Technical and Competition T
he Technical and Competition areas for Orienteering Australia (OA) fall under the portfolio of the OA Director, Technical, and are overseen through the following committees: • • •
Technical (Chair - vacant); Mapping (2019 Chair, Neil Barr); Events (2019 Chair, Greg Hawthorne);
In addtion, other aspects of the Technical and Competition areas are managed by the OA Badge Scheme Secretary John Oliver, and the Manager Coaching and Officiating Development Jim Mackay. Elite rankings are maintained by Bruce Arthur, nonelite rankings by Darryl Erbacher and NOL points by Ian Prosser. The work of the above people and of the committee chairs in 2019 is acknowledged. The Eventor working group reports to the OA Director, Media & Communications (although this position was vacant during 2019).
Technical The Technical Committee met at the Australian 3-Days in Perth in April 2019. OA rules and documents referred to below are maintained on the Orienteering Australia web site, either in the Operational Manual or the Technical Pages. Organisers, course planners and controllers are encouraged to seek clarification from state and national technical directors regarding the interpretation of the OA rules and appendices and of the NOL Guidelines, which will be reviewed in 2020.
Rules - Foot Orienteering The 2019 International Orienteering Federation (IOF) rules were not available until after the 2018 OA Conference; changes incorporated into OA rules included that minimum control separation in sprints has been increased to 25 metres, and the start triangle is considered a control for the purpose of that rule. A trial of 1: 10 000 scale for long race World Ranking Events (WRE) has been permitted by IOF. Older age classes (i.e. World Masters Orienteering Championships, as per IOF rules, are permitted to have 1: 7 500 scale; discussions have begun amongst the OA Technical Committee regarding age classes which should have the larger scale but consensus was not reached for 2019. Addition of a 3rd dot point to IOF rule 20.5, allowing interrogation of a control where a competitor’s card has not registered a punch, was included in the IOF rules. Despite extensive discussion, no decision has been taken to add this to the OA rules as yet although it will be applicable to IOF classes in regional championships and WREs; currently this rule is believed to be a trial by IOF for 2019. OA Rule changes which are relevant to the conduct of Australian races are as follows. 12.5 – Allowing for M/W21E to have 2-minute starts in long WREs (still recommending 3 min, and also suggesting 3 min for M/W20E in long races). 12.6 – Making it clearer that in World Ranking Events, start order is usually according to ranking. 19.4 – Controls shall not be sited within 25m of each other for map scales 1: 4 000 & 1: 5 000 as per IOF rules. Appendix 1 – Updated course-class combinations and relative run rates . David Hogg’s work on course-class combinations, based on revised relative speeds, provides tables for sprint, middle and long distance, which have then been adjusted by the OA Director, Technical so that elite classes should always be given the lowest-numbered courses; ideally there would be no other classes on the same course as elites but this may not always be practical.
10 Orienteering Australia Annual Report 2019
