of the 140%) from your actual time. You can be more demanding on yourself and use a faster differential, such as being only 120% behind your benchmark orienteer – that’s up to you.

Figure 4: Time lost in addition to baseline 40%

Additional time lost (s)

300 250

150 100 50 0

By following this process of analysis, whether you opt for the relatively quick subjective qualitative recall or some level of quantitative number crunching, you should have gained a better awareness of your orienteering strengths and weaknesses. This means that you’re now ready to do something about it, which is what we’ll get to as we progress through this series of articles.

In the December 2019 magazine I will describe how you can identify why you orienteered well and why you lost time

References

200

-50

When doing these analyses you may also have a specific focus on a particular future event, in which case your analyses should look at events on similar terrain. This is because navigating in complex goldmining terrain is very different to navigating in open grassland, and hence your strengths and weaknesses may differ depending on the terrain.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

F

Control

Underwood GL and Bird SR (1997). Orienteering; A Mental Training Workbook. London: Nonington Press, Compass Sport, pp78, ISBN 0 9527351 1 3.

Figure 4

Keep in mind that the purpose of this analysis is to identify what to work on and what to keep doing well. As indicated, with practice you may decide to dispense with all the above calculations and identify the ‘problem controls’ from your subjective recall of your event along with a look at your splits. Regardless of how you do it, the important thing is to move on to the next stage of asking yourself ‘why’ you lost the time, and then doing something about it.

Guest sports invited to Paris 2024 Olympics.

Stephen Bird (VIC).

More JWOC action – from left: Duncan Currie, Tara Melhuish and Aston Key. SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 43

LETTERS

Letters The Australian Orienteer welcomes letters. Preference

will be given to letters which are concise and which make positive points. The editor reserves the right to edit letters, particularly ones which are longer than 300 words.

Human Magnetic Sense In the June 2019 magazine, p36, you broached the topic of the Earth’s magnetic lines of force and our navigation.

About 30 years ago I corresponded with a researcher from Manchester University on this very topic. His work concentrated on homing pigeons where, in their semi-circular canals, he found specks of Fe3O4 (magnetite). He postulated that some homo sapiens would have similar deposits.

Yes – some of us can sense (and point to) NORTH wherever they are; others can not. For example, Jeffa (Lyon) can do this everywhere (southern and northern hemispheres), and in the dark (ie no sun), except in caves and high-rise buildings. This explains her wonderful record as a bush orienteer.

In his research in Manchester he placed helmets on people who claimed to be able to detect North anywhere, and in those helmets he put bar magnets for half the group and nothing for the control group. A significant number of those with bar magnets in their helmets lost, to a greater or lesser degree, the ability to point to North.

Fascinating? What will actual post mortems reveal re bits of magnetite in the best (but past) orienteers’ ashes? (Along with titanium and cobalt bits from replacement knees, hips, shoulders, etc?)

John Lyon, M80, Tintookies O Club, SA.

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AUS 3 Days Orange, NSW

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2020 Arctic Circle Jukola Relays Rovaniemi, Finnish Lapland. www.jukola.com/2020/en/

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JWOC 2020 Gebze, Kocaeli, Turkey jwoc2020.org/

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Fin 5 Kuusamo, Finland www.ruka.fi/en/fin5

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SEPTEMBER 2019 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 45

SPOT the DIFFERENCE

Part of the story behind Aston Key’s success in the JWOC Sprint event is how well the Australian team prepared for the Sprint race. Although there was no previous map of the competition area, Duncan Currie made an incredible map based on Google street-view and satellite images so that the Australian team could practice picking route-choices. Check out the comparison between his map and the competition map.

It was suggested we should use it for Spot the Difference, so here it is. How many differences can you find? We can only find a few differences which might affect navigation choice!

46 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2019

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