The Australian Orienteer – December 2009

DECEMBER 2009

Hermann Wehner World Champion M85 Sprint & Long Distance

RRP $7.50 inc GST

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SILVA National Orienteering League Event Program 2010 Date Round 1

Race

Location

Eureka Challenge

Victoria

Sat Mar 6

1

Long Distance- Massed Start

Sun Mar 7

2

Sprint Distance - AM

Sun Mar 7

3

Mixed Relay- PM

Round 2

Australian 3-day Championships

Fri Apr 2

4

Easter - Prologue (Sprint)

Sat Apr 3

5

Easter Day 1- Middle Distance

Sun Apr 4

6

Easter Day 2- Long Distance

Mon Apr 5

7

Easter Day 3- Relay Distance

Fri Apr 9

8

ACT Sprint Championships

Sat Apr 10

9

ACT Middle Championships

Sun Apr 11

10

ACT Long Championships

Round 3

WOC Trials

ACT

NSW

Sat May 15

11

Sprint Trials

Sat May 15

12

Middle Trials

Sun May 16

13

Long Trials

Round 4

Australian Championships Carnival

South Australia

Sat Sep 25

14

Australian Middle Distance Championships

Sun Sep 26

15

South Australian Long Distance Championships

Fri Oct 1

16

Australian Sprint Orienteering Championships

Sat Oct 2

17

Australian Long Distance Championships

Sun Oct 3

18

Australian Relay Championships

All race details can be found at www.orienteering.asn.au www.silva.se

Silva is a FISKARS BRANDS company. australia@fiskarsbrands.com

Winning PartnershiP

The Australian Sports Commission proudly supports Orienteering Australia The Australian Sports Commission is the Australian Government agency that develops, manages and invests in sport at all levels in Australia.

Orienteering Australia has worked closely with the Australian Sports Commission to develop orienteering from community participation to high-level performance.

AUSTRALIAN SPORTS COMMISSION 4 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

Orienteering Australia is one of many national sporting organisations that has formed a winning partnership with the Australian Sports Commission to develop its sport in Australia.

www.ausport.gov.au

w w w. o r i e n t e e r i n g . a s n . a u Orienteering Australia PO Box 284 Mitchell BC 2911 orienteering@netspeed.com.au w: 02 6162 1200 President: Bill Jones oa_president@netspeed.com.au h: 02 6258 6362 Director (High Performance): Eric Morris oa_highperformance@netspeed.com.au Director (Finance): Blair Trewin oa_finance@netspeed.com.au h: 03 9455 3516 Director (Development): vacant oa_development@netspeed.com.au Director (Technical): Robin Uppill oa_technical@netspeed.com.au h: 08 8278 3017 m: 0419 037 770 Director (Special Projects): vacant oa_projects@netspeed.com.au IOF Vice President: Hugh Cameron oa_international@netspeed.com.au h: 02 6027 0885 Executive Officer: John Harding orienteering@netspeed.com.au 02 6162 1200 m: 0427 107 033 Manager (High Performance): Robert Preston oa_headcoach@netspeed.com.au m: 0403 296 516 Badge Applications: John Oliver 68 Amaroo Street, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2650

STATE ASSOCIATIONS Orienteering Queensland Inc: PO Box 114 Spring Hill QLD 4004. Admin Officer: Sandy Cantwell, Ph (07) 3379 8238 admin@oq.asn.au OA NSW: PO Box 3295, North Strathfield NSW 2137. Secretary: Dave Lotty, Ph. (02) 8116 9848 orienteering@sydney.net Orienteering ACT: PO Box 402, Jamison Centre ACT 2614. Office: John Suominen, Ph. (02) 6162 3422 orienteering.act@webone.com.au Victorian OA: PO Box 1010 Templestowe 3106. Secretary: Geoff Hudson, geoff@orienteering.com.au OA South Australia: State Association House, 73 Wakefield St Adelaide SA 5000. Secretary: Ken Thompson 08 8351 4757 secretary@oasa.net.au OA Western Australia: PO Box 234 Subiaco WA 6904. Secretary: Carol Brownlie Ph. (08) 9446 3457 carolnken@ozemail.com.au Orienteering Tasmania Inc.: PO Box 339, Sandy Bay, TAS 7005. Secretary: Sally Wayte, Ph. (03) 6234 8440 secretary@tasorienteering.asn.au Top End Orienteers (Northern Territory): PO Box 39152 Winnellie NT 0821. Secretary: David Rolland brolland@bigpond.com

NEXT ISSUE DEADLINE

Jan 15; Time-sensitive - Jan 23

ISSN 0818-6510 Issue 4/09 (no. 156) DECEMBER 2009

The national magazine of Orienteering Australia Inc. ABN 77 406 995 497 Published four times a year: First day of March, June, September, December. Print Post Approved PP 236080/00011 Editor: Michael Hubbert, P.O. Box 165, Warrandyte, Victoria 3113 mikehubbert@ozemail.com.au Phone (03) 9844 4878 Magazine Design & Assembly: Peter Cusworth, Ph. 0409 797 023 cusworth@netspace.net.au Magazine Treasurer: Blair Trewin Printer: Ferntree Print Centre, 1238 Burwood Hwy Upper Ferntree Gully.

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Regular Contributors: Badge Awards: John Oliver; Competition: Blair Trewin; High Performance: Mike Dowling; MTBO: Blake Gordon; Official News: Kay Grzadka; Nutrition: Gillian Woodward; Training: Steve Bird; Psychology: Jason McCrae.

Contributions are welcome, either directly or via State editorial contacts.

Prior consultation is suggested before preparing major contributions.

Guidelines for Contributors are available from the editor or from state contacts.

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CONTENTS MTB WOC.............................................. 6 AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEERING CHAMPS

.. . . . . . 1 2

WORLD MASTERS ORIENTEERING CHAMPS... 17 S P A C E R A C I N G .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1 WORLD ORIENTEERING CHAMPS................ 25 D E A F LY M P I C S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 8 S I LVA N AT I O N A L O R I E N T E E R I N G L E A G U E . . . . . 2 9 O - S P Y .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 0 L E T T E R S .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1 H E A LT H.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3 C O L O U R V I S I O N .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 6 TOP EVENTS......................................... 42 C L I M AT E C H A N G E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4 ORIENTEERING AUSTRALIA ..................... 45 TRAINING DIARY – Ken McLean ............... 46

Front Cover: Hermann Wehner (ACT) - World Champion M85 Sprint & Long Distance

DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 5 DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 5

MTBO World Championships In Israel

Photo: Dan Chissick

Mountain Bike Orienteering in Israel – expect the unexpected. Team Jackson (Carolyn and Adrian) represented Australia at an event where competitor numbers were lower than usual because of recent violence in the region and alternative major events in Europe. Despite this, most of the top guns were there so fewer competitors didn’t help Carolyn or Adrian, both of whom were expected to finish well up in the field.

Kay Haarsma travelled with Team Jackson as manager/ coach and she takes up the narrative:

A

DRIAN JACKSON stamped himself as arguably Australia’s best orienteer ever, by winning gold in the two extremes of the Sprint and the Long Distance, and getting a podium finish of 5th in the Middle Distance at the MTBO Worlds in Israel. His win in the Sprint slightly shocked his rivals but his dominant (almost 3 minute) win in the Long Distance had everyone shaking their heads in disbelief.

One of the attractions of international Orienteering is the different countries you visit. Although Israel hadn’t been on my “must see” list I am glad I saw this unique country. I had early misgivings based on:- that only 3% of the country is covered in forest; predicted temperatures were in the high 30’s; and with Israel MTBO riders lacking both quantity and quality at major events I wondered whether Israel could host a high standard WOC. Then, a three week long conflict from Dec 27th between Israel and the Gaza Strip saw approximately 1300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis killed. Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of stopping rocket attacks from and arms smuggling into Gaza. A “special bulletin” from the WOC organisers declared that competitors had nothing to worry about as the range of the rockets was at least 5 kilometres from where we were racing! This didn’t exactly allay my fears. However the fighting stopped and IOF confirmed Israel as the host. Nevertheless many of our top riders chose not to be available for selection and ultimately only “Team Jackson” were named. Both are experienced competitors but Orienteering Australia decided to send me as coach, so our Team only had to think about riding.

Before departure, email communication from Israel was slow and answers vague, leaving me extremely worried. Initially they didn’t want to email me copies of the training maps, as we should have 6 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

Sprint podium. From left: Lasse Brun Pedersen from Denmark, Adrian and Ruslan Gritsan from Russia.

Photo Kay Haarsma

come to the training camp in February! Strange logic. Then I had to call on the controller and the IOF to ensure that previous copies of the event maps were posted on the website, as the rules demand. The weekly emails from Hertz querying whether I really wanted the specific car for that particular fortnight was also troubling. The hassles of MTBO travel included trying to fit three bikes, four people, bike boxes and luggage into one big car.

I deliberately arrived in Tel Aviv several days before the others so I could assimilate to the Israel psyche, get a hold of good copies of the training maps, check out the accommodation, ensure we had a car booked, locate the best bike shops etc. I was helped immensely by staying with a couple of young touring cyclists who explained things and immersed me in the local culture and food. I found them via the “Warm Showers” list of cyclists who put up other cyclists, of which I am a member.

Finally I picked up the hire car and navigated out of Tel Aviv by myself, driving on the wrong / right hand side of the road in the dark to pick up AJ at 11pm. Embarrassingly, I then had trouble locating the car in the huge airport car park. Then it was into the forest for eight days of training before the Championships began.

During the pre-WOC training what did you think of the maps and terrain?

AJ: The training camp was good to just focus on the process of orienteering after doing hardly any O races all year. It was hot which was nice after having spent the previous seven weeks racing and working in a wet Europe. More importantly I got used to riding in the heat again. Really it was no different to an Australian summer when I do a lot of MTB races, so I knew that I could handle it.

Kay: Most of our training was done 100kms north of Tel Aviv where we stayed in guestrooms at Ramat HaShofet kibbutz.

This community was established in 1941 mainly by immigrants from Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland. It has a resident population of about 570 people. Here there were five maps at our disposal. Steep hillsides with many tracks contouring around made for interesting decisions when to “cut” through the forest.

Riding or walking bikes through the forest was allowed in all races, except the Sprint, where you had to carry your bike if diverting from tracks. The Russians were also based here. They were doing it tough having to ride to and from the three closest maps. Here we first met Sakiko, the sole Japanese female rider, who was doing WOC on a background of just one MTBO race. Saki’s main sport is multi-day adventure racing, so she was super fit. After two weeks training in Israel she did remarkably well placing 37th, 23rd and then 21st.

The WOC accommodation and event centre was at Ben Shemen, a youth village and agricultural boarding school about 30kms from Tel Aviv. Established in 1927 its aim was to endow children with a Zionist ethic, teach them to work the land, and install an appreciation of responsibility. Today it has around 1,000 students, of which 400 live in the village. In the 1940s and 50s, a period of mass immigration to Israel, youth villages were an important tool in immigrant absorbtion. There are 60 youth villages in Israel today. Many continue to provide an educational framework for immigrant youth. Others have introduced programs for gifted students from underprivileged neighborhoods, exchange programs for overseas high school students and vocational training facilities.

The rooms were small and basic with 4 beds to a room, shower and toilet. Importantly they had good working air conditioners which allowed us to take refuge from the heat. All teams stayed here and ate in the community eating hall, so it was a great friendly atmosphere. Also, three of the events and the model map were within 5kms, so this made them accessible by bike. And it had a nice large swimming pool strangely camouflaged by blue plastic entirely around it. This was to prevent men looking at women swimmers on the two “women only” days. With some talking I was able to get the three Jacksons (Tim was there too) in one room by themselves and I moved into the “single girls” room next door with Anna (Poland) and Maret (Estonia.) Having some privacy and space is really important to elite athletes at such events so they can get time to themselves and rest properly when they desire it.

However, for a few minutes at event accreditation the Australian participation looked a bit doubtful. The event treasurer pointed out that we had only paid half the costs and could I pay the rest now? (Normally OA pay everything upfront in two installments as is required.) Our meticulous treasurer, while writing his car off in WA and then getting marooned in Darwin, had forgotten the second payment! A hasty “please send money” email was dispatched. Meanwhile we were riding “on appro”.

Long Distance qualifying AJ: I wanted to just spend the minimum amount of energy possible and qualify in the top third of the field. In the end I made one error that cost about a minute, and chose some flat route choices which were slower but saved my legs that little bit more. I never felt like I was really orienteering that well, but sometimes I find when you are consciously trying to take it easier it is hard to navigate really well.

Kay: Normally the top riders like to race together at the end of the field. However waiting around hours in the heat for an afternoon start would be counter productive so AJ didn’t thrash himself in the qualifying. Also the Long Distance Final map was to be almost all 4WD type tracks/roads so there would be no trails left by earlier riders. Carolyn rode conservatively after recovering from a 24hr stomach bug and had no major problems placing 19th in a field of 26. The terrain was a mixture of forest, open areas and almond groves and finished in Kfar Menachem kibbutz. Carolyn had to ride through a goat herd midway through her race! The “quarantine area” (where finishers must wait until all riders have started) was just 50 metres away in the local swimming pool!!

The first day of competition had been quietly but impressively carried out by the organisers, with maps and courses all being complimented. This is looking good, I mused...

Middle Distance event AJ: Lots of technical riding and navigation. When you find yourself having to constantly concentrate on where to put your wheels your map reading slips down the order of priorities and mistakes occur. Straight after the race I felt as though I had been

losing time the whole course, and said to Kay “19 controls, 19 mistakes” but that was just the nature of the terrain. In fact, being hesitant and stop-start navigation was rewarded over the whole course. It was the old adage “lose seconds to save minutes”. In the end my splits were quite good except for three legs where I lost around a minute and a half each - the gap from my 5th place to first.

Kay: The terrain was quite detailed with some single track. AJ suffered from the “hurry hurry” syndrome, pushing the navigation too hard given his lack of O racing. Fitness wise he coped admirably with the sizzling hot conditions. In contrast Carolyn was extremely pleased with her 35th position, having only a one minute error. Although her place appears low Carolyn was only eight minutes off the podium and all the places around her were very close in time. The Finn Marika Hana was a delighted winner while Austrian Michaela Gigon had to suffer the agony of being announced as the winner and a minute later being told that a mistake had been made and she was in fact 2nd! The event was held in a section of Ben Shemen forest, with just a 3km ride to the start from our accommodation. Again the finish line was sited just 50 metres from a village swimming pool. The organisation was almost flawless. The influence of MTB JWOC is being seen with many good juniors making the elite teams. The Russians had four juniors.

Sprint event AJ: With my lack of race practice showing through in the Middle Distance, I was not expecting the Sprint to be my best race of the week. What I did have on my side was an extra day of rest than the other guys, with the race order being; Long qual, Middle, rest day, Relay, Sprint then Long Distance. So not having ridden in the Relay (which was actually in the evening before the Sprint!) was definitely going to be to my advantage. I really got into the course well and got that awesome feeling where you are going flat out but your mind is still one step ahead. There were a few moments where things got slightly out of shape, but each time I only lost a few seconds before getting back into the flow. Call it experience if you want, but sometimes you need a bit of good old fashioned luck to get you on the top step!

Kay: Riding in only his second WOC Sprint ever AJ took out the gold medal by 11secs over the Dane, Lasse Brun Pederson. Adrian was leading after the third of 17 controls and was either 1st or 2nd for the rest of the race before finally taking the lead again and holding it from control #15. Adrian was stoked with his ride immediately after he finished. Being the fourth last starter he only had a short wait to be confirmed as champion. AJ was grabbing at his shoe when he finished and talking to the media at the same time, as a stick had speared through into his foot near the race end. Brother Timmy was despatched to make the gold medallist flower garland and proud Tim and mother Carolyn presented it to him on the podium in the forest amphitheatre. Initially they had hung our flag upside down on the flagpole, but this was soon corrected, being pointed out by several other nations!

Carolyn rode steadily to place 36th. She had one bad route choice, and found it difficult to read the map “on-the-go” due to the detail. Slovakian Hana Bajtosova won, repeating her Sprint victory from 2008. The Neot Kedumim area was fantastic terrain for Sprint Orienteering being a landscape reserve which had literally been sculpted out of eroded hillsides. There were many old farming and archaeological sites dotting the almost open rocky hillsides. More importantly there was a myriad of small tracks, with many of them paved for easy access making for very intense orienteering. It was the most exciting and unique area for Sprint Orienteering that I have seen in a WOC.

DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 7

Relays

What are the races on your agenda in the next six months?

It was a little strange being just a spectator at the Relays. A short second loop of about 10mins had everyone returning through the finish area. From the spectator control riders had to run up some steps much to everyone’s entertainment. The leading last leg riders were given GPS units to put in their pockets and their whereabouts was then tracked on course via a big TV screen at the finish.

AJ: Summer is the high season for XC racing in Australia, so I’ll be competing in the four-race National Series, plus the National Championships in Adelaide in January. I’ll also be heading to Tassie in February to defend my Wildside stage race title and hitting up some of the other big one-day races like the Otway Odyssey and National Marathon Championships.

In the men’s Relay, the Danes were unbackable favourites but their first rider came through near the rear after a ‘mechanical’ and they did well to pull up to a podium finish of 5th. The Russian, Finn, Swiss and Czech teams had a close battle throughout. It was only Anton Foliforev’s fastest time of the day on the last leg that gave Russia a one minute victory over Czech, with the Finns taking the bronze narrowly ahead of the strong Russian second team.

Kay: In October AJ was in the 4-person winning elite team that won the 24 hour Scott race at Stromlo, ACT. A hard race, with only a few minutes to the highly fancied second team. He also ran the Foot-O National Championships off no running training and placed 8th in the Sprint and did a speedy opening leg in the Relay.

In the women’s event, Ksenia Chernikh, Russia’s gun rider, led out on the final leg with a one minute margin to Czech, then Switzerland, Austria and Finland were all within 5 minutes. The forking controls immediately at the beginning of the final loop proved a problem for some teams and totally changed the leader board. It was the “grand madam” of MTBO in Michaela Gigon who emerged first from the trees, eliminating a three minute deficit to grab victory for Austria. Christine Schaffner also rode brilliantly to bring the Swiss into 2nd with the Russians being consoled with the bronze, just ahead of Czech.

Long Distance Final AJ: After the debacle of my poor race in the Middle Distance, I had made the Long Distance my main focus of the Championships.

From winning the Sprint I was confident of my physical ability to race well, but just needed my focus to be on and even luck to show up again. I also sensed how tired the other guys were from the heat and extra race they had ridden. The course was pretty route-choice intensive, and although I didn’t always pick the absolute best, my legs were churning up the hills so I never lost too much time. On one of the key long leg (#5 - #6) I made an impulse decision to go the same way as one of the good Swiss riders who I had just caught. It was a bit of a gamble; a very wide route that climbed a lot in one hit, rather than weaving through the guts of the map with constant up and down. Once into the leg I was convinced it was a bad way, so attacked the climb flat out. In the end it was actually the fastest way, and my efforts had paid off, putting time into many of my main rivals.

Kay: The organisers deliberately put the Long Distance race last as they reckoned no-one would have any energy left afterwards. The course was 36km and 720m of climb with an expected winning time of 100 minutes. Early finishers looked very tired and hot. I had suggested to AJ that he not overcook himself in the first half and this was a sensible tactic. Recording a speedy 92min 41sec he came in to lead by almost six minutes but there were still many riders to come. Carolyn was confident that he had the gold but I was awaiting the last rider and the “skinny lady to sing”. The event announcer, Slovakia’s Marie Cutova, was dressed for the weather in a bikini top most days and finally she did confirm AJ as the winner. The event banquet, closing ceremony and presentation was held later that evening at the event finish area at Mesilat Zion.

Most competitors found themselves frolicking in the swimming pool by night’s end. In the afternoon I had taken the opportunity to ride the women’s course (26.5km & 560m climb) and appreciated how hot the conditions were.

Overall the Israel organisers did an outstanding job and ran maybe even the “best ever” WOC according to popular opinion. Nothing was ever too much trouble and their small volunteer workforce appeared so often in different roles that it appeared as if they had cloned themselves!

8 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

Was Israel, the country and people, as expected?

AJ: Nothing like reported on the news. 90% of the country is perfectly safe and everyone, especially the organisers were very friendly and helpful.

Kay: A bit scary in Tel Aviv with young soldiers toting rifles in the streets. Nearer the disputed territory security was tighter with car and bag searches going into main shopping complexes.

But generally life was going on as normal. The cities had quite dense living, generally on hillsides, in almost all white coloured buildings.

What were the non-O highlights of Israel and why?

AJ: Jerusalem was absolutely amazing. The old city covers a tiny bit of land, and is divided into four quarters (Christian, Muslim, Armenian and Jewish) and everyone lives side-by-side in relative peace, and then there are some of the holiest sites of each religion packed in right next to each other. The Dead Sea was also pretty interesting, although it was so hot that I felt like I was being cooked in a big salty broth ready for someone’s dinner! Land temperature was 44deg and it felt almost as hot in the water.

Kay: The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, and Masada, an ancient village built atop a 400m desert cliff by Herod the Great between 37 and 31 BC, stood out from the religious and historical viewpoints.

Keeping cool Anticipating the hot conditions I borrowed two “ice vests” from the SA Sports Institute. These have crystals in them that take up water and keep it cold. They were put on the riders for five minutes or so before they raced to bring their core body temperature down to normal after their warm-up. Besides the physical advantage it also made the other riders a little envious!

Due to the weather the organisers had a special rule that required riders to carry at least one litre of water.

Maret Vaher, the sole Estonian woman rider, crashed badly going to control #2 in the Sprint, breaking several ribs and puncturing a lung. However she still finished the course. Her brother Sander is a top Foot orienteer and spent a year studying in Adelaide. Maret had to spend an extra 10 days in Israel before she was cleared to fly home. Carolyn, Timmy and I decided to visit her after WOC as her team-mates had departed. She was in a hospital in Lod about 5kms away but it took us over two hours to locate as no-one seemed to know where the hospital was. Then there were twelve identical buildings with Hebrew signs on them and we only knew that Maret was on the third floor of one. We even rang her but none of the nurses spoke English, so she couldn’t tell us which building. We finally found an English speaking doctor who directed us correctly.

2010 – MTBO WOC is in Portugal, based at the small village of Montalegre, some 480kms north from Lisbon.

MTBO WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS MEN SPRINT FINAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Finish 1 Jackson Adrian, AUS 23:19 01:28 03:47 05:20 06:08 07:52 09:30 11:48 13:15 14:43 15:29 17:08 18:11 20:41 21:29 22:23 23:04 23:19 01:28 02:19 01:33 00:48 01:44 01:38 02:18 01:27 01:28 00:46 01:39 01:03 02:30 00:48 00:54 00:41 00:15 6 Hradil Jiri, CZE 24:51 01:44 04:05 05:53 06:43 08:54 10:37 13:06 14:39 16:01 16:51 18:37 19:40 22:05 22:52 23:55 24:36 24:51 01:44 02:21 01:48 00:50 02:11 01:43 02:29 01:33 01:22 00:50 01:46 01:03 02:25 00:47 01:03 00:41 00:15

“Neot Kdumim” – Israel. Scale: 1: 10,000 Contours: 5m The Aussie team: Carolyn and Adrian Jackson with coach/ manager Kay Haarsma

Adrian finishing the Sprint.

Photo sequence: Tim Jackson

RESULTS: MIDDLE DISTANCE Men 1. 56.27 Torbjorn Gasbjerg DEN 2. 57.09 Jiri Hradil CZE 3. 57.17 Lasse Brun Pedersen DEN 5. 59.19 Adrian Jackson AUS Women 1. 52.22 Marika Hara FIN 2. 53.23 Michaela Gigon AUT 3. 53.44 Christine Christine SUI 35. 64.35 Carolyn Jackson AUS SPRINT Men 1. 23.19 2. 23.30 3. 23.56 Women 1. 22.37 2. 23.00 3. 23.34 36. 31.22

Adrian Jackson AUS Lasse Brun Pedersen DEN Ruslan Gritsan RUS Hana Bajtosova SVK Marika Hara FIN Michi Gigon AUT Carolyn Jackson AUS

LONG DISTANCE Men 1. 92.41 Adrian Jackson AUS 2. 95.25 Ruslan Gritsan RUS 3. 96.23 Matthieu Barthelemy FRA Women 1. 91.11 Christine Schaffner SUI 2. 93.00 Sonja Zinkl AUT 3. 93.33 Hana.Bajtosova SVK 33. 116.49 Carolyn Jackson AUS

RELAY Men 1. 2.04.17 Russia 2. 2.05.22 Czech Rep 3. 2.05.52 Finland

Women 1. 2.25.11 Austria 2. 2.25.43 Switzerland 3. 2.27.17 Russia DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 9

Long podium. From left: Ruslan Gritsan from Russia, Adrian and Matthieu Barthelemy from France. Photo Kay Haarsma

MEN LONG FINAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Finish 1 Jackson Adrian, AUS 92:41 07:14 11:07 16:26 26:20 32:43 44:52 50:01 51:37 58:29 69:31 76:59 82:15 90:04 92:02 92:33 92:41 07:14 03:53 05:19 09:54 06:23 12:09 05:09 01:36 06:52 11:02 07:28 05:16 07:49 01:58 00:31 00:08 3 Barthelemy Matthieu, FRA 96:23 08:03 11:54 17:17 27:50 34:22 46:34 52:17 53:58 60:39 72:46 80:46 85:43 93:40 95:45 96:14 96:23 08:03 03:51 05:23 10:33 06:32 12:12 05:43 01:41 06:41 12:07 08:00 04:57 07:57 02:05 00:29 00:09

Ice vests and cameras as soon as you finish 10 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

Photo: Ilan Shacham

MOUNTAIN BIKE ORIENTEERING

My World Championships Carolyn Jackson

A

FTER the shock of being selected to go to Israel, I realized I was in a bit of strife. It was going to be HOT there, and I hate the heat, and always avoid riding in the heat!! The selection trials were held in very cold, wet and muddy conditions, which suit me well. Israel was going to be the total opposite - and it did not disappoint. Most days were around the 40 degree mark and to make it worse the races were all in the middle of the day. For me, clearly I had had no preparation for these conditions. So I had to resort to wearing masses of clothes and somehow trying to train in the “heat” of the day - not easy in a Melbourne winter!!

Timothy and I planned a three-day stopover in Hong Kong, en route to Israel. The idea being it would be warm there, plus help with jet-lag by breaking up the trip. So we went from 8 deg max daytime temperature at home and got hit like a brick bat with a 40 deg heat wave in Hong Kong and incredibly high humidity too. Even the locals said it was extremely hot.

All the World Championships maps were incredibly good areas, with each having terrain very suited to the type of race. The Middle Distance map had a dense network of tracks, with some technical riding. The Sprint was an amazing place with a complex network of tracks. The Long Distance had big hills, and adequate amount of tracks to make for very good route choice.

Photo: Dan Chissick

Kay was a huge help. In the heat, even just the walk to and from the event centre, shopping and all those “little” odds and ends that need to be done, were a real chore. Kay handled all this with no fuss. Just competing seemed to take so much more out of us than usual, so after every race and ride it was straight to the air-con or the pool to rest and recover.

The first race was the Long Distance qualification. Basically for us women it was just a matter of finishing, as all finishers automatically qualified.

Seems a bit unfair compared to the guys. I had a really good ride. I tried to ride within myself, but also ride solidly, as I wanted to see roughly where I was in the field. I never had any illusions that I would be at the pointy end - I was going for mistake-free rides, which would give me the best result I could hope for. This map was a very nice and fun area, which had a couple of long route choice legs. I achieved my goal of no mistakes, just one poor route.

The absolute highlight of the trip was, of course, Adrian’s two gold medals.

Timothy and I got to watch Adrian finish each of his winning rides, which was extremely exciting, and we screamed ourselves hoarse. In the Sprint he was a very late starter, so we knew as he was finishing that he had had a great race and we only had a couple of minutes wait for the last few to know he had won. Adrian has never really considered himself a “sprinter” but he certainly showed the world his versatility that day. Then the next day, the thrill of watching him come down that steep and loose hill at an amazing speed to finish the Long Distance. I was fairly sure he was going to get a medal even though we had an hour to wait. For both presentations, Timothy made a garland, and I very proudly got to present them to Adrian on the podium.

The Middle Distance was my favourite area. Intense navigation, plenty of single track and great route choice kept us very challenged. I was thrilled to finish with virtually no mistakes - just missed one tiny track junction which cost half a minute, and a few other slightly too long hesitations.

We got the opportunity to visit the Old City of Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, Masada, Akko, and many more fascinating places. The ancient history and buildings blow your mind when you come from a place like Australia which is so relatively young.

The Sprint was really fun to ride. It was very hard to keep in contact with the map as tracks came up so quickly at that scale. The light yellow of the area tended to blend with all the detail making for a very hard-to-read map.

It didn’t help that my helmet broke during the race, so I had it constantly flopping onto my nose - hard to concentrate! I never got lost, but feel I made some poor route choices, and was probably too cautious.

Kay, Timmy and

Israel is an amazing place. The Israelis were incredibly friendly, capable and good organizers. The events went virtually without a hitch, the maps were fantastic and the whole event was one of the best I have been to.

The Long Distance race was, for me, just a matter of battling it out to finish.

Keeping well hydrated, riding within my capabilities and just making it were foremost in my mind. I concentrated very hard on picking efficient routes, minimizing the climb and not riding an extra millimetre than I had to. It was always going to be a long day. Many other riders had similar problems with the heat and I was very glad to finish with an ok time.

Pity they just couldn’t have organized the weather a bit better……..

Carolyn enjoy a different kind of riding

The sign on Team Australia’s door says it all.

DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 11

AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEERING CHAMPIONSHIPS

The Trewin Report Blair Trewin

In 2009 the Australian Championships week came to Victoria. For many of the older generation (including a sizeable overseas contingent), it was the first stage in three weeks of orienteering culminating in the World Masters Championships (or the second stage in four weeks for those who had been to Queensland too). For many others, including some of the largest elite fields seen in many years, it was the culmination of the season.

Australian Middle Distance Championships, Chewton, VIC - 26 Sept.

The week started with the Australian Middle Distance Championships in the gold-mining terrain of Chewton, accompanied by the cold, damp conditions that were to be a regular feature of the week (there was even a flooded creek to negotiate before the last control). The detailed terrain was ideal for Middle Distance orienteering and led to some fine racing.

Two clean sweeps of individual elite championships got under way at Chewton. Kathryn Ewels, coming off her fifth place in the World Championships Sprint, would have been considered a serious contender even in a full-strength field, and in the absence of Hanny Allston (just started a new job in Tasmania) she was a very warm favourite. She took a while to emerge from the pack but by the long legs at #7 and #8 she had broken clear, and went on to win with more than a minute in hand. Behind her there were two career-best results at this level in the minor placings. Susanne Casanova finished very well to claim 2nd, in conditions as unlike her now-hometown Darwin as it is possible to get without leaving the country or going to the mountains, while Mace Neve’s consistent run was just enough to hold a fastfinishing Vanessa Round off for third.

Mace’s brother, Max, got an outstanding week under way in M20. Going into the week he would have been considered third favourite at best, but he led almost all the way and ended up a minute clear.

Behind him there was a tight battle for second, in which Oscar Phillips led for much of the way before Josh Blatchford got the best of the final technical section.

After a week of rain before the Australian Middle Distance Champs at Chewton, a small watercourse feature had turned into a very full creek which all competitors had to cross to get to the finish. The Photoworx website www.photoworx.com.au/ shows how everyone got through the creek. Some, such as W14 Olivia Sprod from South Australia, made a bigger splash than others.

Photo sequence: Michael Brown / Photoworx 12 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

Eleanor Ross, NSW Photo: Ian Dalton

Rebecca Phillips, Tas Photo: Ken Dowling

It seemed like situation normal in M21, with the race fought out between Simon Uppill – the most likely of the local contenders, with the injured Julian Dent missing – and visiting Dane Rune Olsen, a face not unfamiliar to Australian orienteers. After the early skirmishes Uppill was in the lead by #6 and looked to be building a comfortable position, as Olsen recovered from a minute lost at the first control. Uppill then lost a minute at #24 to go within an ace of losing, but had just enough in hand to hold on by eleven seconds. Behind them, Bruce Arthur had his best championship result for several years to take third with a very consistent run.

W20 was another close race, and only nineteen seconds separated the four leading contenders – Belinda Lawford, Aislinn Prendergast, Bridget Anderson and Angela Simpson – at halfway.

Simpson emerged in the final quarter to put New Zealand on the board, 39 seconds ahead of Lawford.

There was a significant overseas presence in many of the veteran classes, nowhere more so than in M60, won by Dave Middleton (NZ), where Paul Hoopmann (3rd) was the only Australian in the top seven. There were three British wins, with Stephen Keyes particularly impressive in dominating a decent M45 field; in M55 it was what was happening behind Eddie Harwood which was especially interesting, with Paul

Josh Blatchford, NSW Photo: Ken Dowling

Pacque and Chris Norwood both blowing chances with significant errors and John Wilkinson, more often to be seen in AS, emerging to take the resident championship.

It was also a great day for New Zealand. Not for the first time in recent years, their juniors made an immediate impact, with Angela Simpson being joined on the winners’ list by Ben Reynolds (M16) and Selena Metherell (W16), both of whom had comfortable margins. Their veterans also did well; in addition to Middleton’s M60 win, Patricia Aspin was her usual dominant self in finishing five minutes clear of the W60 field, while at the other end of the scale Carey Nazzer did not get the lead in W50 until the last control, squeezing Debbie Davey out by four seconds.

It wasn’t a total write-off for the locals. Jenny Bourne was especially impressive in W55, her seven-minute margin a remarkably large one for a Middle Distance race. Geoff Lawford was almost as impressive in winning M50 by four minutes, while in M65 John Brock re-emerged after a long absence from national events to taste immediate success in M65 after a good battle with Darryl Erbacher. Christine Marshall also emerged in W45 after a tight contest with Su Yan Tay, in a class where third

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AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEERING CHAMPIONSHIPS

(taken by Sue Hancock over Christine Brown) was decided in the finish chute.

Victorian Long Distance Championships, Choke-Em Gully, VIC - 27 Sept The Victorian Long Distance Championships offered traditional Long Distance orienteering in the big hills south of Chewton, and provided a mix of the expected and the unexpected. Kathryn Ewels’ second win of the weekend was expected, although the margin was not, and local victories in the junior classes for Aislinn Prendergast and Leon Keely were not a total surprise, but few would have forecast the way M21 would turn out.

Dave Shepherd had been largely absent from the scene for the last year after a serious ankle injury, apart from the occasional appearance in a Sprint or Middle Distance, and his result the previous day, fourth, had been respectable without being spectacular. This was his first Long Distance race for more than a year. He started well and held a narrow lead over Simon Uppill for the first two-thirds, then belied any doubts over his endurance by pulling away over the final third to win by four minutes.

(The SA Championships, where Uppill was pushed hard by Blair Trewin over the second half, may have been a more significant indicator than they looked at the time).

Ewels completely dominated her class, winning all but three of the splits and finishing with a nine-minute break. Once again Susanne Casanova emerged in the second half as the runner-up, while Shannon Jones had her best result of the week to take third.

The open, hilly forest was well-suited to Leon Keely’s running abilities, and he was in front in M20 from the start. Lachlan Dow also had a solid run and James Robertson achieved his best result at this level. In W20 Aislinn Prendergast inherited the lead halfway through after a seven-minute error from early leader Angela Simpson at #6, and was in front of Bridget Anderson for most of the way, although the gap narrowed from 1-2 minutes to 37secs at the end.

Oscar McNulty’s two-minute win in M16 was a sign of bigger things to come, as was a comfortable victory for Su Yan Tay in W45. The overseas contingent were not quite as successful as they had been the previous day, but still filled four of the top five places in M60 (Britain’s Peter Gorvett winning this time), and there were repeat victories for Patricia Aspin (W60), Sharon Crawford (W65) and Roger Maher (M70). In a reverse of the previous day, this time Carey Nazzer had a last-gasp loss rather than a last-gasp win, with Anthea Feaver overhauling her at the last control in W50 to win by twelve seconds.

Australian Schools Championships, Browns Reef, VIC - 29-30 Sept For the second successive year, Queensland held sway in the Australian Schools Championships near Bendigo, while New Zealand won the Southern Cross Junior Challenge. It was a closer contest than last year, but the Queenslanders always looked to have their opponents at arm’s length, eventually finishing four points ahead of the ACT with Tasmania another point in arrears.

Both races were held on Browns Reef, one of the fastest areas ever used for a major event in Australia, with the 5 min/km barrier broken on several occasions. It was broken most comprehensively

by Max Neve, who ran the 8km Senior Boys course in 37 minutes.

No-one else was able to match that pace; Lachlan Dow came closest, but drifted out of it a bit in the second half and finished just under a minute behind. Gene Beveridge was the best of the New Zealanders, finishing 3rd after a consistent run.

The Senior Girls was decided by the narrowest possible margin, on a day when the top five finished within two minutes. Belinda Lawford held a narrow lead for much of the course, and it looked 14 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

Oscar McNulty (WA) – first West Australian to win an individual Schools title.

Photo: Ian Dalton

like Angela Simpson might have lost her chance with a minute lost at #12. She came back strongly and narrowed the lead to a single second by the last control – close enough to be able to reverse that margin in the finish chute. New Zealanders filled the next two places too, through Laura Robertson – always in touch but never quite able to get to the front – and Selena Metherell.

The biggest surprise was in the Junior Boys. Defending champion Oliver Poland was a red-hot favourite, particularly after some impressive performances mixing it with the M20s during the season. Oscar McNulty had some credentials of his own in older company, beating Craig Dufty to the WA open men’s Sprint title, and showed at Browns Reef that this was no fluke. He got a 35sec jump on Poland at the first control and matched him almost stride for stride from there; no-one else was within six minutes of them. McNulty was the first Western Australian to win an individual title, and with Bill Mann and Joe Dowson also in the top eight they took their first age-group team title as well.

Jacqui Doyle was the first finisher in the Junior Girls. Her time looked to be a decent benchmark and so it proved. The strongest challenge she had to withstand was from Michele Dawson, who had a small lead late in the course but could not quite match the Queenslander over the closing controls and was 12secs short.

Lauren Turner was also within 20secs of the lead at the fourthlast, but an error saw her lose 3rd to Rebecca Freese.

Schools Relay day always has a certain amount of drama. This year’s dose was in the Senior Boys’ race, which ended up in a three-way sprint finish after Lachlan Dow had made up 6mins on

the last leg. NSW were first across the line – only to find that Josh Blatchford had mispunched, which meant that New Zealand had just edged out the ACT. The Junior Girls also saw a tight contest. Queensland and NSW were close all the way, culminating in a excellent final leg contest between Jacqui Doyle and Nicola Blatchford, easily the two fastest on the day. Doyle just held on to add a Relay title to her individual win the previous day, with New Zealand recovering from a slow first leg to take 3rd. A similar duel in the Senior Girls, featuring New Zealand and the ACT, looked in prospect for the first two legs and Angela Simpson and Belinda Lawford went out together, but this time the New Zealander was too good and finished more than 5mins ahead by the end.

After a first leg in which five teams were within 2mins, New Zealand’s Junior Boys pulled clear on the second leg and ended up winning the race easily. There was an excellent contest behind them; four teams were within a minute, and Matthew Hill’s storming final leg brought NSW through from 5th to 2nd.

Australian Sprint Championships, Benalla, VIC - 2 Oct Proceedings moved to Benalla for the Australian Sprint Championships, with a mix of parks, showgrounds and river flats.

It wasn’t the most technical of Sprint areas, but in Sprint racing even small time losses can be critical (something Mace Neve and Shannon Jones found out, when 10sec losses on a minor route choice at the third-last cost them shots at 3rd place). It was a good spectator area which would have been a better one on a less moist day. Unusually for Australia, tracking in the long grass of the river flats was significant, although it developed so early that only the first few junior starters were disadvantaged (and it can’t have been too much of a disadvantage because one of them won anyway).

Most of the leading elite contenders started late, but two who didn’t gave the field something to chase. Nick Barrable (editor of CompassSport), who has run for Britain at World Cup level this year, and Rachel Effeney both finished particularly well and posted excellent times early on. Both were eventually beaten, but only once. In M21 Simon Uppill put up a serious challenge, but in the end it was Dave Shepherd who was able to edge out Barrable’s time. He was 6secs clear at the spectator control and needed nearly all of them, scoring by 2secs. Rune Olsen, with significant Sprint credentials for Denmark, was another excellent chance and led at the spectator control, but lost 25secs on the next to fall out of contention.

For someone with Kathryn Ewels’ 2009 international credentials, the field at Benalla was unlikely to pose too many problems.

Unless something went wrong the only question was likely to be the margin, and the answer was 46secs. It was more of a surprise that no-one else was able to match Rachel Effeney, leaving the Queenslander with a career-best result in her first senior year. Natasha Key, building for her World Masters campaign, completed the placings.

W20 was a race of cliffhangers. Aislinn Prendergast was done no favours by the draw, but third start position was no barrier as she posted a time which withstood numerous serious challenges.

Bridget Anderson matched her much of the way but did not quite have the pace at the end, Belinda Lawford recovered from a slow start to edge out Anderson, and Laura Robertson also got into the mix with a good run. Prendergast ended up 8secs ahead of Lawford, with only 1sec further back to Anderson and Robertson.

Angela Simpson might have been in the mix too had she not missed a control, and the improving Lauren Gillis took another step forward with a 5th place.

Max Neve made the Sprint the second of what was to be three national titles. For most of the course he was closely challenged

by Leon Keely, who was only 6secs down at the fourth-last, but

he then missed the third-last and had to turn back, falling out of contention. There was a major surprise in the minor placings.

Oscar McNulty had already impressed greatly in the Australian Schools, but took a step further when he stormed through to 2nd place in a field where he was giving up to five years away to his opponents. Josh Blatchford was 3rd after a consistent run.

The other result lists were a mix of the familiar, the unfamiliar and the international. It was not unexpected to see the likes of Jenny Bourne, Paul Pacque, Anthea Feaver and John Brock at the front. New Zealanders once again took out both M16 and W16 through Tim Robertson and Selena Metherell (although some of the better Australians were otherwise engaged in M/W20), and also went 1-2 in W60 through Patricia Aspin and Kate Fortune, while there were French-led international sweeps in M40 and M60, won by Philippe Page and Etienne Bousser respectively.

In its short history the Sprint has provided the opportunity for some names to reach the upper end of fields that they might not normally see. Melbourne Street-O has provided the training for some of those names in the past and this year brought us the likes of Judi Herkes (a convincing winner in W65) and Ian Davies (a close 5th in M50), while Simon Phillips gave us an idea of where Oscar’s speed comes from by coming 2nd in M50 despite losing time at the first control.

Australian Long Distance Championships, Warby North, VIC - 3 Oct The final weekend of the Carnival was on the north end of the Warby Ranges. The map took in the northern half of the 1978 Australian Championships map, but 1978-style rock mapping didn’t provide a lot of scope for using the detail of the northern half and that year’s courses largely stayed on top of the plateau (which explains why no-one got within 1 min/km of David Miller’s 1978 pace). There was extensive rock and often low visibility in regrowth, which proved to be challenging, especially a section at the end of the course that brought more than a few unstuck (sometimes after hearing over the PA that they’d gone through the radio control on a good time). It was a pity that the ranges spent the weekend as a drizzle magnet. And it was unclear whether any overseas visitors were unsettled by the road sign proclaiming the area to be habitat for an endangered snake.

Kathryn Ewels was looking for a clean sweep of national titles in 2009. Her start was slow and she was only sixth at #3, some 22mins into the race, but from there she took command and pulled further and further away from most of the field. Vanessa Round was the only one able to go close to matching her, sitting a couple of minutes behind for most of the course after early time losses. It was another 5mins back to the next cluster, from which Anna Sheldon, who has had a consistent 2009 without producing anything spectacular, emerged with an excellent final sector; Tracy Marsh and Mace Neve both lost reasonable chances of 3rd there.

Dave Shepherd had established his Long Distance credentials the previous weekend and his speed the previous day. His technical skills had never been in doubt and the terrain of Warby suited him well. He was in front by #6 and held it for the remainder of the race, never really putting a foot wrong. Simon Uppill held his race together well this time, but was never quite able to match it with the leading pace and finished two and a half minutes behind. He ended up in 2nd more comfortably than had seemed likely, after Rune Olsen and Bryan Keely both lost significant time in the final section, although they still finished 3rd and 4th. There were some encouraging results from the younger brigade, with Keely joined in the upper end of the field by Murray Scown (6th) and Evan Barr (8th).

The M20 race was effectively all over by #6. Max Neve had caught 4mins on Leon Keely by then and set up his third major win of the week. They were together for most of the remainder DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 15

AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEERING CHAMPIONSHIPS

of the course and filled the top two placings, without being unduly troubled by a late wobble. In addition to the national championships, the result also secured the National League individual title for Neve. Lachlan Dow never really looked like winning but overhauled Oscar Phillips to take 3rd.

Bridget Anderson’s 2009 international campaign had been affected by illness, preventing her from matching her excellent 2008 results. Once back home she had been consistent without managing to win anything of consequence, but this was the day she broke through for her first national title in W20, being rewarded for being the most consistent performer in a race where consistency was in limited supply. Aislinn Prendergast lost time at the end to turn a narrow margin into a comfortable one, but still held 2nd, which was enough to give her a share of the National League with Belinda Lawford. Lawford finished 4th, behind JWOC representative Sarah Buckerfield, who, in her first appearance after returning home, recovered from an early 5min mistake with the best second half of the race.

Elsewhere in the Juniors, there was another win for New Zealand in W16, but this time it went to Jula McMillan rather than Selena Metherell (who was 5th). Rebecca Freese kept her head whilst others were losing theirs to be the leading Australian. Todd Neve had been in the background a bit during the week but rose to the occasion in the more technical terrain of Warby to take the M16 title, while Jack Oakhill continued his emergence in his first national carnival in taking M14, and Anna Dowling had a good win in W14.

Some of the dominant figures of earlier in the week, both Australian and overseas, dominated again at Warby. Jenny Bourne had a double-figure margin in W55 and Patricia Aspin almost matched her in W60. A more surprising holder of a similar margin was Bjorn Mella, who took M45 by more than 9mins, with the placegetters – Hamish Goodwin and Mark Nemeth – both suffering major time losses in the first half of the course.

Geoff Lawford trailed Eoin Rothery for much of the course in M50 but finished the better over the difficult closing section, John Brock’s successful comeback continued with a 3min win in M65, Paul Pacque had a solid win over Eddie Harwood in M55, and Sharon Crawford recovered from 10mins lost at #3 to emerge 25secs ahead in W65. Maureen Ogilvie also came back from early mistakes to overcome Canada’s Nesta Leduc in W75 – a prelude to further contests in the World Masters – and Hermann Wehner (M85) added another to his long list of national titles.

Sue Hancock was 3mins ahead of a decent W45 field, and a great second half saw Anthea Feaver win W50 by a similar margin.

Elsewhere overseas visitors were prominent. Etienne Bousser backed up from his Sprint win in M60 to win the Long Distance as well, although there was more of a local presence this time with Derek Morris only 15secs behind. Roger Maher led an overseas clean sweep in M70, once again benefiting from a late mistake from John Robinson, and Konrad Wildi took out an M40 race where Paul Liggins (2nd) was the only local in the top six.

Australian Relays, Warby North, VIC - 4 Oct The week finished with the Australian Relays. Although all the National League team titles were settled, there was still a lot of intrinsic interest in the elite classes, as well as a three-way battle for 2nd in the Senior Men’s League between the Southern Arrows, Canberra Cockatoos and Victorian Nuggets. The veteran fields were also deeper than usual, with a number of international teams adding to the depth.

The open women’s Relay saw fluctuating fortunes and three teams within a minute. Tracy Marsh put the NSW Stingers into a good position on the first leg, and Felicity Brown built on that with perhaps her best run at this level, only 38secs off the fastest leg.

16 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

That put Briohny Davey, who had missed the previous day with an ongoing leg injury, out in front on the last leg, and although she fought valiantly she was unable to hold on. Natasha Key was close enough to be able to put the Victorian Nuggets in front by the spectator control, where they stayed. Anna Sheldon, not for the first time, ran a great final Relay leg to almost get the Queensland Cyclones up, but had to settle for 2nd with the Stingers 3rd.

More may be heard of the Cyclones in the Senior division in the coming years, because their Junior women’s depth is formidable.

It came through in a W20 Relay which was close with the ACT for one leg, but a no-contest after that, with Bridget Anderson repeating her form of the previous day. New Zealand were never in the race but did manage to get 3rd thanks to Angela Simpson running the day’s fastest time.

Another race which was less of a contest than it promised to be was M21, at least at the front. The Cockatoos got a lead on the first leg through Grant Bluett, and were never headed after that as Rob Walter, and then Dave Shepherd, stretched the lead to 5mins.

It was close behind that for two legs in a battle which featured the Arrows, the Stingers and two Victorian teams, but the Arrows always looked to have the advantage with Simon Uppill on the third leg, and so it proved, with the Stingers 3rd. Not for the first time, the second Victorian team beat the first team home.

The Cockatoos also took out M20 after coming from a long way back. Oliver Poland’s second leg was critical in putting them back in the race, making up 8mins and taking them from 8th to 2nd, but the Nuggets would still have been favoured when Lachlan Dow went out 2mins behind Max Neve. Neve, after an almost flawless week, lost time at #3 to drop behind Dow, and the Canberran was able to hold that lead to the end.

The other classes turned on some memorable races, with major reshuffling on the last leg in M65, W55 and M16. W55 was especially memorable, as Barbara Tassell started in 6th place, 13mins down, but came through the field and passed Liz Bourne on the way into the last control to give Tasmania a great win over Queensland. New Zealand were only just behind in 3rd, after Royce Mills almost, but not quite, recovered from losing 12mins on #5 when well ahead. Nine teams finished within 9mins of the lead.

In M16 the ultimate winner also came from 6th after two legs, but the margins involved were rather smaller – only 59secs separated the top six at that stage. Oscar McNulty (WA) and Marc Gluskie (Tasmania) emerged from the pack, and it was McNulty who prevailed by a single second in a sprint finish; New Zealand dropped from 2nd to 8th. In M65 the ACT led by 6mins after two legs but could not hold on, with Victoria, set up by Tim Dent’s first leg, winning by 12secs over a British team, while a four-way battle for 4th saw NSW, SA and two Victorian teams finish within 18secs.

The other classes were more routine, although neither M55 nor W16 were settled until the final stages; Paul Pacque edged clear of Stephen Flick to give Tasmania M55 by 1min25secs, while New Zealand gradually pulled away from a spirited Queensland W16 team to win by 3mins. In W45, having three good runners – Christine Brown, Sue Hancock and Christine Marshall – was the difference for Tasmania. The ACT had two of the three fastest legs through Liz Abbott and Jenny Bourne, but 6mins was too big a gap for Bourne to make up on the last leg.

Orienteering Australia – National Training Centre

The Masters

Warren Key (Vic) won both Sprint and Long races in M50 ahead of some top competition including former World Champ Jörgen Mårtensson.

Photo: Bob Mouatt

Paul Pacque (Tas) winning Gold in the Long, with Silver medallist Ted van Geldermalsen (Vic) just behind. Photo: Bob Mouatt Tash Key (Vic) completed the Sprint & Long double and defended the title she won in 2008.

Photo: Bob Mouatt

Jenny Bourne (ACT) also won both World Masters races in W55.

Photo: Bob Mouatt

Double gold for Hermann Wehner (ACT) in M85.

Photo: Bob Mouatt DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 17

WMOC 2009

A triumphant

World Masters Championships for Australia Blair Trewin

For the third time in seventeen years, the World Masters Orienteering Championships came to Australia. As it was in 2002, the event was part of the World Masters Games. The Games themselves were based in Sydney, and the Orienteering started there with the two Sprint events, before moving out to the Lithgow region for the Long Distance races.

A

USTRALIA had a highly successful Championship, both on and off the course. Off the course, OANSW did an excellent job of hosting the event; on the course, the hosts got easily the best results of any nation, taking home nearly a third of the gold medals on offer – thirteen in all. This greatly outstripped the results from the previous two hosting occasions, in 1992 and 2002. Included in this were four of the six to win both Sprint and Long Distance titles: Jenny Bourne (W55), Hermann Wehner (M85) and Natasha (W35) and Warren (M50) Key.

Sprint

Close finishes, normally a hallmark of Sprint Orienteering, were a bit thinner on the ground than might have been expected, but two classes were decided by the narrowest possible margin. In terms of the depth of the field, the pick of the bunch was M60, in which 24secs covered the top seven; Peter Gorvett (GBR) led by 23secs before losing his chance at the third-last, and Ossi Lakkala (FIN) overturned a one-second lead of Tim Sands (GBR) in the finish chute. More memorably for the locals, gold in W45 also changed hands in the finish chute, as Su Yan Tay recovered from two errors during the course to pip current American WOC representative Pavlina Brautigam – an outstanding result for anyone, but particularly for someone relatively new to the sport.

The only other real cliff-hanger was in W70, where Birgitta Thunell (SWE) edged out Eila Pekkoinen (FIN) by four seconds in a fluctuating contest where the second last control was decisive, but the four youngest men’s classes all saw lead changes in the second half before eventual wins by Nick Barrable (GBR, M35, & Editor of CompassSport), Bill Edwards (NZL, M40), Michael Thierolf (GER, M45) and, much to the delight of the home supporters, Warren Key (M50). This class was particularly well contested, with Jörgen Mårtensson getting out to a 29sec lead at one point before errors saw him drop into the bronze medal position, while Geoff Lawford might also have challenged for the gold before missing #17 altogether.

The Australians had the best of the oldest age groups. Hermann Wehner had little trouble in winning M85, but a slightly more unexpected result was Kevin Paine’s win in M80, setting up a useful lead early and then withstanding a strong challenge over the later part of the course. Neil Schafer (3rd) gave the hosts a second medal. In W75, Maureen Ogilvie kept her head whilst

Photos: John Harding

The Sprint began with the qualification at Macquarie University, followed by the final at Sydney Olympic Park. On an area which held few surprises for those with some experience of university campus Orienteering, qualification was not quite the formality it had been in 2002. Since then the rules have been changed so that the top 50% (rather than the top 80) go through, and for many of the field, “making the cut” was a goal worth targeting (and not one completely out of reach as it can be in Europe, where in classes like M60, sometimes only the top 14 qualify from each of six heats). Nevertheless, nearly all serious medal candidates got through without much trouble.

The serious business came the following day at Homebush. Many whose knowledge of the precinct was a superficial one – perhaps from attending the 2000 Olympics – expected it to be a fairly bland area, with lots of big buildings and not much in the way of detail. It proved to be nothing of the sort. The main arena of the Showgrounds and the swimming pool grounds, in particular, provided a wealth of navigational challenges at speed, and many came unstuck. (Out-of-bounds areas were part of the challenge, and there were numerous disqualifications for breaching them, including one who would have otherwise won a medal). In numerous age classes, mistakes were critical, and made the difference between first and second, or turned what would have been a close race into a blowout.

The M/W35 podium with Grant Bluett (Silver) and Natasha Key (Gold) and family.

18 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

W/M55 podium with Gold to Jenny Bourne & Paul Pacque

Su Yan Tay (W45) won Gold in the Sprint and Silver in the Long.

Photos: John Harding

Warren Key gets some family help with his Gold medals

Ted van Geldermalsen, Silver medal in the M55 Long

those around her were losing them; she only won two splits, but her consistency saw her nearly two minutes ahead of the field as her most likely challengers all had significant time losses.

Classes which turned from contests into no-contests thanks to the leader holding their nerve were quite a common theme. In addition to W75, there was a cluster of classes which were close much of the way, but ended up with margins of 50secs or beyond after late time losses by the leader’s nearest rivals, sometimes as late as the second last control. The Southern Hemisphere double in W50, where Gillian Ingham scored comfortably over Anthea Feaver in the end after two late errors, was one of these, and four Swedish wins fitted this pattern too: Anne-Marie Holmstrom (W60), Roland Alsen (M65), Birgitta Johansson (W65) and Peo Bengtsson (M75).

Natasha Key, with a Long Distance title to defend from 2008 in W35, faced little opposition this time and ended up with one of the day’s most comfortable victories, finishing three minutes clear and only losing two splits. The other Australian gold medal went to a usual suspect at this level, Jenny Bourne in W55, who was there or thereabouts in the early skirmishes before gradually taking control in the second half.

Australia’s trans-Tasman neighbours also had a good day.

Although their most likely prospect, Patricia Aspin, had to withdraw from the final with an injury suffered in the qualification, they still took home three gold medals; in addition to the wins of Gillian Ingham and Bill Edwards, Marquita Gelderman took out W40 ahead of Australian Jenny Enderby.

It might have been a trans-Tasman trifecta, but Cath Chalmers missed a control, and with it a probable silver medal, in midcourse.

Other Australian medals went to one of the youngest WMOC competitors, Bruce Arthur (bronze in M35), newly-confirmed Australian Paul Pacque (silver in M55), and Queensland stalwart Clive Pope (bronze in M70).

Long Distance The WMOC events moved to the Lithgow region for the second part of the week, with the first qualification on Long Swamp near Lithgow, before moving to a new area at Clandulla, near Kandos, for the last two days. All three areas featured a mix of sandstone rock features and gully-spur. The qualification days were largely gully-spur with only the first few controls of each day spending much time in the rock, but the finals spent long stretches in the detail.

Kevin Paine, Gold in the M80 Sprint

As with the Sprint, the qualification was about avoiding disaster for those at the front of the field, and making the cut for those in the middle. Most at the front of the field did manage to avoid disaster, but two who did not were Maureen Ogilvie and Christine Marshall, who both mispunched – at the second last control in Marshall’s case, in an uncomfortable case of history repeating itself. The qualification days were otherwise memorable for some weather that definitely did not fit most European conceptions of Australia; at one stage on the first day the event was only a couple of hundred metres below the snowline.

The final was always expected to be a different kettle of fish to the qualifiers; the fact that most courses were shorter than the second qualifier, on an adjacent area, for a longer winning time was evidence of that. Extensive sandstone cliffs meant a lot of route choice, detail around the cliff lines, and sometimes the challenge of finding the one gap in the cliffs that avoided a long trip around.

Some handled the different challenges of the Long Distance as well as those of the Sprint, and there were six who were able to win at both Homebush and Clandulla, four of them Australians.

Two of these were unsurprising, with Hermann Wehner (M85) and Natasha Key (W35) both untroubled against limited opposition. Key was already six minutes up by #2 and ended up with a 19min margin; it was an Australian 1-2 as Anna Hyslop was best of the rest. Jenny Bourne doubled up in W55, as did Warren Key in M50, in very similar races where they held a narrow lead for much of the race, before ending up four minutes clear after a mistake by a rival late in the course.

The others to do the double were Birgitta Thunell (W70) and Michael Thierolf (M45). W70 was settled early when Thunell got a four-minute jump on her compatriot Gudrun Broman, a gap which persisted to the end, while Thierolf triumphed in probably the best race of the day. 71 seconds covered the top five, and the German did not get to the front until the last five minutes of the course, after two late errors dropped Per Magnusson (SWE) from first to fourth. Second was even closer, changing hands in the (short) finish chute and going to Australian-based Pole Piotr Czajkowski. The other race which was tight at the top was M40, with the top five within two minutes, but that took a somewhat different form; Alexei Morozov (RUS) built a useful lead over most of the course then almost blew it at the end, but held on against his compatriot Alexander Afonyushkin.

Along with the four who were doing it for the second time, there were two more Australians who tasted success on the day, once again making the hosts the leading nation. Cath Chalmers DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 19

WMOC 2009

Anitra Dowling, Bronze in the Long race.

One of the Australian hard-luck stories was that of leading qualifier John Brock in M65. He narrowly trailed Swede Rune Radestrom for most of the way, finally got to the front with a kilometre to go, but then lost three minutes at the next control and finished fourth as Radestrom took the gold.

Australia was not the only non-European nation for which it was a very good day, as the United States won three gold medals.

(Indeed, the traditional Orienteering powers were more in the background than usual, with NZ-based Dane Carsten Jorgensen the only Nordic winner under 65). Sharon Crawford (W65) and Pavlina Brautigam (W45) both turned the tables after silver medals in the Sprint, with the gold and silver medals being reversed in both places (which in W45 meant another medal for Su Yan Tay), while Natalia Deconescu triumphed in a tightly contested W50 race. Only one second separated the top three at halfway, but the 30 seconds that she was able to gain on Liz Abbott and Carey Nazzer at #6 proved critical. Abbott edged out Nazzer by two seconds for silver.

Hermann Wehner (M85) and Kevin Paine (M80), both Sprint winners.

Cath Chalmers won W40 in the Long.

The Long Distance was not quite as fruitful for New Zealand as the Sprint, but their most likely prospect, Patricia Aspin, returned to the winners’ list in W60 despite being hampered by the injury that forced her out of the Sprint final. She was already at least three minutes up on most of her main rivals by the second control, and although some of that was pegged back in the second half she never really looked in trouble. New Zealand could also claim some of a victory in M35, where Carsten Jorgensen trailed Grant Bluett through mid-course but finished the faster of the two to score by just under a minute. The final non-European gold went to Canada, with Nesta Leduc taking out W75 despite a significant error at the first control.

There were two gold medals for Great Britain too. Pella Rye was the last woman standing in W80, but in the highly competitive M60 field, a high-standard duel between Andy Hemsted and Finn Tapio Peippo saw the Briton lead narrowly most of the way, edging the gap out to a minute at the very end. There was another good duel in M70 between Rodrigo Slavins (Latvia) and Sveinung Fristad (Norway); the 51-second break that Slavins pulled out on #6 proved to be crucial and he pulled away to a solid win.

As in the Sprint, Australia took two of the three medals on offer in M80, but this time neither of them were gold, as Helmer Ekberg (Sweden) took an early lead and extended it throughout to finish almost five minutes clear. Ray Kelly and Neil Schafer completed the placings; Kevin Paine was again the fastest in the field, but this time two errors relegated him to fourth.

Thus ended an excellent week for Australia as competitors and organisers, and a good week for many of the other nontraditional Orienteering powers, particularly the New Zealanders and North Americans. With WMOC 2010 back in central Europe, in Switzerland, the usual winners will undoubtedly reassert themselves next year, but at least some of those who triumphed in New South Wales are destined to feature at the top again.

Bruce Arthur, one of the youngest competitors at WMOC 09 20 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

Photo: Bob Mouatt

Photos: John Harding

recovered from the disappointment of a Sprint mispunch in W40, taking a comfortable lead by the end of the long fifth leg; she lost a bit of ground over the closing stages but it did not matter. Paul Pacque went one better than the Sprint in M55, leading from start to finish. Both races also had a second Australian medallist.

Jenny Enderby won her second medal of the week with a bronze in W40, and Ted van Geldermalsen ran a strong second half to rise to second at the last possible moment. Pacque and van Geldermalsen finished together, not an uncommon occurrence here given the starting structure (where the leading qualifiers start successively at the end) – more dramatically demonstrated in M75 (won by Norway’s Sveinung Bleivkin) where the three medallists were together for the last half of the race.

WMOC versus

WMG

Did you recently take part in the World Masters Orienteering Championships (WMOC) in NSW ?

Every four years WMOC is held as part of the World Masters Games (WMG).

In the intervening years WMOC is held each year as a separate event.

In 2002, WMOC was part of WMG in Victoria; in 2005 it was part of WMG in Edmonton, Canada; and this year it was part of WMG in NSW. In other years, WMOC has been held as a separate carnival – recently in Austria (2006); Finland (2007) and Portugal (2008).

There are some who suggest that WMOC should not be combined with WMG, but held as a separate carnival each year.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Please write to The Editor, The Australian Orienteer, and give us your thoughts on the matter and your experiences at any of the above events. We will include an analysis of the issue in the March 2010 edition of this magazine.

Please send to: The Australian Orienteer, PO Box 165, Warrandyte, VIC 3113; or email to mikehubbert@ozemail.com.au

ORIENTEERING DEVELOPMENT

I Peter Creely (Bendigo Orienteers, VIC)

T is a cool morning in early September, a cold wind, a hint of rain. The last race in the second Series of SpaceRacing for 2009 has just finished. The sausages are on the barbie, spreading a ‘come and eat me’ smell throughout Beischer Park, Bendigo. The presentation of the winner’s trophy and the medals and certificates for all competitors is about to begin. I watch as 30 or so kids mill around, skylarking, some comparing runs and times, some chasing each other – most casting surreptitious glances at the BBQ in the hope of scoring the first hot sausage. The last competitive SpaceRace for 2009 has been decided.

Bendigo Orienteers Inc. was formed in 1977. It has a consistent membership list of around 65 units – families and couples - and since 1990 has run a calendar of 30 to 35 Bush Orienteering events each season. Our main advantage, and the reason we are able to offer such an event list, is that Bendigo, as a provincial city, is unique in its situation in the land, and its position within the sport of Orienteering.

The city has a population of approximately 100,000 people. It has many primary and secondary schools, both state and private, and a large campus of Latrobe University.

More importantly, it is almost completely surrounded by

forest – we have at least 12 Bush Orienteering maps within 10 minutes drive of the CBD. SpaceRacing? The name came about from a perceived need to upgrade the image of Orienteering in schools.

When talking to primary school children and teachers, the impression gained was that of a sport that was performed in the school yard. The kids enjoyed doing it but they saw it as part of the school curriculum, another sort of lesson, but outside the schoolroom, in the yard! Maybe it was time to step outside the yard and develop something with a different image. The availability of SportIdent gave us the opportunity of linking Orienteering to the technology of the 21st century, and to give it a name, an image that resonated with that technology. The name wasn’t immediately accepted by all members, but it will gradually become part of accepted Orienteering vocabulary in Bendigo.

SpaceRacing was born in Bendigo out of a desire to provide a suitable Orienteering format that would appeal to primary school children – away from the schoolyard. Jim Russell, a long time member of Bendigo Orienteers and a Level 3 Coach, was visiting schools

L-R Nicholas Vercoe, Lachlan Cherry, Colin Walker (President BO), Jim Russell (Coach), Brooklyn Cullen & Glenn James,

DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER

21

Registration

Ready

Through tunnels

In the wilds

22 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

and teaching Orienteering, working on a VicHealth ‘Linking Communities’ grant.

However, it seemed that once he was finished at the school there was nowhere for those kids who wanted to, to take it further, unless one of the teachers carried it on – which few did! The question: how to provide a bridge from Jim’s work in the schools, across the attractions of other sports to competitive Bush Orienteering?

to become a student member of Bendigo Orienteers, and a $2.00 entry fee for each race.

On registration they are given a shoulder bag, water bottle and a whistle with lanyard, all with the SpaceRacing logo prominently displayed.

Competitors must run in pairs (two pairs for each school team) and must stay together for the whole race. Assembly on the Saturday is at 9.30am, map handout at 10.00, and the formal mass start at 10.30.

Whatever we did must be attractive to the kids (and their parents). It needed locations that didn’t involve too much travelling to reach, and that were safe and secure for primary school children.

It needed to reflect modern technology. It needed to be short and snappy. Many of the parks and gardens around Bendigo had been mapped in the past and some used for our annual Primary Schools Championships; the club has just purchased its first SportIdent School set – the top in Orienteering technology; a short score event format was available that would be ideal for what we wanted. Thus SpaceRacing came into being.

The winning school in a Series receives a cheque for $100 and an engraved medallion for each team member. A Certificate of Competence in SpaceRacing is presented to every student who has taken part in the Series.

It is exciting, it is fast, it is visual – and the kids seem to love it! In essence it is a 30 minute score event set on one of several park maps close to the city. We held our firstever Series in the latter part of 2008 and attracted three schools fielding four teams (approximately 20 children).

Now, in 2009 in two Series of seven events each, that figure has risen to five schools with 7 teams – averaging around thirty kids at each event.

A school team comprises four students, and a school may enter as many teams as there are kids wanting to run. We have set up a Space Rangers team for those who arrive at the event, are in excess of a school’s requirements on the day, and want to compete.

We do not turn anyone away.

Each new competitor pays a once-off annual fee of $5.00

An important element in the success of SpaceRacing is to have individual and team results displayed immediately after completion. To achieve this, electronic timing is used and makes the task much easier and quicker. The new SportIdent “Schools Training Set” was purchased and includes all the necessary equipment, without the need of a computer. The set includes control stations, start, finish and clear boxes, SI sticks, a download station and results printer. Control boxes are secured inside lockable plates (called Space Stations) and are chained to fixed objects to prevent theft. SI sticks (called Space Keys) are initialized with team names.

Students select a stick from their team box and write the stick number and their name on a results tab.

On completion, the students download and print out their results. The results slips indicate their time and the number of controls visited.

The students then calculate their own points, 10 per control less 10 per minute late, and 10 bonus points for the first pair back with all controls. They write both the score and time on the results stub and place onto a magnetic display board. The students or team organiser

ORIENTEERING DEVELOPMENT

also record their score on their team sheet and the total can be quickly added.

Within a few minutes of completion, all of the team scores are displayed together with each team’s progressive scores. All of the results are provisional until they are downloaded to a computer afterwards and checked.

The courses are set with a view to the competitors’ developing skills. The challenge level is kept high but always achievable. SpaceRacing is not treated as a game, it is always a contest that is taken very seriously by almost all the kids, and course setters must treat it in the same way.

Competitors are encouraged to get together with their partner(s) after map handout and plan where they will be running, what controls will be attempted, in what order, and to plan their run so that they return on time without loss of points.

Communication is most important! We send out three periodical colour newsletters during each Series to keep all competitors, and their parents up to date with what’s happening on the SpaceRacing scene, and to promote other activities within the sport. As well, during the school year we send out a fortnightly e-mail bulletin with SpaceRacing news and details of the next two local Bush Orienteering events.

Now, that is basically how we adults organise and run a SpaceRacing event, and we think it’s great. But what do the kids think about it? After all, they are the ones we are trying to coax into our sport!

One of our parents, who is also a teacher at Creek Street Christian College (the Series winner this year) conducted a survey of the SpaceRacers from her college. She asked them what they liked, and what they didn’t like about SpaceRacing.

Plusses included: Improving my long distance running skills, teamwork, using our heads when struggling with controls,

persevering; New maps, collecting the controls at the end of the day; Going with my friends; Electronic finger key, maps; Electronic orienteering, it kept you fit and was fun and enjoyable.

And of course, the minuses: It was too easy; My legs weren’t used to running so much; I got scared a lot from the sticks and bushes, almost lost; Disagreeable and slow partners.

Concentration

She also asked them what they found interesting, or enjoyed most. The answers to these questions may give us an insight into what we should be trying to offer to young people, whether it is through SpaceRacing or any other form of educational Orienteering.

Lots of fast runners, scores, maps; Getting to be friendly, lots of teamwork, fifteen controls WOW! I like to run, love to stay fit, lots of different controls, learnt how to concentrate; All the lakes weren’t all dried up; Having fun and seeing friends and having a BBQ and exercise; The hard controls to find; Nervous people; Buzzing the beeper and rushing to find the next control.

And …The teamwork was the best, putting our heads together; Studying the map and finding new things; Racing other people to the finish; Going to areas I have never been to; The afterthought of doing your best and running as fast as you have ever run before; Having the GPS on us and afterwards seeing how we went and how fast we ran;

Space Station

DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 23

Brooklyn Cullen, Nicholas Vercoe, Lachlan Cherry & Glenn James

The Kids Rule day: that was where your parents are your partners, but my 4-y-o brother was my partner and my dad just tagged along; Going through tunnels and parks, it was fun running to the finish; Space Keys, stations, maps; Running around the course, punching stations; I learnt how to read maps and signs; Getting out in the bush early in the morning and finding out about friends, compasses and maps.

Obviously they like the format. It is exciting and very rewarding working with children in a sport they obviously enjoy, and from which they get a great deal of satisfaction. Some of them almost demand to help after the event by collecting the Space Stations. We encourage this, but sometimes it rebounds: our course setter for the day had to leave early after one of our events, so a few of us picked up Stations for him. One Station was reported missing – No. 31 (most upsetting, we’ve not lost one yet – touch wood!). A couple of us went out to check – it was only about 50 metres away from the assembly area, but we could find no sign. By chance we asked one of the kids if he had visited No. 31 during the race.

“Yes.” “Was it in the right place?”

“Yes.” “Well we can’t find it.”

“No wonder, I’ve picked it up – there it is on the table!”

Who is teaching whom?

Where to after SpaceRacing?

The most difficult part of any project is starting. SpaceRacing is the start of campaign to draw more young people into Orienteering. As part of our second Series we organised a Bush-O training morning on one of our bush maps – about twenty SpaceRacers came along. They were given lessons on reading a compass and were then taken around a typical Bush Orienteering course. From the feedback we got it seems they all enjoyed the morning. Since then some of these kids have completed simple bush courses under the supervision of an experienced orienteer. The pathway is taking shape, it will take time and perseverance – one of the kids mentioned it above!

The sausages have all gone, as have the kids -- and Mums and Dads. We finished the presentations just before a fine misty drizzle set in, and we have almost finished packing up the SI equipment and cleaning down the barbie. The competitive part of SpaceRacing is done for 2009. Now we must look to next year. We will continue to develop SpaceRacing in Bendigo. In time it will become a permanent link, a stepping stone into Bush Orienteering, and for those kids who show the enthusiasm and interest, it will be a pathway that will take them further into our sport – further up into the Stars, as it were.

24 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

L-R Brooklyn Cullen, Glenn James, Nicholas Vercoe, Laurina Neumann, Matthew Long & Lachlan Cherry

The plan is to present an update in next year’s The Australian Orienteer. What will we call it? – SpaceTrack, taking Orienteering to the Stars?

Look out for it!

WORLD ORIENTEERING CHAMPIONSHIPS

Kathryn Ewels Shines at WOC 2009 in Hungary Wendy Read

A

USTRALIAN Boomerangs member Kathryn Ewels (VIC) went within seven seconds of a medal in the Sprint final at the World Orienteering Championships. Starting in the first third of the field, Ewels clocked 16min 0.9sec for the 2.62 km course, which put her at the head of the leader board for over 15 minutes. Four competitors eventually bettered her time, with victory going to Sweden’s Helena Jansson in 15min 7.8sec. Swiss Simone Niggli was third, just 6.2secs ahead of Ewels.

RESULTS Sprint Qualification Heat A – Shannon Jones Heat B – Kathryn Ewels Heat C – Hanny Allston

Sprint Final 1. Helena Jansson (SWE) 15:07.8 2. Linnea Gustafsson (SWE) 15:49.7 3. Simone Niggli (SUI) 15:54.7 4. Signe Soes (DEN) 15:58.3 5. Kathryn Ewels (AUS) 16:00.9 6. Anni-Maija Fincke (FIN) 16:01.5 Middle Distance Qualification Heat A – Hanny Allston 11th Heat B – Grace Crane 11th Heat C – Jasmine Neve 24th

The tranquil surroundings of the Miskolc Zoo turned into an exhilarating Orienteering Sprint championships arena. Participants in the Hungaria Cup flocked in great numbers from their own midday Sprint event in downtown Miskolc to the sunny zoo parklands to watch the excitement of the Men’s and Women’s Sprint Final unfold.

With temperatures still close to 30degC at 5:30pm, Australia’s hopes rested solely on the shoulders of Kathryn Ewels, the twentieth starter in the women’s Final. And what a performance!

Kathryn had Russian competitors starting immediately before and after her. “A Russian sandwich,” was the description given by team coach/manager Rob Lewis of Kathryn’s start position. At the first television checkpoint, the excitement began to build as the race commentator announced, “Kathryn Ewels is the new second best time!”

Kathryn had caught Galina Vinogradova who had started one minute ahead of her. The Russian had placed 4th in the WOC Sprint in 2008 so Kathryn was indeed running well.

By the first spectator control, Kathryn was holding 3rd place, but as only the twentieth starter from a field of 45 many top quality runners were yet to finish. The split timing results showed an amazing performance in the second half of Kathryn’s race, with an incredible burst of speed from the #11 control through to the finish, which secured her 5th placing.

The 2006 World Sprint champion, Hanny Allston (TAS), missed the final after a major mistake midway through her course when, on a leg of around 150 metres, she lost 2min 10sec to the leader and dropped from 4th to 18th, where she finished overall. Only the top 15 in each heat go into finals.

In other results, Grace Crane (15th) and Hanny Allston (18th) put in strong performances in the Middle Distance final. For some time the Australian girls held first and second place on the results board, causing excitement and anxiousness amongst the Team, Aussie supporters and especially the commentator. And in the Long Distance final Hanny Allston and Kathryn Ewels finished 19th and 22nd respectively.

16th 9th 18th

Photo: Peter Hobbs

Middle Distance Final 1. Dana Brožková (CZE) 2. Marianne Andersen (NOR 3. Simone Niggli (SUI) 4. Minna Kauppi (FIN) 5. Merja Rantanen (FIN) 6. Helena Jansson (SWE) 15. Grace Crane (AUS) 18. Hanny Allston (AUS)

37:09 37:19 37:58 38:20 38:59 39:07 42:12 43:01

Long Distance Qualification Heat A – Grace Crane Heat B – Hanny Allston Heat C – Kathryn Ewels

17th 5th 5th

Long Distance Final 1. Simone Niggli (SUI) 2. Marianne Andersen (NOR) 3. Minna Kauppi (FIN) 19. Hanny Allston (AUS) 22. Kathryn Ewels (AUS)

77:26 79:18 79:36 87:49 89:39

Relay 1. Norway 2. Sweden 3. Finland 4. Switzerland 5. Czech Republic 6. Russia 9. Australia 9.1 Grace Crane 9.2 Kathryn Ewels 9.3 Hanny Allston

2:13:10 2:13:28 2:15:25 2:16:12 2:16:26 2:20:10 2:32:23 39:43 (4.9km) 55:42 (6.9km) 56:58 (7.2km)

Hanny Allston chosen to read the Athletes’ Oath A proud moment for both Hanny Allston and the Australian Boomerangs Orienteering Team as she was invited to read the Athletes’ Oath during the official opening of the 26th World Orienteering Championships in Miskolc, Hungary. Accompanied by one of Hungary’s best orienteers, Gabor Domonyik, the Oath was recited in both Hungarian and English on behalf of all athletes.

DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 25

WORLD ORIENTEERING CHAMPIONSHIPS

Orienteering in Hungary text & photos: Peter Hobbs (Dandenong Ranges OC, Victoria)

Peter was pleased with his run

Can you imagine 5000 parochial and patriotic spectators at an Orienteering event? Seven hundred elite international competitors; upwards of 1500 public competitors? Imagine raucousness, fun, live commentary and GPS competitor tracking, mixed with vibrant colours, perfect weather and sun-baking.

Add some dramatic race finishes and personal orienteering achievements and you have a snapshot of the brilliant experience I had being part of the World Orienteering Championships carnival held in Miskolc, north eastern Hungary on 16-23 August 2009.

I

T was early July 2009; I had already booked a two month holiday to explore Eastern Europe. I could not believe my luck when I stumbled upon the WOC website and learnt that the carnival would be held during precisely the week that I intended to visit Hungary. I immediately entered two public, Hungaria Cup (HC) events – one Middle Distance and one Sprint – and booked accommodation and meals at the official WOC Village, located at the University of Miskolc.

Each day of the carnival was arranged so that, for instance, the public HC Sprint event was held during the morning and the WOC Sprint event was held in the afternoon at a nearby location.

This allowed non-elites to compete in their event then be a part of the raucousness and fun of the WOC event later in the day.

The Middle Distance HC event was staged in a forested area called Bukkszentkereszt, some 45 minutes from Miskolc. Upon arriving, I was absolutely amazed at the scene before me; spectators, competitors, women sun-baking in bikinis, young people and old 26 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

people, not to mention the hundreds that were already competing in the forest. There were flags, tents, promotion caravans and vibrant colour everywhere. The spectator area was located on a large oval including the finish chute spanning the entire length of the western boundary. I had simply never seen anything like it at an Orienteering event before.

Armed with my northern hemisphere compass and SI-stick, I made my way to the Start area. There were so many people milling about that I was barely able to find a patch of grass to perform my last minute quad and calf stretches. Competitors were lined up according to start time in groups of about 25 and starts were at one minute intervals. After five or so minutes it was my group’s turn to start, and with a growing sense of anticipation, I was off. Interestingly, the course began with a 200m sprint to the ‘graveyard’, where I located the ‘21C’ map pile amidst a plethora of 25 other courses. I grabbed my map, took a few seconds to orientate myself, then sped off down a track which provided the perfect ‘handrail’ into control #1.

One of my orienteering rules is ‘sure start’ which basically means I place great importance on cleanly (and slowly, if necessary) navigating between the start triangle and the first control. Having located the first control easily and quickly, my confidence was up, my radar was on and I headed confidently to the second control.

To cut a long story short, I completed the 3.8 km course in a time of 30:26, earning second place. I was ecstatic as it was probably my cleanest and fastest bush-O performance. My only real error was traversing a hillside at too high an elevation then having to descend slightly in order to reach control #6.

Contrary to expectations, I actually found the forest terrain for the Middle Distance event to be quite easy. The map featured classical spur-gully topography including a number of steep hills and a smattering of tracks. Due to a lack of undergrowth and boulders, visibility was excellent allowing identification of controls from afar. The ground was covered with dry leaves and, apart from the odd fallen tree branch, I found it easy to run through the

forest which allowed additional time for map contact and route planning. Despite many other competitors gazing at my Asics runners with disbelief accompanied by comments that these would fail to provide adequate grip in the forest, I had no such trouble. Luckily for me the weather was fine!

The next day, which featured both the HC and WOC Sprint events, was definitely the highlight of the carnival for me. The HC Sprint event was held during the morning on a superb 1:4000 scale map covering a 800m by 400m section of central Miskolc, including the town square which had been transformed into a vibrant scene similar to that for the Middle Distance event, described earlier. Typical of many European cities, the map featured an astounding number of narrow alleyways and intricate courtyards which had been opened specially for the event. Cars were barred from entering the competition area and you would have been forgiven for thinking that the city had been taken over by orienteers!

Temperatures soared to what seemed like 35 deg. Starts were at one minute intervals in groups of about 20. It was hectic, to say the least. I managed to navigate cleanly and quickly to the first control and apart from a near-miss encounter with a tram and a 10sec error whilst approaching control #8, I had an excellent run.

It reminded me of a hectic foot chase in a James Bond movie; you would dart down an alleyway, then burst onto a main pedestrian thoroughfare, then run past bemused customers at an outdoor café, then cross a bridge, sprint across a park, then dart into a small courtyard in pursuit of a well hidden control. And so it went.

I again finished second in my division, only 20secs behind the winner. I was absolutely rapt with my performance. But the excitement of ‘Sprint Day’ had only just begun as the WOC Sprint finals were held at the Miskolc zoo that evening. Course setters had designed the course to maximize spectators’ vision of the event. Spectators passed under a ramped section of the course into a large amphitheatre around which the start chute,

finish chute and a 300m section in the middle of the course were located. The excitable commentator combined with on-course footage, GPS tracking and live times gave spectators a virtual armchair view of the event. The event was being broadcast live on TV into six countries and I estimate that there must have been at least 5000 spectators in attendance. The atmosphere was nothing short of electric.

The women’s course began with a number of controls amidst bushland and animal enclosures within the zoo grounds, before passing via the spectator area, into another bush area and then onto the finish. The bush must have been either thick or prickly as numerous competitors emerged with blood covering their legs.

As finishers began to arrive and official times were appearing on the results board, I managed to snap a brilliant action shot of Australian Kathryn Ewels as she sprinted purposefully past the spectator amphitheatre and disappeared into the final section of the course. Seemingly not two minutes later, Kath emerged from the bush so quickly that even the commentator had been caught by surprise, announcing with a shock that she had moved into provisional first place. With an Australian flag already draped around my neck, I felt quite patriotic!

I also attended the WOC Middle Distance and Relay finals which were also highly vibrant and exciting events. The men’s Relay ended in high drama when midway through the final leg, the leading Swedish runner had a stick imbedded 12cm into his leg, requiring urgent medical attention. Consequently, runners of the second (French), third (Norwegian) and fourth (Czech) placed teams, immediately stopped to render assistance, effectively forfeiting the race for their respective teams. What a fine example of sportsmanship.

Well done to the Australian girls team for doing us all proud. To anyone who has considered travelling to Europe and being a part of the WOC carnival; just do it. It’s a truly brilliant experience.

DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 27

DEAFLYMPICS 2009

Caine Batten carries Aussie Flag at Deaflympics 2009

Caine awaits the Sprint start

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AINE BATTEN was Australia’s sole representative at the 2009 Deaflympics held in Taipei, Taiwan in September. Christine Brown also attended the Deaflympics as an official and interested observer. There were competitors from 14 nations representing four regions but the greatest number of competitors came from Eastern Europe. The Russian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian teams were strong. One of the Lithuanian men, Tomas Kuzminskis, represented Lithuania at WOC in Denmark in 2006.

A full suite of races was held covering all disciplines. The Sprint and Relay competitions were held in Yang Ming Park and the Long and Middle Distance competitions at Cingtiangang.

Both areas are just north of Taipei. The Taiwanese terrain was challenging and some heavy rain made the racing tougher again.

Once outside the urban areas in Taiwan the terrain is steep.

Cingtiangang was once a lovely open series of undulating meadows grazed by water buffalo. After a mishap involving a water buffalo and a person the buffalo were restricted to some

Tomas Kuzminskis 28 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

SILVA NOL

very small areas and buffalo grass quickly took over the meadows.

This restricted running to a series of paths and cuttings but made route choice the key skill in deciding the winners.

Yang Ming Park is a popular park on the outer edges of Taipei.

The park is steep with intricate gardens containing many rock and water features.

Caine Batten, from the Toohey Forest Club and Queensland Cyclones, had a variety of experiences in his second Deaflympics.

The Opening Ceremony was enjoyable. It was a huge affair with an outstanding array of highly choreographed performers.

What made it even more impressive was that the majority of the performers in the ceremony were deaf and had to rely heavily on visual cues to execute their performance. Caine was at a loss for words to describe how the Opening Ceremony felt.

Caine’s best result was 20th place in the Middle Distance. He found the Orienteering challenging, especially the buffalo grass.

There is nothing to compare it to in Australia. It was obvious that the orienteers who were competing enjoyed the competition and the camaraderie offered by the event. Many had competed against one another before at previous Deaflympics. The Deaflympics Orienteering competition is part of a series of major Orienteering events held for deaf orienteers.

Caine said he found it hard to describe the terrain at Cingtiangang. He said the grass was very high. “It was very hard to run through the dark green. Due to the large area of green, I had to crawl for 45min to get out. Afterwards, I jumped down the cliff through the dark green, realising that I was in the wrong place to cross the high grass. I still enjoyed the experience of racing with other countries and particularly against Victor Dinges, who won two golds. He didn’t run the elites races in Russia because he had no financial support. He just came out from local orienteering.

Very impressive. I encouraged him to come to Australia and run with us in our competitions. His 5,000m time is 15:30, a very strong runner.”

Caine added: “Being a Deafolympian is very important to deaf and hearing-impairment people because it means competing at a high standard, and sharing a similar experience with others with a disability while using hand communication as usual. Taiwan´s mayor had contributed over $50 million dollars to Deaflympics events and the Opening and Closing Ceremonies to show us that they treat us like special, elite athletes. Around 3,000 Deaf athletes, and 1,500 volunteers participated.”

Caine concluded with: “There next World Deaf Orienteering will be held in Ukraine in 2011. I’m looking forward to competing again, with no mistake (I promise)!”

Best wishes to Caine in the pursuit of his goals in Ukraine and perhaps in Athens in 2013 for the next Deaflympics.

2009 SILVA National Orienteering League Blair Trewin

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new name appeared on the winners’ list in the 2009 SILVA National Orienteering League. After fifteen years in which the Canberra Cockatoos had dominated, and the Victorian Nuggets had picked up any Senior titles that the Cockatoos didn’t, the NSW Stingers won their first title when they ran away with the Men’s competition in 2009.

The Stingers’ win was set up in the first half of the season when, with Julian Dent dominating and enough depth to always get two other decent results on any given day, they were almost untouchable. After the WOC trials it looked as if they could go through the whole season without dropping a point. An injury to Dent, which kept him out of the whole Australian Championships carnival, brought NSW back to the pack, but none of the other teams were able to perform consistently enough to take advantage.

They did turn on a good battle for second, ultimately tied between the Southern Arrows and the Cockatoos after the Cockatoos won the Australian Relays.

The Nuggets’ Senior Women won for the second time in three years. Led by Kathryn Ewels, enjoying her best season, they had a close battle with the Cockatoos through the first half of the season, but opened up a big lead later in the year as the loss of Allison Jones (expecting her second child) left a hole that the Cockatoos were unable to cover. The Queensland Cyclones finished well to complete the placings.

The Cyclones can be expected to advance further in the coming years with the products of their excellent junior team, which dominated the Junior Women’s competition, with three JWOC team members and more depth to back that up; they barely noticed the loss of Laurina Neumann and Rachel Effeney to the senior ranks. The Junior Men’s was the closest of the team competitions. The Nuggets, led

by Max Neve, broke away in the final week, but only four points covered the next four teams, with the Cockatoos leaping from fifth to second on the last day of the season (and the Tassie Foresters going in the reverse direction).

Much of the individual interest in the 2009 standings was in the two Junior competitions, with the carrot of a trip to Europe (offered by SILVA) for the winner with the largest margin. As it happened they were by far the most interesting competitions only, with both competitions coming down to the last race of the season, and five still in contention for the trip at that stage. In the end it was Max Neve who vaulted over his rivals by winning three of the last four races of the season, while Belinda Lawford, who had had a useful lead through most of the year, went winless in the final week and was eventually caught by Aislinn Prendergast in the League’s first shared individual title, with Bridget Anderson a further six points adrift.

Both Senior titles were secured long before the end of the season, with Julian Dent and Hanny Allston comprehensive winners, and Simon Uppill and Kathryn Ewels equally safe in second. There were good battles for third, particularly in the men’s where Rob Preston emerged from a five-way contest on the last day, while Jasmine Neve’s early season was enough to give her the edge in the Women’s.

Relay start DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 29

Letters

The Australian Orienteer welcomes letters. Preference will be given to letters which are concise and which make positive points. The editor reserves the right to edit letters, particularly ones which are longer than 300 words.

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Senior Age Classes

be more likely to prefer a recreating sport not one which wears us down.

Many of us old fogies just enjoy the exercise of our abilities and avoid the main brain drain that many get in old age mainly from overdoing all the getting famous and rich business.

Winners may be grinners, but that is the inane grin seen in advertisements for retirement villages, over-50s insurance and conducted tours to anywhere.

t seems to me that Orienteering Australia has taken a backward step by reducing the number of senior age classes. The numbers are in the “grey army” and the current policy of having only 45, 55, 65, 75 age classes in State Championships and Badge events must discourage many from entering. I hope that this decision was not made to just save on cloth badges.

Ian Johnson (M80 – Bendigo Orienteers)

In my other sport of surfing, there are age classes for every five years, and a class is only dropped if there are less than four starters. I also note that MTBO has age classes at 40, 50, 60. If OA cannot see the wisdom of five-year age classes and still insists on ten-year gaps why not have 45, 55, 65, 75 one year and alternate with 40, 50, 60, 70 in the next year, and so on.

Neville de Mestre

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Great Photos

write to congratulate Clive Roper on his excellent photos in the June edition. His very clever “moving pictures” of Hanny and Julian not only look fantastic, they are most illustrative of what I believe we all should be trying to achieve. Note how Hanny is reading her map almost continuously whilst moving through the forest and how clearly Julian is looking at his map, but also looking around. Great stuff, Clive. Well done.

Darryl Smith

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Coaching

ears ago when I was a very small boy, and very curious, I thought a coach was a bus loaded up with noisy soccer players and the noisiest one was the Coach. I haven’t changed my opinion much about coaching, still deeming it applied training for the witless.

With young women coaching seems to be togetherness sessions and for men some surly glaring at a yelling older man who is sacked often and makes news headlines.

The coaching we have in Orienteering seems to be performance enhancing physically with some attention being paid to avoiding brain drain and not wasting vast milliseconds at the control site. It is all to do with winning. Navigation is not for the witless to be coached about. It needs lateral thinking, insightful observation, and methods of confirming and checking going on all the time. It is not “point and run like mad” looking for a marker as so many of the witless believe.

John Walker, Red Roos, ACT

OR I ENTEER I N G PUBL I CATI ON S IOF Publications

Australian 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

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

Any navigator worth calling competent only needs a compass to avoid problems associated with brain drain, and a thumb compass is useless for taking bearings. Each person navigates in their own way and takes notice of methods that work for him or her. Leave people alone and they do rather better than those who are force fed with methods that fit like a small round peg in a massive jagged hole.

All courses should have lots of decision making opportunities not just competition in running for longer up steeper hills.

When people arrive at the Finish smiling happily, they have had a good navigationally interesting experience. If they arrive hardly able to stand it is endurance racing. We should 30 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority

O-Spy Hermann Wehner – A True legend

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ERMANN has been a stalwart of the Orienteering community in ACT for many years and, in that time, has had many successes. But at the World Masters Orienteering Championships held recently in NSW, Hermann reached the pinnacle of success he had been striving to attain. Hermann was crowned World Champion M85 orienteer in both the Sprint and the Long Distance events. Congratulations Hermann, and may you dominate for many years to come.

New Orienteer

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ONGRATULATIONS to Liz Hubbert & Andrew Atkinson – a son, Oscar Julian, born 4 October 2009 in Perth. His first training event will be held soon and Oscar says he will be aiming at the M-2 title at the 2011 Easter 3-Days in WA.

Funny Bits

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IGN at an ice-cream parlour in WA – “Children left unattended will be given a double espresso and a free puppy”.

Priorities – “Life is too short – eat dessert first”.

Stressed-out mother – “If you want a hot breakfast, set fire to your cornflakes”.

Merry Christmas

C FOR STOCKISTS CALL 1800 209 999

www.victorinox.com

VICTORINOX AWARD The Victorinox Award goes to Peter Creely for his SpaceRacing article.

Peter will receive a Victorinox Handyman which includes 24 tools and features, retail value $119.

HRISTMAS is almost upon us again. Best wishes and have a happy and safe one; and if you’re going to the Xmas 5 Days – spike those controls.

Our Santa-O cartoon is courtesy Suunnistaja magazine in Finland.

DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 31

Phot-O

Helen Mason-Fyfe punching a control at the South Australian Winter Solstice Event – June 2009. It could only be the Tothill map – steep, stony ground; dead wattles; green yakkas; enhanced boulder features. I really cannot think of another O map quite like it. Peter Kreminski

2009 Jukola Relay start – Finland 32 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

HEALTH

Truly a Sport for ALL Alan Springett M55 BKO (UK) (reprinted with permission from CompassSport, July 2009)

Last year CompassSport mentioned in brief of an amazing occurrence with a happy ending in the Lakes District event. Now the main protagonist of the incident tells CompassSport the whole story:

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N 13th April 2008, on completion of the Hampsfell Regional event, I suffered Sudden Cardiac Death.

On 13th April 2009, exactly one year later, I successfully completed the Medium leg in the Mixed Ad-hoc class at the JK Relays.

A neat trick if you can manage it, but not one I would recommend if you can avoid it! Sudden Cardiac Death, or SCD to its friends (it doesn’t have many!), is pretty much what it says on the tin: Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD): sudden death caused by a coronary event which generally degenerates into ventricular fibrillation (VF), a condition where the heart quivers rapidly rather than beats and consequently cannot supply the body with blood. SCD results in death in about 95% of cases with the chances of survival diminishing markedly the longer the victim is unconscious.

I was out for some minutes…

So how did I manage to be among the lucky minority? Well, not through any efforts of mine, apart from my excellent judgement in collapsing at the feet of my wife, who is extremely competent at screaming for help, and adjacent to a defibrillator-equipped and doggedly determined St John ambulance team at an event where a specialist in resuscitation was also competing. So in the first instance my survival was thanks to Jean Barrett and her team from Ulverston, who would not give up, and to the medical expertise amongst my fellow competitors. But it took several minutes to get me back and there was some concern about the possibility of brain damage. However, no-one has yet noticed any difference in the before and after version! (Couldn’t orienteer before, still can’t now!)

Then it was blues and twos to Furness General Hospital. So a vote of thanks also to the emergency ambulance team for their speed and for the treatment they gave me en route as I continued to have what was later confirmed to be a major heart attack.

Next on the gratitude list are the team who received me at the hospital and who proceeded rapidly to intubate, deep freeze and totally sedate me for 24 hours. They then slowly de-frosted me!

Therapeutic Hypothermia is a relatively new treatment now recognised to reduce significantly the chances of brain damage in patients who may have suffered oxygen starvation.

Catherine & Alan Springett

I should say that I have no recollection of any of this. My memory seems to have been wiped from the evening before the heart attack through until a couple of days afterwards. My wife’s early visits were reminiscent of Groundhog Day with me making the same joke and observations each time I saw her. My jokes are pretty weak first time around, and there are only so many times you can say ‘that’s a pretty new top you’ve got on’ and get away with it!

The body’s capacity to recover is truly remarkable. Less than 24 hours after being brought round from my induced hypothermia I was transferred out of Intensive Care and I was discharged within the week. Once home in London I took it easy and watched the bruises on my chest and arms recede until it was time for an angiogram.

An angiogram allows the doctor to look inside your coronary arteries and find out where and how severe any narrowed areas are. The patient is given a local anaesthetic in the arm or groin, where a catheter (a thin, flexible tube) is passed into the artery. Using an x-ray, the catheter is directed through the blood vessels and into the heart. A special dye is then passed through the catheter and a series of x-rays taken. The dye shows up on x-rays any narrowed areas or blockages in the arteries.

The procedure was straightforward, but being informed subsequently that the arteries in my heart were in such a state that I should sit at home in my carpet slippers until I could be accommodated for by-pass surgery was pretty sobering.

But I did that, and just on a month after the heart attack, on 12 May 2008, I underwent quadruple by-pass surgery at the London Bridge Hospital. By-pass surgery may be pretty routine these days, but not from a patient’s perspective. For a hitherto fit and active chap, finding oneself as weak as a kitten, short of breath after the shortest of walks and nervous of coughing because it hurts is quite difficult. I can laugh now at the memory of myself and fellow patients trudging around the hospital corridor in our thrombosis-avoiding flight socks, carrying our containers of body fluids linked to the drains in our chests and having wheezy conversations comparing progress; but it was not funny at the time! However, the hospital team did a great job and my recovery over the subsequent week, including the first physiotherapy to get my lungs expanded again and to start me walking, began DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 33

HEALTH

the process of getting fit again that has continued almost uninterrupted subsequently.

The first three weeks at home were tiring, but I did my breathing exercises and daily lengthening walks, comfortably exceeding the suggested durations. At the end of the first month after the operation, the surgeon pronounced himself ‘well-pleased’ with how I was healing and said he did not need to see me again.

Although he had become something of a hero figure for me, I think he understood when I said I hoped I did not see him again!

My cardiologist, on the other hand, had the tricky task of delivering an unwelcome and totally unanticipated surprise. He explained that with the surgery done and dusted we now needed to address the life threatening arrhythmia (ventricular fibrillation or VF) that I had displayed on my collapse. Had the VF been a consequence of the heart attack or had it come first and been the cause? And, either way, with a now damaged heart but a determination to get back to a fit and active lifestyle, did I need some extra help to achieve this safely?

Additionally, Catherine and I were now initiated into an amateur understanding of the Ejection Fraction or EF. An Ejection Fraction (EF) is one of the measurements used to assess how well a patient’s heart is functioning. “Ejection” refers to the amount of blood that is pumped out of the heart’s main pumping chamber during each heartbeat.

“Fraction” refers to the fact that, even in a healthy heart, some blood always remains within this chamber after each heartbeat. Therefore an ejection fraction is the percentage of blood within the chamber that is pumped out with every heartbeat. An EF of 55 to 75% is considered normal.

After the heart attack my EF was around 37%. Against this background of impaired heart function and accepting that I was unlikely to be happy as a couch potato, the clear recommendation of my cardiologist and his eminent colleague was that, in order to provide an insurance policy in the event of a future attack of VF while not standing in front of a St John team, I should have my own defibrillator (Implantable Cardiovertor Defibrillator or ICD) implanted in my chest. That news knocked us sideways. There I was, the model by-pass patient, healing in exemplary fashion and already exceeding my exercise regime, then I was at risk of fatal VF with the prospect of further surgery and living with an implant which needs replacing every 6-8 years.

An implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) is a device which is able to give the heart electrical shocks. An ICD is little bigger than a matchbox. It is usually implanted under the collar bone. An ICD is made up of a pulse generator which is a battery powered electrical circuit - and one or more electrode leads. The leads are placed into the heart via a vein. The ICD constantly monitors the heart rhythm and if it senses a dangerous abnormal rhythm it can deliver one of the following treatments: • Pacing to try and stop the abnormal heart rhythm.

•O ne or more small electrical shocks to stop the abnormal heart rhythm and restore the heart back to a normal rhythm.

• I f that doesn’t work, or if the ICD senses a more serious rhythm disturbance, it will deliver a bigger electric shock to stop the abnormal beating and get the rhythm back to normal – this is known as defibrillation.

Most people we spoke to before we decided whether or not to accept the recommendation to have an ICD regarded it as a 34 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

‘no-brainer’ – it might sit in my chest and never do anything or it might save my life, so why not........and how would you feel - or perhaps, more pertinently, how would your loved ones feel - if you did not have one and died as a consequence of a bout of VF? The flip side of that argument was the need for further surgery, the risks of infection, the continuing question mark over the extent to which I really was at risk of further attacks of VF, the psychological side of living with an implant and the natural belief that it would be possible to continue getting progressively fitter without any further intervention. However, at the end of the day the ‘why wouldn’t you’ argument proved irresistible and I agreed that I should have an ICD implanted in mid-September.

Pending the implant, the advice was to continue building up the daily walks but to avoid anything else. On June 15th, two months after the heart attack and one month after the by-pass, I did my first Orienteering event, completing a yellow course in just over 11 minute km’s, and during the next few weeks I took part in four out of the five events in the annual Frolics series in London.

We’ve always enjoyed the Frolics and last year they provided the ideal competitive but fun environment for building a little confidence.

Then it was on to the Welsh Six Days. I had switched my entry to short courses and successfully completed two of them, but bottled out and did colour coded events on days when the Regional event courses were particularly long or hilly. Day 6 proved almost too much for me and I took nearly 90 minutes to complete 4k in very technical terrain and foul weather.

With the ICD implant looming I relegated myself to the role of Catherine’s supporter for the White Rose and then it was back to hospital for the implant and a one night stay. The procedure went well, but it was followed by a frustrating month during which my movement was severely restricted in order to ensure that the wires from the ICD into my heart were not displaced while they integrated with the veins through which they ran.

Leaving aside the recovery from the operation – more impressive bruises! – the ICD took a bit of getting used to as, in addition to its basic raison d’etre of zapping you if your heart goes too fast, it also ‘paces’ you if your heart is slacking. And having had my little companion installed, it is amazing how many people, of all ages and lifestyles, including fellow orienteers, have them.

At the end of the month of relative inactivity I was given the all clear to start proper exercise and I was also given the contact details for an organisation called Pure Sports Medicine who specialise in conditioning athletes after injury. We celebrated the all clear by making a late entry in WIGHTO’s NostalgiO week-end and that proved a great success – beautiful weather, a nice hotel and some magnificent views from the event venues. Then through the UK Autumn it was the usual string of Regional events with the unchivalrous highlight for me being the one at Hatfield Forest which was the first at which my mins per km beat Catherine’s!

My target had been to complete six Regional short course before the year end to get me fully into the ranking system and I was well-pleased to achieve 8, plus one middle distance course.

In the meantime I paid my first very nervous visit to Pure Sports Medicine (PSM). Why so nervous? Well, principally because the last occasion on which I had exercised anywhere near my limits I had dropped dead. A back-drop which had been emphasised by the fact that my local hospital refused point blank to allow me to attend their cardiac rehabilitation classes, which are generally geared to the needs of the obese and elderly, on the grounds that I was too high risk a patient. Additionally, and slightly perversely, although I now had my own internal defibrillator as an insurance policy, I really did not wish to do anything that would trigger it. But PSM were brilliant and have continued to be so. From the very beginning my trainer, David Smith, who has previously helped in the rehabilitation of a heart/lung transplant patient amongst others, showed a very clear understanding of my dual motives for attending the clinic: getting fit safely and re-building confidence. PSM have a highly distinguished international client list ranging from international sports personalities to the Spice Girls, but they apply the same level of care and dedication to lesser mortals.

I now do one supervised gym session per week at PSM and broadly follow a tailored training schedule provided by them which is revised every ten weeks following a further fitness test.

In a typical week now, as well as attending the gym at PSM I will

also go to the local gym once, ideally compete both mid-week and on a Sunday and get out for at least one walk/run session.

My training now is far more ordered than it ever was before the heart attack, which is due in part to the discipline instilled by PSM, but is also greatly helped by having being made redundant/ taken early retirement at the end of 2008. And all of that is paying dividends in terms of fitness and my orienteering performance.

My orienteering is still a mixture of walking and jogging.......but then it always was! .........and I do get extremely puffed on hills.

On the other hand, my navigation has also improved. So if I can hang on to that as well as keep getting fitter......................

Orienteering continues to play a great part in my recovery.

The wide range of available events, all offering the stimulus of competition within their own boundaries, makes Orienteering an ideal sport within which to rehabilitate after injury or illness.

The structure of events makes it easy to compete at Regional or National level in short or long courses according to one’s circumstances. The ranking system similarly provides interest and motivation at whatever level one is competing. While it is absolutely essential for Orienteering to change and stay fresh, we should be careful not to lose any of the features which really do make it an adventure sport for all.

Then there are the people. Many people who we knew on nodding terms from event attendance over 25 years have subsequently stopped to speak encouragingly and with genuine interest. And, despite the drama I caused at Hampsfell, as yet no event organiser or first aider has taken one look at me and run for cover! On the contrary, fellow orienteers are simply pleased to see me back.

The two Orienteering highlights for me so far in 2009 have been a LOC Regional Event at Bethcar Moor on 1st February and the JK Relays on 13th April. The significance of the JK is obvious – the anniversary of my collapse. At the LOC event I was able to meet for the first time – well, the first time while vertical and conscious! - the St John Ambulance team who saved me.

JK Relay 2009

DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 35

COLOUR VISION

Defective Colour Vision in Orienteers is it an issue?

Barbara Junghans, Garingal Orienteers

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ESIGNING any colour coding system, say for Orienteering maps, requires an understanding of how humans see colour.

It is well known that some people are colour ‘blind’, or really, colour vision ‘impaired’. Total colour blindness is extremely rare (everything seen only in various shades of grey). Typically, colour vision impairment is only partial and there is a vast range in the severity, with by far the majority having only a mild problem.

For years, some event organisers have been aware of a handful of orienteers competing at top masters levels who have now been classified by the author as severely colour vision impaired. To discover the challenges they face with the current internationally accepted colour coding scheme, read on.

What part of the eyeball ‘sees’ colour?

The retina, the light-sensitive layer coating the inside of the back of the eye, has two key types of cells or photoreceptors that respond to light stimulation: the rods and cones. It is only the cones that are responsive to coloured light, and there are three subclasses of cones scattered across the back of the retina. One subclass is only receptive to light of red wavelengths, another to blue, and the remaining class is only responsive to green. It is amazing that by simply varying the intensity or the ratio of the red to green to blue light ultimately results in the rainbow of perceptions enjoy by most of us.

As there are three subclasses of cone cells, it can be appreciated that there might be three ways in which colour vision can go awry. If one class of cone photoreceptors is faulty, the blend of information summated from neighbouring cones to be passed up the nerve pathway to the brain will be distorted, and the colour seen will not be the same as the colour of the original object.

What types of colour defects exist?

Hence, if we also count the normal situation, there are 4 different categories of colour vision: 1. Normal: (all red wave length-receptive, green wave lengthreceptive and blue wave length-receptive photoreceptors function normally).

2. Protan: a red/green defect (the red-receptive photoreceptors are faulty or unreceptive) that is uncommon (~1-2% of men, rare in women). The defect is typically congenital and without any

other associated ocular consequences, but may be acquired from ocular or other nerve diseases.

3. Deutan: a red/green defect (the green-receptive photoreceptors are faulty or unreceptive) that is relatively common (~6% of men, 0.5% women). The defect is typically congenital and without any other associated ocular consequences, but may be acquired from ocular or other nerve diseases.

4. Tritan: a yellow/blue defect (the blue-receptive photoreceptors are faulty or inactive) that is very rare except in some eye diseases.

This condition is more common in ocular diseases affecting predominantly the elderly, e.g cataract or age-related macular degeneration. However, visual acuity, and hence the ability to see fine detail is typically also severely affected, probably limiting reading Orienteering maps.

The 3 classes of persons who have abnormal colour vision (loosely known as protans, deutans and tritans) exhibit a wide range of severity from very mild (referred to as having protanomaly, dueteranomaly, tritanomaly, or being protanomalous, deuteranomalous, tritanomalous respectively) to severe (referred to as having protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia or being a protanope, deuteranope or tritanope respectively).

Persons with ‘anomalous’ colour vision only confuse colours in the lighter pastel shades, and are actually able to reliably identify the more saturated or intense versions of the colours for which they confuse the paler correlates. On the other hand, persons with the ‘opia’ defect have problems even when colours are relatively saturated. Hence, any two persons with a colour vision defect, even within the one class, will likely have differing difficulties interpreting colour coding.

How do persons with defective colour vision see the world?

Figure 1 shows firstly how a person with normal vision sees the entire range of colours, and then, how the three classes of colour impaired people might see those same colours. This is possible by submitting the rainbow image to the online service www. vischeck.com. Vischeck will convert any image you upload so you can see how your image is believed to appear to persons with any one of the three classes of colour vision defect. Or, you can download a plug-in ‘filter’ if you have Adobe Photoshop installed on your computer and then apply this filter yourself to any image

Figure 1. On the left shows how a person with normal colour vision sees a colour palette. In order, progressing rightwards, are simulations of how protanopes, deuteranopes and tritanopes are believed to see the same palette respectively (according to Vischeck software).

36 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

you open in Photoshop. The remaining palettes in Figure 1 were generated in this manner.

An alternate way of understanding the problems that might beset persons with colour Figure 3. A portion of the Brookstead map used for Day 3 of the 2009 Easter 3-Day in Tasmania. On the left is how a person with normal colour vision sees this map. In order, progressing rightwards, are simulations of how protanopes and defective vision is to study the deuteranopes are believed to see the same section of the map respectively (according to Vischeck software). radiating lines that have been superimposed on the protan, deutan and tritan palettes above – these are known as ‘confusion lines’. Any colours along the one line will all look the same to the colour defective person, only the intensity varies. If you mentally overlay the protan’s radiating lines back onto the original rainbow coloured palette to the left, you can visualize those colours seen by colour-normals that will be indistinguishable or confused by a protan. Similarly, Figure 4. A portion of the Lincoln University sprint event map in South Island, New Zealand, used for the 2009 Oceania you can mentally overlay the Championships. On the left is how a person with normal colour vision sees this map. In order, progressing rightwards, are lines off the deutan or off the simulations of how protanopes and deuteranopes are believed to see the same section of the map respectively according tritan palette. Notice that the to the conversion using Vischeck software. upper confusion lines of the protan and deutan profiles are similar to each other, both confusing red, yellow and green. yellow-based colours with blue-based colours. This places the However, the lower confusion lines indicate that the protan also tritan’s situation diametrically apposed to both the red-green confuses red, purple and blue whereas the deutan confuses only colour defective classes. purple with blue. On the other hand, the tritan person confuses So the challenge in designing a colour code is to never use colours lying along any one confusion line for any of the three classes of defective colour vision! Only then can one be sure that the chosen colours are distinguishable by all.

How do orienteering maps look to the colour defective orienteer?

Figure 2. The Australian version of the International Orienteering Federation’s PMS colour swatch for drawing Foot Orienteering maps. Top left is how a person with normal colour vision sees this map. In order, progressing top right, bottom left and bottom right are simulations of how protanopes, deuteranopes and tritanopes are believed to see the same section of the map respectively (according to Vischeck software).

Can colour vision impairment affect the sport of orienteering? Through the use of Vischeck software simulations, Figures 2, 3 and 4 respectively reveal how the International Orienteering Federation’s colour swatch, as well as sections of maps used for Bush Orienteering and Sprint Orienteering are likely to appear to orienteers with severe colour vision defects. Basically, for protans and deutans yellows and greens appear somewhat similar, separated only by shades of intensity. It can be seen that orienteering ‘yellow – open’ and ‘green – slow run’ are seen as yellow/yellowish-brown or yellow/ ochre by the red/green colour defective orienteer.

The map sections chosen highlight one dilemma in searching for an alternate strategy to using colour as the predominant approach to convey spatial information: that even for ‘colour normals’ the smaller the patch of colour on the page, the harder it is to recognise which colour has been employed.

DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER

37

COLOUR VISION

Further considerations What factors contribute to the ultimate appearance of a coloured map? For any object, how the eye functions and the intrinsic colour of that object are obviously important to how it will appear. For a map, the ‘object’ is the coloured ink on the paper.

However, how the map creator intended the colours be seen may not come to fruition because dyes age and deposit differently on various papers. Although the different colours are achieved by defining simple ratios of red ink to blue ink to green ink, the final outcome will depend on the ageing of the pigments, the type of paper (highly absorbing, poorly absorbing, plasticised), the type of printer (can it be set to handle different types of paper), the speed of the paper feed through the printer (affected by the degree of wear and tear), etc. Then, once the pigment is on the paper, the lighting under which it is viewed is also important because it is the reflected light off the pigment that determines what the eye receives To evaluate colours on orienteering maps appropriately, dry maps must be viewed under light as close as possible in character to sunlight (technically, using Illuminant C).

One should not compare the map off the home printer against the IOF swatch whilst standing under a bluish fluorescent light or a rich warm light.

To understand the minefield regarding truth in colour representation, simply compare a picture on a computer monitor with the version printed out on paper. The phosphors of your LCD have intrinsic settings that can be changed to render colours with a particular bias, and as explained above, the printed version will also have intrinsic bias. Indeed, the figures used here for this article were created on a computer, printed out as a swatch or map, scanned on a Canon CanoScan Lido 20 scanner, and re-printed according to The Australian Orienteer printer’s colour gamut specifications. It has been shown that the Australian version of the IOF colour swatch and a few maps printed ready for use, contain colours that lie along one or another confusion line for persons with any class of colour vision defect1.

Suggestions Clearly, the figures show that orienteers who are colour vision impaired would have more difficulty trying to decipher their map.

Indeed, it has been shown that colour affected individuals take longer to analyse graphs and maps. This is even so if the maps are made using ‘colour-impaired friendly colours’ and the affected individuals are told this (out of habit?).

Figures 1 and 2 dramatically show the restrictions on any potential colour codes if orienteers with severe colour defects are to be accommodated. It is unrealistic to expect a colour coding scheme for Orienteering maps that will be recognisable by all three classes of persons with colour vision defects. Hence, as tritans are extremely rare, or have eye disease that would of itself reduce vision (probably to the point that fine detail on maps would be unreadable), it has been suggested that only confusions for protanomals and deuteranomals be addressed. If only relatively saturated colours were used on maps, the large majority who have only mild colour impairment would be far less affected.

The existing colours in the IOF swatch could have their shades tweaked so that none lie along any confusion line. For example, if the green used to indicate bush density were made to have a little more blue in it, the new slightly aqua-looking green would be more readily discernible against the yellow that indicates open land by both protans and deutans.

38 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

However, colour is not the only form of coding, and alternatives such a geometric coding can make colouring somewhat redundant; e.g. others have suggested that a brown cross and a green cross could be further differentiated as four star/six star symbols, and of different sizes. Cross-hatching or patterning is also commonly used on graphs and some maps. However, because very small patches of colour are commonly required on orienteering maps, it must be remembered that a geometric pattern may become uninterpretable when the dimensions are very small. Use of fine black outlines for one colour might also be feasible.

To counter the fact that ageing of dyes or variations due to the printing process may have affected the ultimate colour outcome on the particular paper type chosen for an event, a legend that has been printed at the same time as the map itself should always be available for colour-impaired orienteers (either by way of being on the map itself, or as a separate item available at the registration desk). In this way, colour affected orienteers can at least read the map’s presentation of the subtly different shades of yellow/ochre, etc, against the mapped features for the terrain in whichever way they personally read the map.

Map-reading performance can also be assisted by using particular coloured lenses (simple squares of flat acetate film, say hung round the neck for occasional use like a lorgnette). These long wavelength pass lenses alter the relative brightness of specific colours and thus enhance differences between colours that would otherwise appear identical or almost so. These lenses have been marketed under names such as X-Chrom, Chromagen, Colormax, Coloryte and Colorview. However, such lenses will distort other colours and superimpose a blue-yellow deficiency over the existing red-green deficiency, as well as reduce visibility in dim light. Certainly, these lenses do not restore colours to normal appearance for the colour vision impaired person. Therefore, their use in Orienteering might be limited to situations when doubt exists for the meaning of a colour on the map. Feedback from one recreational orienteer was that the lens was immensely helpful. However, other orienteers have found them not so helpful. Again, the diverse impact of colour defectiveness becomes apparent. These lenses are generally only available through the Colour Vision Clinics at the Schools of Optometry at UNSW, University of Melbourne or Queensland University of Technology – although a few optometrists in private practice who have a particular interest in colour vision might have access to some of these lenses.

In summary, because it is known that some persons with the severest forms of colour vision impairment want to enjoy the sport of Orienteering, and presumably many more somewhataffected individuals are participating, the IOF colour specifications need an overhaul. The IOF is cognizant of the scientific evidence indicating the lack of fairness in the current colour coding system used for orienteering maps and has this year instigated a review of the colour specifications. In due course you might notice a slight change in the colours on your maps – and now you know why Footnote: the publication “Orienteers with poor colour vision require more than cunning running” by Jennifer Long and Barbara Junghans, Clin Exp Optom 2008; 91: 6: 515–523, has more details regarding this matter and contains a review of the literature pertaining to the points made above. If you would like a copy of this article, or wish to have further information on where you can have your own colour vision status assessed, email Barbara Junghans at School of Optometry and Vision Science, UNSW, b.junghans@unsw.edu.au 1

Welcome to

July 24th–30th 2010

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Distance 200 km 133 km 282 km 503 km 549 km

Route E18 52 E20 E4 E4

Tuesday 26 January 2010 Ballarat Victoria Sunday 28 February 2010 Gembrook Victoria Sunday 28 March 2010 You Yangs Victoria

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For more information please visit www.oringen.se DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 39

ONLINE ENTRY ONLY. Enter now and save up to 20%. Visit

aus3days2010.orienteering.asn.au The Easter Twenty10 program of events is designed to maximise the orienteering challenges (& recreation time), while minimising the travel between events. The Australian 3-Days are close to Canberra, and boast four completely different terrain types. Then take a few days to relax before we reconvene in the high country for the Snowy Treble; three days of quality granite orienteering.

EASTER PROGRAM

Children aged between 5 -12 yrs are invited to participate in activities provided by the Blue Sparks.

Fri April 2 Prologue and Family Teams Event, Australian Defence Force Academy Sat April 3 Day 1, Gudgenby Homestead Sun April 4 Day 2, Kowen East Mon April 5 Day 3, Collector

SNOWY TREBLE PROGRAM Fri April 9 Day 1, ACT Sprint Championships, Buckenderra Holiday Village

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TOP EVENTS 2010 Australian Orienteering Championships Carnival

Just Don’t Mention Orienteering

Barossa and Adelaide Hills

T

S

OUTH AUSTRALIA has arranged for all events of the Carnival to be within 100km of the Adelaide metropolitan area and either in, or in close proximity to, the Barossa Valley. The Australian Long Distance Championships will be about 5km from Tanunda, the heart of the world renowned Barossa wine region.

The event areas have been chosen near Adelaide, so competitors and families can enjoy the tourist delights of Adelaide, the Adelaide Hills and the Barossa Valley, without great distances to travel .The event areas are also within easy reach of Adelaide airport and near the main highways to the Eastern States.

The Middle Distance Championships will be held adjacent to the Humbug Scrub Sanctuary which was established in1905. The event will be largely on an area where mining was carried out in the 1800s, with interesting contours from the mining. Many ruins of old buildings from the abandoned town can be seen on the map. The mines were called Lady Alice and Lady Edith which we believe were the names of the wives of the mine managers, hence the name of the map. This area has never been used for Orienteering before.

The Long Distance Championships at Tanunda are on a new map. This includes part of an area, mapped by the late Irena Palmer in 1993, which has not been used for a number of years. The terrain is spur/gully with extensive areas of rock and good runnability that should be enjoyable, although testing, for all age groups. An old gravel mining quarry will add variation to the courses.

The Sprint Championships will be held at Trinity College on the outskirts of Gawler, west of the Barossa Valley. And the Relay Championships will be on intricate spur/gully terrain near Walkers Flat, east of the Barossa. The area has not been used for a number of years and is currently being remapped. It is known for its fossilized oyster shells from a bygone era.

Williamstown will be the centre for the Schools camp.

Individual and Relay Championships for Schools will be in nearby areas. Public events will be held in conjunction with these events, with a barbecue and night event following the Schools Relay. Information will be forwarded to the State school coordinators in due course.

Peter Cutten - Carnival Coordinator: (08)3321580

Advertise your event in this space You can have a 5 x 8 cm event ad for just $50 In colour, if we have room, otherwise black & white Send artwork to The Editor: mikehubbert@ozemail.com.au

HE SILVA DuO Adventure Race Series is an innovative new concept designed to attract new members to our sport by getting them to take part in an Orienteering race without even knowing it!

In recent years there has been a boom in adventure races run by professional organisations and most often going by the names of their major sponsors – Kathmandu, Teva, Anaconda, Mountain Designs.

Many of these races are Orienteering, pure and simple, involving foot and mountain bike legs with navigation. They even use our very own Orienteering maps (for a nominal charge!).

So, if these races are just Orienteering under another name why is it that they get 200 or so 20 to 40-year-olds clambering to enter online, paying $100 each to enter?

Is it the quality of the courses? No, as the maps are, at best, poor reproductions of Orienteering maps and the controls are often misplaced because the guy placing them is probably the race organiser with a degree in event management but no experience in course setting.

Is it the slick promotion? Probably: Ads in national magazines and cool looking websites have a huge influence over today’s techsavvy, advertising-aware generation.

Is it the big name sponsors? Probably: they provide the good prizes and add a certain degree of professionalism and kudos to the event’s image/ brand.

Is it because it is called an Adventure Race and not Orienteering?

Most certainly yes! Like it or not there is a stigma attached to Orienteering that puts off the very people who seem to want to have a go at Adventure Racing, vis-a-vis the market we want to tap in to.

With the answer to this last question in mind a group of orienteers in Victoria has developed the SILVA DuO adventure race series. The first series got under way earlier this year and preparations for the next series of 3 races in early 2010 are well under way.

The races will include foot and mountain bike legs with easy navigation, they are close to Melbourne and the wining time is around 90 minutes. The SILVA DuO model is different to how other Orienteering events are run though: there are just 2 courses (long and short), we’re offering great prizes and entry is on-line by credit card. Our promotion is extensive: we’ve got the big name sponsors on board, a great website, flyers distributed at other adventure races and half page adverts in national magazines like Outer Edge, Outdoor and Australian Mountain Bike which have a combined distribution of hundreds of thousands.

Our goal is not to make profit - read all other Adventure Races which need to pay their full time organisers - it is to attract new members to our sport. What better way to promote Orienteering than to run an event where people come and try it without even knowing!

If, like me, you’re concerned about the future of our sport then start spreading the word about the SILVA DuO series and let’s see if we can’t tap into a new market of potential members.

Dion Keech – SILVA DuO Adventure race series director DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 41

TOP EVENTS Aug 22 - 27

2009 Dec 27 - 31

Xmas 5-Days Mittagong & Moss Vale Southern Highlands, NSW www.nsw.orienteering.asn.au

Sept 4-5 Sep 25 Oct 3

2010 March 20-21

April 2 - 5 June 19 - 20 June 26 July 10

June 27 July 4 July 4 - 11

July 5 - 10

July 11 - 17

July 12 - 17

July 24 - 30

July 24 - 31

July 31 Aug 7 Aug 8 - 15

MTBO Selection Trial – NSW National MTBO Series #1 Middle & Long Distance Australian 3-Days – ACT aus3days2010.orienteering.asn.au Jukola Relays Kytäjä, Finland www.jukola2010.net North American Orienteering Festival Washington State (US) & British Columbia (Canada) www.us.orienteering.org/ 6 Days of Tyrol Karersee, Austria / Italy www.tyrol2010.com JWOC Aalborg, Denmark www.jwoc2010.dk Kainuu Orienteering Week Puolanka, Finland http://krv.rastiviikko.fi/index. php\?Itemid=3 WOC/MTB & JWOC/MTB Montalegre, Portugal http://mtbwoc2010.fpo.pt Fin5 Ruokalahti, Finland www.fin5.fi O-Ringen Örebro, Sweden www.oringen.se/987.php Tour O Swiss 2010 www.tour-o-swiss.ch WMOC Neuchatel, Switzerland www.wmoc2010.org WOC Trondheim, Norway www.woc2010.com

42 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

Oct 16-17 Oct 23-24

Dec 27 - 31

Lakes 5 Coniston, Cumbria, England www.lakes5.org.uk Qld MTBO Champs/Nat MTBO #2 Middle & Long Distance AUS Champs Carnival Barossa & Adelaide, SA www.sa.orienteering.asn.au SA MTBO Champs Nelson – Vic/SA border Aus MTBO Championships – Vic Nat MTBO #3, WRE Middle & Long + Sprint, Castlemaine/Daylesford vicmtbo.com Xmas 5-Days NSW www.nsw.orienteering.asn.au

2011 April 22 - 25

June July 1-9

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July 23 - 29

July 31 – Aug 6 Aug 13 - 20

Oct 1-9

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Australian 3-Days West Australia www.aus3days 2011.orienteering.asn.au Jukola Relays Salpa, Finland JWOC Wejherowo, Poland www.jwoc2011.pl Fin5 Lohja, Finland www.fin5.fi WMOC Pecs, Hungary www.wmoc2011.com O-Ringen Halsingland, Sweden www.oringen.se Scottish 6 Days Oban & Lorn www.scottish6days.com WOC Savoie Grand Revard, France www.woc2011.fr Oceania, Australian & Schools Championships VIC, NSW 7 ACT Xmas 5-Days NSW www.nsw.orienteering.asn.au

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DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 43

CLIMATE CHANGE

Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Rising Tides – is Gaia striking back?

Suggestions that rising sea levels along with more turbulent weather will destroy coastal landscapes and badly affect housing all along Australia’s coastline seem to be falling on deaf ears at present.

I

N recent months we’ve had a major earthquake and tsunami (off Samoa) in the Pacific Ocean, followed just hours later by two earthquakes off Sumatra, Indonesia. Each caused massive damage and loss of life. Then, within a week, three more major earthquakes off Vanuatu. Meanwhile, two typhoons hit the Philippines and Vietnam bringing widespread flooding which caused more damage and loss of life.

In September, red dust storms turned day into night across the east coast of Australia from Brisbane down to Canberra. Days later the same dust descended on New Zealand leaving a layer of red on everything in sight.

By 1790, settlers were learning that Australia was a land of extremes. In the summers of 1790 and 1791 water supplies dried up and temperatures reached scorching highs of 41 degrees. Flying foxes and small birds reportedly fell from the trees and crops failed.

“History has downplayed the environmental factors affecting the First Fleet settlers,” said Melbourne University climatologist David Karoly. “There was a perception that these were whingeing Poms and they weren’t used to it … but they had good reason to whinge about the hot summers because it was very hot and they were in a drought.”

Contemporary reports are backed up by an analysis of the meticulous weather journal kept by Lieutenant William Dawes, a scientist who sailed on the First Fleet. Professor Karoly and his colleagues have used it, along with First Fleet logbooks and diaries, to plot the daily temperatures and barometric pressure between September 1788 and December 1791.

The data was then compared with modern measurements taken from Sydney’s Observatory Hill weather station — located just 500 metres from the site where Dawes worked. “He gets the right seasonal variations, the right sort of maximum and minimum temperatures and very accurate pressure variations,” Professor Karoly said. Studying Australia’s climate variability before the 20th century was vital work, as it allowed present changes to climate trends to be viewed in a broader historical context, he added.

Of course, dust storms like this have happened before – remember February 1983 in Melbourne? But have extreme weather events become more frequent in recent decades? Is Gaia really striking back ……..?

“We want to understand natural weather and climate variations, so that we can set recent variations like the drought in Victoria and the Murray-Darling Basin into a longer-term context. Then we can work out whether the dry spell of the past 10 years is outside the current range of variability.”

Effects on our Forests

Climate change dire for Coral Triangle

And how is Orienteering likely to be affected? In Victoria, one Bush Orienteering event had to be relocated because the area originally chosen was badly affected in the February bushfires.

And several other mapped areas have been “placed on hold” while they recover from the fires.

About 100 million people living on Australia’s doorstep could be forced to leave their homeland due to climate change this century, according to a report released earlier this year. The report, commissioned by the environment group WWF, found Australia will have a key role in avoiding ecological and humanitarian disaster in what it calls the Coral Triangle - the marine area including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and East Timor. It estimates that failure to take effective action on climate change will diminish the food supply drawn from the area’s coasts by up to 80 per cent.

But the affects of climate change on forested areas go deeper than merely burning and regrowth. A study in Canada on a onemillion square km area of forest found that the forest area has become a positive emitter of greenhouse gases. The increased incidence of forest fires in the area means that the forest now releases more greenhouse gases than it absorbs in photosynthesis.

The forest area is no longer a carbon sink and has become a carbon emitter.

Early Settlers complained about the Weather An interesting article describing the weather experienced by the first European settlers in Sydney more than 200 years ago puts climate change into perspective. According to the article published in the The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal, the first settlers in Australia might have been whingeing Poms, but in a reconstruction of the colony’s weather during the first four years to 1791, they had good reason to moan.

The weather was terrible. The first two years were marked by cool temperatures and violent summer storms. Rain flooded trenches on building sites, roads were made impassable and lightning felled trees, killing livestock.

44 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

University of Queensland marine scientist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, one of 20 scientists to work on the report, said under the worstcase scenario the ecology of the region would be destroyed by rises in ocean temperature, acidity and sea level.

“Poverty increases, food security plummets, economies suffer and coastal people migrate increasingly to urban areas,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said. “Tens of millions of people are forced to move from rural and coastal settings due to loss of homes, food resources and income, putting pressure on regional cities and surrounding developed nations such as Australia and New Zealand.”

Even under a best-case scenario, the report found the region will lose coral and have to deal with higher seas, more frequent storms, droughts and less food from coastal fisheries. The report calls for large cuts in greenhouse emissions and international financial support for the region’s environment.

ORIENTEERING AUSTRALIA

Executive Matters John Harding – OA Executive Officer

S

TATISTICS count! In particular, membership, participation and high performance statistics. This is a repeated message from government and private sector funders and sponsors. In a competitive marketplace of a myriad of sports, the statistical comparisons are what the funding and sponsorship decision makers peruse in divvying up their budget allocations.

State governments reasonable ballpark estimates over time of participation (and non-participation) in sport and recreation activities as they face the health challenges of rising obesity levels in the population. Orienteering, with participants aged from under 10s to over 85s, has a marketing advantage over nearly all other sports in encouraging life long active participation.

Max Neve (Vic) at the Australian 3 Days this year.

Photo: Clive Roper

On the high performance front, our best elite performers have been doing us proud this year. The double gold by Adrian Jackson at the World Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships, the gold and silver by Hanny Allston in the World Games, the close fourth in the World Games mixed teams Relay, the fifth in the World Orienteering Championships Sprint final by Kathryn Ewels, and the gold rush by our best veterans at the World Masters Championships are highlights of a stellar year.

It is on the membership counting side that we seem to be letting ourselves down compared with most other sports.

Soccer, netball, hockey and so on count every participant in an organised competition in a membership category, sometimes using creative mechanisms such as one day memberships to do so. Our Rogaining colleagues insist that every participant becomes a member to comply with insurance requirements. However, maximising membership numbers by signing up all casual and irregular and schools Orienteering participants to provide a level playing field comparison with other sports can have costs in administrative effort and fee equity across membership categories. So a balance is needed. Orienteering Tasmania (OT) appears to have achieved such a balance through the very successful introduction of a Casual Membership category. This greatly boosted overall membership numbers and enabled OT to obtain additional government funding.

On the participation front, the Australian Sports Commission and State and Territory Sport and Recreation departments jointly run an annual sport and recreation survey of over 17,000 people aged 15 and over around Australia on their participation in organised and not organised sport and recreation activities in the 12 months prior to interview.

The 2008 report appeared to have very good news for Orienteering: an estimated 124,000 participants, similar to the numbers for several major sports, and with half male and half female. Given the 2008 OA annual report figure of 8,842 total members, these numbers seemed suspiciously overcounted, even taking into account Rogaining and adventure sport participation and school participation of 15 to 18 year olds in Orienteering. This was born out by a perusal of the survey methodology. Orienteering was defined as including Rogaining and cross country running, and the survey was conducted by telephone interview and had only a 25.7% response rate.

In addition, 85,000 (69%) of the 124,000 were in the 15-24 age group, in contrast to OA membership of 60% in the Masters age groups. It pays to be careful in collecting and interpreting statistics and this example raises questions about the extent to which estimates for other sports are also inflated. The survey itself is useful in giving the Australian and

National Junior Squad, Junior Development Squad announced The National Junior Squad and Junior Development Squad for 2009-10 have been announced by Orienteering Australia.

The National Junior Squad is: Lilian Burrill (QLD)

Lachlan Dow (ACT)

Belinda Lawford (ACT)

Joshua Blatchford (NSW)

Sarah Buckerfield (TAS)

Oscar Phillips (TAS)

Krystal Neumann (QLD)

Callum Fagg (TAS)

Georgia Parsons (ACT)

James Robertson (VIC)

Mary Fleming (VIC)

Kurt Neumann (QLD)

Catherine Hewitt (TAS)

Oliver Crosato (QLD)

Max Neve (VIC)

Alex Massey (NSW)

Leon Keely (VIC)

The Junior Development Squad is: Rebekah Sunley (VIC)

Oscar McNulty (WA)

Michele Dawson (NSW)

Ian Lawford (ACT)

Emma Campbell (TAS)

Oliver Poland (ACT)

Rebecca Freese (QLD)

Todd Neve (VIC)

Jacqui Doyle (QLD)

Karl Bicevskis (TAS)

Katie Doyle (QLD)

Marc Gluskie (TAS)

Congratulations to all those selected.

Blair Trewin (Chairman of Selectors) DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 45

SILVA COMPETITION WINNER

Training Diary In each issue of The Australian Orienteer, SILVA will award an L1 Headlamp to the best account of how you have been training and of your goals for the future. There will be more awards next year so send in your Training Diaries to mikehubbert@ozemail.com.au . All Training Diaries received so far will remain in the running for future awards.

WINNER – Ken McLean – Esk Valley Orienteering Club (Tasmania) I was inspired! My destiny was clear. After years of being one of the pack and making up numbers my destiny was now apparent.

The stimulus was the June’09 copy of The Australian Orienteer. The Perseverance Cup beckoned. This hotly contested and prestigious award in Queensland is something that I was sure I could really excel at even if it involves travel. As the article by Jim Bowling stated, the Cup is for the orienteer that can remain in the bush longer than anyone else and still return home through the finish chute.

I felt I was a natural. Despite a strong background of running and endurance sports, my second Orienteering event in Tassie gave me a decent 3+ hour long course time, and the last Easter event in Tasmania, due to a combination of innate inability and injury saw a string of encouragingly long times.

Unfortunately later events have shown a slightly worrying trend to get some things right, at this rate my chances of becoming a Perseverance Cup contender could slip through my grasp due to steady improvement. If I was to succeed I should start now, and as everyone knows a serious training program and diary is the foundation of success at the top end of the sport..

Further research shows this is a tough event; a good time over two events is around 4 hours. Obviously endurance is the key and my training was to focus on building this, an emphasis on running with some navigation exercises.

Right! Tomorrow I start. I set the alarm for 6am and retire early.

Day 1 Gosh it’s light for 6am at this time of year, and even stranger - my teenage son is already out of bed and speaking, a check of the watch shows the problem, its 7.45am and I was late for work , the alarm had been set for 6 pm. Right - tomorrow.

Day 2 The alarm went off, it was dark and no children.

This is it, actually 6am. I quietly sneak off and get changed trying not to wake the wife. Gosh these shoes are bloody hard to get on and really uncomfortable. I barely make it to the front gate before the pain in my feet is too much! At lunch I leave work and the podiatrist that squeezed me in between appointments to see me finds the problem, I have turned right and not left in the walk-in wardrobe and picked up my wife‘s shoes.

Day 3 Alarm 6am. Turn left, pick up my shoes and get them on. Much easier but still not really comfortable. I make it to the corner before my feet can take no more. The podiatrist obliges at lunch time again, and again the answer is simple, correct shoes - wrong feet. The shoes are labelled and tomorrow beckons.

46 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2009

Day 4 Alarm 6am, turn left, my shoes, check the right and left labels on the shoes and off I go. I run like the wind, and arrive back home exhausted. Things are looking up. I was puzzled as to why a simple run around the block was so tiring, but crossing the bridge over the river that I had never seen before was a real plus. Phase 1 was shaping up well and tomorrow I would meet up with some friends and do some bush running.

be just a bit further, and then perhaps a bit further, and maybe over the next hill. Gosh not much fuel left, soon the car stops. I have run out of fuel. Using my mobile and every possible favour I am rescued many hours later, I must have held the street directory upside down and driven half way across the State in the wrong direction. I arrive in time to watch the last control being brought in.

Day 5 The alarm, shoes and car, are all under control, I‘m on time but where are the others? I wait around but must go after half an hour as there is a meeting before work. No time left for running. A phone call in the evening clarified things, who would have thought the official names and my name for bush reserves could be so different. Perhaps I should not have assumed the street directory had published the wrong name on the map.

Day 7 My favours used in yesterday’s rescue are called in, the day is spent weeding, emptying the compost bins and finally finishing the odd jobs of the last year. No running and strict supervision means no time is wasted.

At the end of Day 7, I tally the weeks training; running 9km; podiatrists bills $86; fuel $45; late for work once and I still have another weekend’s chores lined up.

After my first week I feel I am making real progress, the sky is the limit, perhaps there is a Perserverance Cup at international level.

(Unfortunately only some of this diary is fictitous, I am that bad but I do get out running).

Day 6 The weekend and it is time to put things into practice. A club event is on. Out with the street directory, double check the road name, yes, I am the right road. Right shoes and yes I am not late.

Now, just look for the correct road turn off. Must

WIN a

L1 Headlamp valued at $199.95

Send us your TRAINING DIARY Record your training for a typical week; include some words about how your felt; tell us your short term and long term goals; then send your Training Diary and a photo of yourself to The Australian Orienteer;email: mikehubbert@ozemail.com.au We will choose the best entry and print it in the next magazine.

Each Diary printed will win a SILVA L1 Headlamp.

This competition will run all year, so keep sending your Training Diaries in.

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WIN a Gerber Method™ Butterfly Opening Multi-Plier® valued at $119.95 Every issue of The Australian Orienteer needs good quality action photos from recent events. This is your chance to get your photos in print. The best photo in each issue will win a valuable prize. We need high resolution photos (file size 2MB or greater). Send your photos to mikehubbert@ozemail.com.au Winner this time is Peter Hobbs (DROC, Victoria) for his action shots from WOC 2009.

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RRP: $119.95 -available at Anaconda, King of Knives, Rays Outdoors and other leading outdoor retailers. www.gerbergear.com; australia@fiskarsbrands.com DECEMBER 2009 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 47

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