13 minute read
MTBO
Adrian Jackson Tops World Rankings
Adrian’s stunning form on his tour of Europe in July and August rocketed him back up to the Number 1 position on the IOF World MTB-O rankings. Adrian won four World Ranking Events in France and Poland in his lead-up to the MTB World Championships held in Poland in late August. Alex Randall ranked 21, David Simpfendorfer 40, and Paul Darvodelsky 61. Thor Edgerton was our top ranked woman at 41 with Carolyn Jackson 47. Adrian continued his excellent mountain bike racing form by winning the two MTB-O World Ranking Events held in France at Fontainebleau. The Middle and Long-distance races were part of the French 5-Days MTB-O event held in the same area that hosted the first MTBO World Championships in 2002. The field of over 50 riders contained many of the current top-10 ranked competitors from Switzerland, France, Austria and Russia. Just the weekend before Adrian had finished 3rd in the BC Bike Race, a 2-person team MTB race held in British Columbia, Canada. This 7-day race covered over 500km of challenging trails and included some of the biggest names in mountain bike racing. Following his successes at Fontainebleu Adrian moved to Nowa Kaletka in Poland to contest the Polish 7-Days MTB-O carnival and the two World Ranking Events that were part of that carnival. AJ had a comfortable victory in the Middle-distance event leading from start to finish, but it was much later in the Ultra Long-distance event before he hit the lead. All of the top ranked Russians were competing as well as top riders from Estonia, Czech Republic and Denmark. Alex Randall also rode very well, finishing in 5th place in the Middle-distance and 8th in the Ultra Long-distance event. Amongst other Aussies competing Paul Darvodelsky came in 24th and 20th in his two rides, and Melanie Simpson was 17th and 27th. Kiwi Marquita Gelderman had some good rides too finishing 13th in the Middle-distance and 2nd in the Ultra Longdistance. A full report on the MTB World Orienteering Championships will appear in the December edition of this magazine.
MTBO World Ranking MEN
1 Adrian Jackson .......... AUS
2 Beat Schaffner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .SUI 3 Lubomír Tomecek . . . . . . . . . . . .CZE 4 Beat Oklé . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .SUI 5 Anton Foliforov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .RUS 6 Ruslan Gritsan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .RUS 7 Tobias Breitschädel . . . . . . . . .AUT 8 Matthieu Barthélémy . . . . . .FRA 9 Lasse Brun Pedersen . . . . . . .DEN 10 Torbjørn Gasbjerg . . . . . . . . . . . .DEN
21 Alex Randall ............... AUS 40 David Simpfendorfer .. AUS 59 Damian Welbourne..... AUS 62 Paul Darvodelsky........ AUS MTBO World Ranking WOMEN ...............
1 Christine Schaffner . . . . . . . . . .SUI 2 Michaela Gigon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .AUT 3 Hana Bajtosová . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .SVK 4 Päivi Tommola . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .FIN 4 Ksenia Chernykh . . . . . . . . . . . . .RUS 6 Ingrid Stengård . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .FIN 7 Anna Füzy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .HUN 7 Marquita Gelderman . . . . . . .NZL 9 Renata Paulícková . . . . . . . . . . .CZE 10 Karolina Mickeviciute . . . . . .LTU
41 Thorlene Egerton........ AUS 47 Carolyn Jackson......... AUS
Adrian posted some descriptions of the events and preparations on his Blog (http://adrianjacksonsblog.blogspot.com/):
Five Days in Fontainebleu
After finishing the BC Bike Race the racing switched gear, with my first MTB-O races outside Australia for more than two years. The French 5-Day was held in Fontainebleau, site of the first World Championships for the sport. The terrain is quite flat and sandy with a nice and complex track network to get this little rusty brain back into orienteering mode. I’m staying in an awesome huge old French house with some friends from NZ and some of their family. This place has about ten bedrooms and I might not have found them all yet. Days 1 and 2 were used to settle back down and try and go as smoothly as possible in preparation for Days 3 and 4 which were doubling as World Ranking Events. After a solid 2nd and 5th places on the first two days, I slipped it into 5th gear and despite a couple of mistakes managed to win both the important WRE days. Day 5 was a bit of a come down, with tired legs and motivation on the way down I did just the minimum to hang on to win the overall 5-Days title for which I got a very spiffy maillot jeune (yellow jersey) and a not-so-spiffy maillot verte (green jersey - more fluro verte really!) for the fastest sprint between the last control and the finish line! The race finished on Bastille Day which was good planning on the organisers’ behalf, as we could join in the festivities on the French national day.
Problems and Success in Poland
As soon as we arrived in Poland things seemed to start going wrong. The guy who was supposed to meet us at the airport with the van was late, and when he arrived it took us quite a while to work out how to fit five bikes and four people into a mid-sized people mover. Later that afternoon when looking for hotels, Greg managed to leave his jacket with passport and wallet inside in a hotel room which we looked at but decided not to take. It was then that we discovered the car problem. On the mad dash back to the hotel to try and retrieve Greg’s stuff the gearbox started playing up. Eventually it simply would not go into any gear, and we were left to drive back entirely in 2nd gear. Interestingly though, we discovered that an Opel Zafira does 85km/h redlining in 2nd gear. We did find Greg’s stuff and the car did make it just back, and after a while the guy who organised the car arrived to sort out the mess. Amazingly, after a couple of hours of fiddling under the bonnet he drove it away without a hint of trouble. We ended up with the same car again, and I don’t know what he got done to it but it is now working a treat. The next hiccup came when we arrived at the accommodation for the Polish 7-Day MTB-O event in Nowa Kaletka. We had been told we were getting a ‘house’, but upon arrival we discovered all we had was a tiny glorified shack in the middle of the forest with unbelievably bad beds. After two painful nights there we shifted out into a hotel in the big nearby town of Olzstyn, which is a really nice town actually. The 7-Day event got off to a mixed start, with the Sprint held in pouring rain which turned the sandy tracks into bike destroying death traps. I had a fairly good ride and won, but I knew a few of the other good guys were resting up for the World Ranking races on the next two days. With the rain gone, but the tracks still very wet, the Middle and Long-distance races were hard work. I had good races in both, losing only a little time here and there, to win both. That means with my wins in France a few weeks ago and some other races in Australia that my world ranking should jump up to around 2 or 3 in the world! I successfully held onto my lead for the rest of the Polish 7-Day MTBO to win the competition.
Aussie team members at the Polish World Ranking Events had an extra challenge. This picture shows it is possible to get 4 people, four bikes and four bike bags into a Kia Carnival. It took about 1.5 hours of packing but we did it.
Mel Simpson and Paul Darvoldelsky out for a training ride in the forests near Warsaw.
After winning four World Ranking Events, AJ found time to relax by riding Alpe d’Huez (of Tour de France fame) as well as some nearby MTB trails including the 32km downhill Megavalanche course.
GPS Tracker Review
Craig Steffens
- Multi Terain Bike Orienteers QLD
I recently purchased a new GPS device to record my route during MTBO events. This new unit is primarily sold as a device to locate photos that you take on trips and display them as a travel blog in Google Earth. I got it for the GPS data recording feature mainly. The one I bought is an ’i-gotU’ http://www.i-gotu.com/ . It’s the size of a matchbox, very light and is simple to use. The included software geo-tags photos from the GPS route it records, but it also exports in GPX format, that most other applications require, like O-Track, OCAD and Google Earth. The unit has no screen, just one button and 2 LED’s to indicate what it’s doing. Price is around $80, but you can find it cheaper. The unit comes with a download cradle and charges the inbuilt battery from a USB port. Battery time is dependant on the recording interval, but lasts for approx. 4 hours at the shortest 1 second setting. Worn on a Velcro wrist band (not included) it quietly does it’s job during a race with no fuss.It’s accuracy was spot on, compared to a GARMIN Forerunner during a recent Beerburrum Event. Try the trace of ‘Craig Vs Bruce’ for a comparison, here…
http://users.bigpond.com/craig.steffens/.
New car bike rack
This new bike rack from Thule looks after your bike when in transit. Bikes rest on their wheels rather than being clamped on the top tube, avoiding scratches and damaging carbon fibre frames.
Blake Gordon OA MTBO Coordinator
What can we expect in Poland?
By the time you read this, the 5th MTB WOC will be history. After lean years for AUS in Finland and Czech Republic, I firmly believe Poland will see the re-emergence of Adrian Jackson, our most successful MTB-O competitor (4 medals in 3 WOC’s) since his spectacular start in 2004 where he collected one gold and two bronzes. Adrian has had a dream run in 2008 with wins in the Wildside and Anaconda Enduro MTB stage races in Australia. A strong 3rd place with the Flight Centre/Scott team against pro MTB teams in the 7-stage BC Bike Race in Canada showed he is world standard. With multi-day fitness and hard riding under his belt, AJ switched his pre-WOC training back to MTB-O with an unprecedented four strong wins in the four WRE races in Fontainebleau (France) and Poland. Then as a change of pace he rode (and was on the podium again) in the French multi-day l”Hexagonal VTT race during the second week of August prior to heading back to Poland. Coming into the World Championships AJ regained the World No 1 World Ranking which he held in 2007. I know better than to predict medals, but I think Adrian has not yet reached his peak and with the strength and consistency developed around the world, I can’t wait to watch him take on the four races (Sprint, Middle, Long and Relay) at the end of August. AUS team members Paul Darvodelsky, Alex Randall, and Melanie Simpson also contested the Polish 6-Day event in similar terrain to WOC gaining valuable competition against the world’s best. The men competed in Lithuania and have had excellent lead up and racing practice close to Warsaw. The last members of the 8-person WOC team, Cath Chalmers and Jenn Graham-Taylor, have been racing MTB-O and adventure races with success in WA. David Simpfendorfer rounded off his preparation with wins in both the Sprint and Long NSW Championships at Nowra recently, and Thorlene Egerton has been based in England. The Aussie training camp commenced on August 17th at Nowa Kaletka, Poland. Adapting to riding on the right side of the track, learning to consider the option of carrying your bike off track (allowed in Poland) and reading the intricate 2.5 m contours was part of the team’s preparation. The team moved into cabins in the small village of Stare Jablonki for WOC, where entries were - 28 countries with 112 men and 67 women. For the inaugural MTB JWOC there were 21 countries with 67 men and 46 women. Finland, Russia and Poland fielded full teams of 12 in JWOC with one junior girl from New Zealand. All results are on www.mtbo.pl/woc2008
School MTBO Championships in Victoria
As part of the developing MTB-O scene in Victoria the 4th Victorian Schools MTB-O Championships produced some new and exciting riders at Mt Macedon on August 15th. Winners in the solo divisions in the 120min scatter format included Heath Jamieson (Senior Boys, Braemar College, 550 points), William Bleek (Junior Boys, Braemar College, 550 points), and Miss Dorrizzi (Senior Girls, Braemar College, 390 points). A record 156 participants - 11 of whom scored the maximum 550 points – was a very encouraging result for the chief course setter/organiser Peta Whitford. A great atmosphere at the start/finish in cool dry conditions made for an exciting day for the solo and group riders. Several other States have planned schools events to help develop our junior MTB-O competitor base.
Blake was chief starter at the Victorian Schools MTBO Championships in August. Here he gets one of the mass start groups away. Photo: Bruce Paterson
Round 2 National Series in Queensland & Round 3 in Canberra
Organisers of the annual Australian Championships hope to surpass the 100+ numbers recorded in NSW in 2007. Adrian and Carolyn Jackson will defend their Men and Women Elite Championships over the Sprint, Middle and Long-distance races. The venue has been shifted due to dense vegetation and timber cutting clogging tracks in the proposed area near Gympie. The organisers promise typical Queensland weather for Maryborough – a real improvement on the overnight thunderstorms and rain that plagued the NSW races last year. Victoria will defend the Champion State Plaque it won in 2007 with strong competition expected from host QLD and NSW. Round 3 will be staged in Sparrow Hill (Sprint) and East Kowen Forest (Long), Canberra on 1-2 November under the supervision of Ann Scown.
2009 Draft National Series
After 2009 national event applications were assessed, the draft schedule of 8 events over 3 rounds (with the WOC/ JWOC Selection Trials in Round 1 and the Australian Championships / 2 WRE races in Round 2) is:-
