SPORTS PSYCHOLOGY

Australian Orienteering begins to bear fruit

Mike Dowling, OA Director, High Performance

TO paraphrase Orienteering Tasmania President, Miriam Whittington, writing in the August edition of Tasmania’s O Know magazine, once in a while an athlete emerges in a sport that is not only talented but gifted as well. Hanny Allston’s brilliant gold medal winning performance at the recent foot World Championships in Denmark combined with her gold and silver medals at the Junior World Championships in Lithuania shows that Hanny does indeed come into this category. As it has no doubt been stated elsewhere in this edition, she is the first junior orienteer to hold a senior world title, the first person to hold both junior and senior world titles and the first nonEuropean to hold a world junior and senior title. The fact that she is an Australian is something we should all be immensely proud of and inspired by. Living in the same state as Hanny you know that talented and gifted are all very well but without hard work and dedication they can often count for little. Hanny trains incredibly hard, is always seeking advice on how to improve her orienteering technique and has a great group of support people to help her achieve her goals. In an interview on ABC local grandstand in Tasmania, Hanny paid particular tribute to her running coach Max Cherry for the great help he has given her in improving her running fitness. This again underlines the three fundamental principles that make a world class orienteer; physical fitness, mental strength & focus and quality orienteering technique. With Adrian Jackson’s 2004 gold medal winning performance in MTB-O, Hanny has now completed the Aussie trifecta of achieving gold medal winning performances in all world orienteering championships in which Australia participates. Nev Bleakley and Bob Mouatt, the drivers of fundamental change in the way orienteering high performance activities are conducted back in the nineties, must feel very satisfied that their vision of Australia becoming a more serious player on the world orienteering scene is now beginning to bear fruit. In addition, our previous national coaches of recent years such as Warren Key, Jim Russell, and Paul Pacqué must be very excited to see their contributions with past teams laying the foundation for our building international competitiveness.

Other 2006 Highlights

In addition to Hanny’s brilliant performances a number of other orienteers have produced great performances across the three World Championships over the last month. In Denmark our women’s Relay team of Jo Allison, Grace Elson and Hanny achieved our best ever placing of 4th in a relay, Grace and Anna Sheldon made impressive WOC debuts by qualifying for finals in their individual races, Jo achieving 20th in the Middle-distance so soon after a significant injury, Rob Walter produced his best ever individual result in the Middle-distance and Troy de Haas had a great run on the final leg in the men’s Relay. In Finland at the WMTB-O Adrian Jackson continued to show he is a world class competitor with a 6th in the Long-distance and 7th in the Middle-distance along with Alex Randall’s 17th in the Middledistance. At JWOC in Lithuania we saw Matt Parton achieve a fantastic 6th in the Sprint Distance and Simon Uppill come 26th in the Middle-distance.

2007 Planning

Both the foot and MTB-O High Performance Management Groups are busy planning for 2007 to build on our successes of 2006. Our aim is to have the selection and trials planning in place for announcement by early October. This is to enable all our athletes significant time to plan and train to be ready to put their best foot forward in 2007. With the 2007 JWOC in Australia it presents our young athletes with a fantastic opportunity to perform against the worlds best junior orienteers on home soil along with WOC in Ukraine and the WMTB-O in the Czech Republic. For both WOC and JWOC we are planning for a two stage selection process with Easter forming the first round followed by specific additional trials in May with final WOC trails in early May and final JWOC trails in late May. In addition, on the MTB-O front Victoria will be hosting the inaugural Oceania MTB-O Championships in May which will also form the major selection trails for our MTB-O team.

Building Our Coaching Capacity

2006 has seen a number of new coaches take on significant responsibilities with our national teams. We have seen Tom Quayle do a great job with our Bushrangers team in their test matches against our cross-Tasman friends from New Zealand and Brett Weihart and Sue Neve do a sterling job with the WOC team. All will be continuing in their roles in 2007 and have no doubt learned much in 2006 with their respective teams and look forward to further building our international competitiveness. This is a part of our long-term strategy to build the number of coaches working with our national teams and elite orienteers. As a part of this process we have again had our elite athletes assisting with our JWOC team with Rob Walter and Reuben Smith again fulfilling such a role with great aplomb. Two areas we need to work on building our coaching capacity are increasing the number of coaches working in the MTB-O sector and also at the state and local level to support our National league. We do have a number of wonderful people working hard coaching in our sport but like all sports more coaches are always needed. It is a rewarding aspect of our sport and I encourage more orienteers to take on such a role. Why not contact your state Coaching Director and see how you can be involved?

Mike Dowling, 17 High St, Bellerive 7018, Tasmania. Tel: 6244 71773 E-mail: mdowling@tassie.net.au

ORIENTEERING PUBLICATIONS

IOF Publications

International Specifications for‑Orienteering Maps . . . . . . . . . . $11 .00 Competition rules for IOF events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $11 .00 Control Descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . $11 .00 Simple Maps for Orienteering . . . . $11 .00 Trail Orienteering (BOF book) . . . . . $30 .00 Trail Orienteering (booklet) . . . . . . . . $8 .25 Trail O (leaflet) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $0 .70

Australian Publications

Elementary Orienteering Instructors‑Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . $13 .20 Level 1 Coaching Manual . . . . . . . . $22 .00 Level 1 Coaching Syllabus . . . . . . . . $3 .90 Level 2 Coaching Syllabus . . . . . . . . $4 .40 Level 3 Coaching Syllabus . . . . . . . . $4 .40 Among the Best Orienteers (video) $19 .75 Sponsorship & Advertising, 1996 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . available from states Club Guide, available on disc .

Prices include GST and postage within Australia for single copies. Prices for bulk orders available on request. Orders should be addressed to Orienteering Australia, PO Box 284 Mitchell BC 2911, with cheques made payable to Orienteering Australia. Email: orienteering@netspeed.com.au