LETTERS Running in Circles Thomas Schoepf (AO Dec’04) talks about the tendency to run in circles. This makes perfect sense, but in my experience the majority of people are left footed. Footedness seems to have no relation to handedness. I am both right handed and right footed. My right footedness gains the term “goofy footed” (ie. not normal) in snowboarding/skating language. Your dominant foot is the one you save yourself with if falling forwards, or the foot you are most likely to put down when you stop your bicycle. It’s the foot you feel more ‘right’ with forwards on a snowboard or backwards on a waterski. Bruce Paterson (ARDF-VIC)
Discrimination for Bikers Last year the Aussie MTB-O team performed exceedingly well by winning 5 medals at the World Championships, including our first ever WOC gold in any discipline. This followed on from a silver medal and 3 podium finishes in France in 2002. Austria and Germany also won their first ever golds and have been publicly lauding those achievements as milestones for Orienteering, not just MTB-O, in their respective countries. The other MTB-O gold medal winning countries, Switzerland and Finland already have many Foot and Ski-O gold medals in their keeping, but warmly welcomed the additional golds. The board of Orienteering Australia chose to publicly belittle our MTBO achievements when they distributed the $4,000 High Performance grant in a blatantly discriminatory manner. Money was given dependent on the points gained in Foot and MTB-O on the basis of international results. However the MTB-O points were divided by a factor of 5, meaning that they were worth 20% of that of the Foot orienteers. Hypothetically this credits Adrian Jackson with only winning a fifth of a gold medal! One of our medallists remarked to me that “it was like a kick in the guts.” It wasn’t the money lost, but the philosophy behind the decision that hurt. The Australian Government gives out grants to Olympic medal winners. Imagine the outcry if the archery, speed skating or cycling medallists were given only a fifth the amount given to swimmers! This HP money came from an Australian Sports Commission grant, not from State contributions. Team funding sees Foot-O competitors get almost totally funded, whilst MTBO team members get less than JWOC competitors, having to pay for flights, as well as the pre-event training camp. In contrast Finland fund their Foot-O, Ski-O and MTBO teams equally. The question of how to fund elite teams to yearly WOC’s is a very difficult one and I believe that we should be lobbying IOF strongly to go back to every second year. Some of the eastern European countries are also struggling on this score. Perhaps we should be funding our elite teams solely on the basis of performance, and not ask the general Orienteering public to contribute so much! Foot Orienteering has a 50 year history in Australia (having started in SA on July 9, 1955), whilst MTB-O is less than 10 years old. In SA this year there are 108 Foot-O events and 6 for bikes. Even in Victoria there are only about 12 bike events. I can’t visualise MTB-O ever becoming bigger than Foot-O, in terms of events conducted, as: a) in many States there isn’t the available terrain, and; b) new MTB-O maps are constantly needed because they become too well known after 5 or 6 uses. So you can’t expect mountain bikers to become members of State associations under the same terms as foot orienteers, as we can’t offer them enough. However, it would be useful for our membership statistics if we can work out a separate scheme. Even “down under” last year we had 152 MTB-O competitors at WMTB-O, compared to 105 at this year’s Ski-O WOC, which has been established a lot longer. Undoubtedly the numbers and depth of competition at the Foot-O WOC are larger, I’m not denying that. However the MTB-O competitiveness at the top end of the field was very strong, and the riders train just as hard (and spend more money on their sport) than do foot orienteers. Australians are pretty proud when our netball and cricket teams are world champions. No mention is ever made that only about 10 nations play both sports! 6 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005
The Australian Orienteer welcomes letters. Preference will be given to letters which are concise and which make positive points. The editor reserves the right to edit letters, particularly ones which are longer than 300 words.
Orienteering needs to accept MTB-O as an “equal but different” part of our sport. We should rejoice in our successes, in whatever discipline, and try to build on them, not diminish them. Kay Haarsma (National MTB-O Coach)
OA response
OA in its High Performance budget has a program called Direct Athlete Support (DAS). The purpose of the DAS program is to reward athletes who achieve benchmark performances as defined by the High Performance Strategic Plan. The actual circumstances of the distribution of DAS funding for WOC benchmark performances in 2004 is as follows. In the 2004 OA High Performance budget, which was publicly available through all States and their delegates well in advance, there were two separate DAS items, $3000 for Foot Orienteering and $500 for MTB-O. The funding differential acknowledged the different level of international competitiveness and depth between the two Orienteering formats. As a result of the outstanding performances by our MTB-O elite athletes at the MTB-O WOC in Ballarat OA allocated an additional amount of $1250 to distribute to the MTB-O athletes under the DAS program. In 2005 a new policy has been developed that harmonises the distribution of DAS funding. If the new funding arrangements had been applied to 2004 performances there would have been a 50/50 split between Foot and MTB-O WOC athletes who obtained benchmark performances in that year. Total funding for MTB-O HP programs will increase each year over the next three-year period by a significant amount. To radically change funding allocations quickly would have had a detrimental effect on the existing broader HP program of OA as funding allocations are broadly determined 12 to 18 months in advance to allow for adequate planning of programs to occur. It should be noted that under ASC guidelines the sport decides how ASC HP funding will be distributed. For Orienteering the funding supports a wide range of HP programs such as wages for the Manager - High Performance, training camps, the National League, world championship teams, regional competition with New Zealand, coaching services and support, and a range of other training services. Mike Dowling, Director, High Performance, Orienteering Australia
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