HIGH PERFORMANCE
JWOC and beyond Mike Dowling, OA Director, High Performance
W
HAT a fantastic week of racing that was JWOC2007 in Dubbo. In challenging terrain we saw that Australians continue to show we can be world class with the brilliant performances of South Australian duo Vanessa Round and Simon Uppill. What it did again reveal to the wider orienteering public was that to be a world class Australian junior you need to be competitive with the best of our senior elites as Vanessa and Simon have demonstrated in our National League this year. Their performances also underlined my basic triple tenet of what it takes to be a world class orienteer; high class physical fitness, strong technical skills when running on the limit and a highly focused approach blended with a calm mental strength. It was also great to see two very inexperienced orienteers in Queensland’s Rachel Effeney and Victoria’s Belinda Lawford acquit themselves with credit on the international stage. Along with the rest of the team it was a fantastic experience for them and I hope it has inspired all the 2007 team to continue to strive to be an integral part of the future of our high performance program. Our international competitiveness can only continue to develop through our national junior representatives remaining involved when they reach senior ranks and building the depth of orienteers competing for their States in our National League. For those juniors who are still eligible for 2008, Gothenburg in Sweden will bring new challenges in the “home” country of Orienteering and should be fantastic experience for those who are selected. I’ve no doubt that the presence of the State Schools teams at JWOC has been an inspirational experience for many to want to be a part of the international orienteering stage and we can be sure some of those will be pressing for selection in 2008. Great credit and thanks must also be given to the joint team coaches, Hanny Allston and Jim Russell, in the way they worked with the team after coming on board late in the team’s preparation phase. The willingness of Hanny, our wonderful World Champion, to give so much of herself as she also prepared to defend her title in the Ukraine needs to be particularly acknowledged. It was particularly selfless and giving of Hanny to make the time and effort to do so. As one who has worked with national teams in the past it is very exhausting being involved in supporting the team during such a high stress week. Supporting our two team coaches was the fantastic back room work of Team Manager Hilary Wood who backed up for a third year of involvement and two wonderful physios in Jan Sargood and Jared Vos who did so much to keep the team in the best shape possible to continually front up and give their best in a demanding week of racing.
Great Work Ben! Keen observers will also have noticed the great work undertaken by my fellow OA Director, Ben Rattray, which bore fruit with the JWOC team gaining sponsorship support from Skins, Fastgear and Silva. The support of these companies for our JWOC team is highly valued as getting sponsorship support is a most difficult and challenging task for a sport like ours that lacks the media profile of the “professional” sports.
Welcome Rob & Bert Our new paid officers Rob Preston and Bert Elson are settling into their roles. The cornerstone of Rob’s role as Manager High Performance will be to provide strategic assistance to our national 26 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2007
team management/coaching groups and to work closely with ACTAS (our National Training Centre), State-based coaches and national league managers to build our competitive depth as a basis for improving our international competitiveness. Rob brings a long career as an elite orienteer to the role. A central part of Bert’s role as Manager, Coaching & Officiating Development will be to develop our coaching & officiating capacity at all levels from those who work at the local community level to those who seek to work with our high performance athletes
Planning For 2008 Both the Foot and MTBO High Performance Management Groups are busy planning for 2008 to build on our position as the leading non-European nation. When this edition hits the streets we will have appointed our new national team coaches for the next period. Our desire is to have coaches appointed for the traditional 2-year term and to also provide them with an option of a third year. This is to allow coaches time to gain experience and more importantly develop strong relationships with their teams. On the JWOC front we have an abundance of emerging talent in our W/M16 ranks that will no doubt form the basis of our JWOC teams in 2009-10 and then onward into our senior ranks. Giving coaches a longer term opportunity to build our talent and to provide logistic support to these coaches will be fundamental to continuing to build on the great strides we have made on the international front this decade. We will again be aiming is to have the selection and trials planning fully 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 2008. For our WOC team we will have the Easter competition on the awesome Dubbo terrain backed up by a second round of races on the challenging terrain of the St Helens area of NE Tasmania as selection races.
Coaching: The Great Orienteering Challenge Orienteering Australia has reallocated a significant amount of its resources into the coaching development area. This is an explicit acknowledgement of the degree of importance OA attaches to the necessity of having active and keen coaches working at all levels of our wonderful sport. OA is keenly aware that coaching capacity is a big issue in some member States and we are very keen to assist in addressing these deficiencies. I personally work with a brilliant group of young orienteers in Hobart and have been very privileged to see how they have made so much improvement in their orienteering and also built some wonderful friendships. It is a rewarding aspect of our sport and I encourage more orienteers to take on such a role. Contact your State Coaching Director and see how you can be involved? The rewards are manifest! Mike Dowling, 17 High St, Bellerive 7018 Tel (03) 6244 71773 ; Email mdowling@tassie.net.au
Orienteering Australia – National Training Centre
