Author: craigf

Australia has made it’s best-ever start to a JWOC campaign — with a bronze medal to Hanny Allston and 8th place for Julian Dent.

Hanny Allston from Tasmania has taken a bronze medal in the Middle Distance race at the Junior World Championships in Switzerland. Allston started the race slowly and trailed by nearly 2 minutes to place 8th at the first split control. But she picked up time steadily over the second half of the course, finishing only 90 seconds behind the winner, Anna Pearson of Sweden.

In the men’s race, Julian Dent was also slow out of the blocks, but finished in 8th place – Australia’s best result in the Men’s Middle Distance at JWOC.

Of the other two A-Finalists Jasmine Neve came in 32nd and Simon Uphill a competitive 22nd in his first JWOC.

A full report from team manager Hilary Wood will be filed shortly.

World Junior Championships At Taverne Switzerland
Middle Distance Finals

Men: 3.5 km: A Final:
1 Fabian Hertner SUI 21:28
2 Philippe Adamski FRA 22:43
3 Hannu Airila FIN 23:27
8 Julian Dent AUS 25:10
22 Simon Uppill AUS 27:26

B Final:
1 Magne Dæhli NOR 23:41
10 Ryan Smyth AUS 26:30
20 Conrad Elson AUS 28:44
23 David Meyer AUS 29:46
52 Louis Elson AUS 37:57

Women: 3.0 km: A Final:
1 Anna Persson SWE 25:51
2 Heini Wennman FIN 26:00
3 Hanny Allston AUS 27:18
32 Jasmine Neve AUS 36:00

B Final:
1 Ane Linde DEN 22:46
6 Zebedy Hallett AUS 28:12
21 Vanessa Round AUS 33:28
52 Ainsley Cavanagh AUS 47:59
Erin Post AUS n.class.

Australia’s team performed strongly in its last event before the Junior World Championships in Switzerland this week, writes team manager Hilary Wood.

A good day for a sprint around the world heritage listed Bellinzona Castle and town has resulted in good early results for the Aussie Team with Hanny Allston taking out fourth place and new JWOC representative Ryan Smyth finishing in eighth place in a competitive field. Hanny just missed out on a monetary prize sponsored by Post Finance with the winners receiving 1000 swiss francs and third place receiving 250 swiss francs. In any case Hanny enjoyed her run although she made a couple of errors which cost her vital seconds.

The run was a mixture of running through the old town and climbing up into the castle grounds to make for a spectacular setting in this lovely Italian part of Switzerland.

Ryan was very happy with his run and enjoyed the attention of appearing on the big screen. The event was also broadcast live on the local TV station which added to the excitement. It was a long afternoon for the rest of the team as they watched and waited for the results to flow through. Rob Walter also competed in the elite sprint and finished in a respectable 14th position.

The team then led a short procession through the streets of Bellinzona and was first to sample the refreshments at the end. The official opening of JWOC is Monday evening at the event centre. We have an unprecedented number of JWOC parents in attendance as the competition coincides with the Swiss 5 days, and let’s face it, Switzerland is a spectacular place to visit.

The training camp went well and the team is feeling comfortable, fresh and ready to compete and give their best.

Paul Darvodelsky has withdrawn from Australia’s WMTBOC team after a major crash in a Sydney road race. The crash happened about 300 metres from the finish, as the pack was shaping up for the sprint at speeds of about 50 km/h. Darvodelsky broke both collar bones, two ribs and his right shoulder blade, and will not ride for at least 6 weeks – meaning recovery in time for WMTBOC is impossible.

Darvodelsky was intending to compete and manage the team, which includes last year’s gold medallist Adrian Jackson. He will still travel to Slovakia as team manager.

Blair Trewin and Kay Haarsma took out the open (21A) classes at theinaugural NT Championships, held at Lok Cabay near Batchelor on Sunday. Haarsma was almost unopposed in W21- after her only competitor (TEO local Katie Webby) pulled out with a bad leg gash, requiring a quick trip up to Darwin Hospital. Mani Berghout, another
local TEO orienteer running W35A but same course as Kay, gave her a run for her money finishing just 9 minutes behind.

Half a dozen contested M21A. First place seemed fairly settled once Trewin had caught his most likely rival, Rob Vincent, four minutes at the second control, but the gap had only grown by another minute at the 8km mark of the 13.1km course. The margin widened steadily after that, eventually reaching 13 minutes by the finish. Vincent ended up in a close tussle on times with Murray Scown (in M20, but running the same course), with Scown just prevailing at the end after a solid run.

The pick of the other classes was M60, where three New South Welshmen fought out a tight contest. Dave Lotty had just under two minutes in hand over Ron Junghans with Dick Ogilvie a further two minutes behind. Barry Sampson also had to work hard for his M65 win, by 87 seconds over Neville Cobbold and Nev Bleakley. The New Zealanders made their presence felt amongst the veteran women, with several placegetters and a good win for Bunny Rathbone, running up a couple of age groups in W60, while Lynn Dabbs had one of the better runs of the day in comfortably winning W50.

There was a pleasingly large attendance of around 120, with many coming from interstate, a significant New Zealand contingent, and even the odd Briton. The terrain gave competitors a very different experience, with a mixture of gully-spur that was very rocky underfoot, flat black-soil plains (with the occasional enormous termite mound) and ancient, large stromatolite rock formations. The vaguer areas brought many undone, and together with the hot and unseasonally humid conditions, made for long times on many courses.

OA has agreed to a variation to its technical rules for the organisation of the Australian Sprint Championships in Tasmania later this year. A Red Start Group will be used (as is done in many international races) in the start draw for men’s and women’s elite races. Entries, excluding the top ten nationally ranked runners, will be randomly drawn, and the ten highest ranked runners will be separately randomly drawn and start as the last 10 starters. The top ten will be those ranked highest on August 12th (close of entries for Australian Sprint Championships). Late entries will not be part of the Red Start Group, regardless of ranking.

The OA Appeal panel hearing Clare Hawthorne’s appeal against her non-selection in the 2005 WOC team has concluded. The OA Board has adopted their recommendation that the appeal be dismissed. Attached is a public report prepared by the Appeal panel outlining the circumstances of the appeal and the panel’s findings. A more detailed report was provided to the relevant parties.

2005 WOC Appeal – report

The minor watercourse that most of the six courses crossed a number of times was one of the most unifying aspects to the 2005 WA middle distance champs. With the average rainfall for June already passed, a flowing wide and deep river was present! The event was held in the granite detail of Mt Billy’s slopes – the location of the Easter 2003 day 3. With the start, finish and a spectator leg all in the assembly area the sounds of enormous splashes were clearly audible. Some competitors such as Rachel West and Cath Chalmers chose with speed and conservatism to cross at the start triangle ‘bridge’ again, others such as Eoin Rothery, Ian Dalton and Rhys Challen tested the rising depths around their shoulders.

All of the hard courses were technical – in the rock detail of this great hillside with a lot of changes in direction. These courses all mostly resembled a tangled knot, inspired by Noel Schoknecht’s Umana NOL middle distance course of May. Karen Staudte had a clean and fast run placing first for the W21s with Cath Chalmers, Rachel West and Leida Williams just behind. These top four within 9%, 10% and 17%. Craig Dufty, John Toomey, Eoin Rothery (pictured, just after this return to form) and Ian Dalton making up the top four in M21. These fastest times were within 2%, 20% and 26%. Rhys Challen running M18 and a strong contender for the Schools Team was just behind these top four.

The 44 seconds separating Craig Dufty and John Toomey was reflected in other close times throughout the event. Deb Dowson and Rosalie McCauley in W40s recorded the same time. With 40 seconds separating runners in the W45, 45 seconds in the M60 and 5 seconds between Rhys Kessell and Oscar McNulty in the M12s.

OA President Bob McCreddin was the controller for the event and ended up carrying out a great deal of work for us setters, even to the extent of rescuing a taped control site from an original minor watercourse bend that had become the middle of a lake. A great event to ‘run’ and see run.

Full results on Splitbrowser.

The Australian team for the World Orienteering Champs was announced by Orienteering Australia’s Chair of Selectors, Ian Prosser, this morning. The team consists of 5 women and 6 men who will compete in Aichi, Japan in August.

For the first time the selectors have nominated the disciplines that each team member will run, including the naming of the relay teams. David Brickhill-Jones has qualified for a relay run following his World Cup silver medal last month — Troy de Haas and Grant Bluett join him. But highest hopes are for the strong women’s relay team who came so close to a top result in 2004 — this year Hanny Allston, Jo Allison and Tracy Bluett will run the relay, and all three have shown strong recent form.

The team includes a WOC debutant: junior Julian Dent. Julian and Hanny Allston will also race the Junior World Championships (JWOC) in Switzerland in July. At the other end of the spectrum, the oldest hands on deck are Grant Bluett and Natasha Key (32 & 33 respectively). Both are aiming to compete strongly on terrain which is considered neutral ground for the strong European nations; rumours abound that they are both considering retirement after WOC.

The full team is listed below. See the OA High Performance page for more details on selection.

Message from Ian Prosser, Chair of Selectors, on the 2005 WOC team selection:

Women

Jo Allison: Sprint, Long, Relay
Hanny Allston: Middle, Long, Relay
Tracy Bluett: Middle, Relay
Al Jones: Sprint, Long
Natasha Key: Sprint, Middle

Men

David Brickhill-Jones: Sprint, Relay
Grant Bluett: Sprint, Long, Relay
Troy de Haas: Sprint, Long, Relay
Julian Dent: Middle
Dave Shepherd: Middle, Long
Rob Walter: Middle

Notes

This year the selectors were asked to not only name the team, but to decide who will run in each discipline.  This is to give athletes some certainty in preparation for the event.  The team management may change the allocation to disciplines where there are special circumstances such as illness or injury.

Australian WOC teams are composed of a minimum of four women and four men with additional athletes, up to a maximum of seven men and seven women, included on the basis of their international competitiveness and how they fit into the team in particular disciplines.  Athletes nominate their preference for particular disciplines but the selectors are free to allocate disciplines for the best good of the overall team.  They consider factors such as the record of each athlete in each discipline and the schedule of races during WOC.

Ian will be hard to contact this week. If you have any queries please contact Jason McCrae (Jason.McCrae@act.gov.au, 0407 510 955).