INTERVIEW – Tania Robinson

Tania

Robinson

Mick Finn, Editor of New Zealand Orienteering magazine, interviews one of the stars of New Zealand orienteering – Tania Robinson. (reprinted with permission from New Zealand Orienteering magazine).

Tania, congratulations on your stellar career, encompassing many years and great performances at 11 world championships and world cups. And numerous National titles at all distances! Before we get into talking about the big races can you tell us how you got started and when you knew that orienteering was “the sport” for you? I’m guessing that your parents had something to do with it, but maybe not...

Well it all started when I was 6yrs old and Mum and Dad set off into the forest on their Orienteering event and left me at the finish area with a bit of pocket money for some lollies (it was normal to leave your kids by themselves back then). So I guess I thought I was missing out and I couldn’t wait for them to get back from their runs to take me around a course so I entered myself and trotted off into the forest. I must say my Mum did get a bit of a shock when she met me in the middle of the forest yelling out ‘HI MUMMY, I’M ORIENTEERING BY MYSELF’. But she left me to it ...I figured it out and made it home and so from then on I had the earned the right to orienteering course freedom.

And, in the early days of your Orienteering career was there any advice that you took to heart and still remember?

I remember very early on I went and watched the World Champs in Australia. I was about 11 years old and all the Swedes who won had short spikes (haircut), so I came home and got my hair chopped off. This proved to be a bit of a bad move as when I lined up for the Auckland Secondary School 1500 metres they told me...’the boys race is next sonny’. I went on to win by the home straight length. Apparently the magic training formula is 2x7x365 but I can’t say I have ever had the motivation to try that theory out. All I can advise is that you be really honest with yourself and work on that one weakness that always nabs you. Mine is compass work and a bit of ‘crowd screaming at you anxiety’ that you get in the big races overseas. I noticed the Finnish coach runs out in the forest with a load hailer during some training sessions screaming at his athletes...maybe more of that would be good.

Looking back, is there anything you might have done differently or you would advise someone else to do differently? Perhaps some aspect of big race preparation/ peaking for the Worlds/getting mentally prepared etc?

Physically I think I have been pretty good. Mum and Dad are from a Lydiard background so I have always had a great little training program that allowed me peak just in time for World Champs. I guess it would have been nice to try the pro athlete thing that some of the overseas runners do, but I have an amazing job. It’s taken me all over the world where orienteering hasn’t, and allowed me compete against the world in another field. We even win sometimes. I wouldn’t want to trade this side of my life for anything. I also have a little man in my life that helps keep me sane and busy. I’m quite happy that I have kept a really good balance in my life but I’m positive if you really want to achieve at the very top level you really have to be willing to focus on the one goal...

you and your mission. I know that when I asked Mum to train me to get on the dais at the World Juniors and she said sure, I had that kind of focus and it worked well enough (I got 5th). But it’s pretty intense and somewhere along the way I realised this kind of focus really wasn’t for me. So I have a lot of respect for people who take this path.

Where do you think your strengths are? Something that you would have liked to have done better?

My strength is I think I can orienteer as good as anyone. I think the couple of weeks of Orienteering training alongside any of the big teams (Norway - thanks Egil, Sweden, Finland, France, Britain) just before WOC each year does a world of good. I just wish we could pop over to all the training camps they have pre WOC and do all the World Cup races. If anyone has been hiding a private jet and a gold mine, sing out. But seriously we can do heaps from home. For a start we need a National Coach! It is absurd that we don’t have one...the efforts of the National coaches I have had along the way were huge and that is really missed. Another thing that bugs me is that we don’t fill our JWOC teams...the sport needs the stories and adventures of these guys. One of my good ‘O’ friends (Fleming Norgard), actually invented JWOC and even though it has become a fierce competition he wanted it to be a place where like minded youngsters from around the world could get together and hopefully be encouraged to stay in the sport and be dedicated elite athletes. I lived with them for a while so I got to fully appreciate his thoughts. In my experience it is often the support of those 5th/6th members of the team that provide the fun aspect of a trip and take a bit of the nerves out of this international experience.

Looking back at some of your races, are there any that you would call “perfect runs”?

Perfect runs are weird things....because I think you can sometimes come to the finish and think it was alright and it was a ripper, or think it was a ripper and it was just alright. I had a really nice run on Rabbit Island Nationals in Nelson where I kicked all the Junior guys butts...that was a fairly nice moment. Also finishing 2nd in my Qualification race in the middle in Denmark.....that was a pretty good one to. There was also this race I had in the snow which was actually the Danish trials for the Nordic Champs. I had a perfect run and beat them all by 5 minutes. They thought I must have cheated but I was just really cold and had been a full time athlete for 3 weeks and had done everything on Mum’s training program for a change.

Any races that were close to perfect? Is there an extra factor such as luck, that plays a major part or is that irrelevant?

No such thing as luck in Orienteering. Actually like Dave Melrose says, ‘the bigger the event the more you have to play it like a tennis match’. The more the nerves come on the more you have to have set strokes and you just have to play the same stroke over and over and it’s the one with the least amount of errors that wins. The only problem is your tennis match is played on a surface you have maybe never seen before and you can’t see your opponent.

Any particular races or events that stand out? Something that you’ll always remember with a rush of adrenaline? Anyone you’ve met that made a big impact?

Well there was the moment I came out into a clearing and had a whopping big moose standing in front of me. I figured they can’t be that different to horses so I just walked up to it going ‘here Moosie, Moosie’. It sniffed my hand and ran off. In hindsight I realise this wasn’t the brightest thing to do. The Norwegians I was training with said I was lucky it didn’t kill me. When they see them they run the other way very quickly. More Norway; running in the mist over stuff that made you bounce in the air (mountain mingi mingi?) or stopping on course to scoff down a load of blueberries. Actually one event that sticks out is when I ran for Denmark in a World Cup (their second relay team because we didn’t have one). I got out onto the map and whizzed through the first couple of controls, not with anyone because I was on the last leg. But then I hit these tracks and ditches, I got totally confused. I didn’t want to give up because I’d let the team down, but when I finally did skulk back in during prize giving and explained my problems with the map, the coach apologised and said he had explained all that in Danish to the rest.... bugger I should have learnt more languages.

Knowing the top competitors over the years, such as Simone, and how they train and prepare, do you think it’s necessary to compete overseas to be on level terms?

Simone is an amazing athlete. I think she is probably the best female orienteer there has ever been. I have been beside her when she has made a mistake though, so its good to know she’s human. I think it would help to run in more big races but New Zealand has the perfect training environment to produce champions. Look at all the champions that have come down here to train. I wish we had more major events on our half of the world. I don’t think the IOF and the Scandi’s quite realise the extra effort we have to make to get to the world champs every year. They sort of take us for granted a little in that way. I had the coach of the Finnish team explain that they would of course be staying in the A accommodation for the World Championships, and when I said we would too if we didn’t have to pay the $2500 to get to this side of the world he was quite quiet.

What steps would you advise for young competitors here in NZ to get to the top level? What can the rest of us do to help?

Please forgive us elites if we seem a little distant or unhelpful at times as it is quite hard to fit in all that’s required to get to competing at WOC and fit our life around it. If we do all the internal races we are often too broke to go to the big events and vice versa. And we can only stretch our resources so far. But what you can be hopeful about, is that orienteering is a sport for life, and as things get a little less hectic we will be the ones stepping up to dig the toilets.