NEWS APOC 2006 The Asia-Pacific Orienteering Championships in 2006 have been awarded to Hong Kong.
World Masters 2009 GAISF (the General Assembly of International Sports Federations) recently announced that the host city for the 2009 World Masters Games will be Sydney. This will almost certainly mean that the World Masters Orienteering Championships will be held in conjunction with the Games. The Orienteering Association of NSW is in communication with the NSW Major Events Board (organisers of the Games) and Orienteering events will probably be held in the Lithgow area. The timing is understood to be a clear week after the Australian Orienteering Championships in 2009 which is allocated to Victoria.
2005 Oceania Carnival 6-16 January, 2005, New Zealand Auckland is the location of the next major event in New Zealand, the Oceania 2005 Orienteering Carnival, 6 - 16 January 2005, in Auckland. The carnival will include one score event, six days of traditional Orienteering (incorporating, on two days, the Australia/New Zealand Challenge Individual and Relay) and one day of Mountain Bike Orienteering (incorporating the ANZ Mountain Bike Orienteering Challenge). There will also be an Australia/New Zealand Schools Challenge. Terrain includes two days on a new map of detailed sand dune type pine forest terrain on a sloped area, three days of detailed gully/spur pine forest and fern covered terrain, two days of technically demanding forest and coastal strip sand dunes and one day on intricate farmland with NZ native bush. All levels of orienteers will be catered for including elites, juniors and veterans and a large international field is expected. Five of the days will count towards the overall Oceania Five Day results with the four best results counting.
Albury-Wodonga Run, another record Albury-Wodonga OC hosted a record crowd for the fourth year in a row at their annual Nail Can Hill Run, topping 1000 entries for the first time. In 2001 entries were 700, then 800 in 2002 and topped 900 last year. The event just continues to grow thanks to support from all sections of the community from the business sector to local government, volunteer organisations and of course the general public. There has only ever had one wet Nail Can (1996) in the 28 times the event has been run. An indication of the growth of the event is the number of sponsors; in 1998 there were 16 official sponsors, and now there are 25, all local businesses, including newspaper The Border Mail. The event is AWOC’s principal fund raiser, generating finance for quality maps which might not otherwise be possible.
Tash runs second Natasha Key was second woman home in the Melbourne 10 km “Run to the G” (Melbourne Cricket Ground) on Sunday 24 May. About 5000 took part. Tash covered the course in 37.45, behind Claire Fearnly. Men’s winner was Lee Troup in 29.57. Tash has been selected for this year’s World Orienteering Championships in Sweden. Events like this have been part of her training programme.
two key reasons: the risk of people being lost from time to time and also to enable participants to blow for help should they be injured.
Sports injuries cost $1.83 billion The Sports Injuries Report for 2004 surveyed 650 Australians. It says sport can be both expensive and painful with the cost of injuries rising $300 million since last year to a bruising $1.83 billion. All codes of football were the most common source of injury, followed by tennis, netball, walking, running, basketball, yoga, then golf, volleyball, hockey and cycling. Ankle, foot and achilles injuries account for 20% of the total, with back and spinal problems at 9%. The surprise was that 25% of people surveyed had been injured during yoga. The reason is attributed to failure to warm up properly. The Age (Melbourne)
GPS in WA OAWA have recently bought a GPS (Global Positioning Satellite device) to help with mapping. The positioning data from the GPS can be imported into OCAD (Orienteering Computer Assisted Design) mapping programme and altered without the need to trace over the lines of a template. Initial use is likely to be in plotting tracks for MTB-O maps.
World University Championships
World Games promotion
The 2004 World University Championships took place in Plzen, Czech Republic, on 21-25 June. The event was dominated by the hosts, who took five of the eight gold medals on offer (with a sixth going to Slovak Marian Davidik). Australia was represented by Simon Goddard and William Hawkins, who both achieved midfield results with 42nd and 47th respectively in
‘On your marks, the Games are coming’ is the theme of a billboard advertising campaign for local promotion of the multisport World Games 14 – 24 July 2005 in Duisberg, Germany. The Rhein-Ruhr area is one of Europe’s most densely populated. Some 500 roadside billboards will remind millions about the countdown to the biggest multi-sport event ever held in the region.
the Long-Distance event.
Blowing the whistle Orienteering Tasmania has determined that all orienteers must carry a whistle. There are
Orienteering is one of 30 sports in the programme. Australia’s Grant Bluett was the World Games 2000 Men’s champion in Japan.
European Championships This first series of World Cup events for 2004 opened at Roskilde in Denmark on July 10–17. Australian highlights came in the Sprint, where Grant Bluett was 19th, and the LongDistance, where Tom Quayle was 22nd. Hanny Allston reached the Sprint final in her senior international debut, and Danielle Winslow had a solid week in the lead-up to her first World Championships.
US club measures hits on its website San Francisco’s Bay Area Orienteering Club reports that its website has about 500 visitors a day, about ten per cent of whom come from search engines. Hits are highest on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The high web traffic led the club to consider whether to cut back on its printed newsletter to save money, but a decision was made to keep it going for now.
International relationship with military sport The International Orienteering Federation has traditionally had an exceptionally good relationship with the International Military Sports Council (CISM). In midJune a new form of cooperation was established. On the initiative of the Finns, an Event Advisors’ Clinic with both military and civilian participants was organised at Niinisalo, Finland. Participants acquainted themselves with the organisation of two events – the Forssa Phone Games, a MiddleDistance event with some one thousand participants, and the Jukola Relay with more than 12,000 runners – and had the chance to take part. Captain Eduardo Olivieara from Brazil was amazed at the size of Jukola. “Until now I wasn’t even able to imagine that an orienteering event can be this big. I find it absolutely amazing that everything works so well despite the enormous number of runners and spectators.” O-zine, IOF electronic newsletter
SEPTEMBER 2004 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 37
