Latest ONSW News
Space Racing, our venture especially for kids aged 8-14, has blasted off in Orange and Sydney.
Goldseekers, our club of the year, last weekend hosted around 20 kids at the Showground on a new map ideal for such outings.
Their next two events are on Saturdays Jan 18 and 25, and with families returning from summer vacation we anticipate numbers will climb as they did last year.
In Sydney, we hosted a small but enthusiastic group today at Curl Curl Lagoon playing fields on a flat, off-road course in warm weather.
For our second Sydney holiday event (Fri Jan 24) we return to Centennial Park - hoping it's not 46 degrees like last year !
Assembly is in front of the Education Centre (bottom of grid F4 on the map). Park in Dickens Drive and walk through the forest to the amenities block.
UPDATE: Saturday Disney will be filming a segment with two of our NSW junior reps that morning up in the sandstone ridge area. They may also later be filming participants at Space Racing. If you consent to your child being filmed we will issue them with an identifying wristband, and ask you to sign a consent form.
As always, any club members who can assist at Space Racing are greatly appreciated - whether it's coaching, shadowing kids around the course, handling rego or putting out and collecting controls.
Please advise
The New Year is sprint time for orienteering - and 2014 offers more than ever.
As well as the regular Sydney Sprint Series, which runs from early January to early March, a new holiday carnival will be staged in Canberra just before school goes back.
Sprint Canberra will run from Jan 23-27 in locations across the capital's northern suburbs and is aiming to raise funds for Orienteering Australia's new High Performance Plan.
The first round of the 2014 National League is a sprint weekend in Brisbane on Feb 22-23.
Across the Tasman, the Sprint the Bay weekend from Feb 7-9 in the Napier-Hastings-Hawkes Bay area is growing in popularity and attracting a fair share of top European competitors.
'Sprint' is the newest format of our sport. Think of it as the T20 of orienteering. At the elite level it is meant to be fast and furious, where an error of even 10 seconds could cost you several places. Courses are short (2.5-3.5km), with lots of controls and lots of changes of direction, and held mainly in urban environments (uni campuses, former hospital sites, sporting complexes etc).
The scale of sprint maps is usually 1:5000 or 1:4000, but can be even as big as 1:1000. Features come up far sooner than on a bush map, so it's easy to overshoot the control or attackpoint.
More features are deemed uncrossable / out of bounds (often walls, high fences, garden beds etc). And at world championship level they have even erected temporary fencing / barriers to make route choice much more complicated than it otherwise would be.
At the top level it's very fast. For your average participant it's just more problem solving at your wn pace in nice surroundings.
And stay tuned for details of some awesome sprint orienteering as part of the Xmas 5-days in Sydney at the end of 2014.
One of the true legends of Sydney (and NSW and Australian) orienteering - Ross Barr - reached a significant milestone recently when he published his 200th blog article about the Sydney Summer Series.
Ross is sort of the Abraham Lincoln of our sport - liberating the street/oval running slaves by instigating the SSS 23 years ago as a way to bring orienteering to the masses, and to encourage people to explore the loveliest pockets of Sydney harbour foreshore, bushland and suburban parks.
His love of O is almost rivalled by his thirst for a Reschs post-run, and most Thursdays he devotes 3-4 hours to compiling a bright, witty and nickname-loaded appreciation of the previous evening's offerings.
And they're not just a few paras - 2,000 words is the norm.
His first website news blog was at the end of the 2006/2007 season, and then became a reasonably regular feature from the 07/08 season. Before this, he used to put out printed updates every month or so – always with a racing theme, hence his use of the ‘Pork Pie’ nom de plume.
Happy New Year everyone!
The first week of 2014 is already behind us and we have events coming up left, right and centre.
The Newcastle Summer Series resumes this Wednesday (Jan 8) at Waratah, while the Sydney series powers on at Rydalmere.
SHOO's Summer Saturdays are already underway, as is the annual Sydney Sprint Series.
Central Coast resume on Sunday (Jan 12) at Ettalong, while many of our regional clubs get back into the swing of things once school starts up again.
Did you know that ONSW, through its member clubs, puts on about 350 events each year?!
Thanks to hosts Goldseekers and all the contributing visiting clubs for another successful annual Xmas 5-days bush carnival at Orange. We look forward to a big urban carnival in Sydney at the end of the year when we entertain plane-loads of European elites en route to Tasmania for the first round of the 2015 World Cup.
From total beginners to the elite level, we welcome and cater to people of all ages and abilities.
