Sprints show off the WOW (What an Orienteering Weekend) factor
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- Last Updated: Sunday, 13 October 2013 22:00
Fine map detail should be seared into the brains of more than 200 competitors after a superb weekend of sprint O in inner city Sydney.
Just 6 days after the annual bush season wrapped up with the Australian champs in the ACT, it was time to turn our attention to the subtleties of urban maps that would test even the legendary forensic guns at CSI.
Big Foot hosted their largest ever Sprints at Sydney Uni on Saturday afternoon, and our State League wrapped up for 2013 on Sunday with Garingal putting on the NSW Sprint Championships on a new map at Pyrmont.
Two days and three courses of tricky navigating around hedges, garden beds, staircases, high walls, buildings, underpasses, overpasses left lungs burning and legs jellied - and led to much animated discussion about route choice as well as mispunches from very experienced orienteers.
A few seconds here, a few seconds there and you could jump - or drop - several places, such is the frenetic nature of orienteering's shortest format. Think Twenty20 cricket.
SL13 pics are on Facebook and the results are now on Eventor. Congratulations to Rachel Effeney from the Ugly Gully club in Queensland for her twin triumphs over the weekend.
The men's winner of Big Foot Sprints was Andrew Brown (BF via Scotland).
In the closest racing on Saturday, Rachel held off Garingal veteran Barbara Hill by two seconds, Barbara lamenting a second last control spike that flashed but did not beep. Barbara was just in front at that stage but in the very brief time it took to go back to the control and repunch (just to make sure), Rachel snuck through and held on to the finish.
In the men's section, Andrew led from the first control and increased his margin on the second leg to win comfortably by 30 seconds overall, ahead of South Australian Ben Rattray. It was very tempting to follow the person in front of you during the chasing second leg, especially if they went off just a few seconds before you. But as Andrew's three closest chasers found out, it's best to ignore everyone and everything else.
Garingal juniors Daniel Hill and Aidan Dawson, along with Uringa's Czech import Ondrej Pavlu all were equal second on the first course, 21 seconds behind Andrew. On their second course it appears the competition between the trio proved distracting: Daniel dropped 20 seconds to the first control across the cricket oval (to be 11th fastest on course and 5th overall), while neither Ondrej (3rd overall) nor Aidan (4th) could make any headway against Andrew.
Sydney Uni also happened to be hosting a "Humans v Zombies" game with more than 300 participants roaming the grounds armed with nerf guns. It looked fairly tame until the zombies launched a mass ambush on the humans across The Square as we waited for the second Sprint to start. It made for a great spectacle and some of the Big Feet kids ended up with souvenirs.
A big thanks to IT guru Andy Simpson for a smooth outing under tremendous time and people pressure.
While those who ran on Saturday may have felt a bit stiff the next morning, their minds were at least well and truly in sprint mode, ready for more intricate course setting from local resident Ross Barr.
The Pyrmont peninsula has been completely transformed from its industrial past, and is now a quiet apartment and foreshore parkland mecca. The map name "Sugar Rush" honours the old CSR refinery site near the assembly area.
Ross made great use of the spectacular start location high above Pirrama Road, and those who take part for the scenery as much as anything else had views of the Harbour Bridge from the small park off to the right of the start. The huge cliffs in the area required careful navigation to ensure you were on the right level, and it was easy to get confused among the plethora of spectator controls in the new garden bed section just east of the assembly.
The courses then went up and west to within 100m of the Anzac Bridge, and finished with a flat charge along the water's edge, past bemused walkers and cyclists.
Andrew and Barbara were 4-5 minutes off the pace, perhaps having spent fuel the previous day, leaving Rachel and WA's Oscar McNulty as the winners in the open elite classes.
To get an appreciation of the level of detail in sprint orienteering, have a look at Sunday's map. Now look at the pink line coming out of the circle at #1. In less than 2mm of map (8 metres in real life) you have open space (yellow), a crossable fence, a narrow path, a thin hedge, an uncrossable wall, another narrow path and more open space. The parkour crowd would no doubt just leap over the lot!
