Lucy Mackie wins silver at world MTBO champs
- Last Updated: Friday, 25 August 2017 20:25
Sydneysider Lucy Mackie has ridden the race of her life to take second place in the Middle Distance at the junior world mountain bike orienteering championships in Lithuania.
By our calculations, this makes Lucy the first orienteer from NSW to win a medal at a world championship.
Lucy finished just two minutes behind Czech star Veronika Kubinova, who is widely considered to be just about unbeatable in the sport.
Very muddy conditions in the capital Vilnius put a premium on fitness and technical skills and, after dropping two minutes to the first radio control, Lucy powered around the last three-quarters of the course on par with Kubinova.
Lots of rain and mud made some of the hills unrideable, though running up a sloping mountain with a bike was also challenging – very slippery! Read Lucy's race report here.
There was more good news for the family, the Big Foot club, ONSW and Australia with younger brother Fergus recording a top-10 finish in the junior men's, finishing 9th.
Newcastle's Glen Charlton was 67th in the senior men's race in a tough MTBO WOC debut.
FRIDAY UPDATE: Lucy gained another top-10 result with a 7th placing in Friday's Long distance event. Fergus was 24th and Glen was disqualified. In Wednesday's Mass Start race, Lucy dropped a map and as a result had a dnf recorded, Fergus was 35th and Glen mispunched.
The championships finish on Saturday with the Sprint event.
NSW schools champs a real Gong show
- Last Updated: Sunday, 20 August 2017 20:39
Our annual NSW Schools Champs took place at the weekend on an old Illawarra map favourite and a sparkling new gem.
Well-used Cataract Scout Park was the venue for the bush event on Saturday and the brilliant new-kid-on-the-block Uni of Wollongong for Sunday's sprint double.
Such a contrast in terrains and in skills needed - accurate bearings and track navigation on Saturday, then a complex building and path network the next day with lots of out-of-bounds garden beds.
Each day saw around 250 participants enjoy beautiful sunshine and seamless organisation by Illawarra Kareelah and guru Ron Pallas on SI timing. On Sunday we had Channel 9 turn up to capture some footage and interview some of our promising juniors (see pic left) - we're told the package will go to air on Tuesday night.
Greenwich Public is our new champion primary school, while KNOX Grammar retained their stranglehold on the high school trophy. CIS were again crowned champion region.
It was fantastic to see students from more than 70 schools in attendance. This is easily a record for this event and reflects the tireless work by our network of coaches in the Sporting Schools program and at the various regional schools championships.
Thanks to IKO and their small army of helpers for a lovely weekend. Our State League page has links to all the weekend results.
Participants are asked to fill in the very brief Course Setter Surveys for each event.
MetrO League 5 rescheduled to Castle Hill
- Last Updated: Friday, 18 August 2017 19:47
Thanks to Hills Council and our WHO club, we will be able to stage Round 5 of the MetrO League at Fred Caterson Reserve in Castle Hill on Sunday September 3.
Original organisers Big Foot had permission withdrawn at very late notice for their proposed event at St Ives, marring hours of fieldwork and a new map.
Garingal will be running SI and other clubs will be assisting with registration and the whiteboards.
The fast work by WHO and council means we can complete the round robin phase and have the finals at Boggabilla on September 10 as planned.
Konsta Vanhanen is our new ONSW scholar
- Last Updated: Tuesday, 15 August 2017 11:45
We are pleased to announce that Konsta Vanhanen will be our orienteering scholar for summer 2017-18.
Konsta is from Finland, as was our inaugural scholar Atte Lahtinen.
Konsta will arrive in time for the Australian championships in late September, then stay with Goldseekers for 4-5 weeks as they put on promotional events in Bathurst to capitalise on the carnival.
A keen MTBOer, Konsta is on the Finnish national team and also won the 2015 junior world rogaining champs in Finland. A young man of many talents, then, but we'll let him introduce himself a little further:
"My name is Konsta. You may know my country from saunas, Santa Claus (in fact I live only 200km away from Santa) and Formula One driver Kimi Räikkönen. Or perhaps Atte Lahtinen, my fellow country man, has already told you everything.
"At first I have to say that travelling Down Under has been a big dream for me for a while. I'm pretty spontaneous person, loving every kind of new challenge and adventure – but hopefully those "challenges" have nothing to do with snakes, crocodiles, bugs, spiders... and so on :D
"I'm a 23-year-old economics student going to take off one year from studying. I've been doing sport since I was a child (mainly skiing, running and Finnish baseball), and as late as at the age of 13 I began to orienteer. And after that there was no way back. Pretty soon I also began ski-orienteering and found mtb-orienteering. I've never been the fastest runner or the strongest cyclist, but instead I've concentrated to train and develop my orienteering skills and tried to find my own way for thinking. Nowadays I do some 50% of foot-o and 50% of mtbo. In foot-o I represent Finnish team Ikaalisten Nouseva-Voima, which has risen to top 15 Jukola team (Jukola is the greatest orienteering event on the earth organised every June in Finland). I've been running only in our second team, but it has been really instructive to follow at close quarters how the best elite orienteers train.
"In mtbo my best results are bronze in sprint in Junior World MTBO Champs 2014 and last week I achieved 6th place in sprint in the senior European MTBO Champs in France.
"I went to an orienteering high school for three years, where I learned a lot about what it means to be and act like an ambitious athlete and how to train. These are some aspects I'd like to bring with me from Finland and share for you the Finnish way of thinking about orienteering. Coaching is really dear to my heart and I'm always eager to talk about orienteering with people - so do not hesitate to ask me for a chat. And I'm hoping to coach as much as possible during my stay.
"I don’t know what to expect, but I'm sure the upcoming 6 months are going to be one of the coolest of my life and I'll meet a lot of great moments with you!
"Best regards," Konsta.
