Latest ONSW News

Our Junior Elites have been battling through the heat at the JWOC in Slovakia in their first races.  The Sprint on Sunday was around Kosice city centre in 33 degrees of heat which caused some of the runners more problems than what they described as a disappointingly easy course.  Ian Lawford (ACT) had the best of the Sprints for Australia coming 20th in 14:59 but the quality of the field was such that even our lower placed runners were less than 3 minutes behind the winner. Heather Muir (QLD) had a solid effort coming in the top 100 only 3:15 behind winner Tove Alexandersson from Sweden.

Monday saw the Long Distance races contested where weather once again provided more challenges.  Overcast and humid conditions greeted the early runners, whilst later runners had thunder, lightening and heavy rain to contend with.  The Australian juniors fared better in the Long Distance than they had in the Sprint with 7 out of the 10 runner team placing in the top 100.  This was due to the fact that there were few major errors made by the Australians and indeed looking at the splits the team were well prepared with steady starts and generally improving speeds across the latter half of the courses.   This strength and poise in their runs belies the fact that there are a number of new faces on the team this year, and bodes well for future Australian international competitions as these young Elites gain experience at this level.

The competition continues today with the Middle Distance qualification races - follow the action on-line at http://www.jwoc2012.sk when the races start at 6pm AEST.