Latest ONSW News
Julian Dent's move to Sweden is paying off with some fantastic performances at this year's World Orienteering Championships in Lausanne. He qualified for the Sprint Final by coming 6th in his heat, a mere 12 seconds behind heat winner Adam Kovacs of Hungary. He finished in 32nd place in the final with fellow Australian David Brickhill-Jones in 39th. They were the only two Australians to make it to the Sprint Final, but there were some near misses with Simon Uppill narrowly missing out with an 18th place in his heat and Rachel Effeney even closer in 16th (the top 15 go through) and only 14 seconds behind the 15th place runner Esther Doetsch of Germany. Lizzie Ingham of NZ won her heat and followed it up with a terrific finish in 9th place in the final which was won by the seemingly unbeatable Simone Niggli-Luder of Switzerland.
Julian's form continued into the Long Distance Qualification race with a 7th place in his heat. Rachel Effeney and Vanessa Round had good runs in their heats but missed out on qualification so it will only be Aislinn Prendergast running for Australia in the Womens Long Distance Final after qualifying in 14th place in her heat. Vanessa Round does get a run in the Middle Distance Final qualifying in 12th in her heat.
The racing continues with the Middle Distance Final with full GPS tracking, live blog and internet TV at 8pm AEST 17th July. Julian races again in the Long Distance Final on Thursday 19th July at 9.17pm AEST with Aislinn Prendergast off at 7.43pm AEST. Follow all the action on the WOC site http://woc2012.ch/en/live-centre.html
There was much antipodean excitement at the JWOC last week with Matt Ogden winning the Middle Distance race, and bringing the first Gold medal ever in this event at JWOC for New Zealand. The Australian team managed one runner in the A final, with Ian Lawford finishing a personally satisfying week for him in the individual races, with a 27th place. NSW runner Kasimir Gregory was 32 in the B final, and Alex Massey 9th in the C final. The Australian women were all racing in the Middle B final and Garingal's Michele Dawson had a great run to take the best Australian women's placing of 17th.
There was more excitement in the final event of the week with the relays, with a terrific performance by the Australian men coming 11th overall in a competition which saw seconds separately runners' placings in each leg. The Australian men's B team also had a great run coming 28th out of a field of 59. The women's team had a steady race with all members of the team well matched and coming in 31st overall. More reporting available on the Orienteering Australia website. Full results on the JWOC website
The Australian JWOC team has been settling into the European time zone with a training camp, before the competition in Slovakia starts in earnest next week. The terrain is classic limestone sinkhole so getting some practice on comparable areas has been really important for the team ahead of the races. The first competition event is the Sprint Final on Sunday 8th July, followed by the Long Distance final on Monday, the Middle Distance qualification on Wednesday and the final on Thursday, wrapping up with the Relays on Friday 13th. We have three team members from NSW – Kasimir Gregory (Northern Tablelands), Alex Massey (Newcastle) and Michele Dawson (Garingal) Follow their progress in their own words at http://ausjuniororienteering.blogspot.com.au/
There is a bush training session being run this Tuesday 10th July at Soapy Flat near Mittagong in the Southern Highlands, and any ONSW member is welcome to attend. The session is being run by Junior Squad team manager, and recent Newcastle Coalfields Classic Sprint setter, Karen Blatchford. The training will be making use of SI so that you can analyse your data afterwards. If you would like to come along please let Karen Blatchford know by emailing here at
This will be the second training outing for the Junior Squad these holidays as Graeme Dawson (Garingal) set a Czech relay on the Wattle Ridge map this week for the team. As well as the squad there were quite a few other orienteers who also came along. Corinne Fulford (SHOO), Airdrie Long (Garingal) and Dave Lotty (Uringa) took full advantage of a great map and interesting training exercise to brush up their fine navigation. Coaching for some of the younger juniors was available with youngsters like Hugh Gingell, a Garingal junior who will be moving up to Moderate courses this year, having a go at some technically difficult controls. Josh Blatchford, up from Canberra, also training, shadowed some of the older squad around the course to give them an Elite eye view of orienteering.
