Latest ONSW News
Ian Jones was first past the post at the Camden Equestrian Centre in the Southern Highlands Occasional Orienteers opening event of their six series summer schedule, but it was not all about the racing on Saturday. SHOO's summer events are designed to provide family friendly social events, with a short score of 30 minutes for experienced orienteers teamed with a technically easy course for beginners. This first event was particularly good as the the event had sole use of the Equestrian Centre, which is well fenced and provides great runnable fields, making it an enormous playground for the children after their competitive runs.
Read more: Family friendly SHOO Saturdays get off to racing start
Uringa hosted the Sydney Summer Series at Balmain on Wednesday 11th January which saw record numbers of nearly 300 participants try their luck on the course set out by Matt Peters. The map 'Skinny Latte' took participants through scenic parts of Balmain, showcasing great waterviews across the harbour and streets filled with wooden cottages.
Organisers had printed plenty of maps but with so many entrants these ran out and early starters kindly donated maps to the later arrivals so they could get a run. Anyone who did donate a map can collect a fresh copy from Matt Peters at the Looking Glass bay event on 18th January.
A full programme was set out for the Otago MTBO Carnival in New Zealand last week. Starting on January 7th there were two warm up events followed by the Sprint, Long Distance, Middle Distance events of the NZ/Australia match before the carnival wound up with a friendly Relay event on January 14th.
The Sprint distance was held on a tiny map, some 1km long by 500m wide, near Roxburgh but the size of the area, did not prevent the planner being able to set 5 courses of up to 7km each in this technically challenging gold mining area. The Long Distance event was raced in sweltering heat over steep hills testing the nerve and stamina of the field of 150 riders. NZ scored a narrow win over Australia in the Sprints and increased their winning margin in the Long Distance races before the teams took a well earned rest day mid week.