The second round of the National Orienteering League was held at the NZ Orienteering Championships, including both the Middle and Long distances. With this being the highest attendance of all events this year competition was fierce at the top of the table. Both days featured extremely challenging courses that caused many mistakes and misspunches among the finishers. Read on for a look at how it played out…

In the Middle Distance, the big result was Matt Ogden (196.7) dominating the Men’s class in a performance reminiscent of his 2012 JWOC victory, winning by a whopping 7:39 over Nick Smith (162.5). Felix Hunt (353.5) finished slightly further back in third, with Ed Cory-Wright (161.7) and (unusually) Joseph Lynch (174.9) slightly further back again in 4th and 5th position.

In the Long distance normal service resumed with Joseph taking the win and clawing back a few points from Matt. Will Tidswell (153.5) posted an excellent 3rd place amongst the field with Ed Cory-Wright again running well to hold off Cameron Bonar (143.1) for 4th. Despite winning the M20E class by over 15 minutes Felix Hunt loses a few points to the 21E leaders as the 20E winner only scores 80 points compared to 100 for the 21E winner. Despite that, he retains the overall lead thanks to strong results from Rounds #1 and #2 and has a good shot of taking home the overall title this year. The other overall placings remain largely unchanged with results from Rounds #1 and #2 keeping Jake McLellan (318.0), Sam Carryer (309.4), Riley Croxford (299.3), and Nathan Borton (278.2) on top of the standings for now.

On the Women’s side Lizzie Ingham (200) produced a perfect weekend of orienteering to take home all 3 individual titles and with it full points for the NOL competition. However, since she didn’t attend Rounds #1 and #2 any chance of an overall win will rely on her travelling down to Dunedin next weekend and picking up points from Rounds #5 and #6. Likewise for the 2nd and 3rd place finishers in the Middle, Renee Beveridge (271.9) and Georgia Whitla (180.6). Lara Molloy (265.7) has been making a strong return to the elite field this year picking up 4th with Zara Stewart (161.7) best of the juniors in 5th.

In the Long distance, Briana Steven (363.5) leapt up to take a strong 2nd place behind Lizzie ahead of Lara, Georgia, and Piret Klade (158.1). This also puts her into the overall lead with a 22-point buffer over the W20E winner Katherine Babington (341.0) and gives her a most excellent chance of taking out the overall title this year at Rounds #5 and #6 as she won’t be in the country for the final round at Kings Birthday. As in the Men’s class, the juniors hold the rest of the leaderboard with Tide Fa’avae (328.5), Phoebe Hunt (313.6) and Anna Babington (293.5) rounding out the top 5.

We are now halfway through the NOL season and with many senior athletes skipping the first round in Auckland points from Nationals could prove crucial come the end of the season. With only a couple of weeks until the next round at the Taitonga/South Island Championships we are close to seeing who will be in the running come Kings Birthday in June.

See the update to the leaderboard after nationals here:
By Scott Smith

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