Not the Vic Short Champs

Bringing back the double header shorts

Until about 30 years ago, most orienteering events were long and only in the forest. Then in the early 1990s clubs in Australia and New Zealand began organising short distance orienteering events. These usually comprised two races on the same day, each with a 20 – 25 minute winning time. Sometimes the afternoon race was a chasing start with the morning’s winners starting first. In an alternative format the afternoon race was a final and only the top half from the morning race ran in the A final. The 1990 Hovell Tour had two Short-O events, the first at “Tharwa Tor” in ACT and the second at “Triptera” in the Warby Range state park near Wangaratta. About ten years later middle and sprint distance formats took over from Short-Os.

The idea of organising a double header short event began to form after Melbourne Sprint Weekend 2020. The MSW sprint race at Granite Hill Park (South Morang) had been a great success and demonstrated the technical quality of the area, so the question was what next to use this map for. It seemed a bit early to open it up for general training and club events. A double header short distance event was proposed and included in the 2021 event calendar for 14 November.

In the original calendar the event was simply 2 x Shorts –Granite Hills. In mid-2021 it was put to the OV Board that the Shorts be called the (unofficial) Vic Short Champs – which was approved. The Short Champs is probably the only event on the Victorian calendar after May that actually went ahead on its originally scheduled date, apart from some Bendigo events. When Ted started planning, the metro/regional travel ban was still in place so he could not travel from Bendigo to check the viability of the courses. Dandenong Ranges member Damian Spencer, who lives within 5km of the park, came to the rescue proactively offering to help with control site checking. Damian also found a much shorter route to the morning start than the one Ted had anticipated. Competitors may have got their feet wet early – but it was much shorter. Ted was finally able to visit the park a fortnight before the event, so planning was definitely just-in-time.

the road between the races.

In the days leading up to the event the weather forecast seemed to get worse each time we looked. The weather stayed dry for the placing of controls on Saturday afternoon but by Sunday a cycle of sun – rain – wind – hail – sun every hour or so had set in for the day. In the afternoon, a few unlucky people experienced the hail while out on their courses. One squall created particular havoc at the download tent, sweeping the computer off the desk. Only quick work stopped the tent disintegrating. SportIdent download was moved into the back of Kathy’s Subaru, which was relocated up to the finish area. For the morning race people could choose their own start time between 10.00 and 11.15am. Their afternoon start time was 2.00pm plus however long they took for the morning race. So, for example, someone who ran the morning race in 22 minutes started the chasing start race at 2.22pm. The new ALGE digital countdown start clock that had been purchased for Victorian clubs with part of the MSW 2020 surplus was used for the chasing start. It was programmed to count down for each competitor’s start. This helped the start of competitors if there was a reasonable gap between starters but needed careful attention when two competitors had start times very close to each other.

Four courses were offered: Hard Long, Medium, and Short, plus a Moderate navigation course for novices. Course lengths ranged from 3.6 to 1.3km in the morning and from 2.9 to 1.1km in the afternoon, resulting in winning times of around 20 minutes. Courses had constant changes of direction and lots of controls. The afternoon long course had 30 controls in 2.9km. Map scales were 1:4000 and 1:3000.

The first few controls of the afternoon courses were set in an area of lower visibility to provide front runners who ran accurately an opportunity to get away rather than immediately be chased down by following starters. The chasing start was a success and the hopes of seeing some tight racing was achieved when Brodie, Pat and Aston raced down the chute with less than a second separating them. There were numerous other head to head races and close down the field and in the other races too.

(Unofficial) Vic Short-O Champions:

Hard Long: Women Natasha Key, Men Brodie Nankervis

Hard Medium: Women Carolyn Jackson, Men Cormac McCarthy

Hard Short: Women Eleanor Williams, Men Alexander Rowlands

Moderate: Women Lydia Stott, Men Frankie Shin