DID YOU KNOW? The World Games 2005 Duisburg, Germany Six World Champions and 16 nations qualified for the Orienteering events.
Gold medallists from Sweden
World Champs in Sweden another success for Silva All gold medallists used Silva compasses. Another grand slam for Silva. Massive Media coverage • 38 nations participated • 25 million visited the WOC’s webpage during the competition week. • 44,000 followed with great interest via the Internet the days of the finals. • 7500 could follow direct via internet moving pictures and speakersound. • 10,000 in the audience for the middle distance and relay could enjoy the anticipation on a large screen TV. • Great media interest with at least 9 European TVcompanies broadcasting from the championships. In Sweden around 75,000 per day watched SVT24 channel during their broadcasts of the sprint, long distance and relay and 150,000 saw the repeat of the relay on Swedish Television.
Great Bike Ride Participants in the 2004 Great Victorian Bike Ride along the Great Ocean Road included ACT’s David and Sandra Hogg. Dave says he wound up a bit sore - well, you would after 575 kilometres - but very cheered to have accomplished the journey after major surgery last year. Other orienteers on the journey included Bendigo’s Dianne and Peter Searle and now-only-occasional orienteers Tony and Cath Kerr from Melbourne. 8200 riders did the trip over nine days.
Six World Champions and a total of 16 nations have qualified for participation in the two Orienteering races included in the World Games program next July. The winners of the individual World Orienteering Championships races in 2004 – Simone Niggli-Luder (SUI), Karolina A. Hojsgaard (SWE), Hanne Staff (NOR), Niklas Jonasson (SWE), Bjornar Valstad (NOR) and Thierry Gueorgiou (FRA) have each got a personal place. The sixteen qualified nations are Australia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Great Britain, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine. Twelve of the nations have qualified for participation in the mixed team relay - Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Great Britain, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland. Orienteering is entitled to enter a total of 80 runners, 40 men and 40 women.
Back from Finland Returned from Finland, Troy de Haas is another orienteer now working at Warren Key’s Melbourne Bicycle Centre. He said that in 2005 he plans to spend a lot of time in Japan in the build-up to WOC’05. A former JWOC medallist, Troy said “Japan is neutral terrain for European orienteers, so it’s going to be the best chance for Australia. I know it’s steep there, so when I’m staying at home at Macedon, I’ll be training by running up the mountain.”
Troy was recently subjected to an out-of-competition random drug test as part of the drive to ensure that athletes are clean all the time.
Events Tally Dave Lotty continues to lead the all-time most events list. At March 1st he had participated in 1995 courses. Mike Hubbert follows with 1941 courses and Ian Baker with 1858. Blair Trewin has clocked 1249 events. The tally includes courses run, and events set or controlled. If you know someone with similar numbers let us know.
Cradle Mountain Run The Tasmanian Cradle Mountain Run is an 82 km traverse of the famous Cradle Mt - Lake St Clair overland track. The field is limited to fifty entries. In the 2005 race on Feb 5th, orienteer Hanny Allston finished 4th in a time of 9hrs 40min. The winner ran 8hrs 20min. The beauty of this run is that it traverses wild alpine areas of Tasmania’s Cradle Mt Lake St Clair National Park and World Heritage Area, an area of Tasmania exposed to the roaring forties. The altitude of the track in several areas of the plateau is greater than 1000 metres, which is not high, but in this area is well above the tree line. The low tree line illustrates the exposure and harshness of conditions that can prevail even in summer.
Dances with Bears – a cautionary tale from Canada Although bears are known to inhabit the New Brunswick (Canada) woods, in the normal run of events few of us see them. However, we discovered early on in our course setting for a rogaine (as in, day one) that our chosen event site evidently supported a “healthy population”. Following every field excursion, the evening chat at the supper table was salted with references to how many bears had been seen, the number of piles of poop encountered (sometimes, unfortunately, including more detailed observations on the size and apparent contents), trees torn open, mama bears with cubs, and so on. Was this altogether too much of a good thing? Would we have to “scratch” the location?? But by then we were pretty much committed to it. So we went on hanging ribbons. We saw more bears, but had no problems with them, and became more relaxed about the whole bear thing. In the end we didn’t worry about it too much. Well, most of us didn’t. The scene: Event central, several hours into the event. Harold is eating a samosa. So is Vicky. The rain is still falling. Rob is eating a samosa. Suddenly the emergency phone goes off. Woo, red alert. Hello? Hi! Rob? Yes this is Rob. Are you OK? Yeah, er, we’re - we’re looking at a bear.....!! Oh, where are you? We’re..we’re near the bridge - Oh, he’s moving! Well, ah, just do what seems best He’s going away.... Ah, yep, he’s gone. I think we’re OK. OK then, good luck, That was more or less it. A few other teams reported sightings, although some turned out to be culverts and tree stumps. We did learn that the bears took a dislike to having controls flags hung in their territory, and they showed remarkable orienteering skill, being able to locate our controls without map or compass. They had trouble understanding the punch system though, and preferred to log their visits by impressing their dental pattern on the sign-in sheets (made of plastic sign board). In the end, although many control points were “chewed” they only really destroyed one control. So bye, bye bears, until another time! Rob Hughes – New Brunswick Orienteers
8 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER MARCH 2005
