Australian 3 Days 2023

The Australian 3 Days this year came to the Monaro region of southern New South Wales’s high country. As with past Easters in that part of the world, the terrain was mostly granite. There was challenging forest east of Nimmitabel for the first two days, including a flat technical area on top of a plateau which brought many unstuck on the courses which went to it, and a more open area near Berridale to finish things off with. At times the weather was almost as much of a challenge as the orienteering in an unusually cold spell for the first half of April, but everyone survived it.The Sunday, in particular, gave us strong winds, frequent showers (some with sleet) and temperatures barely getting above 5 degrees all day; another couple of hundred metres of elevation and we would have been running in the snow. Proceedings got under way at ANU on the Friday with a massstart sprint prologue which managed to find the window between the thunderstorms. Both elite races, as expected, had packs at the front at the business end of the race.This provided some late drama for the men – Angus Haines and Ewan Shingler led into the closing stages but missed the last control and had to turn back for it, leaving Patrick Jaffe to come through for the win over Brodie

Nankervis.Tara Melhuish, having a good year in sprint events, was too fast in the end for Shannon Jones and Lanita Steer.The mispunch of Callum White, first across the line, left Cooper Horley to take the junior men’s honours, while Nea Shingler, as expected, had a comfortable win in the junior women’s.

W21E was expected to change a fair bit once it hit the forest, and it did, but the result was not one which many saw coming. Vanessa Round has made only sporadic appearances at national events in the last few years, but a technical middle distance on the opening day suited her well. Very well – she won the day by 4 min, a lot in such a short race. Grace Crane then got to work to get the latest in a sequence of long distance wins, but only cut a bit over a minute into the overall lead. Defending 2:30 in a chasing start in open terrain apparently more suited to her pursuers looked anything but a formality for the South Australian, but she held things together impressively (on a day when many didn’t) and her lead increased rather than shrank. Crane took second ahead of Caitlin Young, who was challenging strongly in the chasing start but then came unstuck on the final long leg.

M21E followed a more predictable course. With Aston Key on the sidelines with injury, Patrick Jaffe and Brodie Nankervis were expected to be the leading local contenders, with New Zealander Matt Ogden as a possible wildcard. An erratic first day put Ogden out of contention for the win (although second places on the last two days lifted him to third overall). Nankervis took the first-day honours by 6 s, but after that Jaffe took control, opening up a 4min lead on the second day and rarely being troubled as he more than doubled that on the last.

The flat early section (a.k.a. the “plateau of doom”) tripped up many on the first day in both junior elite classes. In M20E that included pre-race favourite Sam Woolford (7 min at #4), and the first-day standings were led by the South Australian duo of Toby Cazzolato and Leith Soden, both of whom had had some promising results in recent months but took a major career step up here.They almost repeated the result on Sunday (although this time Woolford just edged Soden out of second) to establish a strong overall position. Both then struck trouble on the last day, but Soden was able to recover enough to take his first major national event victory, despite not winning any of the three individual days.

Cazzolato was second, with Woolford recovering from his early mishaps to complete the placings ahead of Oskar Mella; less than 3min covered the top four.

W20E was dominated by New South Wales runners but perhaps not in the way expected. Nea Shingler had been a class ahead of everyone else in sprint races this season, but things were more on level terms in the forest, and Erika Enderby had already got on top by the time her NSW teammate’s chances disappeared on the plateau early on the second day.The lead she had established on the first day grew through the rest of the weekend as she made a further advance after having been Australia’s youngest JWOC representative last year. Eszter Kocsik also had a good weekend, the highlight of which was a win on the long day, to come through to second, while Natalie Miller’s consistency – fourth on each day –saw her complete the placings.

Elsewhere, the closest result of all was in the youngest class, where Neo Kozma was 3 s ahead of Logan Seaman in M10A, while M12A was also close, Euan Shedden coming from behind on the last day to edge out Baxter Peel, and Alma Walter also turned a