What price nostalgia? Can you ever truly go back to the scene of a perfect crime? Or relive glory days?
Well, Jock Davis - our NSW junior squad coach - certainly had a good crack as he set some mind-boggling courses for our Long Championships at Snow Hills on Sunday. More than 330 competitors faced long legs and few controls in an area with few features.
Our friends at Orienteering Australia were just last week musing on a famous similar event in 1991 at Inverary.
"Competitors in most of the Red courses picked up their maps at the start at the southern end of the map and discovered that the 1st control was about 2km away on the northern end of the map. In between there were no tracks; instead complex spur/gully terrain where the best route choice was to navigate via the hill tops," recalled one.
"The first leg on M21A was about 2.5km, then there was a very short turning leg, then another 3.5km. Red 3 was about 9km with 7 controls (and three of those were in the last kilometre)," said another.
Jock's demanding courses resulted in some long winning times. The highlights were Duncan Currie (Garingal) beating a quality field in M16A and Michele Dawson (GO) taking out W21A.
On Saturday, NSW junior Rebecca George set the Middle Distance Championships in the eastern part of the same map. They were applauded as testing courses in complex spur/gully terrain with generally low to medium visibility. Father Simon agreed as he won M50A!
NSW runners on the elite podiums were Georgia Jones (UR, 3rd in W20A), Toby Wilson (GO, 3rd in M20A), Michele Dawson (GO, 2nd in W21A) and Nicola Blatchford (NC, 3rd in W21A). Victorians took the juniors and ACT runners the seniors.
Newcastle couple Martina and Stephen Craig made it a double in 35A and son Alvin won M14A, while Tracy Marsh (W40A) and husband Paul (M45A) were also among the gold.
Thanks to Big Foot for a worthy weekend of NSW championships. All the results, splits etc can be accessed via the BF website and our State League page. We ask all participants to please fill out the very brief Course Setter of the Year survey. Some great photos by Tony Hill are now up, too.
