AUSSIES OVERSEAS
2005 Oceania Championships Australia-New Zealand Challenge Blair Trewin
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EW ZEALAND dominated the 2005 Oceania Championships and Australia-New Zealand Challenge, held in early January in the Auckland region. Australia had gone into the week with reasonable hopes of winning in New Zealand for the first time since 1994, feeling that it was fielding its strongest team since then. Nearly 100 Australians attended the event, and the junior team was particularly strong thanks to the presence of the Australian Schools team. In the end the Challenge wasn’t particularly close – 16 classes to 7 in the individual, and 15 to 8 in the relay – and the locals also took out both elite individual titles, as well as winning the elite Test Match easily.
The Championships
There was less ‘traditional’ sand-dune terrain during the week than most expected (partly because of recent logging), and the Championships continued the fine tradition of physically tough individual Challenges. Young pine forest on very big dunes made for route choice between the controls and detail in the circles. A hard day’s work for most. Nine minutes per kilometre was about the best the elite men could muster (an incredibly slow rate compared with other terrains). It’s there… somewhere. Anna Sheldon in the undergrowth. Anna was 3rd in the Oceania Champs. Photo: Rob Crawford 12 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER MARCH 2005
Dave Shepherd, challenging forest and Kiwis, won M21E at the carnival and was 2nd in the Oceania Champs. Photo: Rob Crawford The elite women turned on several excellent races during the week – none better than on the last individual day at the carnival when seventy seconds separated the top five. It wasn’t quite that close on Championships day, but there was still very little in it. More than once in the week Rachel Smith (NZ) had just been able to get her nose in front, and she did it again on the big day. Tania Robinson (NZ) was a close second, whilst Anna Sheldon was the best of the Australians, completing the placings just ahead of Jo Allison and Tracy Bluett. New Zealander Darren Ashmore’s M21E win was a little more surprising, if only because Dave Shepherd had won the three lead-up races. He caught Karl Dravitzki (NZ) and Rob Preston in the first half of the race, and stayed in control of that group to the end. All three were early starters and it looked from the time they finished that Shepherd was the only likely challenger. He was still very much in contention at the map change at two-thirds distance, but fell away over the closing stages to be three minutes down. In the end he only just held second against the Swede Anders Axenborg; Dravitzki completed the Oceania placings. Much of the Australian joy came from the junior girls, who swept all three age groups contested on both an individual and team basis. Kylee Gluskie, doing her best to imitate a certain other relatively unknown Tasmanian W16 of three years earlier, was particularly impressive in finishing eight minutes clear in W16. At the other extreme, Bridie Kean added another big-race win to her tally with an eight-second win over Heather Harding in W18, and Jasmine Neve led an Australian clean sweep in W20, ahead of Rebecca Hembrow
