6 minute read
WORLD RADIO CHAMPS
In early September, three Australian RadiO competitors braved the European summer to compete in the World ARDF championships, this year held near Brno, Czech Republic. Bruce Paterson, Adam Scammell and Bryan Ackerly took on the rest of the RadiO world and came back with two Sprint titles and some good performances in the longer events.
Curse of the Seasons
12th 12th World RadiO World RadiO Orienteering Orienteering (ARDF) (ARDF) Championships Championships Bruce Paterson (VIC) Bruce Paterson (VIC) Bryan Ackerly at the World ARDF championships
The difference in seasons mandates a few days acclimatisation, and this we did spending eight days training in Hungary under the tutelage of Gyrui Nagi and family. Gyrui is currently a member of the US team, but formerly a World ARDF champion when competing for Hungary. It was a pretty intense week near the small town of Orfu in southern Hungary, with two training events each day - a full scale championship length ARDF event in the morning and a shorter skills event in the afternoon. The skills events covered fox-oring, orienteering and speed transmitter location.
Calm before the Storm
Feeling a little more confident about the daunting World Champs, we had four days off to make our way to Brno. Toured around wonderful Budapest, including the Budapest Cup Orienteering championship, then to Brno, Czech Republic, to be met by Jiri and his wife, a Czech competitor I'd met previously in Germany and China. Jiri has played a major role in popularising the sport amongst juniors in Czech Republic, and that is now paying off with strong Open and Junior teams.
Games are Open
The championships attracted 440 competitors from 28 nations. Add the trainers, leaders and officials and you have over 700 people attending. These all descended on a nearby square for the Opening, which featured a band with Didgeridoo (!) and a “Champions” public park race afterwards with previous World Champions competing. One was, of course, our friend Gyrui.
Destination Boskovice
some trouble to try to make the events more spectator-friendly with the finish in the town on an athletics track. All competitors are quarantined at the start point to separate them from their receivers prior to the five transmitters being turned on. This minimises cheating, but can make for a long wait, especially if you're near the end of the start list. Luckily the weather was perfect. A 6th transmitter was located at the beginning of the finish chute to aid announcing and displays of competitors times on huge video screens at the finish. The finish chute was over 500m long and quite an exciting obstacle course involving a river ford and steep banks, and all on video feed (also with live web streaming). I did reasonably well in this event only losing about 12 minutes from what would be for me an ideal course. I placed 33rd in M21 out of 58 starters with all 6 transmitters in 106 minutes. Still a far cry from the winning Czech time of 53 minutes by Karel Fucik, but a respectable 1st place in the Asia-Pacific region. Adam Scammell (VIC) ran faster, but chose an appalling transmitter order, so he did well to get all 6 in 113 minutes for 38th before the 140-minute sudden death time limit (if you’re late back you DNF). Bryan Ackerly (VIC) runs as our “team backup” in case one of us mucks up. He ensures he gets back on time even if he has to miss transmitters. Bryan placed 44th with all 6 transmitters in 136 minutes. The team result is calculated as the sum of the best 2 times, placing Australia 12th in M21, a mere 4 sec after Estonia.
Park Champions
On the “rest” day a public showcase Park Sprint RadiO event was held around and in the grounds of Castle Spilberg, right in central Brno. We'd never done this form of radio sprint event before. It consisted of a number of transmitters all going at once, all on slightly different frequencies. Beforehand we'd put lots of marks on the tuning controls of our HF receivers so we'd know where to tune to hear each transmitter. Adam and I entered in a fairly laid back fashion in T-shirts & shorts and were even planning on walking most of the course. At the start there were many competitors in O-gear busily warming up and looking serious! We felt we'd better run initially as it would be too embarrassing walking with all these people sprinting out hard. As it turned out we both ran most of our courses, except in my case I spent some frustrating minutes looking inside the castle walls when in fact my first transmitter was right out the other side. Well that was fun. Despite the SportIdent they didn't have any results up so eventually we
Our team result was 10th out of 18 teams. What is really lacking is a decent sized Australian team. Over multiple age groups the chances of success are much higher, maybe even higher than in traditional bush Orienteering at the world level. If you know of someone who just might be interested in something a little bit different, but still very much Orienteering, then send them our way! Our events are shown on the OVic calender, our website and on the Victorian e-bulletin. Our website: http://www.ardf.org.au Maps and Full results/splits: http://www.darc.de/ardf/ contest/04090911/04090911.htm Official Championship Site: http://www.wch2004ardf.com/ Some more pictures: http://www.ardf.org.au/wc/photos.htm
Adam Scammell finished in the top 20 in the VHF competition.
started back. Then strange things started to happen. Karel's wife congratulated Adam for doing so well, and then Stephan from Germany had heard Adam had beaten Martin Baier, previous World ARDF champion by a mere second. We had to wait till evening for the results, and the rumour turned out to be true; Adam had won M21 at the Park Sprint. The other surprise was that I had won M40 also. Well that was something to write home about, so we did.
CZECH PARK OPEN
M40: 1 Paterson Bruce 16:57; 2 Stein Jens 19:07; 3 Pietrzykowski Wla 19:08. M21: 1 Scammell Adam 13:57; 2 Baier Martin 13:58; 3 Vlcek Ondrej 14:27.
The Tablecloth
This describes the size of the 1:15000 map for the VHF (2 metres or 145 Mhz) competition. It was larger than A3. As well as being a huge area, the map was bisected by two deep river ravines, one northsouth and the other east-west lower down the map. It was going to be challenging indeed, and it certainly lived up to it. Adam did much better on this event choosing a good transmitter order. His high speed on the hills brought him in under 121 minutes to just make it into the top-20. He was also 1st Asia-Pacific competitor. An excellent result. If only we could both do well in the same competition we might even get a top-5 team placing. My performance was acceptable, but fell apart right near the end when I just couldn't locate my last transmitter. Mark Besley (in Melbourne) tells how he was watching our progress live on the web - there was live radio feed of splits from all controls. He was crushed when he “saw” me punch the finish beacon down a transmitter. I simply ran out of time and had to abandon that transmitter after 13 fruitless minutes. I made it to the finish a mere 54sec before the 140-minute time limit. The winning time was much longer for this event. Karel Fucik again won M21 with 78 minutes, which is doubly astounding because he chose a woeful transmitter order (see his interview on the official website below). Map for the Park Sprint RadiO event won by Adam Scammell.
