Latest ONSW News
Congratulations to Hastings Orienteers founding members Chris Delaney, Michelle Delaney, Alison McLachlan and Dan McLachlan who won a big adventure race on home turf earlier this month.
Their team Rogue Adventure entered the 36-hour category of the Wildside Adventure Race and cleared the course in half the time (18h33m) to win by a massive hour and a half. You can see a short video of their race here.
And HOGs president Matt Bell was in the team (MC Squared) that won the 20-hour category by two hours.
Well done also to Sydney Summer Series rookies Monika Lee, Edie Chow (Garingal) and Mattijs Spierings (Bennelong Northside) for having a go in the 8-hour category and finding all the checkpoints.
"Our orienteering practice really helped us," said Edie.
Siblings Nea and Ewan Shingler have taken out the annual Big Foot Sprints for the second year in a row.
In warm conditions at St Ives Showground - where hundreds of cars were queued up for covid tests - Ewan had a 5-second lead over Big Foot clubmate Alastair George after the first 2.6km race.
This featured four gorgeous bush controls in the east of the map before a flat fast second half.
Ewan stretched his lead in the chasing start second run over 2.4km, where the bush legs 2-3 and 3-4 were key, and finished 17 seconds clear with a combined time of exactly 25 minutes.
Bush n Beach junior Sam Woolford, down from Coffs Harbour for the junior squad camp this weekend, was third in 27.34.
Nea was almost three minutes clear of Emily Sorensen, formerly from South Australia but now residing in Sydney, after the first run and coasted home by four and a half minutes in a combined time of 31.17.
Garingal junior Lilja Lehtonen was third female in 37.35, holding off Newcastle's Erika Enderby by six seconds. The chasing start format meant first to the finish was overall winner, so as you came through the last controls you were trying to overtake people - or not be overtaken.
This was a fantastic event to finish Big Foot's 40th year. Thanks to setter Paul Marsh, controller Tracy Marsh, results guru Andy Simpson for his computer wizardry, and Paula Shingler for the stunning cake.
Goldseekers elite Anna Fitzgerald has won the annual Course Setter of the Year award for her courses at Gumble on the last day of the national Easter carnival.
Anna provided a heady contrast: fast open, rocky farmland for the first half of her courses - then sent everyone plunging back into the intricate granite that had proven so difficult the previous day.
It's the first time in seven years the award has gone to a 'full length' bush event, after being dominated by Sprint setters in recent times.
Here are some of the comments from participants:
"Perfect level of difficulty and length for the last day of the Easter weekend."
"This was a terrific course. There was heaps of variety and I finished completely stuffed after running/walking hard throughout."
"Great use of the yellow and then green areas, good hard controls, great use of direction and length change and making people look for the easy way.
"A really well set course that made for exciting spectating and tactical racing - perfect for a chasing start."
Congratulations Anna!
A reminder that Xmas 5-Days entries close at midnight on Tuesday (Dec 14).
This year's carnival is in the Southern Highlands, and there will be no enter-on-day - so don't miss out!
The Hut at Belanglo State Forest will be available for people who have entered the Xmas 5-Days (see the website story for full details).
Events will be run in accordance with the NSW Health requirements at the time.
We have a bush sprint, 3 bush events and an urban sprint.
(1) If you are intending to run the same class for all 5 days, please enter here via Eventor.
(2) If you are entering individual days or wish to enter different classes on different days, use the daily entry event for each of the days.
