Author: craigf

The 2008 World Orienteering Championships kicked off this morning with the sprint qualification in the Moravian town of Prostejov. The competition for a top fifteen position in each of the three heats is always tough at WOC, with seconds deciding between competitor and spectator for the final this evening.

Kathryn Ewels was the first Australian to race through the town streets and parkland this morning, and posted what appeared to be a good time. It was enough for 12th place in her heat, 49 seconds behind the Dane Signe Soes. “I had a pretty good run, steady and didn’t make any mistakes”, said Ewels, “most of the race we were just looking for controls on thickets and it was just a matter of picking the right one”. Next off was WOC debutant Jasmine Neve, who had a solid race but had a nervous wait until the last runner in her heat had finished to know she’d come 15th. Neve was 1.35 behind Helena Jansson of Sweden. Grace Elson continued her consistent summer of orienteering and cruised into 12th place, 45 seconds behind local star Dana Brožková.

In the men’s race it is always tough to qualify, this year the cut-off was at 45, 55 and 43 seconds in each heat. WOC debutant Simon Uppill had an early start and, like Neve, had a long and nervous wait to find out what he’d be doing at 6pm this evening. Amazingly, Uppill dead-heated with Kiwi Chris Forne and Lithuanian Vilius Aleliunas in 14th place, 45 seconds behind German Alex Lubina (a known star on the athletics track). Julian Dent, Australia’s number one man, struggled physically today. He came down with a bout of food poisoning last night and, despite improving slightly in the morning, was lacking his usual energy. He scraped into the final in 15th place, 55 seconds behind heat winner Mattias Mueller from Switzerland. Kerrin Rattray was the third man representing Australia this morning and despite having a good race, Rattray was unfortunately not quick enough to make it through to the final.

Most of the big names qualified to the final, although 2007 sprint medallists Thierry Gueorgiou (FRA) and Martin Johansson (SWE) gave themselves a bit of a fright. Sergey Detkov (RUS), Wojciech Dwojak (POL) and Tuomas Tervo (FIN) are probably the most significant names that you won’t see on the start list for the final.

Read more on the teams Attackpoint Trog and follow the action live on the Official WOC website.

The sprint final starts tonight in Olomouc at 16:45 for the women and 18:00 for the men local time (00:45 and 02:00 AEST).

In total 335 competitors from 40 countries of 4 continents entered for WOC 2008.

The Australian Boomerangs are one of 10 non-European based nations along with  USA, Canada, South Africa, Israel, China, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, Japan and New Zealand. Another 30 European orienteering federations are sending teams. Keep up with the Australian Boomerangs via their WOC Trog.

Around 200 runners will participate in each discipline, in particular 202 entered for middle, 201 for sprint and 192 for long. During last day of WOC, 63 relay teams should be on start. The highest possible number of competitors from one country, which is set by rules to 14, should arrive from Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine. List of teams, including names of runners, can be found here.

The race program starts on Sunday, with the sprint qualification in the morning (5:30pm AEST), followed by the opening ceremony and sprint final in the evening (12:40am, Monday AEST). Australia’s runners for this race will be Jasmine Neve, Grace Elson and Kathryn Ewels in the women’s race; Julian Dent, Kerrin Rattray and Simon Uppill in the men’s.

As always, live action will be broadcast around the globe via online results and text comments, as well as audio streaming and, for the final, video streaming from Czech TV (see details here).

The Junior World Orienteering Championships concluded tonight with the Relay on Tultered. The highlight for Australia was a sizzling run by Leon Keely in the mens A team, who brought the team through the first leg in 12th place (9th official place, as only the best team from each nation counts for the results). Keely was only 7 minutes behind the leading team.

The Australian team finished in 34th (23rd official) after Oliver Mitchell battled through the tough Swedish terrain, and Nick Andrewartha held the team’s placing.

Sweden won both relays today in convincing performances on their home terrain. Only Russia could break the Scandanavian monopoly winning a tight race for the silver medal in the mens, while Denmark (2nd in the womens) and Norway (two bronze medals) took home the rest of the silverware.

Australia had  high hopes for their women’s A team after some strong performances in recent days. But Laurina Neumann (1st leg) lost a massive 31 minutes in vague terrain early on in the course, and couldn’t make this back up. In the end the B team was faster, led out by Rachel Effeney to come in 28th place (18th official) on the first leg. Krystal Neumann (2nd leg) and then Belinda Lawford rounded out a consistent set of performances to finish in 27th (18th official team).

The women’s A team made significant ground up in the later legs. Bridget Anderson (2nd leg) started out in 37th, but ran the fastest time of the day for the Aussies to pull them up to 33rd,  while Aislinn Prendergast gained another 3 places — they ultimately finished in 30th.

The mens B team also put out a speedster on the first leg in the form of Oscar Phillips. Oscar ran well early to post a good split at the first radio (even faster than Keely at that point) but lost time later to finish in 38th place. Lachlan Dow (46th) lost a few places on the 2nd leg, while Geoff Stacey made that back up in  a strong last leg to pull the team into 40th.

The relay concludes this years JWOC. The week’s highlights for the  Australian team were Laurina Neumann’s mastery the terrain in yesterday’s long distance to place 25th, and Bridget Anderson’s 28th in the middle distance final. Aislinn Prendergast turned in consistent performances — 48th in the long distance and 14th in the B final of the middle distance. Oliver Mitchell also ran well in the middle distance B final to finish 35th, while Keely’s relay leg today shows his potential for next years JWOC in Italy.

Results:
Womens Relay      

1st  Sweden            139:52
2nd Denmark         141:12
3rd Norway            148:20

27th Australia          199:21
1. Rachel Effeney       62:17
2. Krystal Neumann   68:13
3. Belinda Lawford     68:51

30th Australia      212:45
1. Laurina Neumann   82:13
2. Bridget Anderson   60:08
3. Aislinn Prendergast  70:24
Mens Relay

1st  Sweden           148:36
2nd  Russia            153:41
3rd  Norway         153:58

34th Australia      204:29
1. Leon Keely            55:44
2. Oliver Mitchell       75:03
3. Nick Andrewartha  73:42

40th Australia      216:37
1. Oscar Phillips         67:03
2. Lachlan Dow         84:57
3: Geoff Stacey           64:37

Bridget Anderson had a very good race in the JWOC Middle Distance A finals at Hogsbro. Finishing 28th in a very competitive field of 60 competitors is a promising result for 2009 where Bridget is going to work towards a podium finish in Italy. The terrain was rough and tough with open clear and bare rock on the ridges interspersed with complex gullies and tiny marshes in the green. Picking your route was one challenge and then being able to approach the circle and read within the circle accurately and quickly was the next challenge. Bridget was able to do both reasonably well.

Nick Andrewartha and Rachel Effeney were able to clear some ‘demons’ from the previous day to come up with better runs in their races. Nick finished 4th in his C final but knows where he lost time on 6th and 12th control. Oliver Mitchell had a steady run finishing 8’41” behind the winner in the B final. Aislinn Prendergast and Oscar Phillips showed potential with some fast splits but still made costly mistakes on some controls. The middle distance race is about accurate sharp navigation and minimising mistakes.

This terrain is unforgiving and when one loses contact with where one is it is very costly in terms of relocating and a couple of the Aussies have found this out. Leon Keely and Laurina Neumann are struggling in this complex terrain.

Hilary Wood

Natasha Key has taken out the gold medal in the W35 long-distance event at the World Masters Orienteering Championships in Portugal on Saturday. After four successive second places on the sprint and qualifying days behind Finland´s Katja Honkala (who was fourth in the final), she chose the final to have her best run of the week, and was over two minutes clear of Cornelia Eckardt from Germany.

Australia´s other medallist was Maureen Ogilvie, who gave us our second W75 medal of the week. She took silver, just over a minute off the pace.

The tougher terrain of the final seemed to suit the Australians, with eight top-ten results in total. Warren Key narrowly missed out on making it two medals for the week when he was fourth in M45. Jim Russell was tenth in the same class, while Jeffa Lyon backed up her sprint bronze with ninth in W75. Blair Trewin also got a second top-ten result with eighth in M35, Paul Adrian was sixth in M85, and Hugh Moore held on to tenth in the fiercely competitive M60 class.

Results are available from the WMOC website.

The JWOC Long Distance saw a very close finish in the men’s race with 18 seconds separating 1st to 5th places and with 5 countries represented in the top 6.  Johan Runesson followed up his win in the Middle Distance with a Gold medal in this event, followed by Timo Sild from Estonia.  Jenny Lonnkvist took the Gold in the women’s event with Beata Falk again in 2nd place.  The increasing quality of French runners saw them take 4th and 5th place.

The Australian women put in very creditable performances with Laurina Neumann the best with a great run to finish in 25th place, just over 10 minutes behind the winner Jenny Lonnkvist, with Aislinn Predergast in 48th pace and Bridget Anderson continuing with her very consistent results at this championships in 51st place.  Nick Andrewartha was the best of the men in 88th place.

The long distance race was held on Partille-Gunnilse about 20 km from the event centre in the eastern outskirts of Göteborg. The early part of the courses covered complex and steeper topography with large rock features in the southwest part of the map area. Large linear marshes and lakes dominated the remainder of the map which contained very few paths. The hillier areas were dominated by pine forest with good runnability, with the valleys of deciduous forest having lower runnability. Higher grass also slowed runnability in the valleys.

Women

1. Jenny Lonnkvist (Sweden) 55:12
2. Beata Falk (Sweden) 55:50
3. Siri Ulvstead (Norway) 56:35
4. Marine Leloup (France) 58:30
5. Karine D’Harreville (France) 58:34
6. Venla Niemi (Finland) 59:33

25. Laurina Neumann 66:07 (+10:55)
48. Aislinn Predergast  72:58 (+17:46)
51. Bridget Anderson 73:37 (+18:25)
89. Krystal Neumann 85:44 (+30:32)
96. Rachael Effeney 93:41 (+38:29)
98. Belinda Lawford 94:47 (+39:35)

Men

1. Johan Runesson (Sweden) 72:22
2. Timo Sild (Estonia) 72:34
3. Matthias Kyburz (Switzerland) 72:36
4. Erik Sagvolden (Norway) 72:38
5. Olle Bostrom (Sweden) 72:40
6. Leo Laakkonen (Finland) 74:08

89. Nick Andrewartha 95:21 (+22:59)
111. Oscar Phillips 103:57 (+31:35)
120. Lachlan Dow 108:04 (+35:42)
123. Oliver Mitchell 109:48 (+37:26)
137. Geoff Stacey 128:52 (+56:30)
Leon Keely DNF

Orienteering Australia sadly advises that Sue Johnston passed away on Friday, July 4th, at her home in Urunga, northern New South Wales, from motor neurone disease.

Sue began orienteering in Queensland in 1979. Although she took three hours to complete her first course, she enjoyed considerable success in various age classes, with wins in both Australian and Easter 3-day championships, as well as captaining the Australian team in Australia/New Zealand challenges.

Sue was also heavily involved in administration, initially with the Queensland Association, and later with Orienteering Australia as vice-president (Development), and as president from 1997 to 2000. She received the Silva Services to Orienteering Award in 2001.

In  her professional life, Sue was eminent in the field of education, and served as Pro Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) at the University of Tasmania for five years, before moving to Coffs Harbour in late 2005, where she was Head of the Coffs Harbour Campus of Southern Cross University.

Sue is survived by her partner, Peter Plunkett-Cole. If you would like to send condolences, do so to Peter at 108 Osprey Drive, Urunga, NSW 2455

Natasha Key was once again the lead Australian as the long distance qualifying for the World Masters Orienteering Championships finished in Portugal on Thursday. For the fourth race in succession, she was a close second behind former Finnish WOC representative Katja Honkala in W35, and will go into Saturday’s final as the second seed.

She was the only Australian to run a place in qualifying and will go into Saturday as our best medal chance, but with a few results remaining to be finalised it appears that about 20 Australians will be running A finals. Those with chances of high places include Warren Key (M45), Blair Trewin (M35) and Jim Russell (M45), who continued their good sprint form to place fourth, fifth and sixth repsectively, and Judy Allison and Ted van Geldermalsen, who were also sixth in W60 and M50. Unfortunately, Hermann Wehner will not get the chance to repeat his sprint medal after narrowly missing out on qualification in M80.

Results and splits are available on the WMOC website.

Australia’s only A finalist, Bridget Anderson, achieved a great result to finish 28th in the women’s middle distance race at the Junior World Orienteering Championships.  Anderson started strongly, and was in 20th place only 2 minutes behind at the radio control.  She continued well to be in 23rd place at the pre-warning control, but then lost some time in the final controls.

Scandinavians dominated with Finland’s Venla Niemi winning the women’s race by 34 seconds and there were 3 Swedes in the top 5 on home soil.

It was a similar story in the men’s race with Sweden filling 5 of the top 10 places, including the winner Johan Runesson.

After a disappointing qualification race for the boys, all but Oliver Mitchell were left to fight out the C final.  Of those, Nick Andrewartha (4th) salvaged some pride with a strong run, just three minutes from the lead.  Oscar Phillips (14th) and Lachlan Dow (19th) were within ten minutes of the leader, but the other boys appeared to be saving themselves for the long distance race.

In the B final, Oliver Mitchell (35th) finished  just under nine minutes from the lead.

Rachel Effeney was the best of our girls in the B final, finishing in an impressive 5th place, 3 minutes from the lead.  Aislinn Prendergast (14th) and Krystal Neumann (26th) will also have gained some much needed confidence for the remaining races.

The bright spot for the Aussie team was Bridget Anderson’s race to finish in 9th place in her qualification race to ensure her a spot in the A final tomorrow. The race will finish again in the Hogsbro Pistol range which is full of nettles except where they have mowed around the finish area and nation tents. The map is a remap of an old area with a different mapping style from the previous mapper making it barely recognisable from the pre race competition map.

Some sad and sorry stories again have plagued some of the team’s results. Oliver Mitchell the best of the Aussies boys and managing to make the B final, regretting his lack of fitness due to a stunted preparation with a knee injury earlier in the year. Lachlan Dow was very disappointed in his race as he misread 11 to 12 as 12 to 13.

The boy’s team morale is a little low after today’s race and the young ones are finding it a bit tough. Leon Keely and Nick Andrewartha both were having a couple of bad legs costing them valuable time in the race. Geoff Stacey and Oscar Phillips also struggled to find competitive race times but had better races technically than Leon and Nick.

Laurina Neumann was a little unlucky to be in a faster qualifying heat missing out by 2 places – if she had done that time in a different heat would have qualified. Krystal Neumann and Aislinn Prendergast also gave strong performances but just missing out on qualifcation. Belinda Lawford failed to be careful enough in reading her control numbers looking for 36 and finding 46 in a parallel error. Rachel Effeney also found the green and technical terrain a challenge. The girls are a little disappointed and just hope to have good runs tomorrow to restore some confidence in their orienteering ability. Competition pressure gets to the best of them and the experience will help them to understand what is required for the future. Coaching advice has been to go out, have fun and enjoy the challenge in the finals.

General Organisational comment.

The model event was really an extra training as it modelled very little of the championship area. It was not printed on an offset printing map and it did not have proper controls out with numbers on them. It also did not have any sample drinks as stated in the rules sport drinks and water stations would be demonstrated.

There are some unhappy teams leaders about with regard to some of the technical omissions of the organisation for this years JWOC. The meetings consist of basic questions around information which should be clearly stated in the bulletin and they end with the organisers scurrying off to fix some problem that arises as a result. For example the start list of the sprint had to redone and was not ready for the team leaders meeting; the leaders had to wait for the start list for the qualification to be given out; the numbers as stated in the bulletin were completely wrong and the bus times also had to be readjusted. Organisationally this JWOC is not very good compared to the superb job done last year by Australia. We have found this extremely surprising given the status Sweden has in the orienteering world and are very disappointed in this aspect of the Championships.

Hilary Wood &  the JWOC Team