2012 Archive

The Australian girls produced some brilliant results in the sprint at the World University Championships yesterday with three making the top 30.   South Australian Lauren Gillis, a newcomer to the international stage, displayed not only her speed but her fitness too. Lauren backed up after almost a two hour effort the day before in the long, to place a tremendous 13^th .  Rachel Effeney’s 15^th was also a top result, especially as she lost a minute at a mid race control. Bridget Anderson produced her best ever international result with 30th despite injuring her back the day before.

It was a Swiss trifecta in the men’s event, with the same names to feature at WOC in several weeks on home soil.  Victorian Aaron Breed also put the disappointment of a long DNF behind him to do better in the sprint.  Kiwi Toby Scott ran brilliantly for 17th in the large men’s field.    The courses featured an urban area but with some steep slopes.  The women did 2.25km with 17 controls, and the men had 2.8km with 19 controls.

The course saw the runners starting near the top of castle Santa Barbara in Alicante. They were led from the pre start to the side of the castle where they started in the middle of the old town. The first controls of the course caused much confusion and many a time you had to stop to plan your next leg. Was technically and physically hard and included about 400 stairs.

1          17.47    Iveta Duchová,              Czech

2          18.38    Julia Gross                   Swiss

3          18.43    Ivana Bochenková         Czech

12         19.58    Greta Knarston              NZ

13         20.20    Lauren Gillis               

15         20.31    Rachel Effeney

18         20.41    Angela Simpson            NZ

30         21.47    Bridget Anderson

47         23.21    Gergia Whitla                NZ

57         24.54    Laurina Neumann

65         26.47    Imogen Scott                NZ

78 starters

1          17.53    Martin Hubmann            Swiss

2          18.12    Raffael Huber                Swiss

3          18.20    Andreas Kyburz             Swiss

17        20.11   Toby Scott                      NZ

62        22.44    Gene Beveridge            NZ

63       22.52    Jourdan Harvey             NZ

67       23.08    Aaaron Breed              

78        24.40    Murray Scown

81        25.16    Oliver Crosato

86        25.54    Matt Parton

91        27.38    Simon Jager                 NZ

 101 starters

The middle courses start in the morning, which will be about 4.30pm Thursday in Australia.  According to the bulletin the courses feature:

 “Great slopes.  The vegetation consists of low Mediterranean pine which makes the way of progress difficult.  It is an area with large rocks, but we have just drawn those are greater than a meter.  30% of the forest in map is open and crossed by several rent ravines.”

Below are the results from the long distance event at the World University Championships in Spain yesterday.  The race today consisted of very hilly, rocky terrain in which the winner of the course was the one who took the best route choice. Track options around large hills seemed to be the best choices at times however knowing your way through gigantic ravines also seemed to help ( note control 14 to 15) . Our girls today struggled mainly in the ravine just outside of 14 as the crossing point was hard to find and if you missed it you were stuck in blackberries with 10m high cliffs surrounding you. Aislinn was the best of our runners today maintaining a solid pace throughout the course.

1              1.05.32                  Isabelle Feer      Switz
2              1.05.37                  Brigitta Mathys   Switz
3              1.06.37                  Radka Brozková   Czech
28           1.19.41                  Georgia Whitla    NZ
29           1.19.52                  Greta Knarston   NZ
37           1.23.12                  Aislinn Prendergast
39           1.23.55                  Kate Morrison       NZ
49           1.32                        Laurina Neumann
56           1.43                        Imogen Scott    NZ
58           1.49                        Ilka Barr
                MP                         Lauren Gillis

1          1.15                          Raffael Huber   Swiss
2          1.16                 Štepán Kodeda  Czech
3          1.17                 Adam Chromý   Czech
32        1.31                 Toby Scott   NZ
64        1.45                 Matt Parton
67        1.47                 Gene Beveridge   NZ
69        1.51                 Oliver Crosato
            MP                  Aaron Breed

Wednesday is the sprint in the town of Alicante, starting at the top of a castle with 360degree views of the region. The finish is on the beach front, 200m below the castle.

Hermann Wehner and Natasha Key, both of whom already have multiple WMOC medals to their name, have taken silver medals in today’s sprint finals at the World Masters Orienteering Championships.

Key missed out by the narrowest possible margin, finishing one second behind Romania’s Veronica Minoiu in W40 after losing time late in the course. At the other end of the age scale, Wehner, who was competing in his original home town of Goslar, took second in M85, 58 seconds behind Swiss Edgar Bachtold.

Jenny Bourne (W55) and Warren Key (M50) both narrowly missed out on the medals, placing equal fourth and fifth respectively. The other Australian to achieve a top-ten result was Jim Russell (tenth in M50).

Switzerland led the day’s medal table with five golds. It was an outstanding day for Great Britain with four gold medals, the same as Sweden.  The World Masters has attracted 3,958 competitors in age classes from M/W35 to W85 and M90. Australia has 71 participants which makes us the 12^th most represented country out of 43 competing. Finland leads the way with 654, then Sweden (506), Norway (500) and Russia with 428.

Remaining Australian A final results:

M40: Blair Trewin 47

W45: Wendy Read 16, Kirsten Wehner 56

M45: Martin Wehner 54

W50: Liz Abbott 36

M50: Tim Hatley 45

W55: Sue Key 24, Hilary Wood DNF

M55: Geoff Lawford 12, Ted van Geldermalsen 52

W65: Libby Meeking 38

M65: Stephen Flick 36

W70: Ann Ingwersen 66

M70: Darryl Erbacher 34, Alex Tarr 54

Full results are available on the WMOC website.

Competition resumes, after a rest day tomorrow, with the first long distance qualification race on Wednesday.

The ACT Sprint and Middle Distance MTBO Championships were held in Canberra last weekend.     The elite fields featured a good number of present and past Australian team members who were eager to tackle the world class terrains of “Bruce Ridge” for the sprint and “Stromlo” for the middle.  The latter map included unique symbols for one direction only tracks.

Steven Cusworth displayed excellent form in his lead up to WOC in Hungary with convincing wins in both events while JWOC debutante Heath Jamieson had his best ride in the long to take 3^rd.   Mary Fien exhibited her fitness and navigational cunning to take both victories in the strong women’s field but adventure racer and former foot o star Danielle Winslow was right on her tail.

Other double victories were recorded by:

M16  Stephen Melhuish                       M20 Paul de Jongh       M50  Andrew Power       M70 Graham Fowler

W20  Rebecca Powell           W50 Sue Donoghue      W60  Kathy Liley                 M 80 Kevin Paine

SPRINT     M21A      5.9km   16 Controls                    W21A   5.6km     14 Controls

1 Steven Cusworth   (VIC)     36:03                           1 Mary Fien          (NSW)       37:45

2 Thomas Walter    (ACT)       42:22                           2 Danielle Winslow   (TAS)    40:14

3 Luke Poland    (ACT)             42:28                           3 Carolyn Jackson      (VIC)     44:31

6 Heath Jamieson    (VIC)      49:12                           4 Emily Walter    (ACT)           48:30

MIDDLE   M21A     13.6km    15 Controls                                W21A      10.4km     13 Controls

1 Steven Cusworth      (VIC)         66:13                      1 Mary Fien                   BF N              66:13

2 Ian Warren                (ACT)         76:55                     2 Danielle Winslow            AL T              66:51

3 Heath Jamieson       (VIC)            79:37                  3 Belinda Allison             ACT               67:40

Well done to the Sunley family and ACTOA for organising two excellent events.

Today the World University Orienteering Championships (WUOC) kick off in Alicante in sunny southern Spain. This year Australia is fielding a strong team of 10 athletes.

The mens team includes Murray Scown (ACT), Matt Parton (NSW), Oliver Crosato (QLD) and Aaron Breed (QLD/VIC).

The womens team includes Aislinn Prendergast (VIC), Rachel Effeney (QLD), Ilka Barr (VIC), Laurina Neumann (QLD), Bridget Anderson (QLD) and Lauren Gillis (SA).

The athletes and coaching staff of Evan Barr and Simon Upphill have spent the last few days in Alicante acclimatising to the to the warm dry conditions, the late afternoon siestas and the street rioting that occurs when the host country wins the European Football Cup during the carnival.

The racing kicks off tonight (tuesday night Australian Eastern Standard time) with the Long distance and with the mens race including over 700m of climb it should prove to be a tough day out for all.

This year clashes with the World Championships and the Junior World Championships have meant the some of the traditionally stronger countries are not sending full strength teams. This fact combined with competition terrain that is not dissimilar to Australian terrain means that the Aussie team could well post some great results.

The first mountain bike orienteering event in Far North Queensland will take place this Saturday, 30 June, in the McKenzie Pocket Forest outside Kuranda.

Being organised by the newly formed Far North Orienteering club, the event is sure to attract a good following from the large number of mountain bike riders and adventure racers in the region. Over the last month, local orienteers and other volunteers have been busy checking the tracks through the plantation forest and undertaking track pruning to ensure some enjoyable riding for participants.

An experienced orienteer and MTBO rider, Andrew Campbell, formerly from Victoria but now living in Cairns, is one of the key organisers of this inaugural event, ably assisted by Mike Coleman of Adventure Sport NQ who has a long history of involvement in outdoor recreation in the region. The forests of North Queensland have not yet been fully explored for their MTBO potential but there are some exciting possibilities around the Atherton Tablelands and west of Ingham and we look forward to further development of the sport in the region in the coming years.

For more information check out http://adventuresportnq.info

21 Australians have reached the A finals in the sprint at the World Masters Orienteering Championships after today’s qualification races in Bad Harzburg, Germany.

The most impressive qualifiers were Natasha Key (W40), Jenny Bourne (W55) and Geoff Lawford (M55), all of whom were second in their heats. There were three Australians in the top eight in M50-4, with Europe first-timer Tim Hatley joining regular WMOC contenders Jim Russell (3rd) and Warren Key (7th), while Ann Ingwersen (W70) and Hermann Wehner (M85) were also third.

Ted van Geldermalsen made it by the narrowest possible margin after dead-heating for 20th, the last qualifying spot, in M55. On the other side of the coin, Nick Dent missed out by one place and three seconds in M60.

The final will take place tomorrow in the medieval town centre of Goslar.

Results are available through the WMOC website.

Vanessa Round (SA) and Julian Dent (NSW) did well to finish about a minute down in their respective sprint races in Switzerland yesterday.  As only the 40 top ranked runners got a start in the World Cup sprint held on the same day, these fields were quite strong and full of runners from a variety of countries.

Some of our team members will join in the Swiss and Finnish middle and long WOC selection races mid week.

Elite Women ( 2.8 km,  20c )                                                       Elite Men   ( 3.2 km,  24 c)

1. Eva Jurenikova         CZE           14:50                                     1. Yannick Michiels           BEL         15:46
2. Franziska Meier        SWI          14:50                                     2. Rasmus Thrane Hansen   DEN     15:52
3. Hanna Wisniewska   POL          15:05                                    2. Robert Merl                AUT            15:52
4. Vanessa Round            15:54                                     12. Julian Dent                AUS              16:44
5. Aislinn Prendergast           16:34                                    26. Evan Barr                  AUS               17:17
6. Felicity Brown                   16:45                                      30. Tane Cambridge             NZL         17:29
7. Bridget Anderson           17:09                                     43. Murray Scown               AUS          18:21
8. Lauren Gillis                 17:19                                       46. James Bradshaw             NZL          18:32
9. Susanne Casanova         17:39
10. Laurina Neumann         18:14

Full results can be found at: yesterday http://www.o-l.ch/cgi-bin/results?type=rang&year=2012&event=6.+Nationaler+OL+A+/+64.+St.Galler+OL

Julian Dent was our best performing runner in yesterday’s Middle distance World Cup event, being only 8 minutes behind the winner, Swiss Matthias Kyburz, who ran above his world ranking of 21.   Swiss superstar Simone NIGGLI-LUDER continued her successful 2012 comeback, after giving birth to twins, to make it a double Swiss victory.  With three men in the top 4 and five women in the top 10 places the Swiss are certainly eyeing off medals in their “home” World Championships in three weeks.

The terrain consisted of steep slopes with deep but crossable valleys.  Mostly highly runnable with no undergrowth. Courses were 6.3 (women) and 7.0 km (men) with 220 / 290 meters of ascent. Planned winning times were 37 minutes for both men and women.  View maps and tracking of top runners on website.

Sprint, Sunday.
First start women 8.30pm  AUS – men 9.35. The terrain is a flat city centre, mostly urban old town centre including a  UNESCO world heritage monastery.  Courses are 2.4 / 2.9 km long with 75 / 100 meters of ascent – winning times of 14 / 14:30. See the old map with a thought course made by Eva Jurenikova here (via Twitter).    There is GPS tracking and live TV coverage.  Seehttp://www.postfinancesprint.ch/    Only the top 40 ranked runners are in the official sprint, so our runners will be competing in the earlier public race.

1 Matthias Kyburz            SUI         40:41 0:00

2 Olav Lundanes               NOR       40:45 +0:04

3 Baptiste Rollier              SUI         41:34 +0:53

4 Matthias Merz               SUI         41:53 +1:12

5 Frederic Tranchand      FRA        42:12 +1:31

6 Jan Sedivy                        CZE         42:15 +1:34

71 Julian Dent                   AUS       49:08 +8:27

77 Ross Morrison             NZL        50:48 +10:07

84 James Bradshaw         NZL        54:46 +14:05

85 Tane Cambridge         NZL        55:24 +14:43

86 Evan Barr                       AUS       55:32 +14:51

87 Murray Scown             AUS       59:06 +18:25

Many of our best runners have just departed / are about to depart overseas for Junior, University or elite World Championships.  Some early arrivals took the opportunity to race in Finland, including the prestigious Venla – Jukola Relays last weekend.   Following the races on live internet coverage, with cameras in the bush and GPS tracking on the maps made for entertaining watching, even from here.

Our women’s team, comprised of all elite runners, did exceedingly well both place and time wise.

Vanessa Round’s individual leg place of 59^th was our best.  She followed this up by filling in for a Finnish Jukola team the next day, and did well in running the longest leg (15.1km).  Anna Sheldon also ran first leg of Jukola for another team – energetic girls!

The men’s team had several last minute replacements subbed in and they sensibly led off with three elite runners before putting the veterans out on the shorter legs and having promising junior, Kasimir Gregory, run the long last leg.   Murray Scown and Ian Lawford ran outstandingly, with Ian having the long night leg.

WOC runners Julian Dent (42^nd) and David Brickhill-Jones (99^th) ran impressively for their respective Scandinavian clubs.

Venla women’s relay – 1,235 teams

1)      2.57        Halden (NOR)

2)      2.59        Paimion Rastii (FIN)

3)      2.55        OK Pan Arhus (DEN)

93)  3.38       AUSTRALIA

Leg    Win team         AUS       Leg place     Overall          Name

Kms      mins               time

5.4         38                    47.30     200                         200         Anna Sheldon

5.5         38                    47.09     133                         139         Laurina Neuman

6.9         46                    58.17     108                         117         Felicity Brown

8.1         54                    66.01     59                             93          Vanessa Round

Jukola men’s relay – 1650 teams

1)      7.56        Kalevan Rasti  (FIN)    Leg times were – 78, 74, 82, 47, 47, 59, 86

2)      8.04        Malungs (SWE)

3)      8.08        Halden (NOR)

278      AUSTRALIA

Leg    Win team         AUS       Leg place     Overall          Name

Kms      mins               time

12.7        78                   94           277                 277       Evan Barr

12.7        74                    89           121                174       Murray Scown

14.1         82               100             133                140       Ian Lawford

7.7         47               109             1,259             315       Nick Dent

8.1         47                   74           432                317        Anthony Cox

10.2         59                   93           406               318        Jim Russell

15.1        86                    123         244               278        Kasimir Gregory

Other Australian Runners

Julian Dent     Malungs 2                        Leg 7     99.40 mins  42 leg place  36^th team place

David Brickhill-Jones  Rasti-Kurikka   Leg 1   93.26       99th leg place  62^nd team place at end.

Vanessa Round                                      Leg 7   131 mins  373 leg place  373^rd team place

Anna Sheldon                                         Leg 1

130 mins  1035 leg place after starting at no 1605!

FINNISH  FORSSA GAMES middle length course

17 – Murray Scown          11 – Vanessa Round

24 – David B-Jones           27 – Anna Sheldon

32 – Evan Barr

64 – Kasimir Gregory

FINNISH Sprint

4 – David B-Jones             1 – Vanessa Round

11 – Murray Scown        11 – Anna Sheldon

Orienteering Australia is very pleased to announce the appointment of Gareth Candy as High Performance Operations Manager.

Gareth is a University of Canberra Graduate in Applied Science in Coaching and has a considerable background in orienteering high performance development and management. From 2009 to 2012 he was Performance Director for British Orienteering responsible for all aspects of Talent Identification, Talent Development and High Performance programs. From 2007 to 2009 he was manager of Junior Programs for British Orienteering and in 2006 and 2007 was Orienteering Australia High Performance Manager and Head Coach.