High Performance News

What happens when you put an Aussie (Julian Dent), a Norweigan (Oystein Kvaal Osterbo), an Irishman (Nicolas Simonin), a Finn (Marten Bostrom) and a Swede (Fredrik Bakkman) together?

The winning team for Swedish Orienteering Club– IFK Lindingo SOK in the relay Smalandskavlen which was held on the weekend near Jonkoping, Sweden. This relay for H21 consists of five legs, two at night and then three starting the next morning in daylight. There were teams from all the biggest clubs in Sweden as well as from Norway and Finland entered in this relay. IFK Lindingo has won this event for the past three years.

Apart from Julian being in the winning team this year there is another Australian connection with IFK Lindingo as Bryan Keely and Laurina Neumann who are both living and working in Stockholm are also competing with this club and were in the second team for H21 and D21.

Julian who is focusing on night orienteering was selected to run the first leg which is a mass start leg of approximately 10km with forking. He ran a very steady race (65:19) and was in 6^th place 27 seconds down on third place. Olav Lundanes was running first for Halden SK and he was the fastest in a time of 59:25. After the second night leg the Lindingo team was in 9^th place, 5:58 minutes down on the leaders OK Denseln. Lindingo took the lead at the end of the first day leg, with Nicolas Simonin being the fastest on this leg to put the team in the lead by 25 seconds. With Marten Bostrom and Fredrik Bakkman on the next two legs the team had two WOC representatives for their country. Marten had a very good run to extend the lead to over 4 minutes to the Finnish club Tampereen Pyrinto. Fredrik after a small problem early managed to hold on for a comfortable win by 3:12 from Malungs who finished 2nd by one second to Tampereen Pyrinto.

Relays are a very important part of the orienteering calendar in Sweden and clubs place a lot of importance on their performances in these relays. As reported earlier in the year the biggest relay of the year in Sweden in Tiomila with close to 300 mens teams of ten runners and 300 womens teams of  five runners. There are no age classes for this relay just men or women teams. Lindingo had a very good performance in this relay also with the team finishing in 4^th place after being in the lead after 9 legs. Julian ran the second night leg and the team was in 15^th place after his run less than 1 minute behind the leading team. With 10 legs it is crucial that each runner has a steady run and this enabled the Lindingo team to gradually improve their position to be second on leg 8 and first on leg 9.

Two weekends ago the 25 Manna relay was held. This is a relay for all ages in the club and has 25 legs with different distances and different ages and sex running each leg (see table).

25 Manna- legs, length and who can participate

With legs 4-7, four runners run at the same time and their times are all added together to calculate the total team time.

Lindingo won this relay in 2014 and so were hoping for a repeat in 2015. This was not to be, but they did finish in 3^rd place only 1:48 down on the winning team after 25 legs. The winning team this year was Halden SK (Norway) and one of the third leg runners was Lizzie Ingham the ex Canberra Cockatoo who is now living and training in Norway with Halden SK one of the strongest clubs in Scandanavia.

Maybe there is something in the structure and approach to relays from Sweden and Finland that Australia could adopt to resurrect the interest in relays in this country.

Australian Long Distance- performance analysis

On a lovely sunny day the Australian Long Distance Championships were held at Chapel Flat near Creswick. A gold mining, gully spur terrain not dissimilar to the Australian Middle last weekend. Courses were set by the ex-Australian elite and well known mapper Rob Plowright. The elites had a start in the arena and also a map change next to the arena, so there was plenty of action for the spectators in the arena and also those watching the live feed provided by Living It Live. For only the second time in Australia we had live GPS tracking on a big screen in the arena and also live on the internet. Over 500 people were watching the live feed at some stage of the event.

M21E

Ralph Street the Great Britain orienteer who is on a coaching scholarship in Victoria was a clear winner of the M21E class. This completed a successful week for Ralph as he won the Australian Sprint Championships also and was second in the Australian Middle Distance Championships. Ralph won by 4:42 with Peter Bray in 2nd place and Leon Keely who was the best Australian in 3^rd place. Ralph lead from control 5 and was by far the strongest runner towards the end of the course as the other runners slowed especially in the last loop in the gold mining where some errors also slowed them down. Ralph was the fastest on the long leg to control 5 where he stayed close to the red line and also maintained good speed. Leon Keely who was running fast took the left track route and covered an extra 609m and lost 2:20 on this leg. The young Australian junior Henry McNulty who was running in this class was in 5^th place at control 22 but he lost time (5 minutes) over the remainder of the course to finish in 7^th place.

W21E

This class was won by Jo Allison in a time of 87:53 and she was an amazing 9:16 in front of second Krystal Neumann with Anna Sheldon in 3^rd. Jo took  the lead at control 4 and steadily increased her lead until the finish. Anna Sheldon had a strong start and was in the lead until leg 4. On the long leg 5 Jo was the fastest by 4:23. She took the straighter route choice and used as many small tracks as possible and was running much faster than Krystal Neumann who took a similar route. Anna Sheldon went for the left track route choice and by doing so ran an extra 533m and was over 7 minutes slower on this leg. Aislinn Prendergast also took the left track option and she ran an extra 952m and even though she was running fast she lost 4:27 on this leg.

M17-20E

Tommy Hayes (NZ) who has been in great form all week continued this form with a strong win in this class. Tommy won by 3:12 from Patrick Jaffe with Ed Cory-Wright (NZ) in 3^rd place. Patrick had a slow start losing 2 minutes on the first control. Early in the race the lead changed, with Simeon Burrill leading at control 2, 3 and 4 before Tommy Hayes who was the second fastest on the long leg to control 5 took the lead and his speed and consistency enabled him to maintain this until the finish. Patrick after the slow start ran strongly on the long leg to be the fastest after choosing to stay close to the red line. However, he tired a little towards the end to finish second. Tommy Hayes choose the left track option and ran 1111m further than Patrick and running this leg at the very impressive 4.48min/km. Simeon Burrill was running strongly and was in third at control 14 but tired over the rest of the course to finish in 4^th place.

W17-20E

In a very strong performance Winnie Oakhill won this class convincingly, by 10 minutes from Lanita Steer and Zoe Dowling a further 1:36 down in 3^rd place. Winnie started strongly and after a very strong leg 4 she continued to increase her lead for the rest of the race. Lanita Steer after losing over 6 minutes on leg 2 was almost matching Winnie for running speed until control 11 after which she tired and lost a further 2:30 against Winnie. Anna Dowling who was in the lead at control 3 and in second place until control 10 realised on the way to control 11 that she had taken the wrong map at the map change and she lost 14 minutes on this leg. This was very unfortunate for Anna as she was running almost at the same speed as Winnie until this happened. Anna was the fastest on the long leg to control 2 by 1:45.

GPS tracking

Winsplits

GPS tracking routes courtesy of livingitlive

Nick Dent

The Australian Bushrangers will take a good lead into the final two races in this test match series for the Aspin-Key trophy. After the Australian Middle Distance event the overall score is Australia 94 and New Zealand 86. In the individual classes the scores were:

M21E- NZ 23, Aus 22

W21E- Aus 24, NZ 21

M20E- NZ 24, Aus 21

W20E- Aus 27, NZ 18

There are two remaining events in this test match series- the Australian Sprint Distance Championships on Friday and Australian Long Distance Championships on Saturday.

Also over the next two events the Icebug National Orienteering League Individual winners will be determined.

In M21E  Matt Crane is on 205 points with Simon Uppill on 204. As Ian Lawford is not running in these events, it comes down to a two way battle between Matt and Simon.

In W21E there is some very close points, with Krystal Neumann and Anna Sheldon, both Queendsland Cyclones on 195 points and the two Victorian Nuggets, Natasha Key and Aislinn Prendergast not far behind on 188 and 187 respectively.

In M20E the current leader Matt Doyle is competing in the M21E class over these two events so Patrick Jaffe who is 12 points behind is the likely winner.

In W20E Lanita Steer has a 22 point lead over Anna Dowling, with Winnie Oakhill a further 14 points back. So the placings in these two races will determine the winner in this class.

The teams point score will be finalised after the Australian Relays on Sunday.

Nick Dent

Senior Boys

Tommy Hayes was running much faster up to Control 11 where he was over a minute in the lead. He then had problems with the leg to Control 12 losing 1.35. Simeon Burrill who was the fastest on the leg was then in the lead by 33 seconds with five short legs to go. Even though Tommy was running faster, Simeon had a big enough lead to be the winner by 4 seconds to Tommy Hayes in second. Jarrah Day (3^rd) and Ed Cory-Wright (4^th) both had similar runs being over 1.30 behind after control 11. They both had very good running speed from this control to the finish with Jarrah being slightly faster to end in 3^rd place. Patrick Jaffe had a slow start losing 43 seconds on control 3, a very short leg. From control 11 his speed enabled him to catch up to Ed, however, he lost 15 seconds on the short leg 14 and was unable to match the speed of Jarrah and Ed to finish in 5^th place.

Senior Girls

Going into this event Danielle Goodall was the clear favourite after her performances at JWOC for NZ. However, a loss of 3.31 on leg 3 meant that she was too far behind to make up this amount of time in this fast open terrain. Jo Anna Maynard the winner of the sprint on Monday continued her very impressive development. After a small problem on leg 2 Jo Anna was running faster than everyone else and after gaining the lead at control 4 she remained in the lead to the finish to win by 1.02 from Winnie Oakhill. Winnie had some problems from control 7-10 and was not running fast enough to make up this loss of time. Asha Steer who also lost time in the middle of the course was not running as fast as Winnie and finished in 3^rd place. Georgia Jones who started slowly had the fastest split on the long leg, but after losing 35 seconds on leg 12 she finished in a promising 4^th place.

Junior Boys

In perhaps the performance of the day Aston Key started fast and was in the lead all through the course. His winning margin was 1.50. Aston is showing very impressive running speed and when combined with his very consistent navigation he is rapidly establishing clear ascendency in his age group. The brothers Tristan and Patrick Miller were 2 seconds apart at control 9, but Patrick ran the last 6 controls faster than his brother and finished in 2^nd place. Dante Afnan who was only 4 seconds behind the Miller boys at control 9 managed to finish in 3^rd place. His speed over the last two controls enabled him to get in front of Tristan Miller who finished in 4^th place 17 seconds behind 3^rd.

Junior Girls

In a race where the lead changed four times early Zoe Melhuish was the most consistent and the fastest from control 5 to win by 23 seconds to Jenna Tidswell in 2^nd place. Jenna had some very fast legs but her inconsistency cost her the chance to repeat her victory in the Sprint yesterday. Briana Steven and Caitlin Young both had very good speed on some legs but not enough consistency. Briana finished in 3^rd place with Caitlin who was one second behind the lead at control 3 finished in 4^th place 3 seconds behind.

Nick Dent

OA Head Coach

A new feature of this Australian Championship carnival is the provision of live results- including live audio, video and GPS tracking. Also on Saturday at the Long Distance Championships there will be a large screen in the arena for the spectators to be able to watch the GPS tracking and live results for the four elite classes. For those of you who can watch this on the internet the website

Live Centre

will be providing this service at all events during the carnival. Chris Naughton is the man behind this online results service and he is working closely with the organizing clubs to make the results and the online services a key part of this carnival.

GPS tracking from today’s School Individual Event is available. This service is something that is common at major events overseas and thanks to the hard work and dedication of Toph (Chris) we can now provide this service to spectators at the arena and also any interested people anywhere in the world.

An agreement has been made to have an Australian v New Zealand Test Match at the Australian Championships Carnival starting this weekend. The test will be held over three events: Australian Sprint, Middle and Long Distance events.

Each country will have a team of three in the following class: M21E, W21E, M20 and W20. The Bushrangers and the Pinestars will be competing for the Key-Aspin Trophy which is currently held by Australia. This test match series provides a great opportunity for Australia’s resident senior and junior elites to get some international competition. New Zealand have announced a strong team and we can expect a very strong challenge from the Pinestars even though we are competing in our home terrain.

Test Match Teams

AUS      Bushrangers

M21E                                      W21E

Leon Keely                                        Rachel Effeney (Sprint)

Brodie Nankervis                             Natasha Key

Simon Uppill                                     Krystal Neumann

….                                                     Aislinn Prendergast (Middle and Long)

M20                                        W20

Aidan Dawson                                  Anna Dowling

Jarrah Day                                         Winnie Oakhill

Patrick Jaffe                                      Lanita Steer

Manager: Jim Russell

NZ     Pinestars

M21E                                      W21E

Nick Hann                                          Jenni Adams (Middle)

Carsten Jorgensen                           Renee Beveridge

Matt Ogden                                      Sarah O’Sullivan (Sprint and Long)

—-                                                Tessa Ramsden

M20                                        W20

Ed Cory-Wright                                Sophie Harrison

Cameron de L’lsle                            Lara Malloy

Tommy Hayes                                  Heidi Stolberger

Manager: Alistair Cory-Wright