Veteran men decide their races in the paddock
Easter may have seen three days of reasonably technical granite orienteering, but M50 and M55 were both decided in the paddock at the end of the final day. Perhaps the biggest turnaround there came in M50. Ted van Geldermalsen had run well over the first two days and took a lead of just under four minutes into the last, but he faded on the third day and had slipped 27 secs behind Ross Coyle by 16, with only the apparently straightforward last few hundred metres to come. It looked a lost cause, but he won five of the last six splits, retaking the lead only at the last control and holding on by thirteen seconds. M55 was even closer, with only seven secs separating 1st and 2nd, and 25 secs covered the top three. Bob Allison, Terry Bluett and Steve Flick all had chances through a fluctuating
Teri McComb (SA) W45-54A Short I won yesterday (Saturday) which was a surprise since it took me 15 minutes to the first control. I wasn’t really into the map. I’d run the Family Relay on Friday with my rabbit ears so I should have been a bit more with it. After I found the first control I slowed down and took things more carefully and was alright from then on.
Big comebacks and a bizarre finish
Ted van Geldermalsen worked hard right to the finish on day 3 to win M50 by 13 seconds. Photo: Peter Cusworth last day, with each in turn looking like they had the race in their keeping before making a mistake. Allison looked like he had enough in hand entering the paddock, but he had to withstand a storming finish by Bluett, who took big chunks of time out of the other two in the last few hundred metres, gaining 2nd place but falling just short of the win. The best race of the rest was in M45, where the two Tasmanians, Darryl Smith and Mike Dowling, were so closely matched that the margins were in single digits on both Sunday and Monday. Smith’s two-minute lead after the first day was the difference in the end; it wasn’t looking that way for a lot of Monday as Dowling wrested the lead by 13, but he couldn’t quite finish it off against the strong-finishing Smith.
The younger end of the veteran female list is not noted for close finishes – the fields are often a bit too thin for that – but 2005 was a conspicuous exception, as the winners of W35, W40 and W45 all came from behind on the last day. W40 saw perhaps the best performance, as Nicola Dalheim won the last day by seven mins to overturn a three-min deficit against Christine Marshall. The victory was set up on the tenth and eleventh controls, where Dalheim took nearly five mins out of the field. The margins weren’t quite as big in either direction in W35, but Linda Sesta still managed to reverse a one-min gap against Sheralee Bailey on the last day. This race also marked the return to Orienteering of Louise Fairfax, although illness and a fair bit of navigational rust kept her out of the placings. The final come-from-behind result was the most bizarre. Liz Abbott had a two-min break over Carolyn Jackson in W45, and looked to have coasted in on the last day, stretching that lead by another couple of minutes, but it turned out that she had somehow managed to miss the last control, handing an easy victory to Jackson.
The “Sledge” class was big and well contested again with much fun and good natured rivalry had. Here some of them line up for a photo, at an appropriate location, after the final boxer shorts were awarded. Photo: Peter Cusworth
Rod Dominish (QLD) M60A I was one of the people who got Orienteering started in Sydney and then in 1974 I helped get it going in Wagga. I was there seven years, so the Waggaroos are just over 30 years old now. I still try to yell “Wagga, Wagga!” as I run down the finish chute but these days the breath is not as good as it used to be. I’m in Queensland now and work as a quantity surveyor/estimator, building power stations that use sugar waste - very green. I’m manager of the Australian Team to the World Championships in Japan in August. I was the first Aussie ever to run in a WOC - that was 1972 in (then) Czechoslovakia. I was the only representative, team manager too! It was the first time I’d ever run on a colour map and the first time I’d ever seen rock detail on a map. It took me three and a half hours to finish 72nd out of about 90. In 1981 I was team manager in Japan when David Rowlands (BK-V) won the Asia-Pacific Championships ahead of the world’s top two orienteers, OyvinThon (Norway) and Jörgen Mårtensson (Sweden). I’m aiming to keep up my record! Rod finished 25th in M60 at the Australian 3-Days.
Why the ears? Last year we won the Family Relay at Easter, but this year my husband Andrew has an injured knee so cannot be here so I’m out to enjoy myself. I’ve got a fluffy tail too and a little bow tie. We had a good time at the Relays on Friday, even though it was rather chilly. Teri finished 1st in W45-54AS. JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 27
