Latest ONSW News
The 2011 World Masters Orienteering Championships is a major event with approximately 3 times as many competitors as Australia hosted in 2009. Finland has 639 competitors and there are 47 Australians, 17 of which are from NSW. M60 is the largest class with 374 runners and M65 the second largest with 344. In the women’s classes the largest group is also W60 with 236 and W55 comes in second with 210.
The Sprint Qualification race on 2 July was held in the old section of the host city of Pecs, providing both an orienteering challenge and a tourist delight in the form of narrow streets, courtyards and castle walls. Small route choice errors were costly. Pride of place for the Australians went to Victoria's Jim Russell who finished first in his M50-1 heat, with NSW’s Debbie and Alex Davey, Ross Barr, Julia Prudhoe, and Val Hodson all getting a place in the A finals of their age groups.
The Sprint finals moved to Komlo, a mining town around 22km north of Pecs. Whilst being less complex and detailed than Pecs there were still enough steps and grassy banks to cause competitors problems. The finals started at 10am, with the B and C finals taking place first, then followed by the A finals. The late start meant that the A finalists started in the warmest part of the day, with temperatures in the mid to high 20's.
Of the Australian competitors it was the younger end of the age groups who fared best with Susanne and Jenny Casanova finishing 5th and 12 in their A final, Blair Trewin finished 17th and Paul Liggins finished 26th in the M40 final. Unfortunately Jim Russell missed out on a place due to a mistake near the end of his course. He ended up in 13th position, just 1min 2secs behind the winner. The ACT's Anne Ingwesen also had a good race in W65, finishing 9th. For the NSW contingent there were too many small mistakes which pushed them down the leader board.
Great performances in the qualifiers propelled 13 Australians into the A finals of the Long Distance race at the World Masters this week. After some racing on magnificent limestone sink-hole terrain, the competition in qualifier race 2 finished leaving the Australians with some real chances for medals. Australia has Susanne Casanova in W35 who finished in 2nd place after two qualifying races, and Jim Russell whose combined result put him in 3rd in M50. Susanne is joined in her final by Jenny Casanova who qualified in 10th, and there are also chances for Herman Wehner (M85), Paul Adrian(M90), Ann Ingwersen (W65), John Hodson (M70) and two in M40 with Blair Trewin and Paul Liggins.
The JWOC team have been having a patchy week up in Poland starting with a pleasing set of results in the Sprints, which saw Max Neve 29th Lachlan Dow 37th and Ian Lawford 41st in the men’s races, and Belinda Lawford the best Australian women in 46th. The Long Distance race saw a set of unremarkable but solid results with Lachlan Dow in 50th and the rest of the men’s team bunched towards the middle of the field. In a race dominated by Danish Ida Bobach and Emma Klingenberg, Belinda Lawford was unable to repeat her success of the Sprints finishing 88th behind best placed Australian Krystal Neumann in 82.
The Middle Distance qualification races provided some real frustrations, with none of the women’s team making it into the A Finals and two key members of the men’s team, Josh Blatchford and Ian Lawford, missing out on qualification by one place and sixteen seconds between them. The two qualifiers from the Australian team had better fortune in the finals, with Lachlan Dow finishing in 36th and Oscar McNulty in 58th. There were some confidence building runs in the B finals, with Belinda Lawford 3rd and Claire Butler 19th in the womens race and Oliver Poland 6th in the mens race. The competition finishes on the 8th July with the relays. Full results can be found here.
