AUSSIES OVERSEAS
A S I A - PAC I F I C O R I E N T E E R I N G C H A M P S
Australian Team success in Kazakhstan
These events were preceded by the Open Cup of Kazakhstan, a series of four races starting with a sprint event amongst the parks and apartment buildings of Ust-Kamenogorsk, then moving on to three days (sometimes wet and mostly cold) amidst the rocks and heathlands of the Blue Gulf. No Australian managed to win all four days, though a few went close. Alex Tarr only lowered his colours once, a 51-second loss to fellow Aussie Jim Sawkins on the last day.
In May, a representative Team traveled to Kazakhstan to contest APOC 2004. It was a most successful event for Australia with seven titles won, a great improvement on 2002 in Canada when we only managed one. Blair Trewin reports: The terrain was some of the most enjoyable to run on anywhere in the world – imagine the Flinders Ranges pine forests studded with complex granite – and the mapping style was quite similar to our own, unlike the more generalized style common in Europe. The Individual Championships
O
UR only winner from Canada, Eric Morris, successfully defended his M21E title. He made a mistake early but recovered well to be second outright, behind 2003 JWOC gold medallist Dmitry Tsetskov of Russia (from St. Petersburg and hence ineligible for the APOC title which is only open to Russians resident in Asia). It was an Australian quinella, with Blair Trewin two minutes behind Morris and just ahead of Russian Andrei Tolstov. The most impressive Australian winner was Alex Tarr (M60). He’d had some close tussles during the lead-up races but the APOC classic race was in the most difficult terrain of the carnival and it was an area where one could expect the cream to rise to the top. Alex certainly rose to the occasion and won by almost twenty minutes. Australians won four of the five age classes from 65 upwards, through John Lyon (M65), Neil Schafer (M75), Janet Morris (W65) and Caryl Woof (W70), and scored five more placings in those age groups. The other winner was Debbie Gale, who took out W55. The younger age groups were dominated by Russians and Kazakhs. W21E was no exception, won by Russian Irina Grigorieva in an upset after her compatriot Daria Smolik had dominated most of the week.
The Relays
Another good day for Australians with two titles won and six placings. Victories came in M65 and W65, with neither team being pushed at any stage. We had hopes for wins in other classes, notably W50 and M21E, but had to settle for minor placings; the W50’s gave away too much ground early and Jacquie Rand’s strong finish was in vain. All three M21E’s had days they would rather forget, finishing behind Russian and Kazakhstan teams. But at least not winning saved us the problem of how to get the enormous trophy home. Other successes were a second place for our M50 team (two-thirds being the M60 combination of Alex Tarr and Jim Sawkins), third places for our second teams in M65 and W50, and an unexpected third in M21A for a scratch team featuring two M45s (Tony Garr and James Lithgow) and a woman (Jane Pulford).
The Other Events
Other events run in the lead-up to the Championships included the APOC Short Course which doesn’t have championship status (yet) but was treated seriously by most. Six Australians won here; Alex Tarr (M60), John Lyon (M65), Neil Schafer (M75), Jane Pulford (W21A), Val Hodsdon (W55) and Jeffa Lyon (W70). Nikolai Tarasov gave the locals something to cheer about by unexpectedly winning M21E (Eric Morris was third, and second APOC), whilst Russian Daria Smolik won W21E.
12 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2004
The Rest of the Story
APOC 2004 was not just another Orienteering trip; the choice of venue was enough to raise some eyebrows. Most people asked two questions about Kazakhstan: “where is it?” and “isn’t there a war going on there?”. Intrepid Australian orienteers were not deterred. Our contingent was a pleasingly large thirtyfive, the largest foreign group other than the Russians. The first challenge was finding how to get there. Barry Hanlon took on the task, presumably with absolutely no idea of what he’d let himself in for. Plan A came unstuck when Air Kazakhstan went the same way as Ansett. Plan B, which involved going via Moscow, came unstuck because the Russians wouldn’t issue double-entry transit visas, meaning we could get to Kazakhstan but couldn’t get back. That left Plan C, which looked horrendously convoluted but actually worked very well. We went via China, with stops in Guangzhou (southern China), Urumqi (north-west China) and Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city. The early legs were on the perfectly respectable China Southern Airlines, and the last leg on the unfortunately-named SCAT. The décor may have been ancient but at least the planes stayed in the air when they were supposed to… Almaty was the first pleasant surprise. It has a spectacular setting – a 5000-metre mountain range rises directly from the southern suburbs. The city itself was also a surprisingly green and attractive place, lacking the concrete monoliths that characterize so many other former Communist cities. (There are few high-rise buildings of any kind because of the high earthquake risk). It would make an excellent base for exploring the numerous mountain ranges of the area, in a region that deserves to get many more tourists than it actually does. (The most spectacular views of all were on the flight back from Almaty to Urumqi, tracking along the northern side of the main range that reaches over 7000 metres in places). The next pleasant surprise was the high standard of organization of the APOC week. Past experiences in eastern Europe led us to expect that the ‘in forest’ aspects would be organized well, but that the surrounding infrastructure might have a lot of hitches. As it turned out very little went wrong. The terrain was outstanding, the maps were excellent, and while the course-setting was occasionally patchy it didn’t detract from the enjoyment of the Orienteering experience. Away from the events, the accommodation and food were a little idiosyncratic but perfectly acceptable, and the transport system worked well (with the assistance of regular police escorts), despite the decrepit state of the local roads and some of the local vehicles, which look like they are about to fall apart any moment but still seem to work. (The Ust-Kamenogorsk bus fleet consists of a mixture of Soviet-era relics and second-hand vehicles imported from western Europe, some of which still bear destination signs for various Stockholm suburbs or ads for Finnish supermarkets). We had two Russian speakers in our party (Barry Hanlon and Peter Komyshan), but the path in Ust-Kamenogorsk was smoothed considerably by interpreters supplied by the APOC organizers. (The country is fairly evenly split between ethnic Kazakhs, whose language is related to Turkish, and ethnic Russians, but the northeast where APOC was held is mostly Russian). The interpreters were English-language students from the local university and became an integral part of our group during APOC week.
