AUSTRALIAN CHAMPIONSHIPS CARNIVAL
Great Performances in the West
The New Zealanders were again dominant players with many top-ten results, but Thomas Reynolds was their only individual winner. For the first half of the senior boys he was in a close tussle with Nick Andrewartha and Bryan Keely, but Keely lost three minutes at #8 to drop back into the bunch (recovering with a strong finish to take third), and Reynolds gradually pulled away from Andrewartha over the closing stages to win by three minutes.
Blair Trewin
Heather Harding completed a fine Schools career with her third win in four years – only two New Zealanders in 2005 stopped her from making it four in a row. Only Jo Allison, with five wins from 1989 to 1994, has done better. Harding was never seriously challenged; she had opened up a three-minute lead by halfway and held it to the end. Emma Watson emerged from the bunch with a good second half, whilst Catherine Hewitt recovered from an early mistake to take an unexpected second place.
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HE carnival started with the WA Championships, a two-day affair at Darkin River, east of Perth, which saw the full range of terrain, from open, fast, vague areas, to steep rocky slopes which provided the week’s toughest physical terrain. A distraction for some (especially the locals) was the AFL Grand Final, which took place during the event on Saturday afternoon. Jo Allison won both days to open up her National League chances. On the first day her closest rival was Shannon Jones, enjoying her best year at this level, but no-one was able to match her consistently and by the end of the second day she was more than ten minutes ahead. Ten minutes covered the next eight, with Anna Sheldon’s strong second half on the long second day – an indicator of what she was to produce six days later – seeing her take second ahead of Susanne Casanova. A large part of the M21 field struck trouble at the second control on Day 1 – which was sufficiently doubtful to trigger a (dismissed) protest. Dave Shepherd lost time there and more over the following controls, and withdrew. Julian Dent also lost time there, enough to prevent him from winning the first day (which was taken out by Grant Bluett), but he became increasingly dominant the longer the second day went on, pulling away from Rob Walter over the last third of the course to secure a comfortable victory, with Bluett third and daylight between them and the rest. It was to be Walter’s last race of the carnival, thanks to a bike accident on Rottnest Island the next day. Ryan Smyth made a slow start on the first day but took control of M17-20E in the second half of the second day, pulling away from Chris Naunton and Murray Scown, who were separated by nine second on the first day and nothing on the second. Vanessa Round also made a slow start, losing time on a long leg on the first day, but she hit the front late on that course, and then held off a fast-finishing Sarah Dunnage on the second day. Elsewhere, some of the more interesting classes were W45, where Anthea Feaver and Jenny Bourne swapped narrow day wins but Feaver came out just on top; M16, where Lachlan Dow led a group of five within just over three minutes; and M45, where Mark Darvodelsky came from three minutes down on the first day to take victory over Darryl Smith at the last control.
Australian Schools Champs, Peterdine Hill, 3-4 October Queensland and the ACT were equal winners of the Australian Schools Championships after a dramatic Relay day. It was a repeat of the result from 15 years ago, and once again the result was settled by the protest jury rather than in the forest. This time, it was the reinstatement of a disqualified Tasmanian team which pushed the Queensland senior girls back to third, and dropped them back into a tie after initially appearing to have won by a point.
There was a fine three-way tussle in the junior boys which was not settled until the very end of the day. Lachlan Dow, Oscar Phillips and Scott McDonald were only separated by seconds at the spectator control, but it was the superior finishing speed of Phillips – a Tasmanian junior cross-country representative – that held sway in the end. Laura Robertson, only a first-year W14, set the pace for a long time for the New Zealanders. It looked as if she might hold on for the win, but a two-minute mistake at the end proved costly, and she dropped to third. Belinda Lawford was first to finish ahead of her with a consistent run, but Krystal Neumann had been a little ahead of her through the course, and finished off well for her second successive win. Relays day at the Australian Schools Championships rarely passes without incident, and 2006 was certainly no exception. Four states started it within some sort of range of the title, with a fifth (NSW) within remote reach if they had a very good relay. New South Wales indeed made an excellent start – after the first leg, they were the leading state team in two classes and second in another. That was the end of their challenge, and whilst the New Zealanders were taking overall control for a second day in a row, the ACT were setting up an excellent position to win the state competition. First Lachlan Dow came from 12 minutes down to run over the top of Queensland and New South Wales in the junior boys (Joshua Neumann outsprinted Thomas Carter to give Queensland second, a result which was critical to the overall score), then their two senior teams got into winning positions. Heather Harding never looked like letting the senior girls’ slip, but it was a different situation in the senior boys, where littleknown Michael Pfeifer was defending a five-minute lead over the individual winner Nick Andrewartha. Pfeifer did a better job than anyone dared expect, and whilst Andrewartha made some inroads towards the end, it was not enough to stop the ACT scoring an unexpected win.
Queensland’s Bridget Anderson
That gave the ACT the clubhouse lead. Queensland, who had been the leading state team in the junior girls, still had their two senior teams on the course. They needed a second and a third to win, or two thirds (or a second and a fourth) to tie, and started the final leg in third (girls) and fourth (boys). At the spectator control Bridget Anderson had moved up to second, after making up a seven-minute gap to New South Wales, whilst Simon DECEMBER 2006 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 3
