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Orienteering Australia Awards 2019
Orienteering Australia Awards
Athlete Of The Year Aston Key - VIC Silva Medal Stephen Craig - NSW
SILVA Award for Services to Orienteering: Richard Matthews - WA
Richard Matthews joined the Austrlian orienteering community in 1981 when he moved to Australia from Great Britain in 1981. Since that time Richard has been an outstanding contributor to orienteering in both his home state of Western Australia and also on the national scene. Richard has, over more than thirty five years, been a very active member of Orienteering Western Australia (OWA), setting events, controlling, mapping, organising and leading.
Richard is a Level 3 Controller and IOF Event Advisor. He is highly regarded controller and course planner who has set and controlled events at local, state and national levels. He has always strived to make his events enjoyable, fair and well managed. As a regular attender of International events, Richard has transferred his experiences to the betterment of at least three of Western Australia’s national Easter Carnivals and is currently advising New Zealand with the organising of the 2021 Oceania Regional Orienteering Championships.
Richard has taken on numerous committee positions on OWA’s Council, including Mapping Convener (1987–1989), Education/Promotion Convener (2007–2009), Technical Convenor (2010–2013) and President (2017–2019). He has always been progressive in his approach to moving OWA forward and can be a patient yet tenacious problem solver in times of crisis. Richard lead from the front, when the WA Water Corporation withdrewaccess to much of the Helena Valley and put the holding of the 2019 Easter Carnival in jeopardy. Richard has also represented OWA at a national level ensuring that our remote state’s voice was heard.
Richard Matthew is an outstanding recipient of the 2019 SILVA Award for Services to Orienteering for both his all round services to his club and State as an administrator, course planner, controller and mapper and aslo his contribution to the governance of Orienteering Australia as a OWA representative and his work as an IOF Event Advisor.
David Hogg Medal for Services to Event Management: Margi Freemantle and Ted Van Geldermalsen - VIC
Margi Freemantle and Ted van Geldermalsen were awarded the David Hogg Medal for Services to Event Management, specifically for the innovative Melbourne Sprint Weekend, featuring six races of complex sprint orienteering in three days in March 2016 and 2018 and the Sprint into Spring Series (SIS) now approaching its 5th season in Melbourne. The weekend offered over 1500 participations, with more than 300 visitors from all states of Australia, making it the largest and most successful orienteering event in Australia outside of the traditional Easter and Australian Championships Carnivals. The SIS series has been among the most innovative we have ever had and has put sprint on the map and created an accessiable urban series for existing and new orienteers.
For some time Margi and Ted had thoughts of holding a multi-day sprint event similar to Sprint the Bay, a 6-race series held in New Zealand. Following a reconnaissance mission to the 2014 Sprint the Bay event, planning started to take shape for what became the inaugural Melbourne Sprint Weekend in 2016. Building on the success of 2016, a high quality event including 4 National Orienteering League (NOL) races, a Sprint Relay, a World Ranking Event (WRE) and the Australian University Championships were arranged for 2018. Margi Freemantle took on the lead organising role which included gaining permission into venues and confirming planners and advisors for each event. Ted van Geldermalsen was the overall technical advisor and IOF Event Adviser for the WRE, ensuring that a consistent approach was applied across the weekend. This is a big task for any national event, but to do it all for 6 events in a 3 day period was an enormous task. Both 2016 and 2018 events have shown that it is not only possible, but also extremely popular with both elite orienteers and recreational age group competitors.
The intention is for the Melbourne Sprint Weekend to be a regular fixture on the OA and NOL event calendar every 2 years over the March long weekend. This will be especially important preparation for our high performance athletes with Sprint World Championships occurring every 2 years from 2020.
The Sprint into Spring Series was Margi and Ted’s creation with our urban sub committee. However they have played the key roles throughout the four years of the series. Margi has coordinated the planning of events with clubs. Her innovations have included hand picking courses planners and often approaching new course planners to give then their first opportunity. One series was planned mainly by leading juniors such as
Aston Key, Patrick Jaffe and Todd Neve and gave them their first taste of course planning for official events. This would not have been possible without Ted acting as overall technical controller and mentor to these novice course planners. This meant that Ted rarely got to compete over the six race series for the first two years – a great sacrifice for a World Masters medallist at this distance.
Other innovations that Margi and Ted instigated included:
a.
b.
c.
d. e.
f. g.
h. A Tour de France style jersey model for each of the three courses including a common sprint and hill leg across all courses. The jerseys are incredibly popular and give sprinters and hill climbers something to focus on.
A separate web site and promo material that gave this series it’s own brand.
A low effort event organisation model where on the day man power for clubs is limited to 3-4 key roles.
Season ticket entry to save effort.
A “finals” weekend that integrates with the Vic
Sprint champs.
Finding new locations.
Planning the series to cover all key areas of
Melbourne.
Events on Saturday afternoons not Sunday mornings.
Integrated roles for our coaches in residence who have taken over some of the technical coordination.
Branding of the courses and simplification into three (Mo Farah, Usain Bolt , Sally Pearson). The series has grown year on year and now averages 130-150 participants per event. It has been a successful growth driver in Victoria and could be easily replicated in any state.
On top of this huge effort, Margi also contributes as Vice President of Orienteering Victoria, Co-Chair of the Urban Orienteering committee and Ted is also overall technical advisor for the Sprint into Spring series, mapper and IOF Event Adviser.
We can not think of any Australian residents who made more of a contribution to event management and administration in Australia.
Bridget Uppill nee Anderson is a most worthy recipient the Orienteering Australia Silva Award for Services to Coaching. Bridget is a former Orienteering Queensland junior who now resides in South Australia has contributed much to coaching while at the same time being an Australian World Championships representative and a successful high level Elite competitor on the Australian domestic orienteering calendar.
Bridget has been highly impressive by her continued dedication to orienteering and her successes at the elite level while being also committed to coaching.
Bridget’s contributions to coaching have been most evident through her involvement with the Orienteering South Australia Schools Orienteering Team. At the Australian Championships carnival, Bridget is always seen enthusiastically motivating her team members who clearly enjoy and thrive on the challenges she puts forward. The impact of her involvement is clearly seen in the recent successes of the Orienteering South Australia Schools team, including a second place overall at the 2018 Australian Championships Carnival. In addtion, she has organised many coaching activities to support the growth and engagement of junior orienteers in South Australia. In recognition of her efforts in coaching, in particular coaching at the junior level, Bridget is an outstanding recipient of the 2019 of Orienteering Australia Silva Award for Services to Coaching.
